I am going to try and make this hard to see if you accidentally came to this page by putting in some spaces before my dick pic that I have artistically drawn from a real photo of my real dick.
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I feel ridiculous being so shy about making erotic art about my own body. But I have been FASCINATED by my own bottom growth and I’ve been trying to figure out how to put a layer of artistic value onto what would otherwise just be a dick pic. So today I played around with a photo of myself and did some illustration on Procreate. It taught me a couple things, one is that yes you can totally draw over a photo in Procreate which is good to know. It could be handy for rotoscoping etc. The other thing is that it made me think about how many men have casually drawn their own dicks, and how HARD it is for me to even feel ok doing and showing this. I blame the algorithm of all the social media companies that are anti-sex. And also my own concerns about exploiting my own body I suppose. But it’s such a NICE pic!!! And now I’m like could I put it on a mug? Could I make merch out of this? It’s honestly so hot and sexy and I dunno, I guess I could make it political by putting a slogan under it or something. But also like, would I really walk around with a shirt with this on it? How to monetize my new desire to make artistic illustrations of my peen?

So far besides putting it here, I’m also using it on Grindr and will probably send it to potential lovers. With permission!

I wish I was braver again. There was a time I was completely fine showing my wide open vag in a video, and now I’m just so shy even though I’ve been documenting this part of my body for a while now.

I don’t think I’ll make it into a Canada Council project, but it was a really nice process trying to draw this and make it look good. And maybe I can draw more of them, or other things that aren’t my dick.

I do very liberally give people on Grindr pics of my dick, but this is like, a classy dick. An upstanding trans cock. It’s not even hard here though but it looks pretty nice I think, the real thing looks pretty nice too.

Doing the illustrations for Carmilla the Lonely really was a nice experience and I think I want to do digital illustrations more. It’s such a different way of making art than video. Like, it feels more based on traditional art, even though I prefer digital drawings.

I had the most fun doing all the different colours in my boy pussy. Because there WERE a lot of colours. I think I could do a better job on showing the shiny parts though, some of it needed to glisten and I didn’t convey it properly.

I’m glad is spring time. Always my favourite season of them all. All the flowers, and the people wearing less clothes (esp since you can barely tell what people look like in Canadian winters). My apple watch exercise rings were closed for a whole week which is amazing just because of walking outside more. You would think I would also like summer, but summer in Toronto gets HOT and sticky and people hide in the air conditioning. I’m always promising myself to buy a better air conditioner because mine sucks, but I never do. And it’s so heavy to bring it outside and bring a new one in. Maybe it will be easier now that I have a man body.

I can chest press 60lbs now! That’s a lot!!! I can probably get up to 70 or 75 this summer if I keep going to the gym.

May is my poor month, probably my last poor month for a year because I’ll start getting money in June and then start a job in September. I hate being poor. I’ve been trying to figure out what made me so poor this year and there’s like, a combo of things so I don’t think I’ll ever be sure. I transitioned, I changed my name so I couldn’t travel internationally for six months and seven days, I was posting a lot of things on my socials about Palestine, I think those were the main things. Some of it is like, no one’s fault. Like it’s not that universities in the States did not want me coming to do studio visits etc, it was that I couldn’t travel for almost the whole school year. And no one can hurry up a name change process.

It’s probably good I couldn’t travel most of this year so far though, because it let me stay home with Todd and try to raise him to be a good dog. I don’t think he is, but he is sweet and funny and generally a happy guy, so it’s good for him he got to be around me this whole time so far. He’s also a puppy though so he’s just learning still. And we did do his puppy classes.

He needs more classes. He needs to socialize with other dogs more, and on our walks I can tell he wants to play with dogs, but Posey HATES all other dogs so we can’t go up to them and meet them.

Maybe I should give him a second walk on his own, he definitely has enough energy for it. He’s so fucking bouncy! I’m so used to Posey’s chill old lady dog vibes, and he’s just like bouncing all over the place, running, crashing into things. It’s a lot! Puppy energy vs. senior dog energy is very different.

