The Truth About Transition

People around the world battle with self-image and self-esteem issues.  Humans do a lot of things to look presentable and attractive, or even acceptable, to the world around them. Society sets unrealistic expectations about what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man. Transgender people not only have to face these universal unrealistic expectations, they also face many unique challenges and have experiences that cisgender people don’t. Today In the Den, Jen sits down with special guests Erik VonSosen and Beckett Jones to talk about a wide range of topics impacting transgender people, from managing transition expectations to finding healthier ways to approach societal expectations to fully learning to embrace our true selves. 

Special Guest: Erik VonSosen

Erik is a 23 year old fashion and costume designer based in Los Angeles. She creates womenswear out of recycled and sustainable materials, with an emphasis on structural heavy-duty corsetry. With a love of fashion as a form of visual storytelling, her inspirations often come from video games, nature, and her identity as a trans woman. When she's not working on a project, Erik can usually be found mixing songs on her DJ controller, scouring the flea market, or deciding what to wear out with her friends on a Saturday night. 

Special Guest: Beckett Jones

Beckett is a transgender artist and poet. He is the oldest of three siblings and can often be found outdoors. Beckett’s a conservation worker who has spent his last few summers working in a variety of wilderness areas, including Yellowstone National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, and Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge (located about 1100 miles South of the Hawaiian Islands). Beckett's currently studying Marine Biology at the University of Hawaii.

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Transcript

JEN: Hello and welcome to In The Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created to walk and talk with you through the journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. Thanks for listening. We’re glad you’re here.

Society encourages all of us to have some pretty unrealistic expectations about what it means to be a woman or what it means to be a man or at least one of the “good” ones.  People around the world battle with self-image and self-esteem issues.  We do a lot of things to look presentable and attractive, or even acceptable to the world around us.  Recognizing that this is an everybody issue and not particularly a trans issue, we wanted to narrow the focus through a trans lens. But, I cannot emphasize this disclaimer enough.  If you are thinking “I’m not trans and I do that.” Yes.  It is an everybody issue.

This conversation is hopefully going to be about talking through the difficult and awkward stuff, not about defining or defending or talking about how things should be or how things shouldn’t be.  But helping us all be more comfortable deconstructing some of the ideas we might have and reconstructing some that might be more healthy. We have asked two guests to return because they are young, but primarily because they are thoughtful. And to be honest, I thought it would be the most fun and interesting to have this conversation with the two of them.

We have Erik Charlotte VonSosen. Erik is a 23 year old fashion and costume designer based in Los Angeles. She creates womenswear out of recycled and sustainable materials, with an emphasis on structural heavy-duty corsetry. With a love of fashion as a form of visual storytelling, her inspirations often come from video games, nature, and her identity as a trans woman. When she's not working on a project, Erik can usually be found mixing songs on her DJ controller, scouring the flea market, or deciding what to wear out with her friends on a Saturday night. You can catch Erik on episode 56 with her mom. Welcome Erik!!

ERIK: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it and I’m excited to have this conversation.

JEN: Oh, good. And we have Beckett Jones. Beckett Jones is a transgender artist and poet. He is the oldest of three siblings and can often be found outdoors. Beckett’s a conservation worker who has spent his last few summers working in a variety of wilderness areas, including Yellowstone National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, and Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, located about 1100 miles South of the Hawaiian Islands. Beckett is currently studying Marine Biology at the University of Hawaii. You can catch Becket all the way back on episode 10. Welcome Becket!

BECKET: Hi. Thanks.

JEN: I love reading your bios and thinking about how it kind of minimizes how cool you guys are. Eriks like, I do fashion. No, Erik does phenomenally breathtaking, ground-breaking, edgy fashion that is just super cool. And Beckett lives in the middle of nowhere saving the planet. Swimming down to the depths of the ocean and rescuing turtles. It’s actually way cooler than their bios make it sound. I think a little bit more of that is at least in Eriks episode. I encourage you to go back and listen. Right out of the gate, I talked to you two about this already. But I want to say to all of our listeners that I am likely to stumble on my words and my ideas with this episode.  It's kind of a vulnerable thing to try to explore these ideas publically.  My intention is to learn. It is not to cause harm.  So if I word something badly, I hope the two of you will help me to rephrase and reconstruct my ideas and my questions in more appropriate ways. Basically you two can talk and I’ll be piping in from left field. 

But I want to start our conversation with society, the ideas of society and your experiences in society.  What sort of messages do you think society sends to all of us about what it means to be a girl or what it means to be a boy?  What kind of messages do we all get about the importance or value of being attractive in the world?  And do you guys think this is changing over time? If we have a boomer who’s listening or an alpha who’s listening, talk about how those things would be different for the two of them.

BECKETT: I can talk. I think that a big part, I think, of how I would say attractiveness or beauty and how it’s idealized or standardized in our society has a lot to do not just with feeling wanted or feeling attractive or feeling beautiful, but with basic respect. I think that something that I know a lot of people struggle with, especially in those marginalized spaces, is the feeling that if they are not beautiful or if they are not desirable, that they will lose what little respect they have from people. Or that if they’re attractive that it will make up for those things that they think that they lack in the society space or those privileges that they don’t have. And I think there’s a lot of pressure on everyone in our society to be desirable. But I think, especially when you’re in a space where you already don’t have, or don’t feel desirable or are ostracized or are missing some of those things that society wants from you, then it feels like there’s extra pressure that you have to go above and beyond to be respected or to be acceptable.

