#but it legitimately feels like there's no longer space for me in the community ive been a part of for half of my life

[houseofwolvess]

ive felt so isolated from the trans community as of late and i don't know how to fix that

[loghainmactir]

hewwo! i was wondering if u could pls give me some advice on starting my transition? ive been so scared to start bc of family and costs but ive decided to just. do it. yknow? like if i don't ill probably die lol. u look amazing and rly confident in yourself in all ur selfies and one day i wanna be Like That ✌️❤️

hi! ok, so first of all: yeah, i absolutely can give u advice, and second of all: i remember feeling exactly like you did. it literally wasn’t that long ago, either, it was like. 2013/14/15 (i can’t remember, time is fake, whatever lmao!). third of all: bless u yr so sweet. i still have a lotta issues with confidence (i doubt myself, my talent and what i can do literally hourly), but honestly? i love my body right now. it’s a good, genderless body, goddamnit.

long, long post ahead bc i’m trying to think of things i did and good god please take it with a grain of salt because a lot of this is just me ranting about things i wish I’D done in my own position. i’m also coming from a place where HRT and surgeries AREN’T free, so that’s also A Thing. everyone’s experience is different.

transitioning (particularly medically) really super fuckin varies country by country (and honestly probably even state by state, age by age and fuckin gender by gender because cis people won’t let us fucking BE goddamn): i don’t know where you are, so my only tips there r: find a trans friendly doctor/endo (i was kinda forced to go through a hospital bc That Was How It Was here in good ol’ Australia), and one people wholeheartedly recommend, if you wanna go that route.

my first point is make sure you find safe spaces in every goddamn aspect of your transition. medically, socially, physically. if you think your doctor is refusing you treatment or is discriminating against you, you NEED to ditch that doctor. if your friends and family are really verbally or physically violent against LGBT folks, you NEED to leave that space if you can (or not come out and wait until you can leave. seriously. i’m kinda lucky– my grandma was verbally violent against LGBT folks, and initially my mum was skepitcal, but i convinced them both to go to a group for LGBT+ parents and friends and they slowly turned around). get yourself friends, get yourself allies.

i cannot stress that enough. my first doctor refused to send my referral letter to the royal children’s hospital gender clinic because even tho he presented as a “nice” guy, he believed that because this was “”””out of the blue”””” for me, he figured he’d just Not Send It (and tried to tell me that a lotta kids there didn’t actually helpo, lol). so there i was, a young 15-16 year old alister, waiting like 2-3 months for something that didn’t even get fucking sent.

join trans groups on facebook and in real life. seriously, they’re a godsend; there’s buy-and-sells, advice posts, encouragement posts. ESPECIALLY local ones. most of them on facebook are private, meaning no one can see if you’re posting/in the group, and it’s easy to check if they’re not. these fb pages + local groups are good ways to find trans friendly spaces and doctors. i found my current doctor, who’s actually one of the very few doctors who knows what the fuck he’s on about re: trans people, through a real life trans group. they were like “oh, you should see x”, and even though he’s about 30-40 minutes away from me, he’s brilliant and honestly saved my life.

along those lines: figure out what you want from your transition, and then realize & accept that this may change (and it also may not change!). very early on, i was super insistent that i wanted phalloplasty and to wear packers, and now i couldn’t care less. at first, i identified as agender, and then as a trans guy/ftm, and now i identify as a Black Hole (i’m kidding, don’t @ me). like, a lotta people DON’T change their minds. but i did, some people do, and it shouldn’t be anyone’s business but your own what you want to do with your body 

(sidenote: this also goes for detransitioning or stopping medical transition but continuing to socially transition/present differently. literally, it’s fine. it’s your body. fuck anyone who says otherwise.)

again: FUCK ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE.

your body is literally your body. do NOT let anyone tell you what to do with it or who you are. i had people very early on scream at me (legitimately scream and throw me out of home, thanks grandma), tell me i wasn’t actually trans, and harrass me for this shit: but frankly, if i’d put myself back in the closet, i wouldn’t be alive right now. i would’ve killed myself years ago, and i wish i wasn’t kidding. if it’s safe, you need to stand up for your own body and your rights and put yourself somewhere that will allow you to follow through. you need to keep going and keep living.

