The strangest thing for me about being trans is that I am. It seems so strange at times because I never considered myself to be trans until I was in my mid to late 40’s. Sure I can look back now and see things in my life that were a clear indication that my gender wasn’t what they told me it was, but due to the high levels of dissociation I had already applied these moments were lost, instantly repressed, leavening me with confusion and an unnamable fear.

Let me step back for a second and give you some context. I’m come from two poor families in rural Kentucky. Neither of my parents finished high school, and my dad only went for his GED in order to become a minister. He took a home study course through Trevecca Nazarene College in Tennessee, something you couldn’t do now. Not In the Nazarene Church or most institutional churches. The Universalist Church on the other hand…but I digress. My father received his ministerial license in 1976, when I was 5, just turning 6. Yes, 1976. Poor, uneducated, minister in rural Kentucky in 1976.

i had grown up in the Nazarene Church. Early memories are fuzzy, but I can remember being there. So likely I had religious trauma before I could speak. Certainly before my dad became a minister. You may be asking youself “What is this Church of the Nazarene?” They don’t make the news much and I’ve seen them featured in a movie or tv show. They are, or were, I don’t know if any of this has changed since I left the church, a Tribulation Church, they believed that the Rapture was coming soon, as in literally any day now. They had some other distinguishing characteristics but I don’t think the specifics of the theology matter outside of this: they loved to talk about Hell and the horrible things that happened to sinners who were cast into Hell. They also like to talk about the horrors of the Tribulation, being Left Behind, which has been referenced in a contemporary books and films, so I won’t go into it. But it was scary as fuck to me especially when I was hearing these horror stories when I was 6.

This part is relevant but unfortunately not limited to the Church of the Nazarene: sex was bad. In fact I recall many, many times hearing my mother say “don’t watch that, it’s nasty!” With a slightly elongated stress on the word nasty, almost making it two words. Now, she was saying this about things that were on network television in the 1970’s. There really wasn’t much going on over network television in the 70’s. Especially when compared to today. But it was still “nasty” and er were told “y’all aught’na watch that” to which I responded with shame.

Since the body was mortal and only a home for the soul, the salvation of which was our entire purpose on earth, and was to be discarded prior to entering Heaven, the whole thing was problematic. Looking at it could cause others to commit the sin of lust, not to mention that anyone who exposes their body, in anyway, bathing suit, taking your shirt off outdoors, wearing shorts if any length, were being “shameful”. I suppose their sin was “Pride” but we didn’t have official sins, so I don’t know that it was specified what the sin was, maybe immodesty? Seems like a mild word compared to how they talked about it. The word they used most often was “carnality”.
I didn’t understand this ar the time but “carnal” means “of the body” and carnality means “preoccupation with the body and worldly pleasures”. So, having a body wanting to do anything fun with it was pretty much a sin. Unless you wanted to over stuff yourself at the church potluck.

So there I am, approaching adolescence, in the 70’s, in a poor family in rural Kentucky, being told nothing about the body or sex or even gender, and the only thing I am being told about body or sex is that it’s “nasty” and shameful and could be the reason why I don’t make it into Heaven snd instead, after enduring the Tribulation on earth, be cast into eternal torment. All this before I even considered my gender or sexuality. So like I said, major dissociation seemed like a safe bet.

Let me add one more layer to this tableau. The only references to queerness or transness that could be found were in popular culture where queer and trans folx were stereotyped to be effeminate men, lesbians were almost unheard of, I don’t recall any, and a “man in a dress” was a source of shame for the man and a source of humor for those seeing them. And that’s if it were mentioned at all.

Like I said, there were signs early on of my gender and sexual orientation, but they got swept away almost immediately. The fact that o was attracted to women helped me deny that I was also attracted to men. And the fact that I was attracted to women also helped me deny that I wanted to be them.

The first time any of these came into my consciousness was when I turned 20. I has only been at college a few weeks and noticed that the person I was checking out was in fact a man and things that had been happening suddenly fell into place and so many things about my life began to make more sense.

Within a year of coming out I started wearing make up and skirts. I rationalized this by saying I was copying Robert Smith and David Bowie and whoever, and maybe doing a little gender fuckery as we like to call it. But I wasn’t trans. I didn’t want to be a woman.

i changed my name to Jayne in January of 1993. That’s another story for another time, but again, yes this is gender fuckery, and in fact at this point I was acknowledging that I had a “male and female side”, which was expressed by my second tattoo I got that year; a sun eclipsed by a moon, which I said was the masculine being eclipsed by rhe feminine. But I wasn’t trans.