JEN: Is it unrealistic? Do you think you do have to be?

BECKETT: There’s yes and no to that question. And, one is it is unrealistic and it’s not attainable and it’s not achievable and it’s not sustainable. But on the other hand, it is something that genuinely does grant you more privileges or more respect from people. Especially, I think, when we talk about trans people in trans spaces, there’s a lot of narrative, I think, that gets pushed on trans people or that is kind of said to warn people away from transition like, “You’re good the way you are now, but if you were this something else, then you would be beautiful or you wouldn’t be desirable or you wouldn’t be attractive.” I know we talk about the trans is beautiful campaign where we had all these transgender celebrities or creators posting pictures of themselves and trying to talk about beauty in the transgender community. And I think that while that is awesome and powerful in a sense of “No these people are beautiful. These people are desirable. These people are attractive.” Is that you shouldn’t have to be, you know what I mean? You shouldn’t have to be desirable or you shouldn’t have to be beautiful or attractive or to meet these beauty standards to be respected or to be valuable.

ERIK: Yeah. That's something I definitely have noticed and agree with, the sentiment of for sure. Kind of the pursuit of physical beauty as almost an over-compensation for being trans. I think a way that I viewed beauty a lot, especially earlier in my transition before I had more of the self-awareness and knowledge of myself that I do now, was I felt pressured to be extremely – like above and beyond – beautiful than the average person to almost make up for my transness putting me lower on that attractiveness. Which, again, is not exactly logical or sustainable or realistic. So I definitely have noticed that a lot. Especially in some of the work that I do. I’ve done a lot of modeling work here in LA.  A lot of times just with friends or things like that. But I’ve definitely noticed the way that I’m treated in those spaces is slightly different than a lot of other people. And sometimes it can feel a bit tokenizing. People want to put a trans person in their artistic photo shoot, in their film project, just so that they have a trans person there. So they’re like, “We’re going to pick someone who somewhat passes.” Which is interesting because there's an argument for whether or not anyone passes. 

But I’ve definitely noticed that connection between transness and beauty and there almost being big expectation there. You can also see it in the type of trans people that we platform in society. A lot of the trans people that we see in higher spaces in media and being seen more in the public eye, typically pass better. Or, if they don’t, they have some sort of ethereal model like beauty that sets them apart or people look at them and are like, “Whoa, I can tell they’re trans but they’re really pretty.” So I think transitioning and beauty have a lot in common and it can be hard to separate the two. And it kind of is understandable why certain people get really caught up in their appearance as they’re transitioning as opposed to the inner thoughts and how you feel comfortable in your own body rather than the way you look in the mirror.

JEN: So when you were just talking – this is where I’m going to start to get myself in trouble – But when you were just talking and you were talking about how they pick you, maybe sometimes because you’re trans, I was thinking – before you got to the part because I’m trans – I thought you were going to say because I’m a great model and I’m beautiful. You’re 6’1”. Is that right?

ERIK: I’m 6’3”.

JEN: 6’3” and you look like a runway model and you have this gorgeous hair. But you’re also a good model. You do the elbow things and the hip things that the rest of us don’t understand. You’re a good model. Is that kind of hard to separate out? Are you like, “Did they pick me because I’m beautiful? Did they pick me because I’m good at this? Did they pick me because I’m trans?” Is it kind of this mental mind mess?

ERIK: For sure. Yeah.  And it can be really hard for me to tell the reasoning and sometimes I have to defer to a friend to be like, “Hey. I got approached to do this project. I’m just flattered that they want me to do it because I’m like they think I can qualify for this.” So I’ll have my best friend look at it and be like, “Okay, girl, do you think that I’m being kind of tokenized here or do you think they actually really want to shoot with me?” And so that’s always been tricky and sometimes really hard to tell. But then there’s also that same feeling of, “Well, at least they’re putting me in it. At least they’re putting someone trans in it because representation – especially in media and fashion media which is really where I thrive – is always really important and really cool to see.” So it’s kind of like you kind of just evaluate almost on a value scale if I’m being tokenized somewhat, then if this is more visible then maybe it’ll help out. Or maybe it’ll help me in some way. So if they’re taking something from me, at least I get this for my portfolio or something. So, yeah, I think it’s definitely a little bit tricky at times.

JEN: That makes sense. And do you guys think it’s different for trans men than it is for trans women? And obviously, I’m speaking to the binaries. There’s a big mix in the middle and on the outside of those. But do you think it’s different?

ERIK: Like in what way?

JEN: Like do you think trans women are more tokenized than trans men? You guys talked about passing, right? That idea of passing – which I hate that word. I can’t wait until the trans community comes up with a different word – but there’s this idea of passing as an expectation. Like, if you’re with a beard and you go into the men’s bathroom, probably nobody’s going to question you. That’s like man enough to enter the men’s room, right? But passing as a woman is a little bit different and it contains this element of safety. Like, is it just different for trans men and trans women, this expectations and how you’re trying to move through the world recognizing expectations but not putting them on yourselves when you have to consider safety also.

