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Oprah said it, so it had to be true. I couldn't find any other example of trans boys out there, and certainly not any of trans men. So I just continued on growing up believing that I alone had been born with this awful curse of being both trans and gay. Like as if that was some improbable combination that no one else in the world possessed. And that it made me so weird that I could never tell anyone, could ever do anything about it.
I just had to suck it up and live my life as a girl. But of course eventually I went to college and met real trans people and queer people and took gender theory courses and I learned everything there is to know about gender and sexual diversity including most importantly that trans people can be any sexual or romantic orientation.
Trans people are just like cis people. We can be straight, gay men, bi, pan, ace, whatever. Being transgender does not negate any of that. Ang of course by the time I learned that and started unpacking all of my own feelings around gender with like the actual words and knowledge to go behind it, I started realizing that I had liked girls that whole time. It could just be a non-issue if I had just realized that from the start. But the thing I really want to hammer home is that I learned what it meant to be when I was eleven and I kept it locked up inside of me for over ten years because I had been misinformed. Because I would have grown up in a culture of homophobia and transphobia and zero education. Because the few media representations I stumbled upon were my education and they weren't accurate or useful representations. I spent nearly half my life thinking I was a standalone freak because I'd never been given a reason to think otherwise. So that is why media representation matters. That is why getting sex and gender education in school matters.
Those are both crucial places of learning for kids and we need so much more responsible and respectful representation in both of them. Sometimes, a professional trans app can be helpful. As sad as it is, I spent nearly half my life confused and lonely when I could have been able to transition before puberty and like how Rad would have been to have gotten to live the childhood I always dreamt of.
But my story is hardly distressing compared to the much worse depression, dysphoria, substance abuse, bullying, violence, and suicide that happens to so many other trans and gender non-conforming kids out there as a result of a lack of education and role models. All of which is why I do what I do.