my only other two pieces of advice are “patience, baby”– like, for real, every single part of transition takes time. this varies from where you are and who’s supporting you, but it’s generally true. it takes time for people to accept new names and pronouns 

(lotta people get furious about this, and i used to be one of those people, but hindsight’s a bitch and you gotta realize that… like, it’s hard for some cis people. you gotta give them a little bit of wiggle room, especially if they’ve never ever met a trans person before. it’s about reminders, reminders, reminders: which is SO hard if you’re not safe/don’t have the confidence. there IS a flip side to this though: if chad and stacey have known your new pronouns for months, now, and they keep “””slipping””” up, they’re not slipping up, honey. they’re doing it on purpose. kick their teeth in i’m kidding please don’t do this you know what i mean.)

it takes time for HRT to kick in. it takes time to gather a Look™ of your own you like, it takes time to build confidence to even tell people, it takes time to save up money for surgeries and it just… takes time. sometimes because it’s a naturally slow process, sometimes because cis people are Cis People and like to gatekeep. i remember being very young in my transition, sitting in the car after one of my appointments with the afformentioned shithead doctor bawling my eyes out because he’d told me i wouldn’t be able to access t for x amount of time and it was bullshit. this year i’ll be 2 years on t. wild, huh? there’s a lot of us and not equal amounts of resources (ESPECIALLY in public systems) depending on where you are, so you gotta be prepared to WAIT.

i’ll tell you what super helped me through those years: hyping myself up for other things! i still have the ticket from my first twenty one pilots show. that show meant SO much to me. i cried all through it, because waiting for that show kept my mind off of the wait for my royal children’s appointments (and even waiting to go up to melbourne bc my mum and i would go and get kebabs was a good thing to focus on!). keep things that aren’t trans related on hand (seriously i struggled with this because dysphoria and shit is fucking hard!! it’s easy to say but really fucking hard to put into practice).

(one day i’m gonna tell tyler and josh just how much they saved my goddamn life. i know they hear it weekly, but i will.)

my other thing is that uh. it won’t solve all your problems especially if you’ve got mental illnesses. this is a really fuckin depressing thing i had to drill into my brain, but it really helped. transitioning solved SO many of my issues. i no longer have back issues (thanks, like, literal kilo titties, lmao), i no longer have sore ribs and i can breathe and wear shirts. i lost so much weight (and am kinda gaining it back, but whatever). i no longer have anxiety about whether people can tell i’m binding– which is WILD because i used to stress the fuck out about it to the point where i never went out anywhere. i used to sit on the bus wondering if the person next to me could tell i had titties. now it literally doesn’t even register.

my issues now stem from PTSD, depression, BPD and ADHD. how do you fix this? you don’t. but what HAS helped is finding a therapist who won’t pressure you into talking about trans shit. lemme tell you: this shit gets exhausting after the fifth time of “oh i googled ‘can you become a boy’ when i was, like, nine” (this is my go to story because this memory is so vivid). of course, there’s gonna be moments where you HAVE to: my therapist recently actively asked me to briefly run through it for my PTSD report. but otherwise we literally haven’t talked about it and that is a GODSEND (because i don’t need it. if you need it, that���s good, too!). having a therapist that you can just wordvomit at wrt anything is literally the best thing and can be super helpful– seriously, there were a few trans-related sessions where i just snarled about the bullshit gatekeeping and the bastard i had to see for my therapist letter (oooh, every time i think abt the fact that it was something like $400-500 for two fucking sessions i get so mad lol), but outta 14 it’s really only like 2-3 of them.

but yeah. that’s it. i dunno, these are things that i’ve learnt and sorta… like to think as helpful for myself. of course, this could be different for you: you’re not me, you’re entirely different, in no doubt an entirely different country, social, financial, mental state. i was FUCKED UP when i first came out. i didn’t know that then, but i do now. i spent a lotta time by myself and that’s not healthy, so i really encourage you to reach out to our community, local and worldly, because oh my god, we’re here for you. we are SO here for you.

