The World Shines
I
Is there a song you really like that’s a bit messy? Controversial? Dated or written in poor taste? A bit embarrassing, but you still want to sing or dance whenever you hear it? Everyone has at least one, I think.
I’ll share one that I like! I love The Mountain Goats! This is not news to a lot of my friends because I never shut up about them. It’s a indie, folky, sometimes lo-fi (sometimes not) band that sings about anything from the Anglo-Saxons to baseball to jesus h christ to high pressure chemical containers to pro wrestling and more! They’ve been going for at least 30 years now and it’s always been the project of this cool guy called John Darnielle.
If my paraphrasing of their Wikipedia page didn’t scare you away: keep reading! I wanna talk about a song they wrote way way way back in 1994 from their debut album Zopilote Machine. I wouldn’t call it their best album. It’s a bit messy and all over the place, but I think it still has a lot of charm.
And for the record, they’ve had plenty of songs that I like a lot more than this one, but this song is interesting because of its history and the way it’s been performed less and less in recent years. And as of recently, I’ve been thinking about it a lot.
It’s one of their most popular songs called Going to Georgia. You might’ve heard it if it popped up on a playlist or maybe a music algorithm recommended it to you. I really like it.
I’m no music writer so I can’t give you a masterful deconstruction of why it works, unfortunately. The gist is that it’s an emotionally raw and succinct little lo-fi tune about a person travelling with a gun. And the implication that — in a pure rush of adrenaline and blitz of emotions — they’re going to use that gun. It’s going to threaten or even harm themselves or another person, most likely to retrieve something in return. The ultimate means to an end.
The most remarkable thing about coming home to you
Is the feeling of being in motion again;
It’s the most extraordinary thing in the world
I have two big hands
And a heart pumping blood
And a 1967 Colt .45 with a busted safety catch
But the twist — they are eased into putting the weapon down after being stunned by the other person in the song. Once they enter that doorway, everything changes. And they welcome them in.
It’s up to interpretation whether they are stunned by their kindness, their beauty, their sympathy, finally seeing them again after so long, or realising the gravity of their actions.
The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway
Is that it’s you and that you are standing in the doorway
And you smile as you ease the gun from my hand
I am frozen with joy right where I stand
This isn’t the best explanation, so by all means feel free to listen to it. It’s pretty short.
Lyrically speaking, it packs a lot of different themes into a little over two minutes that you barely have any time to dissect because you’re focused on what the armed person is gonna do with the gun — the 1967 Colt.45 (with a busted safety catch, no less) — and whether anyone is going to get seriously harmed.
It’s questionable whether the song’s protagonist/antagonist is being depicted as evil and manipulative for threatening another person for their acceptance; or whether they’re almost being pitied for being at rock-bottom and having to resort to extreme violence. Regardless, this person is sick. Maybe they don’t want help, or maybe they don’t know what help they need. Maybe that help wasn’t even there in the first place.
Taking the song’s subject matter literally — the two subjects usually being read as male and female, in order of appearance — it can easily be read into for romanticising things like misogyny, toxic masculinity, incel culture and so on.
A side note, when reading over the lyrics, I did realise there’s a lot of Mountain Goats songs that involve doors of some kind. Shutting doors, opening doors, cellar doors, deadlocks, door jambs, furniture-blocked doors, lock-picked doors. It’s a handy narrative device that always seems to indicate a line being crossed, whether it be something taboo, an emotional boundary or a forgotten memory. And usually, the subject is desperate to get through it. A happy ending doesn’t always follow it, but it depends. I guess it’s up to you whether you consider the song’s ending a happy one.
But enough about the words. Musically, it’s only 4 chords and an absolute BANGER (Pitchfork, my DMs are open)
It instantly sticks to your brain and Darnielle’s nasally vocal strains really helps sell the whole vibe of this song being an emotional catastrophe, sounding like you’re yelling to stop yourself from bursting into tears. And on top of that, the lo-fi whirr of the now-iconic Panasonic boombox that 99% of old Mountain Goats songs were recorded on gives it this sick and dusty feeling of finding some old musical artefact. A tape rescued from a hermit’s cave that never managed to make it big with a one-hit wonder, and probably won’t unless he tunes that guitar. I think it’s a great song and was likely the first song a lot of Mountain Goats fans heard from the band.
I think it’s representative of a lot of underlying themes and calling cards of many other Mountain Goats songs; essentially a blueprint for the next two decades of the band. The subject matter does move around quite a lot but it won’t be the last time you hear songs with the “Going To-” prefix, waxing about Americana staples and self-destructive and troubled protagonists. It’s not too distant from the long list songs about the Alpha Couple either!
So if it’s so typical, what’s the history that makes this one stand out?
Well, Darnielle more or less hates it! If you ask him about the writing process, he’ll likely tell you how he regrets writing it at all, and that it glorifies a kind of masculinity that can only exist by thinking of women in society as objects that serve only to pacify and nurture destructive males. By extension, noting that the song’s character is proven right that violent or extreme methods produce results, and the implied romanticism of that mindset.
He’s known for doing a lot of stage banter and variations before playing a lot of his songs (part of the reason why a lot of fans have documented a lot of live gigs pretty forensically) and you can get a decent idea of how he feels about the song as the years progress.
It slowly peters out of the typical setlists. If it does show up, it’s usually preempted by a long talk about how he really does not like it, or at the least is very uncomfortable playing it. There’s even a video called Going To Georgia For Sixty US Dollars where someone actually takes him up on the joke offer of a bribe to play the song he calls “misogynistic garbage.”
It’s a lot to delve into. Is it the only mountain goats song with sort of problematic writing? Nah. In fact you’d find a song with — I’d argue — more questionable views about women on the same album in a song called Bad Priestess. There are others across the whole discography, but you can scour the internet for a lot of interesting discussions on them, and how Darnielle feels about them if he’s ever commented on it at a show or in an interview.