BECKETT: I think it is and it isn’t. You know, when we talk about passing, I think as I’ve moved through my transition and it’s been a lot of years for me now, is that passing seems totally random. Early on in my transition, it really kind of wounded me when I felt like I wasn’t passing or when I got misgendered in public, even by someone who I could tell was well-meaning. And I think at a point now, where I exist, it happens and I just kind of laugh because it seems totally like everyone has this sort of algorithm they’re doing in their head when they meet a stranger. And they’re adding up the pieces and points and that algorithm is different for every single person. And it comes out differently every single way. And I think that I’ll talk to people and I’ll say, “Oh, yeah. This happened to me the other day at the grocery store and it was funny.” And they’re like, “I don’t get it. I think that you pass really well.” And I’m like, it doesn’t matter. It’s just is and it isn’t. I think that passing as this idea, at least in my experience I think it just is maybe not totally random. 

But I think that often passing is just kind of like – I don’t know if it’s easier or harder for anyone is probably really dependent on their own circumstance and their own body and their own access to HRT or surgery or clothes or makeup or any of those things. But I think that in, kind of, the place that I’ve come to now, is that passing is something that happens or it doesn’t. Or if it doesn’t it’s this weird kind of moment where I can tell this person just isn’t sure and is trying to figure it out. But I think that my own experience of taking away my own responsibility in that and not feeling that sting of being like, “This is their personal problem that they’re working through right now.” And I don’t need to worry about it. And I think that’s the place that I’ve reached. But I think early on in my transition, passing did feel very much like a safety thing for me. And it was really scary, especially before I got top surgery. That was a weird space to be in and that I did have some facial hair and I did have a lower voice, and I was kind of just tall. I’m not super skinny, I’m not super short. And it was still sometimes nerve-racking to be in the men’s bathroom or to be in men’s spaces or to feel like people were looking at me or not know if I was passing or not. 

But I think in terms of passing and the standards that are put on passing, I think that the difference in transmasculine versus transfeminine or trans man or a trans woman, is that the beauty standards that society places on women, are so much more extreme and are just so much more intense. There are beauty standards for men. There’s expectation for men. And those expectations can be intense. But the amount of work that it takes for a cis woman to be respected as a woman in her appearance and the way that she looks and the way that her body is presented to the word, is just so much more. And I think that the experience that – I mean, this is me talking from the other side of the pond – but I feel like the expectation of beauty probably rests harder on trans women in that sense and that moving from that space of what is acceptable to look like in a public space or what is respectable to look like in a public space and then moving towards the side of, “No you do need to have your makeup done. You do need to have your hair done. You do need to be wearing nice clothes. You do need to look attractive.” Is something that I imagine is probably more intense.

ERIK: Yeah. Well, I think I can speak to that, that it is very intense. I think early in my transition, I was really focused on sticking to all of those ideals as closely as I could because it was so validating to be called “She” in public and have that happen. It was such a cool experience. But I think as I’ve gotten older, I realize that my closeness to those wasn’t as self-serving as I thought it was because it can be really constricting and really difficult. I think as I got older though my transition and my hair started growing, I have such a deep relationship with my hair because long hair is one of the most obvious signifiers of a male versus female in society which is interesting because cis women have such a variety of hair styles and hair colors and hair lengths. And often never have to deal with  the issue of being misgendered, although they do misgendering kind of effects everyone. It’s just a whole conversation about how transphobia affects cis people as well. 

But I think for me, I was just clinging so hard to the idea of, I want long hair because this is going to be the cure-all, cure for passing, I’m going to pass all the time. And so I think, once I let go of those standards and realized just how arbitrary these beauty standards in passing is, I felt a lot more relief and got to experiment a lot more with what is my personal style? How do I want to come across to the world? There’s definitely a lot of traditionally feminine things that I do and that I communicate. I wear makeup. I have long hair. I dress in pretty feminine clothing. But I also like to experiment with different things because at the end of the day, even if someone doesn’t perceive me as female or as a woman, doesn’t really matter that much depending on who it is. Like if it’s a stranger, it  really doesn’t have much of an impact on me the way that it used to. And I think it’s just so arbitrary because I always have the mindset of, “I’m never going to fully pass because I’m 6 '3” and you don’t run into a lot of 6' 3 " cis women every day. But it’s interesting because I’ll still have people tell me, “I had no idea.” And I’m like, “I don’t even understand how that’s possible. I’m confused who you got to that, not even in a bad way. I’m just like, interesting. 

So it’s always so fascinating to hear how other people have that algorithm like Beckett said. That was a really good way of putting it, of like everyone has their own ways of evaluating strangers and putting them into their own world view. But I think it helped for me a lot to distance from that and be like, “I don’t have to fit into that woman’s world view.” Like, “I don't know you people. You don’t know anything about me. So there’s no reason I need to try to fit into your way of evaluating the world.” So I think the beauty standards are really tough as a trans woman and I think as much work as I’ve done to try and distance from them and not feel as much reliance on them, I still feel a little bit trapped by them. Which I can imagine is the reality for almost any woman in society. I don’t know, there’s always days where I wake up and I’m like, “I really do not want to put any makeup on. I do not want to brush my hair. I feel horrible. I just don’t want to.” But I feel some sort of pressure to, and it’s so ever-present. 

