Sans Seraph

Tag: mtf

  • Carte blanche

    Carte blanche

    I don’t normally like to be so reactionary with my words as I’m about to be. I’m not a reactionary person. I prefer to observe, assess, plan, but I have some time to kill at the moment and the specter of fear is lording over me, so, here it comes out of the brain pipe, raw and unfiltered.

    I hope I’m wrong. I hope that the truth prevails, and that this incident with Kirk doesn’t become the call to arms for the right to start firing up the engines and building the camps. I hope that this incident was (as statistics show) just another pissed off cisgender, white, male.

    But it won’t be. The right has been looking for a martyr to catalyze their message for years. It didn’t work when Trump was shot, not how they wanted. They needed blood, and, after seeing the video, it looks like they got it.

    I pray to whatever force beyond me is listening that the shooter doesn’t turn out to be a trans person, but, as the truth does seem fluid these days, I’m sure no matter the outcome, we will be blamed. There is an agenda here, and this fits so nicely into furthering their narrative, that I really don’t see a way that they won’t try to twist this as a leftist-trans plot to kill “the Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk.”

    Since January 2013, of the 5700 mass shootings in the US, 5 of the perpetrators have been confirmed to be transgender, according to Gun Violence Archive. A statistic that works out to 0.088%. That’s even less that the often reported 1% of the population being transgender. Yet, of late, every single horrific event is being tied by the right to a transgender person.

    If at any point there is a person in this country with even a modicum of free thought that thinks that trans people are not being singled out an othered to force an agenda of eradication and genocide, then you are the highest of fools.

    Here’s what is really happening. Law abiding trans people, such as my partner and I, and scared. Fear is not something I generally describe myself as having. Yet, in the middle of the night two days ago, as I awoke to my dog barking out the sliding glass door that walks directly into our bedroom, I was afraid. I am proudly, outwardly trans. We have trans pride flags hanging from our frontage. Yet in that moment, my partner mentioned how maybe we should take them down. I wondered at whether I should keep my pistol out of the safe and next to the bed. Trans people have now become hunted things.

    What had become the greatest gift I had ever given myself, to be truly happy, to feel joy and love for myself and my body, is being used as a political tool to further the cause of fascism. It happened before, and it is happening now. Every fascist regime needs a scapegoat, and trans people are it.

    In the same week as three prime ministers have resigned from office, as countries such as Nepal riot in the streets and demand better, America, so braggadociosly strong, rests on her laurels and lets her democracy erode. While the jews died, the Germans suffered, and it will be the same here.

    Though the world did not depend on Germany. Germany was at best a giant among men. The United States is, for better or worse, a cornerstone of our civilization, and the fact that the “greatest country in the world” is keen to sit back and let the rot of fascism eat her from inside, says a lot about how decadence and comfort are the enemies of growth.

    I’m afraid, and if you’re not, if you think yourself distant from the conflict, or even on the “winning side” then you should at least beware.

  • Up to speed

    I’ve recently returned from my tenth journey to Burning Man. Since I’ve been back I’ve been trying to think of how I’d write this article, something summarizing the changes I’ve seen in the event, the denizens, etc, but I find myself not having a lot to say, or, at least, I haven’t puzzled out quite what all of those thoughts I had in the Great Desert K-Hole meant.

    It was a hard burn. With the weather and a flurry of emotions in the beginning of the event, I found myself falling back into old habits. It is a lesson I’ve learned a few times now, but it is truly hard to disassociate who you were in certain places and certain events with who you are now, especially when those prior actions were, at best, coping mechanisms for a hollow life.

    It has become very apparent that my attitude and relationship toward the event needs to change, and I’ve decided to take at least next year off. I’ve been planning to do so for a while, but I’m going to follow through this time. Think of it less as a retirement, and more of a licking of the wounds and returning with vengeance.

    All of that being said, I had a great time with my absolutely wonderful campmates, and I greatly enjoyed showing my darling, patient girlfriend around my favorite place. I promise, beautiful, burn was better next year.

    I haven’t posted in a while, and that irks me. I really hope this gets me back into the habit of writing regularly. I need it. I think I can make something of it, if I can just maintain momentum. It is the thing I was always best at, afterall.

    This summer, nay, this past year, has been hard. It constantly astounds me how polarly opposite this summer and last were. Here is the part where I’d tell you about how my job has been kicking my ass, I seem to be incredibly emotional all of the time, I live with constant anxiety that my rights are being taken away, and I’m one dark alley away from being tossed through the gates of a modern Auschwitz.

    In fact I’d usually, at this point, start lamenting how my depression has returned after being basically eliminated by HRT. I’d talk about how every day I read the news and cry out into the void as only one who truly doesn’t understand what to do in the face of such reckless hate and idiocy can.