And if you so will it, you can isolate this song from the author’s interpretation and feelings and judge it solely on its own. It’s not an invalid approach! Kill that author!
In fact, Going to Georgia isn’t the only song that Darnielle is uncomfortable playing live, with several others not appearing in recent setlists due to the emotional content being quite raw.
It can be seen as taboo amongst fans to request these songs at gigs, or to talk openly about leaked unreleased albums such as Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg — a record Darnielle has requested people to not share openly because he wasn’t happy with the record. He’s recorded 500+ songs (that we know of) and I suppose it’s understandable that there’s a few he isn’t proud of anymore.
And of course, myself being very very annoying, I find myself somewhere in the middle. I don’t intentionally seek it out, but I enjoy lots of art considered problematic, either due to its subject matter or the eventual reveal of its artist’s nasty intentions behind its creation. I bet you do too! I’m certainly not in the position to judge people for liking art with ignorant or bigoted aspects to it because in a way, that encompasses a lot of art in general.
And to be clear, I am put off by people claiming they are somehow holier-than-thou because they only engage with unproblematic artists. They are setting themselves up for the world’s biggest Milkshake Duck moment, but hey good luck with that I guess.
But can I completely detach myself from what other people think about problematic art? Not completely. It’s not just how they feel about said art, but also how they feel about me consuming said art. Honestly, I feel like Darnielle’s own relationship to the song influences how I think about it a lot, and that probably won’t change any time soon.
I’d like to think I’m more-or-less open-minded and progressive although certainly willing to learn more and improve. But still, does all that mean nothing if I clearly get a lot out of a song that definitely has some unsavoury aspects about it? Does it mean I stand behind everything it potentially endorses?
I’m a naturally neurotic and self-conscious person, I think. My brain can’t really survive off of consuming media in isolation. I crave to hear what others think about the things I listen to or watch, and usually want to immediately talk about my new favourite thing. I wrote about that a little bit (and ADHD in general) more here if you’re curious!
In both approaches, I think what truly matters is how you interact with problematic art. Do you ignore those aspects; recognise and acknowledge its flaws but keep engaging with it; detach entirely or try to make your own art to critique it? That’s always been a lot more interesting to me than trying to figure out which one of us consumes art better. I’ve always thought about how my opinions of these songs can change years out from when I first heard them, and what I should do as a listener when it comes to their subject matter.
Maybe listening to something else is the right choice. Let the past be the past and move onto another thing, something more emotionally mature. To borrow that handy narrative device, shutting the door behind you is a good habit to get into.
II
Quite recently, I came out as a transgender woman. You might have seen my old name around (it’s not hard to find) but now I am going by Zoe and using she/her pronouns. At time of writing, I spent 24 years and eight months presenting as a boy, but I’ve only been out as a girl for the last three.
How’s that been? Ehhhhhhhhhhh good! Mostly! But also a lot of bad. In a way, I expected this.
When I began the long process of coming out, I first told a few close friends in private. You know who you are, and I love and appreciate you all so much. I knew going in that you would be kind and courteous regardless of my identity and I was still blown away by how gentle and understanding you all were. I was just looking for someone to listen and I got the bonus of tangible support and offers to help me with aspects of transition. So thanks!
I gradually came out to most of my other friends and then posted a lil thing on social media for people who knew me but weren’t that close. Everyone was super cool about it and said so so many nice things and I felt so relieved about coming out. Except that one creepy dude who sent me an unsolicited DM telling me he liked how I looked in my dress. I love being a woman.
But Zoe (that’s me!), what about your family? That’s the tricky bit!
Before I was completely public but after telling some friends, I told my parents. A support group I was in advised I write a letter to read out. This was a good idea because writing it could help me collect my thoughts, but also drop it and run if things went sour. The thing about coming out is that you can never know the reactions ahead of time no matter how open-minded you think they are. It’s the hope-for-the-best-expect-the-worst approach.
It must’ve been about ten minutes of having my fingers clasped around the door handle to the living room where my parents were. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack but I eventually opened it, asked them if I could talk to them, and read out my letter. And I did.
I can’t really mince words, it was absolutely horrible. My letter was well-written I think, but I knew that it was going to take time for both of them. That’s something I’ve been emphasising throughout the whole process: I don’t want to force them to accept me. I want them to see that I haven’t left, I’m the same person but hopefully a happier one. That takes time, education and understanding. I wanted to help them and I still do. I do love my parents.
I won’t go into all the details except for some close friends in private but the gist is that we’re not talking right now. They don’t accept me and they don’t support me. It sucks. It really sucks. I hope it gets better but I can’t rest on that and I need to move forward regardless.
What I can say is that I was made to feel not like their child, let alone a human, but a freak. A freak with a sickness or condition that needed to be cured. A person lost in their own delusions. Someone who could maybe have innocent fun dressing up in private, but certainly not in our house.
But the good part: now I know for sure that I’m transitioning, and I’m not going to be convinced otherwise. Even with how much they pushed back, it did give me this weird sense of knowing that I’m doing the right thing. It’s hard to pinpoint everything that brought me to the realisation that I was always trans, but I know I’ve reached a pretty solid conclusion.
I was stumbling around my head for 20-or-so years, hazily making out more details as I grew up. One day everything clicked. It was hard to tell whether I was moving or going towards anything in particular at times, but eventually I reached it. What was it though? Is it a location? An object? A door? A person? Is it still me?