So I think it is really good to have conversations like this because I think a lot of times trans women and cis women feel very separate. There’s a lot of rhetoric going on in politics and in society that our experiences are totally different. And I do agree that experiences between trans women and cis women are different and I never want to try to equate them. But at the same time, there’s so much shared and so much in common that it’s like, we’re all under this same pressure. It’s better, I think, if we work together and we talk about it and be like, “Hey. This sucks.” And have both of us come together and be like, “Hey this actually really sucks.” Because sometimes I think that there is this almost stereotype that trans women almost like the pressure and like to really conform to standards. It’s like at least for me, I don’t want to. I have no desire to. I assume that you guys don’t do either. I think it’s just a lot of pressure but it’s pressure that’s shared among a lot of women and so there’s obviously parts that are more specific to being trans for sure. But it’s the same pressure for everyone. And sometimes that helps me when I feel like I’m having a bad day or I don’t feel passable. I’m just having a day where I’m feeling more dysphoric than usual. I think, “Well, these are the same pressures that are on anyone. Cis women feel this way too.” It helps me feel a little less alienated sometimes. And I think it’s important to come together and honestly be like, “Honestly, this sucks.” Because sometimes it really does.

JEN: I love the cis men who are experimenting with makeup who have amazing skill and model and stuff with their makeup. Because I have this dream in my head that as we move forward through life, it will turn into people who like makeup do makeup and people who don’t like makeup don’t have to and we can switch back and forth between. It’s not an expectation for one group of people and an angry, get-people-insulting-you activity for another group of people. 

Sometimes I think joy in life is about having reasonable expectations. I don’t know if that sounds like a downer. Like I know I’m never going to look like a supermodel. I knew it when I was 15 that I was never going to look like a supermodel. Now that I’m in the 50’s my days of tight skin, gone. High energy, that’s in the past. But I can see, I can imagine this situation where I was having some procedures, maybe I was taking a GLP1 or I was exercising really hard or had Botox, whatever. I might have some sort of hope inside that I would look like myself version of when I was 30. And so in my head, trying to experience empathy and understand, I sometimes see what I think is a similar struggle with trans people. Like, no matter how they look or how much medical or surgical transition is happened or anything, they haven’t reached that pinnacle of what they wished they look like. But they’ve been getting closer. I’ve been moving further away from the pinnacle for a really long time now. But for people who are transitioning, they’re moving kind of toward that. I don't even know if that makes sense. But, if you could talk to someone who’s early in their journey as a trans person, what sorts of things would you suggest to them to help manage their expectations? Like what can they hope to look like? What is just not attainable for the majority of people?

BECKETT: I think that a lot of people getting into transition have that hope for, or this vision of an idealized self, or this vision of the type of men or women that they want to look like. And the reality is that transition is this super awesome, super powerful way to exert your own soul over your body in the way that you want to be perceived. It’s also not going to turn you into something that you’re not. Like you’re probably not going to look like Audrey Hepburn. You’re probably going to look like your mom. You’re probably going to look like your sisters and your aunts. You’re probably not going to look like Channing Tatum. You’re probably going to look like your dad, look like your brothers. And I think that it’s something that exists in our society for everyone, right? The addictive nature of – I’m thinking of diet culture.

JEN: Like the quest for perfection?

BECKETT: That’s what I’m thinking of. I’m thinking of the demand for that perfection and how it’s, I think, become more intense with things like social media where there’s this idea that you need to kind of put this image of yourself out there for people to pay attention to or to receive attention or to receive affirmation. And I think that in transition, that sometimes that can kind of get away from you in a sense of not just wanting to look more like yourself or to look more like how you want to be perceived. But that those feelings are tied up so tightly also in attractiveness and in desirability and how not wanting to just be a man or not wanting to just be a woman, but wanting to be beautiful, wanting to be a good man or a good woman as you kind of talked about in the intro. 

And I think that separating those two pieces is really hard. And I think it’s because of the intertwinedness of those two feelings and ideas is why we have really high rates of eating disorders in trans people. We have really intense pressure to control bodies to look a certain way to exert power over the body in a way that you can achieve that perfection. And it’s something that I think – I don’t want to speak for everyone but I think at least the trans people that I’ve talked to about these things or these people that I’m close to – have all really struggled with that, with the idea of not just wanting to transition but wanting to become beautiful. 

And I think that the advice that I would give to a young person or to someone starting a transition is that transition looks different on everyone that does it. And a lot of things like HRT and surgery, they depend on your genetics. They depend on the history of your body. They depend on a lot of things. And that having these expectations for yourself that you would never put on any other person, is not fair to you. It’s not fair to your transition. It’s not fair to your body. And allowing yourself to exist as yourself and not as some really kind of unrealistic, idealized version of yourself. And I think that something that I know a lot of cis people experience too and they talk about the quest for perfection. The quest for perfection is putting off things that you want to do until you’re beautiful. Like, I won’t wear these clothes until I look a certain way. I won’t do these activities until I look a certain way. I won’t go to these parties until I look a certain way. and just, like, wasting life waiting to be beautiful. And I think that in the terms of transition that that can be really devastating because transition is something that can last a lifetime. It’s something that’s always shifting, always changing, moving. 