I won’t say it didn’t occur to me at all that I might be, I even spoke to some trans folxs when I had the chance and felt discouraged or…well I’m not sure what else I felt, I don’t remember that second conversation I had. For whatever reason it didn’t strike a chord and as you can see I forgot about it.

Clearly, I did figure all this out at some point. I was approaching 40, I was in Grad School, it was the 2008 or 2009, somewhere in there, and I was taking a Gender Studies Course and came upon the word non-binary. This felt right. Well, potentially right. I was pretty sure it described me and was quite happy to discover the word, but I had a few more hurdles to get through. Mostly it was “only these young people are using the term, am I too old?” (Which I admit sounds silly when I say it out loud or write it down, but we all do shit like that) and “all the people using the term seem to be assigned female at birth, so can an AMAB person use the term?” The biggest hurdle of all for me was my marriage.

At this point I had been married 8 years or something, time gets real fuzzy when you’re dealing with this much trauma plus ADD. We had one child and would soon have another. I knew that my wife wasn’t comfortable whenever I talked about or questioned my gender expression. I don’t mean to vilify someone who doesn’t get a chance to respond, I also don’t want to say for the sake of diplomacy that I might have misunderstood their meaning. Because I didn’t. The one thing I’ll reiterate is that for my part I’m sure I would have used anything as an excuse to change.

Once we were divorced and I had moved out on my own for the first time since 1991, one of the first things I did was to say “I can go back and explore this non-binary, genderqueer stuff I was thinking about in grad school”. Which was a gradual process, although it feels like it happened quickly, which it did, 7 years from that moment to now.

The rest of the timeline goes something like this: in 2018 I started wearing make up again, then in 2019 started coming out ad non-binary to friends and most importantly to me, I began to transition at work. My pronouns were they/them and at some point I started going by the name Jayne again. At first I said I wasn’t going to start HRT, but by 2020 I started estrogen, and at some point my pronouns changed to she/they, and my presentation has become more feminine.

Also, somewhere in there, I began to wonder if non-binary was also trans. I wanted to be respectful, but also I have survived and navigated my traumas in part by being a people pleaser and I couldn’t tolerate the idea that someone might become angry with me for saying I was trans. So I’m 49 maybe 48 about to turn 49, before I even considered that I was trans. Five years. 1/10th of my life.

That is why there are so many moments where I stop and think to myself “I’m trans!”. This isn’t the fulfillment of a life long desire that I’ve held since childhood. Even in my 20’s when I was wearing make up and skirts, it wasn’t about being trans, it was just what I did. Not once did I ever try to picture myself living, working, loving, and parenting as a non-binary transwoman. So the strangest thing about being trans foe me is that I am and that in doing so I have never been happier.

So yeah, as an epilogue, just so the point isn’t lost, my dissociation has deceased dramatically since I formally started my transition. Embracing my authentic self has been one of the most powerful feats Of healing I’ve accomplished. But I didn’t do it alone. I didn’t mention all thr support I’ve found from my friends I’ve known since high school and new friends I’ve met along the way, as well therapists I have worked with over the years, and continue to work with, and let’s not forget the medication for anxiety, depression, and ADD.

The problem is, as I see it, at the root of what drag is and, more importantly, the space it occupies in culture. Drag is an exaggerated performance of masculinity or femineity or other gender expression. All of which is phenomenal. Historically, certainly in more recent times, drag has become a method for social satire, political commentary, and exploring or challenging gender norms. In many ways it’s not unlike clowning, which is historically a very important, sacred role in any culture, not just the tricksters of many indigenous cultures, but even in Europe. The Jester or the Fool had a special place in the court that no one else had: they were allowed to criticize royalty. I won’t go further into that because it’s a subject that warrants it’s own post. This is one of the reasons I still love drag. No, I never said I hated drag, I said I was over it. The root of drag, however, it’s pure essence, we could say (I’m certainly going to say it) is the exaggerated performance of gender. When we view drag we are viewing a performance that is itself a satire and criticism of gender and gender norms. Add to this that historically this has been men performing femininity. So much so that I had to go back and correct this post to specify that is drag queens that I am talking about, not drag as a whole, which illustrates part of the point: we don’t perceive drag as being about gender, it’s become synonymous with the performance of femininity. Generally, largely, almost exclusively, men performing femininity.