I might still not know exactly, but I know I’m trans. And realising that meant I had to become hyper-aware of the barriers I had heard about, but never applied to myself. Please enjoy this extra fun context:
Ireland has horrible trans healthcare, especially for adolescents where the system has essentially collapsed. Waiting times could last up to ten years for the first phone call. And for those who have reached consultations, you don’t have to look far to find accounts of people being asked disgustingly inappropriate questions about their genitals, what pornography they prefer watching, being told they aren’t really trans and lack an adequate amount of Gender Dysphoria (tl;dr the umbrella of different feelings that arise from the disconnect of a person’s gender identity and their assigned-at-birth gender) to receive treatment.
Any private options are outrageously expensive, and more people are choosing to look outside the country at (also expensive) telehealth clinics or DIY healthcare options. Some people have chosen to postpone or cease their medical transition because they don’t have much hope of being able to afford or access it.
Irish media have started importing transphobic talking points from the UK while also giving platforms to “grassroots” movements clearly astroturfed by British trans-exclusionary radical feminist groups, all with documented connections to far-right sympathisers and actors. We’re about to go from just-asking-questions to full-on, frequent scathing attacks towards trans people in Irish media. And most recently, the topic has turned to trans conversion therapy.
Conversion therapy for all LGBTQIA+ people is still not banned in Ireland, with legislation stalled for quite a while now. The UK has reneged on its promise to ban conversion therapy for transgender and non-binary people, and there’s a reasonable worry Ireland could fall into the same media and political environment that allowed such a move in the UK to take place. UK sneezes, Ireland catches a cold etc.
Most conversion therapy is masked under the category of “exploratory”, and seeks to remove gender-affirming treatment in its entirety. The therapy “explores” every single aspect of a person’s mental state and potential issues, aside from the fact that they could be transgender.
You might be encouraged to approach the boundaries of your assigned gender, but no more. It’s less exploratory and more about whittling a trans person’s self-esteem and willpower down to the point where they associate gender euphoria with pain and anxiety. Anything that challenges the gender binary is caused by sexually motivated and insidious thoughts. And for legal purposes, I must say that the above leaked audio of a licensed psychotherapist saying we should have no empathy or sympathy for girls with porn-induced trans delusions is very different in context, apparently.
This is only the surface of the blitz against trans people worldwide and one very biased to my own location in the world. If you haven’t been picking up what I’m putting down: there is a clear discrepancy between how trans people exist and how they are portrayed in the media. And by extension, this treatment affects their general rights and how they are seen in society, even to their closest family members. You are an incurable. You disgust others and you are a threat. You’re contagious. You kill people.
The goal of all this is to minimise and ultimately erase the idea of being transgender. What starts off as mild concerns quickly develops into paranoia and fear. Being trans is an illness, and if it cannot be eradicated then it must be treated. Exposure must be reduced, and those contaminated are isolated. Perhaps you recover enough to make it back into society, but don’t let anyone know about how you were infected.
And this is where I’m fascinated, for lack of a better word, by trans conversion therapy. And the school of thought that believes so much of trans youth (specifically trans femme) attraction towards gender is either purely or entirely sexual in nature.
Beyond the horrible fact that some are making a career out of calling children porn-obsessed because they don’t identify with their assigned gender at birth, there’s also no inherent end goal in sight. Obviously, it doesn’t work, just like any form of conversion therapy for LGBTQIA+ people. You don’t cure that person’s gender identity or sexual orientation, only give them new negative associations and traumas to associate with it.
So what happens when it fails? Or if a conversion therapist realises that a person can’t be changed? They’ll accept that this person is inherently broken, and that they should be isolated to a group with others like them. This youth is ill and can’t be allowed to delude themselves into thinking they belong in womanhood. That thinking exists in so many trans people internally, because that’s what they realise society sees them as.
I didn’t always recognise that I was trans. I could feel it, but I had no way of knowing it wasn’t a mental or physical condition. I always thought something was horribly wrong with me, and I wouldn’t dare associate my feelings with any sense of identity or purpose. I wasn’t going to tell a doctor what was happening, but I just knew I felt like I contracted a disease.
How do you go about curing something you don’t understand? You can sit and wait until it leaves, of course. It’s normal to get random aches and pains, the immune system will sort it out.
Yet, you can’t wait. Your immune system doesn’t actually know what to do and it’s horribly overwhelmed. And it hurts. It really really hurts. You need a painkiller. A really really strong painkiller.
III
I mentioned earlier how I began coming out to a few close friends. This isn’t entirely true. Yes, coming out involves going public to some degree, but these people weren’t the first to hear my thoughts about being transgender. Hell, they weren’t even the first to hear me talk about gender in general.
For the longest time I called myself a crossdresser. It’s a word that feels a little weird to type let alone say out loud for me now, even if I still see it fairly often. It’s an age old term that has differing meaning and connotations depending on when and where it was used. It ranges from describing fun dress-up to a term still used by LGBTQIA+ people in parts by the world, some of which are currently having their basic human rights denied.
For most, it’s probably seen as an innocent term. You’ve probably heard it used to describe some androgynous musician or an actor in drag. I learned about it as a culture of amateurish and secretive dressing up, typically by cis men. Maybe some people just say femboy instead now, I haven’t really kept up.
Some people just like dressing up and good for them! I found it through the mid-to-late 2000s internet on some crusty, forgotten websites and it would’ve been my first exposure to anything adjacent to trans stuff.
For the trans people reading this, you probably know where this is going. And by all means, please tap out. Or if it’s cathartic, stay tuned. I could modify this to sound less cliché but it wouldn’t be accurate. If I’m gonna embarrass myself on the internet I’m gonna go all the way! I’m playing all the hits tonight baby!
For many many years, I would say since I was about 6 or 7, I was infatuated with girls’ clothes. Usually in stark contrast to my other typically masculine hobbies. I would have sneakily tried something on when no one was looking, thinking I was committing a sinful, or at the very least humiliating, act. I used to think my late grandparents were looking down at me from above with abject disappointment. There’s probably some commentary about Catholic Ireland there, but someone else can write that.