Anyway, I was never into restraints because of psych ward trauma. BUT the concept of HAVING restraint has been very predominant this year, which an interesting concept. Like I could go around saying I’ll never work with a cis man again who’s going to take all the credit for a story about trans people. But I don’t do that. And who knows maybe there are cis men I would work with, I definitely have worked with cis men who are story editors and had a good experience. I have nothing against cis men in general, even though people are always trying to divide trans and cis men in terms of morals or some shit. Some people just have bad morals.

I mean really some projects just need to be relegated to the bin and we can all move on from them. When something gets too tainted by egos it’s best to just start over for everyone. Some people really hang on to things though. And make up lies, so many lies, just to try to salvage something they don’t even value because they don’t value the creator who made it.

ANYWAY I was working on my step outline for this script again which was starting to get somewhere. Then I am going to start back on editing this short film about my transition. I need to beef up the transition story! It’s just kinda boring right now and needs mucho assistance.

I ALSO LEARNED A NEW CREE WORD! It’s manchos. It means a small crawling insect or bug. I like that it sounds like nachos, which I imagine is what it would sound like to eat a bunch of crunchy insects, and probably what will help me remember the word. I was looking it up because of work reasons, because I need a name for these monsters in my story even though they are big and not small.

I made a payment plan for my rent this month, which is a relief, and also reminds me that grace can be found in many places. I’ve generally been fine at paying my rent here at this place I’ve lived for almost nine years. So I think one shitty month should be ok. I’m so looking forward to June when I can pay my rent without worrying and go on a long awaited vacation.

Mainly my life’s mission right now is to work out, smoke weed, make art. I could put love somewhere in there at some point but right now there’s no one to love honestly, so it’s not part of my life right now.

Went to the passport office and felt the most prepared out of a lot of the people who were showing up still filling out forms. The only thing that sucked was the waiting. THREE HOURS on a little chair in a medium sized room. And I had a weird sequence of numbers that was only coming up rarely in the queue. BUT it got to me and I had nothing weird happen. He saw my driver’s license and name change document and birth certificate and OLD passport and my filled in forms and my photos and it was all fine. I can pick it up next week. And then I can go where ever I want again, which will be nice.

I counted up the time between my last international trip and the day I can pick up my passport and it will be six months and seven days from the beginning of my name change process to get nearly EVERYTHING changed and to get a new passport. Name change, Driver’s license and health card, Status card, bank and credit card, CRA, YMCA, birth certificate, passport. Next I need to do my SIN number which means another trip to a Service Canada office, such a drag! But that’s a problem for another day. After that it’s changing my business account name at CRA. It was such a damn hassle, and now it’s nearing the end! I will just be a Theo Jean Cuthand everywhere. And my gender will be male everywhere. So that’s nice.

The Walker Art Center published an interview Shawaan Francis Keahna did with me just before the holidays last year! You can read it here!

Aside from all that, just relieved that my name change shit is practically over and done with. Never gonna change my name and gender legally again, too much of a hassle to do more than once. BUT now I’ll be able to roam around the globe again, and things will be easier, except for going through the airport scanner where they get worried because I have no cis cock. But if I ever get married it will be with my real name which is nice. Or any other bureaucratic paperwork anyway. They were still using my old name at the hospital today which was annoying because it’s def Theo Jean Cuthand in OHIP now. Whatever! No not whatever, I hope they use Theo from now on. I suffered by having to stay in Canada for six months for this name!

Omfg so I don’t remember how much I complained here about this. But basically the name change thing has been A LOT of work and taken A LOT of time. I had changed everything I could change without a birth certificate, and then was just waiting to get it. I called the vital statistics office a couple weeks ago and they’d said they mailed it on the 12th of April. So I waited and waited and waited and called today and found out they didn’t send it to my address, they sent it to my doctor’s office! And then it was already 12pm so I had to wait an hour until lunch was over to find out if they had it. And I was having all this anxiety like omg if they mailed it back to Saskatchewan I would be fucked, or if the address was a bit off maybe it went to Tim Horton’s instead and then I’d be fucked because who at Tim Hortons would bother looking through their old mail for me?

BUT I did reach the office and the guy went and looked and there was a long wait, but he found it. So I walked over and finally got my birth certificate. WOW I was pissed tho which kind of took away from the joy of finally getting this crucial document.