Case in point, it’s called RuPaul’s Drag Race yet have their been drag kings on there? If there have, and I honestly don’t know, nothing I have seen or heard about Drag Race as a non-viewer, which I feel is more than I know about most other shows on the market, indicate that there has never been a drag king or whatever someone who is performing non-binary gender is called, which I think should be drag sovereign. They are called Drag Shows, but how often do they include performances of masculinity? I’m sure there are, yet I am willing to bet that is it still a rare exception. Also, and here’s the crux of my argument, even if there are, I am certain that a poll of a cross section of the population as a whole would show that everyone still associates drag with femininity. And most likely a survey of the LGBTQIA community would produce similar if not identical results.

When we, then, present drag queens as the “face” of the community when are associating the community with the performance of femininity. Specifically men who are performing femininity. That is where I have a problem. We as a community are not defined by our performance of femininity, especially with the specific trope of men performing femininity. That is has been a problematic way the community has presented for decades. My whole life the only queer people I ever saw in movies or on t.v. were effeminate males. Now this is another topic in and of itself, so I don’t want to get too far into the particulars. This is certainly covered in excellent documentaries like the Celluloid Closet and Transsomethingor other. To be clear, I do not have a problem with effeminacy or queens or “sissies” if you’ll allow me to use an archaic term. In fact I am a non-binary transwoman who is AMAB. More on that in a bit. The problem with this representation isn’t just that it’s been played for laughs for so long, which can undermine the perception of queer folx as people, although that is an aspect of this we cannot ignore, it’s that it has been synonymous with queer folx.

Despite all the progress we have made across the culture in this country, and I have lived through much of it, we have not shaken off the image of queer=effeminacy. Not completely. For every Will there’s a Jack, for every Ian Gallagher there’s a Titus Andromedon.

We are well beyond this point as culture, not just queer culture, but as a culture on the whole.

So what DOES it tell you? It’s safe to say that someone who is a Witch is focused on the feminine. This could be a specific goddess or a more broadly defined idea of the feminine in nature, such as revering the life giving and generative aspects of nature. For others, it could be the “goddess within us all”. In addition, Witches usually have a reverence for nature in some way, as many practice their faith outdoors and not in a building. And of course, there’s a good chance that Witches believe in magic, which is, again, not unlike saying “all Christians believe in God” because the actual definition of and practice around this belief can vary widely among Christians, just as the actual definition of and practice or magic can vary widely.

Secondly, it’s a political statement. At least for me and many others Witches. The earliest records of any practicing Witch is most likely written by the Christians and describe a local woman who acts as the village healer, midwife, and general spiritual advisor. For many they practiced folk medicine, not unlike the kind my Memaw practiced, putting potatoes on infections and keeping aloe plants in the kitchen. These were passed down orally between generations which is why the earliest written accounts are not by the hand of the Witches themselves but by their detractors, who wished to unseat women as the source of guidance and healing and replace it with the monolithic and patriarchal church. As this was part of an cultural smear campaign against women, these practices became associated with all kinds of unwanted behavior and nefarious associations, to the point that any woman who practiced self-advocacy, independent thoughts, or showed signs of a curious mind were labeled as a Witch with all the negative connotations it had been given. Over time the word Witch became a generic pejorative term analogous with bitch and whore, which were others words that were used to disempower women. At some point in history, particularly modern history (and I’ll give you the name of this great book that I have but am not referencing for this post because it’s at home and I am at work) feminists and feminist adjacent women began to take back the term, just like they were taking back the term bitch, slut, and whore, identifying with the traits associated with those terms as empowered, such as thinking for yourself and challenging the authority of the patriarchal church.

Thirdly, it’s also a social statement. It is a declaration that the person won’t be defined by the fears or a “polite society”, that other’s comfort is not the limit of one’s identity. Many would not identify as a Witch simply because others might not take them seriously or worse associate them with the negative stereotypes of this term. Now, it’s hardly likely that people will think a Witch is eating children or making pacts with Satan, although there are some that do still think this, it’s more likely they will snigger behind their backs for having such antiquated beliefs that are clearly contradicted by our current understanding of the material universe. Which is, ironically, how I feel about Christians. Declaring oneself a witch is setting oneself up in opposition to this need for conformity as a source of comfort, mimicry as a form of identity, and passivity as an aspect of community.