In reality, when I could put the shame out of my mind, it made me feel quite at ease. Before I tried on a dress for the first time, I didn’t think it was possible to have positive feelings about clothes at all, let alone feel so comfortable wearing them. No one ever caught me, but there was always the danger and excitement of that risk looming over my head. It’s weird to describe a feeling that is so intense yet relaxing at the same time, as well as the quiet spaces when I couldn’t experience it.
Once I realised that I enjoyed doing this for whatever reason, I had to figure out if it was just me. My only problem was that I lived in a little tiny village, but I did eventually come up with a solution. Although I had only used it for playing some games, I realised that I could actually use our old family computer. It has access to the all-good all-knowing all-perfectlynormal internet!
All the searches for dumb little Newgrounds flash games were replaced with pure cringe. I cannot think of any other word that suits it better. Examples included wide-reaching keywords like “boy dressed as girl”, “girl dresses up boy”, “boy wearing skirt/dress” etc. I wasn’t expecting much, but I got more search results back than I knew what to do with, and I got really good at deleting my search history regularly to make sure no one knew what I was up to.
Eventually I became familiar with some of the terms that kept cropping up, like the aforementioned crossdresser or transvestite. I’d skim TVTropes pages like “Wholesome Crossdresser” or “Disguised in Drag” as a way to find isolated clips and images of movies, TV shows and books that showed a male character crossdressing.
Usually these stories involved some annoyed protagonist reluctantly going along with someone else’s plan before realising how much they’re enjoying it. I could not stop thinking about it, long after I turned the computer off. I definitely had some peculiar hyperfixations as a kid, but this one always felt very different.
I was so young and I didn’t even connect the word “gender” to it. I couldn’t describe why I was getting these feelings and why I always reached out to it. It felt obsessive, but also felt quite natural. It was strangely nostalgic going back and lazily reading what I used to absorb with 200% focus. For all the time and attention it consumed, It made me happy and I wasn’t hurting anyone. As far as I was concerned, this felt normal.
It, however, didn’t take long to discover something known as Forced Feminisation. A quick overview is that it’s a term used to describe a situation of a male character forced to undergo a feminisation process by another person or group of people. I’d find short stories or images with these themes — and absolutely dire writing — on now-dead crossdressing-oriented websites like Fictionmania and Crystal’s StorySite.
The term (genre?) could mean anything from using a different name, adopting a different gender role, changing your clothes or having medical changes through a surgical or magical plot device. It was the next step up from what I was consuming up until then.
And quite the step up it was. While these stories could be innocent enough, there’s definitely a large enough subset that would have sexual undertones. It would range from mildly provocative language to full on graphic sexual encounters. In my experience, they were the majority I found, and the clean stories were not too far away from the more suggestive ones.
Looking back now, it clearly comes off as fetishistic, a sort of thrill gained from having one’s masculinity stripped away without personal choice and finding a release. I would read extensive amounts of these stories, inserting myself and feeling the sheer rush of adrenaline at the idea that this could happen to me. Constantly waiting for someone to pull me into the computer to the universe where I was made to be a girl. It didn’t matter what happened in them, as long as I could insert myself into the position of protagonist.
I went on chat rooms where conversations would quickly turn into that of a sexual nature, thinking that this was the right way to explore this side of myself. Fake names were used on both sides, with no idea of the identity of the person I was talking to. It was always text-based, and I typically always did it with one eye on the screen and one eye on the door next to me. Maybe I had the thought of writing out my own stories at some point as an outlet, but terrified that someone could trace it back to me. Throwaway role-play sessions felt safe enough, provided I never revealed anything.
This was it, I thought. This is the logical next step. I see clearly that I’m part of this little group, and how all my innocent searches were a prelude for what was to come. This is how I explore whatever it is in secret away from the eyes of others. It’s my identity, as sordid as it felt. And obviously, no one can find out.
There’s comfort in knowing that I wasn’t the only one who liked wearing clothes meant for the opposite sex, but I didn’t realise what was attached to it. Everyone I encountered got off to the idea of this role-reversal, and I wasn’t supposed to think I was any different. If I couldn’t feel comfortable being a different kind of boy, I definitely didn’t feel comfortable being a different kind of crossdresser. So I kept my head down, I just need to keep myself in motion.
IV
You might’ve heard of Autogynephilia, and if you haven’t, consider yourself lucky! Here’s a rough overview.
It’s a discredited theory about trans women that claims they are secretly transitioning for the purpose of sexual arousal. Its creator Ray Blanchard uses the “transexuallism typology” to categorise trans women into different sexuality groupings, as well as a sliding “autogynephilia” scale to determine how likely they are to get aroused by the fantasy of being a woman. It’s bollocks, and if you want to know why, here you go.
Despite it’s incredibly shaky foundations as a theory, It’s still thrown down by a lot of anti-trans actors. It’s still listed in the DSM-5. It’s even joked about by a lot of trans people just because of how ridiculous the idea is, the idea that you would go through all the effort of social, legal and medical transition purely for sexual kicks. I find it pretty funny now just because of how stupid it is.
But for the longest time, it controlled me. When you start to wonder and investigate why you’re drawn to forced feminization stories, it’s almost impossible to avoid running into it. It’s hard to pass it off as a quirky interest when it’s so detached from the rest of your normal life. You see a medical professional backing up feelings that sound similar to yours and you just take it in. They always know better, and lord knows I didn’t know the first thing about myself.
It wasn’t that I was driven to read long research papers about this theory, but that it was simply accepted and woven into online discussions about people like me, even amongst circles that claimed to be accepting. It wouldn’t necessarily be seen as a outwardly negative trait but one that people simply accepted about themselves. Accepting themselves as sexuality-first creatures, where everything else came second.