Anyway, the birth certificate was accurate, my new name and gender were on it the way they were meant to be. So it’s fine. It sucks it took so long but now I never have to be anxious waiting for that again.

ALSO it means I can finally go get my passport! Which is exciting because that means I will be able to travel again and do gigs in foreign countries. Which has been in prior years a big source of income that I just could not access while this whole name change stuff went through. And it’s like, the entire school year of 2023-2024 was basically toast because of this name change stuff.

I’m looking forward to having a passport ESPECIALLY because I have a trip to Troy NY this month and to NYC next month. So I was getting so fucking anxious about maybe having to cancel my Troy trip, also because that is $3000 USD that I need. I need money all the time omg. But yeah, it’s gonna be ok. Now I can do those trips. And in the end not being able to go to NYC for my birthday was fine because I was short of money anyway so it would have sucked going there just to be poor in another city. No oyster bar! Sadness.

I’m excited to get a passport, especially because I look super sexy in my passport photo. Ha ha if a passport photo could be sexy, that would be it. Plus I’m hoping going through borders is easier after this, because my name and gender matches what I look like at this point in time. Everything is aligning!

So my birthday happened last week and I finally started hooking up more with guys on Grindr. The first guy was nice, the second guy was super hot. Some guys on there are fun to talk to but never meet, or disappear. It’s like gardening really, you have to nurture lots of convos and only a select few will ever end up in actually sitting on a dick. I mean growing a harvest ha ha.

There used to be this book called Natural Harvest that was a semen cookbook. It’s probably still available in PDF somewhere. But that just popped into my head ha ha.

I remember I read a page from it and there was a line that was like “semen has wonderful cooking properties.” I’m sure it does.

ANYWAY.

It’s still kinda weird going from being a lesbian for so long to being a bisexual trans man. In a lot of ways it makes sense, and also in other ways it’s funny to talk to queer men and be like “when I used to be a lesbian…” Sometimes I’m doing something so hot with a guy and later I’m thinking “WOW if my lesbian exes knew I was doing this they would probably be disgusted.” I mean maybe not. Maybe the era of lesbians being squeamy about penises is over. But who knows. I don’t really want to put out a survey to find out if different demographics of queers are grossed out by other demographics of queers. That seems like the worst study that could exist. It’s not really anyone’s place to judge different people. Jesus wouldn’t like it that’s for sure.

I’m just gonna throw Jesus’ name into all kinds of situations from now on. I’m not a Christian and I don’t even know if Jesus was real but a lot of people follow him so it seems logical that I can also use his name to back up my lifestyle. I’m sure he would appreciate it.

I was talking with guys on Grindr tonight hoping to find a hookup and it was going ok then I guess sexy times was over because one guy was telling me about seeing a body outside his window of someone who jumped from a nearby apartment, and another was telling me about this terrible car crash that killed grandparents and a baby that was on the news. And I was like wow no more dick for me tonight. But then I guess the news guy felt like we had strayed off topic because he followed up with an album of dick pics.

I actually appreciate a good consensual dick pic. I appreciate the willingness to be upfront about what is going on. I don’t need a dick pic though, I have hooked up without needing to see them in advance. I don’t need to see women’s or nonbinary people’s nudes either. But if they are sharing I don’t mind receiving if it’s offered.

I finally cried today! I actually cried yesterday, I was getting on a streetcar and a song that had played at a funeral a long time ago came on and I started crying but had to hold back because I was in public. But this morning I played the same song on purpose and had a good cry. Maybe a 2 or 3 minute cry but it was noisy with lots of tears so it felt good. My puppy Todd has never seen me cry like that so he was concerned. Posey has seen me be a crybaby for years and years on an estrogen dominant system so it wasn’t new for her.

And then I played this song that I listened to over and over when I had the BIG HEARTBREAK in 2022. And that made me cry. And then I was walking down the street today when this other song from the BIG HEARTBREAK of 2022 came on and it didn’t make me cry but it did make me feel all wistful and achey.