Thirdly, it’s an ontological statement. At least it is for me. When I say “I am a Witch” I generally mean “I AM a witch”, in that it is more than a practice and more than a political statement and more than an act of rebellion. It is the way in which I inhabit my life and the world. At first I didn’t see it this way, it was enough to be anti-patriarchal and to anti-establishmentarian, yet I have long sought a spiritual practiced that addressed what it meant to be IN the world, to participate in existence, even creation itself, and more than anything to inhabit my own body and my own life. Now, the journey that lead me to being a Witch has several threads, and I’ll post the link to a podcast where I talk a little more in-depth about it, which includes my path to becoming a therapist. In summary, and I don’t mean this to be reductive about my practice, it think it was Alister Crowley who said that magic is a manifestation of the Will. It is willing a change in the world, which includes a change in you, into existence. Which is also the goal of therapy. And we use a lot of the same tools; vision boards, letters to the past or future, dialogue with aspects of the self or with manifestations of loved ones, mindfulness, art, etc. etc.

Sure, there are plenty of people who scoff at those tools and at therapy in general, and they are usually the same people who are critical or even prejudiced against Witches. Mostly likely those people aren’t even reading this blog, so fuck ’em. I tried doing things their way and all it got me was depression, misery, and pain. Yes I read Tarot, however I think it is a tool for looking at the self and your situation, to gain a new perspective of your current experiences, the same way a painting or a book can grant you perspective. After all, a Tarot deck is a deck of paintings with specific associations that are aligned randomly to create a story. Yes I work with Sigils quite a bit, which are concentrated affirmations, among other things.

And lastly, and for me most importantly, the statement “I am a Witch” is a spiritual statement. I am saying that I do have a spiritual practice, that I do see the world as other than a purely materialistic existence governed and defined by reason and that which we can “prove”. I am not anti-science, I think an understanding of the material world is very important in having an understanding of the spiritual, or the ethereal nature of the world. It’s just that, when it comes down to it, how we define something has more to do with us and our beliefs than it does with the measurable data

I just enjoy every minute of being a woman. Walking into the coffee co-op, the hem of my sun dress flapping precariously about my upper thigh, the air moving across my smooth legs, the weight of purse in the end of my finger ss it dangles by my side….it’s such a deep whole body experience. We talk about gender as performance, and it is, but I think that causes the somatic experience of gender to be downplayed. I find myself wondering to myself how many times I still look at myself, and admittedly others, albeit subconsciously, and see the aesthetics of gender performance and miss the existence of trans bodies.

But I still don’t know if that was the proper thing to do or not. At what point do I stop apologizing for having the tits that I worked so hard to obtain at this somewhat late point in life? And this of course brings up other issues around the female breasts, the main one being why are they considered taboo in the first place? What makes my chest uncomfortable for others now that it has more adipose tissue underneath the nipples? The nipples are the same as before. However, we all know that the adipose tissue that gives my breasts more volume and shape is perfectly fine to be shown, as long as the nipple is covered up. Even if covered up, it must be covered with something opaque enough to obfuscate the nipple and preferably thick enough to prevent the shape of the nipple being seen. Which is one of the arguments for undergarments, in addition to the sometimes more practical need for support. It boils down to this, as far as I can figure, women are not supposed to have nipples, at least they are not meant to remind us they have nipples.

I say “women” to note the subtext or is it context? that shapes our view of what I am going to refer to as boobs or tits, because everyone has breasts, but a breast and a tit is not the same thing, anatomically and aesthetically speaking.

There’s a similar question around breasts and personal relations. It’s one thing to presume a medical professional isn’t going to feel put out when I get my tits out, but what about colleagues? Friends I’ve known a long time? Like I said, I’m comfortable showing my tits for a lot of reasons, pride being one of them, but another being that they aren’t that different from “male breasts”. In fact, we all know that in many cultures around the world even today and certainly through history there is no taboo about boobs. A topless person with tits and one without are regarded roughly the same. Sure they are still considered sexy, on the whole, but they are also seen as a basic part of the human body, and far less personal than genitalia. So, if I am comfortable around a friend I’ve known for 30 years, and that friend has seen mye topless countless times in the past, what is the difference now? Adipose tissue, but again, it’s the same nipples they’ve seen thousands of time that now are considered taboo. Even if they are an artist and have drawn nude models before and thus have some training on regarding the body with objectivity (as opposed to objectifying). Also, I trust my friends don’t have a sexual interest in me, because weve known each other a long time, and if they did, I trust they’d tell me about it.

