SECO

You can flip back through the pagеs
And you won’t find I was making any promises
You’re the dеsert, I’m the rain
And we both know I never stay
But still you wanted it

– “Slow Song” by The Knocks and Dragonette

Explosive bolts keep firing in my mind, decoupling the thing I tried to be from the thing I am – in spasms of emotional and physical joy and pain. This is the craziest time I’ve ever experienced in my life. Part of the explosive decoupling is admitting things that I never could believe about myself before. Things I hoped for, things I dreamed to be, but was certain were reserved for people braver than me, or who were lucky enough to be born as cisgender women. I can’t claim that my experience is representative of any other trans experience but my own. It’s important to listen to other types of trans voices, but here’s mine, and I’m going to shout a lot.

Many powerful people in the United States have decided that the most powerless, smallest segment of society – trans kids – are a nice easy target to beat up on and make money off of their victimization. I can’t bear to look at the news these days. Every day, there’s something about state-sponsored violence against trans kids. Why do these a-holes go after kids? I am so fucking mad that society made me *absolutely terrified* to ask my doctor for hormone blockers when I was twelve, in 1990. I would have done it. I almost did. But my brain said, “If you ask, they’ll know. They’ll know that *you’re gay*. And you’re making a permanent change, and are you really a girl? You don’t know! Don’t fuck up your life.” (In 1990, the prospect of being a gay adolescent in the middle of the country was absolutely terrifying. In fact, I had no idea that gay women even existed, and I knew I wasn’t a gay man.)

The violent, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic things that society made me tell myself are exactly the arguments these so-called “representatives” use to destroy the lives of kids and force them to experience the wrong puberty in front of their peers. If I could have stopped my puberty, if someone had grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “Nicole, you can stop this. You *don’t* have to have facial hair, you *don’t* have to have your skull distorted by testosterone, you can *keep* your voice, you can *have boobs*!!!” I would have burst into tears and immediately said “PLEASE do it.”

So, some day, I will write a book about my experience. And I will talk about my experience. And I will try, desperately, for the rest of my life, to convince just one parent at a time that *It’s OK* to let your trans son or trans daughter live their life the way they know that they should. Please stop telling kids that they’re not really trans. Please believe them. Please stop this violence against kids.