And if you are waiting to be a beautiful man or a beautiful woman or to be good enough, then you’re never going to do anything. And so I guess my advice is to not put those things off, is to exist in the body you have, and work towards being more comfortable in that body in whatever that means for you. But to never hold this expectation of yourself of what you have to look like before you can be happy or you can be acceptable or good enough, if that makes sense.

JEN: The idea that you’re going to look like your mom just made a lot of people sad. Look at your mom when she was your age. It’s going to be a little less traumatic for you.

BECKETT: Yeah.

JEN: But I think that’s actually reasonable, like a reasonable standard. Look at the people you’re related to, right? How about you, Erik?

ERIK: Yeah. I think that's really great advice. I know that a lot of that, it was meant for people who are earlier in their transition. But I took that and I was like, “Oh, that’s really great to hear.” Because I’m even four years into my transition. I’ve been on hormones for four years. It’s still helping for to hear like, ‘cause there’s still times when I’ll put things off. But in terms of expectations for transitioning, I think it’s important to be realistic. But I think it’s also important to – I think it’s okay to have high expectations of what you want. But I also think it’s important for them to be malleable. But you have no idea what you're going to look like, what hormones are going to do for you. And they’re also not miracles. This is medicine. It’s only going to so much to you. 

The real miracle of the transition is what you’re doing in your head. So there’s definitely been things that hormones have helped me out with in terms of my transition. And they’ve been lifesaving medication for me, frankly, which I know is dramatic, but it’s also not. Because I really don't think that I would be here in the  state that I am today if I didn’t have the help of hormones. 

But, again the medicine is only going to do so much. A lot of it is what happens in your head. So I think, early in my transition I had this idea of what I wanted to be and I had to realize, I can’t shrink. I’m not going to get shorter. My feet are not going to get smaller. My bones are not going to change whatsoever. And just being at peace with that and being like, “No. This is my face. This is my body. There’s going to be small changes to it that are going to make me really happy. But it’s up to me to decide if they make me really happy or not.” I think taking small incremental steps and allowing those to wash over you and find happiness in those, I think, is really important because I think there’s also an expectation early in transition that it goes by quickly. Hormones do not work quickly at all.

JEN: Testosterone’s a little faster than estrogen, but, yeah, not fast.

ERIK: It is not fast at all. Especially if you’re just starting and you have to get all your dosages changed. I didn’t even go on my max dose for like six months in. So it can be really, really frustrating and I totally get that because I was there. I was in the mirror every day. I was like, ‘Oh my god, can my boobs go, please, please, please?” But I think it’s really important to have reasonable expectations and not stick too closely to this idea that you’re forming early in your transition. And that goes for hormones. It also goes for surgery. I think early in my transition I had this idea where I was like, “Okay, I’m going to get bottom surgery right away. I want all the works. Put it all on me.” When I was 19. And now I’m 23 and I still have not had any sort of surgery in my transition and I feel completely content with that. And I know that it might be something that I want down the road, but because I kept my expectations a little bit more flexible, I think it’s really served me. And maybe I could’ve gotten all this surgery when I was 20. But I feel like there’s no way I can go back in time and change it. 

And that’s one big piece of advise that I have, especially for trans women because a lot of the trans women that are very visible are trans women who went on hormones really young or were able to go on puberty blockers, which is great and I’m obviously so happy for people who had the background people to do that or the support. But I think it’s important not to compare yourself to those people too much because then you start to fall down a pattern of thinking of a bunch of what-ifs. What if this changed? What if this changed? What if I went on hormones earlier? And you have no control over it. There’s no control at all. What you do have control is yourself now. So you can instead think, “Well here’s what I have to work with now. What can I do to work with it?” And you just have to be realistic. 

It’s like having a used car. You can add a whole bunch of new stuff to it. You can get a new engine – and obviously I don’t know, I really don’t know anything about cars so I’m just listing random car parts – but you have a base model. You can’t go replace it. You’re stuck with this model. Or you can think, “No. I have this model and look at all these things that I can do to change it and have it still be me.” So I think it’s really important to know for some people you’ll go through kind of a big rebirth. I really felt that I almost went through a sort of metamorphosis. But a lot of that was internal. 

You’re not going to turn into a butterfly externally unless you’re able to do it internally. So I think managing the expectations is really hard because early in the transition it’s like I really want this and this and I want this to happen, and I want to look like this trans girl and all these ideas. But I think it’s important to go step by step and think who do I want to be and what do I want to show to the world and then apply that to yourself and just be realistic about how your body’s going to change and how your mind’s going to change and how those will work together to make you the woman or man or person that you want to be.

JEN: I love all of that. You have touched on a bunch of this already and I’m not trying to make you repeat yourselves. But I want to kind of flush out this idea of performing gender a little bit because I think trans people are so much better able to articulate this performance of gender than cis people who are kind of seeped in it our whole lives. Because when you were not out, whether you knew and you haven’t started transitioning or you didn’t know at all. But before you were out, you kind of had some expectations. You might’ve found yourself performing gender. I know that there’s a lot of trans boys who give the super feminine one last push to see if they can pull it off. Then you start transitioning and there’s a lot of performing gender. I see people, like trans women, learning how to tuck their hair behind their ear in a seductive way or learning how to bat their eyelashes. It’s like this performance learning curve where you’re learning and performing and you were already performing beforehand half the time. But at some point, both of you sort of stopped performing gender most of the time and just kind of leaned into, embraced your internal experience with your gender. Can you talk about suggestions for how people can do it or what that looked like for you to stop performing gender as much and just existing in your actual gender?