Now, i know that we can know someone a long time and be surprised about someone’s behavior. I’ve had that happen to me recently. I’m not suggesting that everyone share my views, I’m saying for me personally and my friends. And yet, as much as I feel that I can trust them, that they have likely seen me nude at least once, because I have been an exhibitionist for a long time and thus nudity isn’t going to destroy or damage our friendship, I still feel uncertainty about how the feel about seeing my tits, even if it’s an artistic photo and not a salacious display.

Because boobs are weird! Right? So many variables, so many exceptions to the rule, such as the aforementioned art example. If it’s in a performance or a picture in a gallery, that’s one thing, but a snapshot is another? If the other person has breasts is it still considered rude to expose yours? Do AFAB people casually take their tops off in the company of other AFAB people? Is it safe or wise to presume so? If not then why not? I can understand wanting to avoid sexualization or objectification and yet I wouldn’t assume that is the case in a gendered space like a locker room. And maybe it isn’t, I don’t know because I’ve not been in those spaces as a transwoman yet.

And of course one of the reasons that I haven’t is that I may still be seen as “not a woman”, I don’t even want to say “as a man” because it angers me to think about it. I am aware of all the discourses around this very topic regarding bathrooms and locker rooms, and I’m not even going to talk about bathrooms, that’s also another blog post for another time. I know that being in those spaces produces another layer of discourse in addition to the etiquette around boobs. I admit, again with some reluctance and much frustration, that I haven’t shed my 48 years of conditioning living as a man to always feel embodied and empowered as a woman. I still have some imposter syndrome around gender and would feel a bit like a rooster in the hen house in these gendered spaces. Some of that is anatomical and but much of it sits at the intersection of sexuality and gender.

The protests against trans people in a gendered space is based on perceptions of gender and sexuality. If you were assigned male at birth then you must have a “male gaze” when viewing the bodies of those assigned female at birth, regardless of whether or not you have ever regarded AFAB bodies with sexual interest. We don’t want to accept that it is not anatomy but sexual orientation that informs our gaze and that gay, bi, and pan folks have always shared these gendered spaces with those whom we find attractive and whose bodies we may sexualize. Keeping AMABs out AFAB spaces and vice versa really does very little to prevent these gazes from happening. I suppose now that I think about it it’s a case of “out of sight, out of mind”. If you look like me, that is have similar anatomy to me, the homogeneity obscures sexuality. Which brings to a deeper truth: that which we fear the most is the Other.

Regardless of what else we have in common in terms of appearances, and regardless of what differences we may have in terms of sexuality, someone with a different anatomy stands out in a room where anatomy’s are similar or the same. As I’ve said several times in this post, that’s a subject for another post, probably several posts. This also bring to my attention that I’ve moved quite a distance from the discussion of nipples, which I take as an indication that I’ve reached a stopping point. Do I have any more clarity? No, only more questions (“Questions that need answers!”). My original premise still stands, “having breasts are weird, especially when you didn’t grow up with them”. And I accept that having lived with breasts since adolescence likely only means you are familiar with having to navigate these spaces and but that doesn’t mean they make any more sense to you. Just because the weird is the norm, doesn’t mean it isn’t weird.

It’s been 7 years since my last blog post. I had just left my wife, our divorce was final in December. Since then I’ve had at least 2 Major Depressive Episodes, my father passed away, as did my cat, my oldest child has had 5 psychiatric hospitalizations, both of kids have come out as non-binary, my oldest started HRT, I’ve started a private practice, moved twice, become a queer nun, gotten 26 tattoos, most in the last 5 years, and embraced my identity as a witch. Oh, yeah, and I started my transition too.

I count my transition as officially beginning in 2019, since that’s when I decided to transition at work and live my life as authentically as possible. Of course it started before that, when I first came out as bisexual in 1990. And of course it started before that, on that gravel road I lived on in my early years of life. Although of course no one knows where it all really starts, not really. It seems unlikely that someone with my origin story would lead this life, yet here I am, 52 years later, still figuring it all out….