Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia
For our dear friend Chrissi L. Bentley,
who took her own life on the 23rd of April 2018.
Chrissi was an amazing person that was so full of life
and energy, who gave so much of her time to help
other trans people. She was the moderator of the Trans
Teen Survival Guide Tumblr blog, which is focused
on offering advice to trans teens all across the world.
Her advice and support has saved countless lives.
Her work was the inspiration for this book and her
name will continue to live on through all the lives
she touched and all the people she inspired.
Contents
3. Telling the World (or Not!)
5. Being You (Whoever That Is)
9. Genitals, Parts, Junk – What Suits Best?
17. Self-Care and How to Help Others
20. Appendix: Young Trans Kids and How to Support Them
Chances are that the reason you’re starting to read this book is because you’re wondering if you’re trans or not. Or that you’ve already figured out that you’re trans and you need some more information. Or perhaps someone close to you might be trans. We’re glad you decided that this book might be of help to you and we really hope it will be. It contains valuable information that we wish we’d had access to when growing up, and it’s so amazing to be able to share this with you.
So, without further ado, let’s try to figure out what being trans actually is and what that actually means. The trouble with providing definitions and ticking boxes is that it leads to oversimplification. There isn’t a single definitive answer to the question of what it is to be trans, because there is no one way to be trans! There are so many trans people and they are so diverse that there isn’t a universal experience that is more trans or truly trans. Gender is a complicated social construct, and trying to define it, or people within it, is quite hard! So let this be a guide – or an offering of possibilities – to what it might or might not mean to you. But just remember that ultimately it’s you who defines who you are, whether that’s as a trans person or not. The short answer, though, is this: Trans people are people who don’t identify with the gender that they were assigned at birth.
Fox Fisher
The long answer is a bit more complicated. When we are born (and even before we are born) we are assigned a certain gender based on our sex. This means that when we’re born, medical professionals take a look at our genitals (gross, we know!), classify us as male or female and assign us the gender ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ according to what they see down below. In most cases, people are actually fine with this assignment (which means they’re cisgender. In the case of trans people, it isn’t quite as simple. It’s a bit like you signed up for a French class, but when you get there everyone is speaking Spanish. Something just isn’t the way it should be. So essentially, being trans means that you aren’t actually the boy or the girl everyone seems to think you are. It means that your inner sense of self – your gender identity – is something different. Whether it’s that you’re actually a girl, or a boy, or non binary (people who aren’t fully boys or girls), the main thing is that you’re just not what most people seem to think you are. And that’s pretty frustrating. In other words, it’s pretty annoying that just about everyone around you got it wrong and now you’ve got to correct all of them. But don’t worry, we’ll give you some advice on how to go about this in the next chapter.
Being trans is pretty straightforward, right? You’ve known you are trans for as long as you can remember, you’ve always dressed up as the ‘other gender’, played with girls’ toys or boys’ toys as a kid and almost exclusively had playmates of the ‘other gender’. Then you come out, take hormones, have surgery and, hey presto, you’re done!
Okay…no, that’s not exactly how it works. It’s a lot more complicated than that. It takes time and effort and can actually be pretty hard sometimes. It doesn’t really matter what toys you played with when you were younger or who your friends are, because being trans isn’t
