Results for: be the change
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“Transparent” Changed Me (And TV) Forever
“Do you have something to tell us?” my mom joked. It was a joke, because of course I didn’t. “No,” I said with a laugh. And I thought I was telling the truth.
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The Birth and Death of a Name
This is the story of the birth and death of my name, which means that it is a story about transition, which means that it is necessarily a story about the border between two places and the force with which one rends it.
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Harden/Soften: Finding Sensuality After Top Surgery
My chest continued to breathe new life, even when I was no longer alone. Physical affinity suddenly cropped up in corners I never anticipated.
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What Self-Quarantine is Teaching Me About Gender Dysphoria
Three weeks ago I began my Coronavirus self-quarantine. Faced with the reality that I wouldn’t see anyone, I started an experiment. I wasn’t going to shave, paint my nails, or put on makeup — until I wanted to, for myself.
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You’re Just You: An Accidental Love Letter to Los Angeles
“Towards the end of the night you fall and tear the skin on your knee. But you pop back up and keep skating. You’re relieved. Now that you’ve fallen once you know you’ll be okay.”
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Uncharted Waters: A Trans Woman’s Journey Transitioning in the Navy
“Presenting as male every day hurts. When the ship is in port, it’s not as bad; I grow to hate coming in to work, but once the day ends I can go home and be myself. When we’re underway, it’s worse. I’m stuck being ‘him’ all day, every day. Sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks… once, for months.”
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Queer Latinx Love is Resistance: A Collection of Vignettes
“There’s nothing more I want to remember than every moment and sensation we shared. Our grinding hips at Queer Cumbia, feeling your drunken sweat drip onto my freshly implanted tits. The way we sloppily made out and smeared our red and burgundy lips all over our mouths, noses, forehead, and neck.”
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My Trans Body as a State of Desire
“My brain is lit like the map of a major metropolis at night. My body is, too. ‘I am at one with a sea of sensations, glitter, silk, skin, eyes, mouths, desire,’ Anaïs Nin wrote, and that’s pretty much it. Or, put another way: I have found an affirmation of selfhood, and I haven’t thought to immediately annul it.”
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Sometime In June
“Keeping abreast of the passersby, the evidence of our intimacy was in the way we carried our hands. They were strategically placed so when they touched, it could be disguised as a perpetual accident. In honor of our silent dance, those near us were careful to walk around us instead of in-between.”
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On Performing in The Vagina Monologues When You Don’t Have a Vagina
“There’s an annoying song that’s only playing all the way through all day long on some days. Others, I can barely hear the chorus, and others I can’t hear it all. But every day, I know that that song will be there again one day, maybe even tomorrow, maybe even later that same day. And I hate this song.”
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Skydiving in Two Genders: An Essay on Trans Visibility
“I decide I’ll test the durability of a BB cream by Tarte at thousands of feet in the air, then feel ashamed at worrying so much about how I look, then feel the dread again, that all this might go completely wrong, not because I’ll fall to my death, but because I’ll be reduced to my past.”
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Graduation to Womanhood: Navigating Trans Identity at a Southern College
It’s as if I had just discovered a new color and now had this entirely new dimension to my life. I was able to paint a holistic portrait of what I wanted the rest of my life to look like.
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On Learning to Love My Body: Because Summer Is For Fat Girls, Too
Dipping into my summer wardrobe for the first time reminded me just how far I’ve come in learning to love my body.
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The Army Taught Me That I Can Change My Body (And It Will Still Be Mine)
Here’s the deal: I both like and am my body. I am a girl, ergo I have a girl’s body. It’s neat. You know what I think helped me to be comfortable with my body more than anything else? The US Army.
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TransBlack and Beautiful: Acknowledging My Authentic Revolutionary
“One morning, while I was applying my new lighter makeup, I accidentally put too much banana powder on which created a shroud of ashy yellow veil all around the center of my face. I stopped and stared back at my reflection. I looked absolutely foolish. Here I was relishing in this depigmentation of my beautiful ebony skin that I no longer looked like myself.”
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Badass Blacksmiths: Women’s Work and Transgender Identity
People would look surprised and say, “But…you can’t be a girl. You’re a blacksmith!”
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Leaving It on the Court: When My World Changed, Sports Stayed
My teammates didn’t know that I was ending my run in this men’s league because I had to leave my male identity on the court.
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The Language of Comedy: On Defensiveness and Being Wrong
“LANGUAGE MATTERS. In the same way a racial slur brings back a SLEW of painful memories for me and a reminder of the entire history of those words and what they have meant to people and how they have been used to hurt people. I was wrong and it’s important to accept when you’re wrong.”
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This Is Because I’m A Woman: How Sexual Harassment Invaded My Life (And Some Ways to Respond To It)
“I once had a life where I could go blocks, miles, months without a stranger standing in my way, saying, ‘Hey girl, where you goin’ in such a hurry?’ I want to take my personal space bubble to the shop and have it re-inflated to its original size, but that chapter of my life seems to be done.”
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If Joan Of Arc Can Do It, Why Can’t I?
Ever since I went to a Halloween party at my friend’s church youth group in 6th grade, I’ve been almost inseparable from my Christian identity. But on November 4th, 2012, my heart was all the way down in my toes as I got ready to go to church for the first time as a transgender lesbian.