    I won’t. I won’t do it. I spent this morning crying and I won’t do so again. Not today. Not for that reason at least. I just cry all of the time now, so it’s bound to happen later. So let’s talk about what’s going right, and we might as well start with that.

    I cry all of the time! I have emotions! How wonderful (and no, that isn’t sarcasm!) Now that I’ve used up my lifetime allotment of exclamation points, let me just say, that being able to feel this deeply is one of the highlights of the past year. Sure, it makes the bad stuff really bad, but the good, dear reader, the soaring in my soul when I play with my dog, or eat something delicious, or feel hope, the good things I feel almost make up for the pall that has fallen over the world.

    On top of emotions, I look great. Modesty be damned, and I know that I have a long way to go, but I don’t hate looking at myself in the mirror every day now. Things are starting to match. Just earlier I noticed my silhouette, something that has always bothered me, and I didn’t have an instant aversion to it. I had a lot of dysphoria at Burning Man, but it was apparently unwarranted. I loved the pictures. I’m starting to feel confident in my body, and why anyone wants to take that away, I’ll never know.

    I took Jenny to her first pride, and she took me to see her camping spot, and, just, Jenny. She is so good to me, and so patient, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so understood by someone. How I have not annoyed her to death at this point, I’m not sure.

    I went to the ren faire with my friends for my birthday, and we had a great time. In fact, I have wonderful friends. I am really hard on myself, but these people let me hang around despite the despair and self-loathing.

    I’ve been writing. I think I’m actually starting to get back into the swing of it. Currently I’ve got two stories I’m sort of hashing out, as I’d like to start diving into fiction again. I think at this point it’s safe to assume I’ll always be far too anxious to make it as a reporter, and that’s okay.

    Things aren’t always going to go well. In fact, I’ve spent increasingly more amount time assuming that nothing will be good ever again. I’m still not sure I’m incorrect on that. There are dark clouds on the horizon. The overwhelming sense of agitation I feel on a daily basis just existing in this most broken of timelines is immense. I’m not going to think about that for the rest of today. I can’t. To do so pushes me farther into the realms of burn out, and I’m already circling the rim. There may be a time where my will finally breaks, but not for the rest of today.

    Fuck it all, and stay safe.

  • Things have changed

    The first time I ever did hallucinogens was at San Francisco Pride in 2009. I consumed what I at the time didn’t know was a rather large dose of mushrooms. Within an hour I began to lose myself as the roar of the crowds and general chaos and over-stimulation consumed me. I remember saying to my friends that “things have changed” as what was already an incredibly over active mind and socially awkward person began to unravel.

    Then something beautiful happened. I let go.

    It wasn’t a conscious decision, but as the psylocibin coursed through my synapses, I let go. I had crossed the abyss of what has been termed “ego death,” and while the drug fueled search for self of my twenties is the topic of another post, the important part to focus on here is that when I let go, things got better.

    One major lesson I’ve kept learning in my life is that attachment is the root of suffering. Yes, that’s very Buddhist of me, but it stands. Even in the past year, as I keep navigating the choppy waters of transition, I keep realizing that holding onto the past is really not doing me any favors.

    Last night I attempted to do something that the old me loved. I got all dressed up, grabbed my beautiful girlfriend, and we drug ourselves out to a bar to go see some local punk bands, and support a charity for trans youth. Yet about fifteen minutes into being there, I was ready to leave. Between knowing I couldn’t have more than one drink, since I had work the next day, and just generally not being a fan of crowds after spending a decade in the event industry, I realized that a lot of the things I was looking forward to doing from the past as the old me aren’t really part of the new me.

    I’ve done this four times now in the past year. It is the very definition of insanity.

    Things have changed. I have changed, to which you say “of course you have.” Which makes sense. My body is changing, my mind certainly has, but what is astounding is just how much all of those hormone driven changes really do change who I am. I’m still me, in that I’m still him, in a lot of ways, but more and more I realize that a lot of him was just bits of personalities strung together to cope with the depression, and dysphoria, and anxiety.

    I’ve said a lot in the past year that I finally feel like a real person, and that before transition I was basically just waiting around to die. A person doing that isn’t really a person, they’re a shell. Even though I never had a real strong sense of “being a woman in a man’s body” I certainly wasn’t okay with being a man. I was so against it, in fact, that I operated like some cheap children’s restaurant automaton. Faded from age and neglect, the face smiles and the song plays while there is an audience and the lights are on, but then when the doors are locked for the day the false life fades and the body slumps. That’s what it felt like for me.

    I took my old ID and put it into the temple at Burning Man last year. It wasn’t something I had planned to do, but it felt right. I felt like I had to honor the pain and suffering he went through, but also draw a line in the dust saying that “this is where he ends and I begin.” It was one of the most defining personal moments of my transition so far. Yet last night I found myself still trying to pretend that I’m the same person that I let go in that conflagration.