BECKETT: Yeah. I think for me it took time. A lot of it was just time in my body, in those spaces learning, and eventually coming to the conclusion of this doesn’t matter as much as I thought it did. And I think this is going to be a little bit of a unique experience. But I think for me, a lot of deconstructing that performance or realizing that performance wasn’t as necessary as I thought it was was spending time in wilderness spaces with small groups for months at a time. It’s just us and even for cis people, I see those performances break down a little bit because you’re in this microsociety, right, this little bubble. Of these people that you’re working with you grow to trust and respect. And you also don’t have access to a lot of amenities and people start to let go of things. Something that I’ve done – I’ve don’t it four times now – been a crew lead for a camping crew. And the first week, I see a lot of that performance. I see a lot of the women are still trying to do makeup even though we’re in the woods and no one’s there to see them, and still trying to do their hair. And I see the men still trying to maintain that attitude that they’ve been told is what gives them respect or what makes them manly. And as people spend time together in the space and create their own little microculture, those things kind of disappear. And it’s really cool to watch every time it get to see it happen because I see people leave that space and then take some of that with them, you know what I mean? I think that now that they’ve been through it and realize, “Oh, I don’t have to look this way everyday or this doesn’t actually matter. I lived without this for ten weeks and it was fine.” And kind of carry that away. 

And I think that being able to exist in those spaces – I think the first time that I went into something like that, I was maybe a year and a half, two years into my transition. And I was still feeling a lot of pressure to look and act like a man or be perceived as a man. Especially in that space that has already kind of has been a boys club for a long time. Using a chainsaw, swinging tools out in the woods, I felt a lot of pressure to be that image and as I did it and as I was successful I was like, “Oh I don’t need to do that to be good at this.” or I don’t need to be that person to be good at this. And watching people around me, other trans people, women, people of color, watching them really succeed in those spaces and not have to sacrifice or not have to perform those things to excel. 

And so I guess just to break that all down, what I’m saying is exposure to people who are willing to push the boundaries of those performances and break them down and spending time with people who want to be thoughtful or want to kind of grow and expand outside those boxes is I think really healing and really helpful. I think spending time with other trans people, spending time with gender nonconforming people, spending time with and embracing those people around you that also are in that boat and gaining a love and respect for them and then being able to reflect that on yourself. This person that I love and respect and is all these amazing things, I don’t think that they need to do these things. I don’t think they need to perform this way. Why am I putting that on myself, you know? 

And I think that just time and steeping in that and realizing as I got more confident and more sure of myself and less concerned with how people looked at me or how people thought of me or perceived me that that performance just mattered and mattered and mattered less to me until I got to a point where I realized that it didn’t really matter at all. And I guess if you’re trying to maybe speed that process up and not let it take those years, I think that it probably does still take those years. I think I’m probably still unlearning it and I’ll be unlearning it forever. But trying to create a community and a space and a culture with the people that you love and your friends and seeking out those individuals that want to do the same unlearning is a really powerful way to speed it up.

JEN: Awesome. Erik, you have not spent a lot of time in the wilderness. So you’re going to have a different take on that.

ERIK: Yeah.I spend a lot of time in the city around a lot of people who are doing a lot of performing. I think, when it comes to gender performance, I think I’m never going to be fully exempt from it. I think it’s something that’s so pervasive in my life all the time. But I think what I do have is more of a self awareness of it than I think the average cis person because I’ve had to adapt from one performance to another. And I’ve been performing gender, I guess, more unorthodox for a long time now. Because as a teenager, I feel like I never really was a straight man. I was always gay from the start and doing drag and stuff in high school. So my gender performance has always been a little bit wackier. So I think I have a different perspective on it that really makes it very clear to see in other people. And I think it’s interesting because it’s so hard to get people to notice in a way. It’s weird. It feels like people are always on the cusp of understanding that we’re all performing a certain role all the time. But it’s just barely not there. 

We know what toxic masculinity is, but we somehow just can’t make the connection that that’s a performance. That’s gender that’s based on this societal expectation that we have. but I think it’s definitely a really pervasive force that I feel a lot.  And I think I notice it a lot when, not only with my friends because I get to see them up close and maybe get to challenge some of their ideas and I think that’s a really great way to break them down is talking to people close to me and be like, “Well, why do you do that? Why do you feel the pressure to do that?” And sometimes the answers are like, that totally makes sense. But I think an area where I see a lot of that kind of gender performance really clear is in dating. I think when it comes to dating as a trans person, especially I’ve really only dated cis men. So I get to see gender performance up very, very close. 

And it’s always so interesting because I think that cis people have this idea that trans people are the biggest gender performers, like we’re going through every day trying to trick people into thinking that we’re men and women. But when I look at people, especially cis men, I’m like, you’re trying a lot harder than I am. You’re doing a lot. Because I think a lot of me, there's men that I get close to and it feels like they’re one person when they’re one-on-one talking to me and then they get with a group of other men and then it’s like i don’t even know who you are. It’s completely different and it’s this whole performance and you tell them that and they’re completely unaware to the fact that they’re kind of performing around a lot of their friends. And I think it just goes to show that gender performance is – I don’t want to call it a prison because I feel like that is very intense – but it’s definitely a pressure that is felt by everyone. Again, the same point that I was talking about cis and trans people have a lot more in common than we want to let on. Part of that is the pressure gender performance is affecting all of us. And sometimes it’s affecting cis people even more intensely than it is trans people. 