I began taking it in wholeheartedly as the only thing that my other side could be. It was a fetish. Can an fetish be an identity? That’s what I thought. If forced feminization spoke to me, it’s because of autogynephilia. People like me did exist, and they were sexually driven above all else. I was an autogynephilic male and that’s all I could be. That’s all I was allowed to be.
I consigned myself to the fact that I would grow up as a boy who likes to play dress up in private, and I had to do it for quick sexual pleasure. Even though I was learning more about what I could be, I still had to accept that I couldn’t discuss this with anyone. Like sure, you have an identity now, but you thought you could tell other people? Guess again.
Maybe one day I could find an extremely accepting girlfriend, but that would rely on whether they would be fine with loving both myself and the other side of me. I knew I liked girls, but something did always feel off. I told myself that I had to be straight, because girls were literally all I could think about. Their mannerisms, their voices, their way of walking and emoting, the way they put up with a lot of bullshit, how comfortable they were with their emotions, how they held their heads high, how much I wanted a body like theirs. You know, just like every other dude!
And I did have relationships with girls growing up, and a lot of good memories along with them. But I was also afraid. There was something in the back of my mind, constantly drilling away. One of these days they’re going to find out. They’ll find out how you’re one of those people who gets off of stealing women’s clothes. They’ll question your sexuality, whether you liked them in the first place, whether you were just using them to get to their wardrobe.
It got harder the older I got. I was starting to doubt that even autogynephilia was appropriate as a term, let alone crossdresser. Maybe my actual desires are lying dormant, and that I’m more sick than I think. One that lets the opposite sex consume their entire life, and how I need to learn how to control it before it gets out of hand. I never knew any other way people could just live with these feelings, I had learned that it always ends in disaster.
Going back to when I was much younger, I vividly remember every time a cartoon or show would have a gag where a male character wears a dress and becomes the butt of the joke. Whenever my parents read the paper, I had tabloid headlines plastered with the concept of the exotic sex change burned into my memory. It was always features on people who “thought” they were women, but weren’t accepted as one in the eyes of the media, their former name and background on display for all to see. It was a tactic for selling papers, a classic freak show. Any kind of gender experimentation was an exercise in humiliation.
I kept thinking about how it all went wrong. My main fascination was with clothes, I thought. But then I remember other things from early childhood. I was shocked at the emotional vulnerability I saw from other girls in my primary school. It wasn’t how boys should act, it was extreme and unrealistic. It was never forced on me, but that was my first feeling of being cornered and trapped by masculinity. I had to learn to accept it, because that’s not the option I was given.
That’s why going on the internet gave me those great feelings of shame and guilt. I learned early that I had to act a certain way, but then I read those stories. It was brief, but jesus, I felt something. I saw this new option, this new world. It was like finding out my house had an extra room, but there’s no door.
In general I felt like I could always be myself around women, even though I felt shameful about my thoughts concerning femininity. There was always some form of connection there that I could never quite pin down; never one of objectification but one that was almost sisterly. I felt horrible that I could find them relatable, because they had nothing in common with someone as despicable as me. Someone who was just objectifying them.
I tried to bargain with crossdressing, trying to detach from it at times. Maybe it would eventually lead to the point where I don’t have to do it at all anymore! I thought it was just a phase! One that turned out to last for 20+ years but still! I could work on my actual self, the introverted boy who liked computers while quickly shoving this aberration further and further away. As long as I keep this secret and stay perfectly still, I can die happy.
That’s not what happened, go figure. No matter how much I saw other crossdressers balance their male/female sides, I couldn’t do the same. I found myself unable to detach from it at all, and knowing how many hours of the day I spent thinking about it murdered my self-esteem and confidence.
It was interfering with my relationships, my friendships, my hobbies. If this really was a fetish, why couldn’t I simply put it out of my mind for a few hours? Am I just this messed up?
The crux of how crossdressing works, in theory, is being fully aware of your own gender. A man playing dress up is comfortable with the idea that when all the makeup and clothes are off, he can still be a man. It doesn’t always need to be sexual of course, but you’re almost always aware that you’re still just a man.
I thought this was what I wanted, this was how other crossdressers enjoyed it. How autogynephiles were supposed to enjoy it. I could play into sexual aspects of it later on as a horny teenager, but it didn’t feel right. I was thriving off the excitement of being seen as a woman, and then the logical thought was that I have to get off to it. But no matter how hard I tried to commit to, every scenario ended with disgust, shame and self-hatred.
But all signs pointed towards that identity. I was to fulfil my sexual desires, and it’s the only way I can feel comfortable. I could see myself enjoying parts of it, but the shame that came after each encounter was beyond overwhelming. It just reminded me that it wasn’t real.
I want to chase that high of when I put on a dress for the first time. I wanted to find it again as an escape from feeling the malaise of my daily life. The few times I could feel truly happy was picturing that new world, thinking I’d eventually find that door and open it. But if I keep going at this rate, I don’t know what will happen if I find it. Do I have the patience to find the keys or am I going to shoot the lock off.
I found myself struggling more and more with how I identified. Crossdressing could still bring some small bits of joy, but I had internalised that there must be a sexual element attached. As it progressed, each time I indulged these feelings, I’d need to come up with an even stronger reason for continuing.
I argued that I didn’t enjoy it, but did it anyway, hoping to eventually communicate to my brain that I should associate these feelings with disapproval and disgust. With enough time and effort, I’m going to only be able to think good, normal things. I won’t need to worry about being some pervert 24/7 and I can get married at 30 with a loving wife and kids.