Anyway out of curiosity I looked up what my ex from the BIG HEARTBREAK of 2022 was doing now and they seem to have done well for themselves and achieved what they wanted to professionally. Which made me proud for them, because they were an amazing person. And also seeing their photo made me miss them. And then I just really hoped that they found someone to love them well, or were loved well, or something. They did not love me which is why there was a BIG HEARTBREAK. But the more I thought about them today the more I realized there was still an ocean of love that I feel for them and then just being sad that it has nowhere to go. I think the fact that I did have so much love for them is why I had to unfriend them. It was too hard seeing them show up on my facebook feed and not be able to talk to them. It was like torture. And now we still don’t talk but I don’t have to be reminded that they are out there and don’t want to talk to me every time I go on Facebook.

So strange that such strong feelings still exist, just like, underground I guess. Like I don’t talk about them that much anymore. But like if there is an ocean of love I feel, I’ve turned it into an underground ocean. I don’t want people to know I still love someone that much. It seems like a weakness or something. Because it seems like love is only valid if it’s returned, so unrequited love has always felt sort of shameful for me to have. Also because I have let a lot of mean people get close to me in my life who have used that to hurt me.

I kind of want to fall in love with a man for a change. I just think it would be different at least. Femmes kinda put my heart through the meat grinder, I haven’t had my heart broken by a man yet so maybe it’s time. I don’t think I will find him on Grindr though. I found the BIG HEARTBREAK on Tinder, but now my Tinder is full of gay men and straight women and it’s so not working for me anymore. And the gay men on Tinder seem to want to get married and I’m not into that at the moment. So many monogamous gay men on Tinder! What happened to slutty queer men? I guess that’s why I’m on Grindr more than Tinder now. And the straight women on Tinder are not into a cock like mine so I don’t get any matches with them. I don’t want them either if they are going to be like that though. I’m just saying a more queer inclusive Tinder feed that has bisexual women in it would be better and I don’t know how to make it do that while being real about my gender. Maybe if I start one again as a non-binary person.

Tomorrow is my birthday! A long time ago someone told me birthdays were celebrations of oncoming death, which is a bit grim. But it does have a bit of a countdown quality to it. I will be 46! And I’m not anywhere super amazing this year because I couldn’t get my birth certificate in time to get a passport. I am in fact STILL waiting for my birth certificate. It could come today, but who knows! It’s been in the mail for like, nine days or something. That’s a LONG time! It’s supposed to take five to seven days to get national mail delivered, and Toronto is a big hub! Or Mississauga anyway, I know that’s where the big Canada Post mail place is around here because my packages always get to Mississauga first before going out for delivery.

ANYWAY before I get into my self indulgent blog post, here’s some links to send me birthday money or “I appreciate you” money or “Thank you for making weird shit for us all these years” money or whatever you want to call it.

My Ko-Fi https://ko-fi.com/theocuthand
You can also send me paypals and etransfers to tjcuthand at gmail dot com.
ALSO buy my game

I got my COVID shot yesterday, so I am caught up again on my vaccine. I don’t really mind doing it every six months, it’s a lot though. I mean, I get a shot of testosterone every week now though, so it’s not like I’m never getting needles. It’s just like, wow we really have to do this forever I guess. Unless they made a universal vaccine I guess, that got all the variants.

It’s kind of disappointing that humanity couldn’t get it together to stop the virus being endemic. I guess that’s where we are now.

I was listening to an old psychic reading from 2020 before all the shit happened. And I was surprised to realize that the things she was talking about DID happen. On a bit of a longer timeline though, which makes me wonder if we’re destined for things to happen but sometimes the world slows it down because of current events. Like, some of that stuff didn’t become apparent until 2022. But I guess were already going into motion. Like she saw someone I was working with did not respond well to criticism and always took it as a personal attack, which became very very true. I didn’t know who she was talking about at the time, had no clue, thought it might have been someone else. But no it was this other person. There’s also this person she saw coming into my life who I think might have turned out to be my therapist, who I met and started working with later in 2020. That was really cool, I’m not totally sure she meant my therapist because she could hear an accent though and my therapist doesn’t really have one, or it’s similar to mine anyway so it doesn’t sound radically different. It could be another producer of mine though, which is also interesting. Either way this person was supposed to give me good advice and stuff and that’s true for both of those people.