And I think letting go of that performance is really, really difficult but it’s really, really rewarding. And I think the best way to kind of ease into that, because I don’t think anyone can just drop it all at once and be like, “I’m completely exempt from gender as a force. Yay.” Obviously, I wish that that was the way that things worked. But I think that one way that really helped me was picking and choosing what do I want to perform. What feels comfortable for me to be performing and what do I think is a little bit limiting for me? So I feel like when I transitioned I almost wanted to be even more quiet and I felt like that would help me pass, almost. I was less assertive. And I think I had to reevaluate and think is this really something I want to perform? Do I want my female friends to not be assertive? Do I want my mom to not be assertive? These are traits that I admire in women, there’s no reason I need to perform something different than them. I think when people break away from those gender performances it can be really, really admirable. And it ends up being qualities that we end up really, really appreciating in people because they feel so fresh and out of the box because they’re so separate from those gender performance that we’re so tied to.

JEN: This is why I love talking to trans people. Just what you said, I perform gender all the time. But I’ve noticed in the past 15 years since I’ve become friends with trans people and learned so much more about it, I feel so much less pressure because they taught me that I was performing in ways that I just was blind to. And I was absolutely doing it. But I didn’t recognize it. I didn’t see it, kind of drowning in it. And then a couple trans people say something and I’m like, “Wait a minute.” And I love that. 

So I want to tackle one more topic before I let you guys go. And it’s kind of a big one. but I’m going to try to cram it into one question. But I want to contemplate or consider the ideas about how privilege plays into all of these sorts of things. There’s different levels of privilege. There’s different types of privilege. So maybe you’re white and you have that privilege. Maybe you’re straight and you have that privilege. And moving between types of privilege. We all know that transgender people in the United States right now are not privileged as that category itself, right, the trans category is not a privileged category. So sometimes you’re moving into lesser privilege area. And then we have these ideas where different types of men are prioritized and different types of pretty are prioritized in society. And I want to talk about how we sometimes try to hold onto ideas that aren’t good for us. Maybe like an older white trans woman who’s fighting for a spot at the table in areas that prioritize patriarchy because they always benefited her before and now they’re not particularly beneficial. And I want to hear your ideas about how privilege plays into all of it.

ERIK: I think when it comes to privilege, especially as a trans person, I think it’s important to look outside of just yourself. I think since the trans experience is so difficult that it becomes really easy to become a victim of your own circumstances and only look at your own struggles and think, “I am going through it. I have it the worst out of anyone in the whole world.” And I totally understand that feeling because that was something that I felt a lot earlier in my transition as well. But I think it’s really important to acknowledge that even in our sphere as trans people, these hierarchies that we have around race and around class still really exist because if we look at a lot of the – I can’t even say a lot of because the trans people who are visible in media and culture are so far and few between and a lot of them are white and a lot of them are well off to where they have the class privilege to maybe transition younger or to get surgeries or they have racial privilege to where they get more visibility and it’s a lot easier for them to be in more visible spaces – and I guess something that I noticed a lot is definitely class plays a big part in transitioning. 

At least I know for a lot of trans women, a lot of your transition sometimes is almost categorized as how many surgeries have you had? How much work have you had done? How much do you pass? Are you fitting this image? And so much of that is wrapped up in class because to transition and be lower income is difficult. If you don’t have health insurance, it’s very difficult to get on hormones. It’s very hard to afford hormones. And then the whole concept of surgery is even off the table. It might be harder to get clothes that are gender affirming or makeup or take care of yourself in the same way. And I think trans womanhood like cis womanhood is so wrapped up in class because that gender performance mixed with class is the same way that it, again, affects cis women. 

I think a lot about job interviews and the way that there’s so much pressure put on women for a job interview. And it’s very hard for women of lower class to get jobs because job interviews are so – that’s one of the ultimate gender performances is you need to be so put together and communicate this hirable image but if you don’t have the class standing to make that happen it’s really difficult. And that’s kind of what transitioning is like as well. I think my, kind of, main thesis is that it’s important to remember that the privilege that’s almost taken away with being trans doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Being in this almost tier of being trans, there’s still so many tiers within that as well. Not all trans people are on equal footing either. So it might feel like you’re kind of down in the depths, but it’s also important to recognize the privilege that you have. I am a white trans woman. I have supportive parents. I have a job. I was able to get an education. So I understand that even though I might be on a lower rank than certain cis people, there’s also a lot of trans people who don’t get to have the same privileges that I do. And even just being aware of that and then also using the privilege to help maybe more underprivileged trans people, I think is really important. 

And I think sometimes trans people do struggle with the loss of privilege. Because when you transition there are certain privileges that you’re giving up and that can be really difficult. But that loss of privilege is happening even for people that hardly have any to start with. So I think it’s important to almost take inventory of the privilege you have before you start to victimize yourself, I guess, depending on where you’re coming from. What I’m trying to say is that transness doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s just another layer onto all these privileges and struggles that we have in our society and it’s important to see the bigger picture because sometimes that can get lost really easily.