I reached out to other crossdressers, and I was told that I should just relax. Stop overthinking and feel the pleasure all other men like us get when trying on a piece of women’s clothing: the feeling of tights on stubbly legs, the ill-fitting dresses in garish hues and frills, the misaligned lingerie not made to conceal that kind of genitalia, the convincing disguise and deception of makeup. You know what you signed up for.
I started thinking we didn’t have the same ideas of pleasure. My enjoyment didn’t come from engaging in sexual acts that made me aware of my birth sex. I loved the security of a dress that fit right. I loved the way makeup made my face shine. I loved the colours, patterns and styles that I couldn’t find in men’s clothing sections, but also loving the simplicity of ladies’ pyjama shorts and leggings. I loved looking back in the mirror and seeing my eyes wider than they ever have been. I loved dissonance, but not at the cost of harmony. I loved it more.
But it can’t be harmonious. I’m not actually worthy of any other kind of thinking. I’m just nothing more than a sexual deviant. That’s what everything on the internet said. Do not look for that door. Do not open it. It’s more fun here.
Forums and imageboards weren’t working anymore and it didn’t take too long before I turned to dating apps. I thought maybe finding other people with similar interests could help me accept this side of myself better. This time they weren’t in different countries, they were only a few miles away.
I met a lot of nice people. Absolutely lovely people, in fact. They had been doing this for years, with amazing make-up skills and outfits, offering me tips on how to get a certain look or appear more feminine. But they were confidently men outside of crossdressing for sexual purposes. They could take everything off at the end of the day and not worry about it until they next felt that urge.
I accepted that maybe it was just my personality: I was just a very boring and not-very-masculine male. One that frequently fails at masculinity and tries to escape it, but very good at hiding it.
For the longest time, I didn’t think identity mattered, and that those who were confident in their own identity were simply lying to themselves or delusional. You can’t just become a girl, you’ll always be a man after all, and people won’t let you forget that. You can’t find that door.
One day, a person messaged me asking for a hook-up. I panicked. Despite talking to so many others before, this felt much more real. This was what my activities online and sneaking into wardrobes were leading to. A promised sexual encounter that would satisfy my urges. This was what it was all building up to. You’ve reached the autogynephile endgame, thanks for all your effort and dedication.
But I couldn’t.
I was afraid, sure. But I was more disgusted. Not disgusted at the person, but disgusted at how much this didn’t align with how I felt on the inside. Why did I keep putting myself through this even though it clearly gave me so much stress. Why so much just for brief episodes of relief?
This is what I am. It has to be me. I’m someone who doesn’t feel extreme pain when I think about living as male. I just feel very happy pretending that I’m not. And I do it a lot. And I think about it a lot. And it consumes every waking thought I have. And I’m always anxious.
It took time, but I started learning about another group of people. The ones who “changed” their gender. The ones who took feminising or masculinising hormones to change their body. Obviously I would’ve have to have heard of them because I thought they directly contradicted the idea of my own existence. I could tell that they were different, but I think I thought of them as people in denial. They didn’t accept themselves like I did. You can’t just change your gender. I’m not sick like them. There is no door.
They wouldn’t stop showing up. I started reading up more on what living like that feels like, just out of morbid fascination. So many people I read about were all at different stages of their transition. They said that their assigned gender at birth didn’t match their actual gender identity.
What started off as fear into a curiosity. A curiosity similar to the one I first felt typing into a search bar all those years ago. I started talking more openly about these people to friends. Asking them what they thought about these people, why they’ve all seemed to pop up out of nowhere. They might not be as weird as I thought.
Years later, I started talking about it more. Eventually, I started writing about people discovering their own gender identity. Most importantly to give them a voice, but also hoping to understand them beyond what I read online. All of them were extremely patient and understanding with me, this weird guy from the internet. I transcribed what they told me in interviews, but it felt like I had written this before.
I kept talking to more and more of these people but I kept dodging the question: why am I doing this? I know that’s not me. Even if I thought I was, there’s nothing to back it up.
I’m not the same as them. I don’t have the same experiences as they do. I grew up playing with power rangers, playing games and all other hobbies that boys my age seemed to do. I thought my voice deepening was cool, and it was impressive how fast I could grow a beard if I let it.
No matter what, I keep looking at them. I don’t look like them, and I bet they always looked like that even before they transitioned. I could never pass as a woman no matter how well I tried. I’ll only ever be a poor imitation of one.
My story doesn’t line up with what I hear is the real experience for these people. I’m not doing it properly. I’m different. These people couldn’t be further away from who I am: I’m just a sexual anomaly who doesn’t deserve to be considered anything else, certainly not a woman. The fact that I ever felt close to women was disgusting, for they shouldn’t have to concern themselves with someone like me.
Who even were these people?
They were people who seemed so much happier in their skin than I was. They didn’t have to hide this from everyone, they didn’t have to fetishise themselves to justify their existence, they were just existing. They took action to improve their lives, risking their connection with family and friends but taking the leap to find a life worth living.
I didn’t know their back stories that well. I knew they had a different gender assigned to them at birth but it was wrong. Some of them knew straight away, some of them didn’t find out till later. Some were married and had divorced when their spouse found out, some knew what their identity was and told everyone, but not their families. Some of them aren’t here today, some of them are still here but struggling. Some are doing really well.
They were beautiful people.
They are beautiful people.
I wanted that so badly.
Everything they had I wanted for me.
Why can’t I have that.
Why do I want to have that.
Why can’t this leave my head.
I finally found that door.
I’m freezing.
V
I realised that I’m not a fetish. This gives me something to work with, a lot more than self-hatred. I should be happy but I’m not. I’m really scared. I’ve never been this scared.
Those fantasies brought me to some of my most depressive episodes while giving me elation like nothing else. It was my lifeline. It was my painkiller and it made those bad feelings go away. And now it’s not working any more. I’m trying to order more but there’s a shortage, and I don’t know when it’s going to be in stock next.