She also saw me ending up spending winters at least in California, but like, in 20 years or so. Or maybe 15 years. In my 60s anyway. So who knows, maybe that is still in the cards! It was a tarot reading actually that this particular psychic did.

I should probably do a tarot reading for myself for this birthday, I used to read my cards all the time but I think they got annoyed because I just kept asking the same questions. But when I read for other people I can be pretty accurate sometimes, so maybe if I do a birthday reading it will be less annoying to my cards than when I was reading every day.

Ha ha omg one time I was reading my tarot cards about this Femme lover who dickmatized me and I got this card that had a goat masturbating on it. I was like wow what does that mean? Ha ha ha.

Anyway I hope I achieve great things in my 46th year, despite the odd adversary. I am making a new game this year about Repatriation! And I am developing a class! And hopefully directing a film! And finishing my short video about Transitioning! I’m hoping to get that done soon, I wanted to get a shot for it but I can’t until July, and I need to do things sooner if I want to submit to this particular documentary festival in Europe.

I was trying to get hookups this week but I think I might give up for a while. I’m just too busy, and these guys want to talk all the time because they are lonely. I need a wildly unbothered lover or two. Someone who doesn’t need attention EVERY DAY ALL DAY. I admit I used to be one of those sucky guys who needed constant attention. But not anymore!

Today was a LONG day! Cleaner came by and my house was a fright so I’m very relieved it’s been reset back to clean. Also I had a pitch today that went well I think but I’ll find out in a couple months. Also! I am going to get more of my videos into distribution at Video Databank so that’s cool because I’ll make more money on my old videos having them at an American distributor, they get lots of rentals so that will be nice. I have to get all that material together (titles and video download links) and sign some paperwork. And I am still working on my transition video, but that’s a longer term project because I don’t think I will have the last piece I want until July when I can go to Saskatchewan and shoot something. I feel like it needs to be more interesting BUT ALSO right now just the basics are there because it’s still at an assembly edit stage.

I was putting in all these headlines about anti-trans laws and shit and it was DEPRESSING and overwhelming and also visually not very interesting. So I think I might just use a few headlines. I also noticed my body changed more than my face did, and my transition photos I’m starting with are mainly face shots. SO I gotta go through my phone and put images from that in there because there were more things being documented.

TMI Paragraph, skip if you are a relative or young!
Lol omg I know I shouldn’t care, I should be brave and push it or something. BUT I have a ton of photos of my dick growing and I wish I could use them but I don’t think I will. It’s pretty hot. It did get pretty big considering where it started from. Unpopped popcorn kernel size to Haskap size. I mean that’s impressive but I don’t think it’s going in my transition video. Maybe I will make a more sexy/porn oriented video about my dick one day. But not today. Or tomorrow. But SOMEDAY before it gets old and more wrinkled.

ANYWAY I’ve been doing well.

I’m in a bit of a lull between income streams so my cash situation right now sucks. BUT work is happening and I will be getting paid soon. So it’s just trying to squeak through the lean days. My career is actually doing pretty good. Which is a relief considering a producer tried to cancel me for not supporting our project anymore after said producer was sending me abusive emails. It’s nice to know people still support my work and see the value in it. I think also there was a bit of a comparison between reputations and track records of people involved. And I have burned a few bridges in my career but not many really, very rarely, in comparison. MOSTLY my working relationships have been good and mutually respectful. I’ve generally been fortunate to work with experienced producers with integrity and I am still working with experienced producers with integrity. So life goes on I suppose is the moral of the story.

I’ve been feeling a lot of spiritual significant things have been happening in my life recently. I might have talked about them, or maybe not. I don’t really want to get into them now. But I do feel like, a curiosity about why that’s been happening to me a lot. I don’t want to be a spiritual leader or medicine person. If anything I would hope my art is medicine. I don’t want to feel called to take on a more spiritual role in the community because I don’t think it’s for me. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to translate those events into storytelling more than doing ceremonies with people.

I mean, a film is a ceremony anyway really. We all come into a dark room, follow certain codes like not talking or being on our phones, eat certain things and watch a story. It’s very ritualistic really! I would rather lead people through experiences that way.

