Makeup from a music video shoot this past weekend. I love the “both/and” present on my face..

Recently a number of people have mentioned something about my “transition” during conversation. They’ve been curious to know how I feel about what it’ll be like on the “other side”. I want to talk about this idea more fully. It strikes me that the question doesn’t quite pertain to my trans experience.

First off, I’m super glad to finally be read as something other than cis femme by people! It’s been a lifelong desire not to be boxed over in that perfectly wonderful, yet not quite me part of the gender world. Secondly, I want to voice the idea that I don’t consider myself to be in a “transition”. I don’t feel that word really applies to me.

I’m not from one place and going to another. I’m living my life as well as I know how to. I’m taking what, for me, has proven to be an anti-anxiety and anti-depression medicine: testosterone. This medicine also gives me facial hair and a bigger clit (among other attributes), which is awesome because I’ve always wanted facial hair and a bigger clit (among other attributes). For as long as I can remember I’ve been into body modification and costumes. Body mods which make me feel more like myself in little ways such as piercings and tattoos have never been geared toward assimilation with beauty standards set by society, but toward the ways in which I would like to see myself.

I’m genderfluid and I’m non-binary. I’m also, by way of career, a shapeshifter and a character actor. I’ve been so professionally since the age of 11 when I wrote my first monologue, which also happened to be my first drag performance. I hold all of the options within me. This is what makes me happy. I’m not interested in being a “man” in exactly the same way as I’ve never been interested in being a “girl”. I love my identities as a Woman and a Boy though, and I will forever be the creature and imp before you.

When the idea of “binary as ultimate trans designation” started to break down, and then was coupled with an emergence of non-binary options, an entire trans spectrum became more visible. That did more for my gender experience than almost anything else in my life. Suddenly I was free from the expectation that I can only be trans if I feel as though I am “the [binary] other”. I am not “the [binary] other”, I am many others and both. My journey taking Testosterone has led to a deeper love and respect for myself, and to higher levels of joy in my existence. Doors have opened, an enlarged perspective of the world is still being discovered, and a continually persisting disinterest in passing as anything other than exactly who I am is my ultimate goal. What you see is what you get. My body here and now is capable of a great many things regardless of its androgyny or it’s manifestations as femme and masc and…

As for the questions anyone might have: please never stop asking them! I don’t want to be less inspired to write things like this. I want to articulate personal things which shed light on matters of interest. I hope this perspective has inspired new questions too.

Love from inside the Creature, not the Chrysalis.