I’m going to die. I’m going to go into withdrawal and I’m going to fucking die. I have to forget everything I knew because it’s all gone now. My body can’t function with all this pain and I need to find something new quick. Something to hold me off until I get my regular batch, then all will be good again.
No matter how long I look for, I can’t find anything. I can’t find new medicine, the shortage is still going on and I’m starting to worry people are going to see how sick I really am.
I became stuck in this sort of purposeless purgatorial existence. My tether for blending into normal life has disappeared, and I can’t make out anything in front of me. But this feels different to my normal brain fog.
I spent my whole life wandering around in this haze. It was confusing at first but I grew used to it. Maybe I could be safe as long as nothing finds me, and I find nothing. This limbo was the opposite. It starts off as a wide expanse of almost-nothingness. There’s no fog, but it’s a little bright.
If you stare directly at a light bulb and quickly close your eyes, you’ll see something similar. A thin veneer barely blocking that far more powerful light source. But the surface is uneven, and populated by shapeshifting and pulsating wisps that dance along the inside of your eyelid. Maybe it’s like viewing bacteria under a microscope too.
I keep thinking that they’ll go away once my eyes adjusted. Instead, they remain. My eyes aren’t adjusting. Over time, the form stops distorting. It becomes more defined, more static. It starts rotating, aligning itself and heading straight for me, faster than I can process. I can see them. They can see me. I can’t hide anymore.
And I stay there. Still. In my own head. Waiting for judgement, penance, some kind of lesson. I think I would welcome a lobotomy at this point. But I didn’t get anything like that. Instead, these wisps stop in front of me and merge. It’s something I can interpret, and I can see that it’s a gift. Even more, it’s a word.
People add new words to their vocabulary all the time, but this isn’t a word I don’t know. I know this word very well. I had used it to describe other people plenty of times. But now, it’s mine.
And I keep getting gifts. New emotions, new lives, new names. They are never surprises because I already know them. I talked about them. This time it’s not just for someone else, it’s for me.
As the days go on, my eyes do finally start adjusting. I see the world around me. I see what belongs to me and what doesn’t. I see different shades and hues across the spectrum. I hear voices. I see people.
I don’t recognise them at first. It feels like I had forgotten everyone I knew. But the more I look at them, I realise I do know them. Some I met already and some I hadn’t. To be honest, I’m not sure some of them even like me. But we knew each other. We might’ve never said a word to each other but we already had so many conversations, so many arguments, so many moments of trust and forgiveness.
I saw myself in every single one of them. I can finally say all the words I used for them. I can finally feel. I can finally say I’m Zoe. There’s light underneath my hair.
VI
And Zoe’s going to be here for the foreseeable future, in person! Not hiding behind some anonymised profile online, not in the wardrobe of all the clothes she kept hidden for years and not in the miasma of a subconscious. She’s finally able to face herself and realise that she’s not a mistake that deserves to be hidden. She’s a bit of a mess, but she wants this mess to get better and flourish.
When I picked the name Zoe, I didn’t really put a lot of thought about why it suited me, it just sounded nice. Maybe I can retrospectively say I got it from that good old debut album Zopilote Machine.
You know, get rid of the whole “pilote machin” bit and you’re left with a Zo and an E! The beginning and the end! It’s dumb but that’s what I feel like. My beginning cannot exist without the end, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise. I’m a bit all over the place but god damn do I have my charms.
My journey happened, as messy as it was. I could’ve chosen to keep this hidden and carried on as a trans person. Yet, I can’t make peace with that idea. It was a critical part of my life, and I shouldn’t be forced to take it to the grave in the same way I almost took my transness to the grave. If I now have a deadname, I will gladly pay my respects.
More trans people in media means nothing when we only see the “presentable” aspects of transness. Trans is innumerable repetitions and permutations of death, purgatory and rebirth; filled with isolation, adrenaline, pain and beauty. No matter what sets us back, we go forward and cross that line.
Transphobes would like to to think I transitioned on a whim: that one day I decided I no longer wanted to be a boy. I found the struggles of manhood too taxing and decided I will become a girl. Or that I am still acting out this fetish and have finally exposed myself to others for sexual fulfilment. Acclimatising myself to feminine presentation and mannerisms but retaining all of the male privilege.
The actual fact of the matter is that I didn’t decide that I wanted to be a girl. I always have been a girl. She’s always been here. What has changed in recent years is the language and tools I use to describe it for others and most importantly, myself. My journey with gender has been long and winding throughout my whole life, and I am finally feeling ease that I have reached a level of self-acceptance to come out after years of hiding this.
If you want to tell me that I’m a failure of a man then go ahead, I won’t disagree. But you have some nerve if you think I’m doing this because it’s easier. If I wanted to, I could go to the end of my days as a man. I could keep this all a secret. But I would not live as a man. Living demands awareness of all that surrounds me, accepting the challenges that face me and reaping the rewards of my own efforts. It’s very easy to go through life desensitised and emotionless because we live within a system that encourages it. A cultural system, a patriarchal system, a capitalist system, a cisheteronormative system.
After I accepted myself as trans, I read a lot into forced fem narratives, seeing how other trans people found comfort in the narrative, and how they related to it after socially and/or medically transitioning years later. Hell, I guess that’s what I’m doing now yet again.
It’s clear that the ideas of femininity within these fantasies are regressive and outdated. Even though people engaging in it probably know this already, it deserves to be critiqued. Its idea of femininity or womanhood can be seen as one rooted in sexist ideas of women, that feminine qualities only go as far as makeup or clothing.