I’m doing well on a lessened testosterone dose. I went from 80mg a week to 70mg a week. It’s doing good so far, I still haven’t cried but I feel like, CLOSER to being able to cry. On 80mg I would get misty eyes and that was about it. Not satisfying. I was so relieved to stop crying every day like I did on an estrogen dominant system. I used to start crying at the beginning of therapy sessions and cry the entire way through it. And now I don’t. BUT like having emotional release is important for me. So I’m hoping this helps me get my full range of emotions back. It’s like trying to draw a picture with a bunch of crayons missing from the box. I want the whole box! Not this cheap ass missing crayons box.

So we’ll see, it does feel like I’m closer to getting that range of emotion back. I was laying in bed the other night, feeling the cry start to build behind my eyes and I was like “Yes! This is it! I’m gonna cry!” NOPE. Dammit. SOMEDAY SOON I HOPE.

I’ve been doing 80mg of testosterone a week for a while now and I’ve stopped being able to have a good cry. It’s eerie!! I feel exactly like Edina Monsoon being like “Squish squish” when I want to be crying but can’t. Like one time in therapy recently my eyes watered but then I wiped them and it was over.

When we did therapy when I was on an estrogen dominant system, I would basically walk in and start crying and KEEP crying until I left. Every other week like clockwork. I used to have to schedule crying times at home too ha ha. One time I cried so hard the cushion I was sitting on was damp.

But now I can’t really cry, or if I do it’s just like, easy to wipe away. But I feel like crying is a good thing. It’s a release, it does good things to your body to let that stuff go. Now I have to go be a boy and work out at the gym when I need to regulate my body. So tough! Sigh.

Anyway I am gonna do it again next week and the week after, but after that I’m seeing my doctor again FINALLY to see what’s going on with my hormones and maybe I will decrease to 70mg and see if it makes me feel better about being an emotional human. I don’t feel like the higher dose brought any more things like new hair or anything. And 70mg is higher too anyway. I think I can cry at 60mg.

It’s just very weird seeing certain people in the community try to ruin my life and then not cry over it. Like, that should happen, some tears. Nope.

So anyway maybe in May I’ll be able to cry!

My web host has been paid until 2027. So this blog will stick around for that long at least, hopefully longer depending on my ongoing survival in this hellhole we’ve turned Earth into. But at least I’ll have some corner of the internet to blab in.

I did a lot of work today. I scored some applications for an award. I answered some emails about upcoming travel to EMPAC. I responded to an application for the workshop for Indigiqueer/2 Spirit Youth with Crushing Colonialism so that they knew we received it (please apply! See Crushing Colonialism Instagram @crushingcolonialism for details!). I did some light cleaning. I edited some video FINALLY for a project and realized the resolution is extremely LARGE which was making it glitch out in the sequence settings I was trying to edit it in. I’m gonna have to dial down the resolution when I go to output because honestly the monitors it’s going to be on are NOT that fancy. I got some toilet paper and Posey’s fancy cheese for her heart pills. I also did an interview with a filmmaker who is doing a film about various approaches to gender and sexuality in different societies so I was telling him things I knew about 2 Spirit people. Which is a lot but I still gave him some names of other people to talk to.

This last month was a lot of managing issues going on. And that took a lot of time away from working on my practice. It was really hard to keep on top of stuff. But yesterday and today I’ve gotten back into the swing of things. I came up with a course description for a course I am going to teach in 2025. So that’s cool, I think I wrote about it here already because it hasn’t been so long since I posted last.

After these small videos are done, I am going to be trying to edit my video about transitioning. I have two last shots I want to get but aside from that it’s taking everything I’ve gathered over the last while and trying to do something experimental with them. I obviously want to do something NEW with it that hasn’t been done before. But I don’t know if that will happen, maybe it will just go into the pile of what all the transition videos look like. July 25th will be two years on Testosterone so I’m not sure if I want to wait to export it until I get some images of me at two years. But I could at least edit most of it.