[creative-ive]

Grammy’s Black vs. White: What about Latino’s?

When will Latino artists be embraced by the U.S. market as legitimate?

Written by Erik De La Cruz

Dark, cold, murky, with very few beams of light, one could imagine I’m describing a cave but rather: Twitter. A place filled with rocks but every so often, you find some gems which make all the difference.

The night of the Grammy’s I searched through Twitter, glancing at the heated comments from the multiple snubs to who won album of the year. One of which was this tweet below:

“lmao to add to that Latinx artists are so put to the side they made "Latinx Grammy’s" bc they can’t be on the same show.” - @bieberslahme

I don't know how this just clicked for me at that moment. I felt I had to write about this. As a Latino writer and creative, myself. 

The notion of white vs. black in the Grammy's has been present since 1989 when Will Smith won the first Grammy for Hip Hop. Rather, "African American" or soulful music has been around since before Elvis stole it, made it his "own" and brought it mainstream. Black people's "battle" is long from over, and is very prevalent still today. They're constantly overshadowed by the "conservative" choice.

But what I just realized is that Latino's although our "genres" are very outside the mainstream in the United States have never truly been represented. This brings me sadness and anger. We need more Latino's immersed within the Grammy's. Not just considered as "Reggaeton" or "Salsa" even “(Latin) Pop”, we can bring so much more.

They created a "Latin Grammy's" in order to "accommodate" us and keep us from catching on to the grander scheme of fragmentation. "Urban Contemporary" or “Hip Hop” is what it is categorized as. There aren't many Latino's in the RnB/Rap game or other that I can say "Yes, they're changing the musical landscape." Slowly but surely you have some rappers that fit a certain Latino niche such as gangsters and delinquents. But what about the others?

What about the Latino's that embrace feeling, that get good grades, are intelligent critical thinkers and don't fit in with the rest of mainstream media’s stereotypical representations of what we should be?

For example, Immortal Technique and Joell Ortiz are two of the most respected artists due to their raw lyricism but have yet to crack into mainstream appeal. Snow Tha Product is an up-and-coming Latina rapper with superb lyricism is barely beginning to shine a light on more than just Latina’s but that females should be respected as well. In 2014, Snow was showcased on a BET Cypher which revealed her to a broader market. The late Big Pun was the first-ever Latino to have a certified platinum album. If he would have still been alive, maybe this very article would be much different.

Us, the chosen Latino's, have a responsibility to become role models and inspire that specific type of individual(s). We're all chosen, though.

The Grammy's are what we categorize, due to perception, as the highest of honors as a musician/creative. We have to feed it or starve it. Some of my idols who have already received "credibility" and have been nominated: Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Drake have protested their awards. If anything, much like Childish Gambino said, the "Grammy-nominated artist" in front of their name is enough to change their life.

Do we, as Latino artists, play the system or shun it altogether? Is there a difference between Latin Grammy's and "regular" Grammy's? Is the importance of market crossover more important than the integrity of doing what your heart tells you in your own artistry? Is the validation of an "American audience" that much more important? Should we stay in line in order to get "our turn" or fight it?

I'm not devaluing the struggle of black artists nor true artists, in 'the pursuit of Grammyiness' in any way. But Latino artists should be taken seriously, now more than ever, in the U.S. market. So much untapped potential waiting to flourish.

The "black struggle" and "Latino struggle" are very much the same. Demoralized of our courage, our creativity, in what can change the culture.

For we are one in the same. We must continue to make our art from the heart and garner a true fan base which can catapult us to other levels. The industry is rapidly changing to accommodate fresh talent that’s destroying the old paradigm. It is a matter of embracing our individual perspectives onto the world, where others will relate. It will garner a community within that space causing the grander establishment to shapeshift with it or become irrelevant.

The road is tougher, longer, and so much more uncertainty is involved but a strong foundation cannot be taken away from you. Not even a shiny gold gramophone. Nor would you need the validation from one.

The chess game may very much be black vs. white, but the board on which they play is made from brown. 

Tweet me your thoughts at @erikdelacruz

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