JEN: Thank you, Erik. I appreciate that. Beckett, any thoughts on this one?

BECKETT: Yeah. I mean, I think that all of tha was really insightful and kind of reflects a lot of my own thoughts on the experience. I’m going to go on a little bit of tangent here. And when I think just listening to Erik talk and just this conversation in general is kind of putting in mind my first summer working after I got on T, after I had top surgery, I was in Yellowstone. I was really visibly trans. It was still kind of early in my transition. I still hadn’t had my legal name change. I was very visible. And because I was visible, I had some really, really impactful and powerful experiences where trans people who were not visible would come to me to talk to me because they could identify me. And when I think about those people that were in that space with me and doing the same work that I was and doing it in secrecy – you know what I mean – and the reason that they were doing it in secrecy, most of them, was because the fear of losing privilege, the fear of losing access, of losing respect. 

And I get it. I had managers that were not nice to me. I had people that were not nice to me because I was visibly trans. But I also had access, like Erik was saying, I had family that supported me even though they weren’t with me at the time. Just having someone that you know is in your corner, it’s huge. And not very many people have that. And I was kind of resilient to those things because I had access and privileges that not everyone has. I think I had four conversations that really stick out to me. One was with a trans woman who was in her 50’s, 60’s, working as a maintenance “man”. And kind of picked me out to talk to me because I was trans. And listening to her talk about her experiences and then being in the workplace and realizing that I was the only one that knew. Everyone else was treating her like a man. Everyone else thought she was a man. And I had that experience repeat itself. 

And I remember there was another trans woman that I had a conversation with who came to my apartment, essentially, late one night and knocked on my door. And I got up and I went to talk to her and we’d been friends for a little bit. But she pulled this little vial of estrogen out of her pocket and was like “Do you know what this is?” And I said, “Yeah. I do know what that is.” And started talking to me and talked about a lot of her life and that she’d been on E for a couple of years and was still totally – no one in her life knew. No social transition. No anything like that. She was just taking E and I remember talking to her about “Walk me through that? Why?” And one of the things she said is, “I can’t socially transition until I can't pass as a man.” And I was like, “That’s not going to happen if you’re still in these clothes and you’re still using this voice and you’re still trying to look like a man for this access and privilege and these things that you’re afraid to lose.” And she essentially just told me that her fear of losing family, losing friends, of losing her job, of losing everything in her life, the status that she holds was like so intense that she essentially said that she thought she was never going to do it, but that she was just going to be on E the rest of her life and that was going to be her little private sacred thing, and that she would just never tell anybody. 

And I think that having those experiences so early in my transition and realizing one, how many trans people were around me at any given point, how many of them didn’t have the world that I had and that I knew that I had something to fall back on, that I knew that I had people who wouldn’t leave me behind. I think that losing privilege or losing status is something that not everyone always understands like how serious it can be or how scary it can be. I know when I think about coming out eh first time when I came out as bisexual versus when I came out as trans, and the fear was totally different. I remember talking to family about whether or not I was going to come out as trans. And I think it was my mom asked me, “Well, you already came out and it was okay. You did it. It was alright.” And I was like, “This is different.” And she asked, she was like, “Why?” And I said, “This is not just about who I love or who I bring to a family gathering. This is about how intrinsically people have to look at me. How people have to talk to me, how people to see me. And I think that that as you talk about that change in the totem pole or that shift in the access to the world, things you are able to do, it can be big. Even for me as someone who has a lot of privileges and is super lucky in the family that I have, and my access to hormones and my access to top surgery and that I’ve been able to find and work in places that are supportive of me and my gender. It’s something that is not a given. And it still was super scary to think that I was going to maybe put all that on the line. 

And so I think as we think about privilege and all the intersectionalities that Erik is talking about about class and race and all these other things that play into how transness intersects with your identity or what It means for you and your identity, looks different on everyone. But I think it’s something that is not necessarily just for trans people. That fear of losing status or losing privilege if you don’t perform gender correctly. I think that that's something that cis men are afraid of. I think that’s something that cis women are afraid of is the idea that if you don’t perform beauty, if you don’t perform gender, if you don’t perform these things in a way that is acceptable that you’re going to lose your job. You’re going to lose your friends. You’re going to lose respect. And I think that it's an emotion that is really widely shared across the society that we live in.

JEN: You guys are both so amazing. I say this often, but I could really just spend two days talking to you guys. I admire both of you so much. And you give me continued hope for the future and the next generations. I’m hoping that it all sounds like a lot of hope also for the parents who are trying to understand and dissect this and work with their kids. So thanks again for giving us another hour. I sort of idolize both of you a little bit. I think you’re awesome.

ERIK: Thank you.

BECKETT: Thank you.

JEN: Thanks for joining us here In the Den. While we have you, we want to let you know about the inaugural LUV Conference coming up this October 18th and 19th in Salt Lake City, Utah. The conference is all about learning and connecting and creating a more supportive environment for LGBTQ+ individuals and their families. Get more information at www.luvwithoutlimits.org . That’s L-U-V- without limits.org. Or find the link in the show notes under the links from the show. We hope to see you there.  

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