I also have to finish this script I’ve been sitting on like a little egg that is going rotten. It’s like, extremely young (not even a first draft yet, just outlines) and I need to work A LOT on it. Which means getting back into my writing practice and things have just been taking time away from that. But when I wrote “macîskotêw (Evil Fire)” I would MAKE myself write. like I had DEADLINES to meet and stuff, and I would put on timers so I would have to write for 20 minutes at a time a few times a day. And that worked for me but this project has been so neglected. Plus I need to get stuff to my story editor and he’s just waiting. WONDERING. When is it coming?

It’s funny to me that the two projects I’m having a hard time starting are the trans projects. I heard someone criticize trans people who have only been out for less than a year taking up space and talking about their experiences. So I didn’t want to do that I guess although the beginning of transition is exciting. But anyway, it’s been almost two years since I came out as a trans man so it’s about time I did SOMETHING about it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about beauty and ugliness, kindness and cruelty. I feel like I’m committed to bringing beauty and kindness into the world. I heard someone boast about being mean and I just think wow what a sad life that is. I’m assertive but I’m not aggressive. My therapist was telling me about the difference because there is one. We’ve also been talking a lot about power and what it means to have power. And the possibilities of having power without abusing people. I think some people think power is equivalent to abuse and that being cruel means you’re dominant. But even in BDSM that is not a true statement.

Anyway ha ha philosophical thoughts.

Really though I think being an artist means I’m committed to beauty in some way, and I don’t even mean physical beauty. I just mean creating spaces in the world for people to experience themselves and understand something. Not like a garden, although maybe sometimes. I think even horror films can have a kind of beauty, to the people who like to watch them.

Happy Trans Day of Visibility! It’s a scary time to be visible, with manufactured outrage stemming from predatory fascist Christian evangelists. Jesus was probably trans to be honest, if the virgin birth thing was real. And hurrah, because a Trans Jesus is a great concept. Loving but persecuted by the government of his era. We owe a lot to Trans Jesus, and the fact that it’s Easter Sunday today also makes me think of him.

ANYWAY. Personally I think even when I was identifying as a Butch there was some acknowledgement for myself that I was trans masculine. I remember the agony of trying to figure out if I was cis or trans. I felt like I wasn’t qualified to take on a trans identity because I was so unsure about a future with hormones and surgery. I remember when I was finally deciding to start hormones in 2022, I had dinner with a friend and said I had some ambivalence and they were like “I asked a friend whose been on hormones for 7 years and he said he’s still ambivalent!” I know that sounds like maybe I wasn’t sure, but it seems like every day since then I have become more and more sure of my identity.

But also my gender was just in a state of flux for my whole life, and I think in certain ways I was very visible as being some kind of trans person.

What I like about the label Transgender is that it is an umbrella that lets people in at their own pace. I felt trans for years before I started a medical transition, I was even vocal about it before starting to use he/him pronouns and a new name. If I hadn’t been allowed to fit under the umbrella when my identity was more non-binary, it would have been harder to finally ID as a somewhat more binary trans man. Not that every non-binary person eventually transitions, but I felt like I had a community even before I figured myself out.

I had the feeling a lot of trans people in my life were just wondering when I would get around to it. And I just had to think about it for a long time I guess.

And now I’m the one being visible, hoping another trans person at whatever age gets inspired to live their truth. I can’t promise it’s fun, except it kind of is. I mean the persecution sucks yes, but having your body more aligned with the way you feel inside is really worthwhile. Not that every trans person needs hormones. In fact a lot don’t, or do them for a while and then stop for other reasons. BUT the shifts my body has taken with hormones and surgery is so fucking nice.

The other day in boxing class we were throwing tennis balls back and forth to practice defense (I am the worst at this) and my friend hit me in the chest with a ball and got so worried they almost said the forbidden word (“sorry,” if you say it in boxing class you have to do ten pushups). But it actually didn’t hurt the way it would have if I had boobs still. It just hit muscle and bounced off. And that was a cool new thing I realized about my body after surgery because breast tissue can be so tender.

Anyway, regardless if you can be visible or not, if you are trans and feel alone or scared, there are people who love you as you are, or will love you if you haven’t met your people yet. I’m fortunate that trans people in my life loved me and helped me be myself for over 26 years.