What do you associate with trans joy?

Reframing the narrative about transgender people and transition

What do you associate with trans joy? Do certain words come to mind? Actions, behaviors, items? Other emotions? Have you ever thought about it before? How often do you put trans and joy together like that?

In my teaching and public speaking, often paired with a friend of mine, Cass (he/they), I ask that question to audiences of all kinds: graduate students, healthcare providers, corporate workers.

A couple of years ago, I asked my LGBTQ health class, and they stared back at me, at a loss for words. This included three students in that class who were trans/nonbinary themselves and many others who were LGBQ. I followed up with “Have you ever thought about it?” and they shook their heads no.

Last fall, Cass and I asked an audience of healthcare providers at an LGBTQ-focused conference for health professionals. To my delight, several people called out words:

Embodiment, euphoria, thriving, magic, sacred, connected, love, beauty, becoming

Around the time Cass and I started sharing this message, I saw we weren’t alone. A Facebook group dedicated to trans people having fun was formed.

Ben Greene

’s book, subtitled “A Joy-Centered Approach to Support,” was published. Delighted, I pre-ordered it and forwarded the ad to Cass.

Look at this! I thought. This is paradigm-shifting.

Why?

Of course, trans people have always experienced joy, happiness, contentment, and love. We are human. But in the narratives, discussions, and discourse about transness, we are not granted those pleasant emotions, the positive things in life. We aren’t given full, rich, nuanced lives where we get to be fully human—which includes a full spectrum of positives and negatives. (Watch Laverne Cox’s Disclosure if you haven’t!)

In the news, we hear about anti-trans bills and the rights that are being taken away. We are bombarded with negative portrayals: menaces, “gender ideology,” “unsafe for children,” “must be eradicated,” mentally ill, unfit. When talking about gender-affirming care, we hear the words side effects, mutilation, castration, damage, etc.

This framing harms trans kids and adults. It scares health care providers, teachers, and parents. It’s gotten people who had never heard of trans people to despise us now.

Against that backdrop, trans existence is resistance. Trans joy is revolutionary.

In this reframing, transition isn’t about fears, side effects, suffering, loss, and risks.

Transition is the beautiful, sacred process of becoming.

Transition brings confidence, relief, comfort, joy, liberation, healing, connection.

Transition is beautiful. Magic. Self-actualization.

Before my transition, I lived in survival mode. I had my physiological needs and some of my safety needs met. But I never felt fully safe. I could never relax. I thought I did, but only because I didn’t know any different. I wasn’t comfortable and safe in my own body, so I disconnected from it. I ignored my body’s needs and cut myself off from feeling my emotions. I went to therapy when I could (i.e., when I wasn’t living abroad), but my sessions were about week-to-week coping.

Once I started my transition, I started feeling safer. Each year since then, I’ve gained insights that have helped me break unhealthy coping habits, release shame (working on that one!), get out of destructive relationship patterns, find my self-worth, and stand up for myself. I have worked to reconnect with my body and, through that, my emotions, needs, and desires. No wonder I had chronic pain. For me, this growth was only possible with transitioning.

I’ve also been able to connect with friends on a deeper level, realize I’m queer, and build my chosen family. I’ve learned to recognize when relationships are unhealthy and set—and enforce—boundaries around them. I’ve taken accountability and apologized as needed.

A couple of years into my transition, I met someone, and with confidence I never had before, I took the lead on asking him out, saying I love you, and proposing. Together, we created the wedding we wanted, not one demanded by tradition, religion, or parents. (Stay tuned for a joyful post about that!) Together, we are healing and growing.

In my career, I sailed along where the wind took me, following a path laid out for me by academia. All the while, I felt unhappy; I figured that’s just how it is. Work just sucks, right? Once I settled into my new life as Will, I took control of my trajectory. I named what my ideal work situation is, and I moved myself to it: self-employed, juggling multiple gigs as a subject matter expert in applied work that helps people, working mostly from home. For my brand of neurodivergence, this is wonderful.

I also finally did something about my long-time dream of writing creative nonfiction: I enrolled in a master’s program in writing. I’ve even worked (partly) through my perfectionism and now share my writing here without first going through four drafts and asking my husband and one or two friends to read it before I hit “publish.” (I save that rigor for literary magazines.) I even miss some typos, and it hasn’t caused the end of the world yet!

Which is to say I’ve been able to work on love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization—all the layers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Transition is the beautiful, sacred process of becoming.

Transition brings confidence, relief, comfort, joy, liberation, healing, connection.

Transition is self-actualization.

Beautiful.

Magic.