Femininity has always been a double-edged sword for trans femmes. If we dress in typically male-coded clothes, we might be more likely to be called men, misgendered or deadnamed. If we wear typically feminine articles of clothing we’re told that we are appropriating femininity. Anything outside that binary choice is basically a crapshoot for what insult or slur we’re going to get that day.
For a fantasy built on the premise of deception and manipulation, there’s a safety there. By allowing ourselves to be “forced” into another gender role, we can feel allowed to conform to the story’s specific gender dynamics. In these worlds we’re no longer the thieves of femininity, we are the source of it. As clumsy and insensitive as these fantasies could be when examined with a feminist lens; for many people, it was all they had. As someone who went through their entire childhood in two christian conservative schools that had next to no LGBTQIA+ education, it was certainly all that I had.
There is a stigma against trans women talking about their sexuality, especially pre-transition. A large cohort of people within transphobic circles believe they can catch us out and prove we’re secretly sexual predators. The sex lives of trans women will always be put under scrutiny, thinking that it’s the key to undermining us. Most trans women I know are proud of their sexuality, and it certainly makes them no less women for embracing it. I’m only starting to embrace mine again after years of thinking I didn’t deserve pleasure of any kind.
And by all means, I give you permission to screenshot any of the paragraphs above when I still saw myself as nothing more than a fetish; use it to prove I’m delusional and I’m secretly a perverted sick man. But when you go searching for shame, you will turn up empty.
If you believe I’m truly afflicted with a disease, you’re only half right. There was a boy who was sick. And unfortunately, he’s not around anymore.
If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve read thousands of words about him already. There wasn’t a cure for his contagious disease and he suffered. And despite his best efforts to reduce exposure, it spread.
It consumed him, and he told no one where his deathbed was. But someone found it. A door left open.
He dies. His last moments spent with the girl he raised. The one he loved. The one who knows how much he loved her. The one who contracted the disease in infancy. The only one still here.
That girl was sick for a long time, but feels a little bit better every day. This sickness can kill, but her immune system isn’t overwhelmed. It keeps her alive. It keeps her feeling alive. It’s strong enough because of what he did. Because he died happy.
Gender affirmation isn’t an illness, it’s the cure. For so long, I relied on treating the wrong area, and I thought I knew my affliction. I saw my only chance of joy through the lens of suffering, humiliation and destruction. To know that I missed out on years of healthy gender exploration will never not sting. I’m not to blame, nor are the groups I surrounded myself in, but a world that refuses to let its people heal. A world that only chooses to let its people die, but never to reincarnate.
If I was exposed to conversion therapy at a young age, I wouldn’t be here today. It’s one thing as a child to have a stranger on the internet telling me that I was a sex-crazed freak, but a licensed psychotherapist? One that would whittle down what was left of my self-worth into realising that I was a mistake, and I deserved to be cured of any “transexuallism.”
But you know what? Despite how unhealthy my journey was, it actually was an exploration. No matter how many dead ends or pitfalls I fell into, I kept on going. The immune system developed. I kept on going till I found what I always knew all along, despite being told that it couldn’t be me.
Immune systems break down. Some were not as lucky as me and they need support. They need to be cared and nurtured back to full health. They need to be listened to, they need resources. To choose otherwise is torture.
I wrote this piece not as a way to self-flagellate myself in public but finally show that I don’t need to keep this hidden. I wanted to hear a trans narrative similar to my own when I was younger but never got it. I have to write it for myself, and maybe even for others who found or are finding themselves in a similar position. If you don’t love yourself, then I will. For as long as it takes you to recover. Until you are ready to open that door.
Only last week, I finally took all of the new clothes I had bought for myself over the last year out from the single hidden box in my wardrobe — dresses, skirts, blouses etc — and actually hung them up. No more mishmash arrangement, all hung up and in the right place. Some days I’ll feel like I’m making no progress at all, but days like that are a reminder that I’ve still got so much to do, and I’m not dreading but actually looking forward to it. I can’t wait to fix the messes I will make.
I talked about a lot of my feelings here, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to convey how reassuring it is to finally know what it means.
What this part is. What I should do with it. A lot was spent trying to figure out everything else, everything except the most obvious thing: it. What that boy left behind. The questions he spent so long asking that I finally have the answers for.
It is what it means to exist. It is what it means to exist around others. It’s so so so many things.
It’s given me a way to get to where I am today. It’s where I started. It’s helped me for so many years. It’s helping me realise that I can’t let life be dictated by shame, it’s helping me realise the control I have.
Now is not the time to let it go.
It’s not a label that’s set in stone, and it’s not something I can’t question or adjust in the following years.
It’s not about thinking of your existence as nothing more than freakish indulgence. It’s not permanent branding. It’s not just a phase. It’s not about the future and it is certainly not about the past.
It’s not thinking about being trans enough to transition. It’s not actually something else. It’s not an intrusive thought. It’s all of the thoughts. It puts everything in motion.
It’s not about how much gender dysphoria there is, and it’s not how much gender euphoria there is either. It’s not sexual proclivity. It’s not a sickness. It’s not a painkiller.
It’s not how long realisation took. It’s not about lost time. It’s not about what-if. It’s not about why-now. It’s not about all of these questions.
It’s not about what’s there. It’s not about who’s there. It’s not about what caused everything to happen in the first place. It’s not about a door. It’s not about the door.
It’s not about ignoring that door. It’s not about what people might say if they found out something opened a door.
It’s not about the moment that door opened. It’s not about turning a key. It’s not about shooting off the lock. It’s not about moving the furniture blocking the door. It’s not about checking the deadlock. It’s not about whether the door was even locked in the first place.
It’s not how far away the door is. It’s not how close the door is. It’s not the door in motion.
It’s what’s seen when the door opens.
It’s the most remarkable thing.
It’s you.
It’s that you’re standing in the doorway.
And you smile.