    So from now on, I’m going to push myself to try new things. To accept that I need to figure myself out all over. I’m older now, I have a day job. I don’t drink as much. I prefer a small gathering of friends over being squeezed into a room with loud music and strangers. That’s okay. I can be a different person, because, in a lot of ways, I am.

    Give yourself a little bit of grace, girl.

  • The defeatist attitude is getting old

    “Protests don’t work. I’m not watching the news anymore. We don’t have any power.”

    Stop. Just stop. This is exactly the attitude they want you to have. All of this is designed to make you want to hide your head in the sand and wait for it all to blow over. They want you to dig a little hole and grow fat and weak so that when they come with the men in black to take you you’ll be an easy target, and they are coming.

    A lot of people seem to focus on the idea that protests, especially in liberal areas, do nothing. So let’s play in that space. Why do you think it does nothing? Because one protest doesn’t change anything? It took years, decades even, for everything to get here. This is a long fight. We are in the “peaceful gathering to show our discontent” stage. If you think that the only way things get better is by burning teslas, well, you’re wrong. If things get violent, the fascists win. As soon as the powder keg blows up, we will be in martial law and then we have REALLY lost. Right now we need to be gathering our allies and preparing for war.

    So what then do peaceful protests do? They show we are angry. Happy people don’t take days off work to go march. Those who are satisfied with their government don’t go stand in the rain with signs outside of government buildings. As for why protests are in the middle of the day when people have work? Because the people we want to see our discontent are also working normal hours.

    I feel like I’m shouting into the wind again. Let’s tie this up.

    I find myself both proud of, and disgusted by so many people recently. So many people out there care. I’ve been to a handful of marches and protests now, and the one thing I always take away from them, more than a sense of progress or control, is that I’m not alone. I see all of these other people doing the same thing I am, and caring about the same issues, and the fear and anxiety I have that creeps into my mind at 2AM is temporarily lessened.

    So protests do nothing? They prove you’re not alone. Are things going to change over night? Of course not. This is going to be a very long battle, but if I am a soldier in the army of freedom and liberty, I can’t fight if I am paralyzed by fear. Protests, if nothing else, feed your soul, and your will to fight, and that’s worth a lot more than ignoring the problem and hoping help will come from somewhere else.

    The time to throw bricks through the windows of Starbucks will come, but for now we need to build community and strength so when the boots of the faceless are standing on our necks, we know that help will come from those we stood with in the beginning.

    I guess that’s it for now.

    Hail libertas.

  • I’m stuck in Seattle

    Maybe it’s time I start coming to terms with it: I’m stuck here for the foreseeable future.

    Stuck is an interesting verb in this case. If there is one pervading theme in my life, it’s constantly striving to be absolutely free. Free to move, act, love, be. So, when I say I’m stuck, this should resonate as something that’s anathema to me.

    I’ve lived here for four and a half years now. That’s quite a long time. I’ve lived in this particular house for longer than I have ever lived in any one location. Even as a child, my parents and I moved around a lot. My dad was always pissing off someone at work and having to move to a new factory, or my mom got bored or tried to “fix” things until they were too screwed up it was just easier to move than to actually let the dust settle around her own life. Unfortunately, that’s a trait I inherited, but luckily, I seem to keep my “messing” limited to my own art projects.

    While the philosophy behind the endless pursuit of perfection is a great topic, I want to talk about something that no one would ever associate with me: acceptance.

    Do I hate the winters? Do i hate the long cold and dark, the lack of any sort of happiness for six months out of the year as I await the triumphant return of the sun? Yes. Oh gods yes. However, over the past year or so, I think that being “stuck” in Seattle may not be such a bad thing. Maybe my perspective has to change.

    I don’t think I really wanted to be here in the first place. Ending up here was the result of trying to please my partner at the time. It was I who wanted to move, but I don’t think if I had the thought incepted in my head, I would have chosen Seattle. I love the desert, you see. I love the vast nothingness, the at-first-glance lifelessness, and the deeper pulsation of life that’s hidden. I love the rocks, and the open sky, and the loneliness of it all. In a perfect world, I would live in the desert, but we do not live in a perfect world.

    I know longer have any hope that humanity will curb climate change in any meaningful way. Without a major ecological catastrophe, almost assuredly resulting in the loss of massive amount of life, I see no way that human emission of carbon slows. This is one of the things I have come to accept. This is not something that ends well. There will be a flight from the hotter drier places of the world over the next few decades, as the feedback loop runs away. Billions will migrate from equatorial regions to more temperate ones, and the resulting diaspora will be brutal.

    It makes no logical sense to live in the desert anymore. I think I have begun to accept that. I have no desire to be a refugee in the climate wars.

    There are vast parts of this country (in hotter areas no less) that are basically no go zones for me. Hostilities are so great against trans people in certain parts of this country that my work reconsidered sending me on a trip to Florida to help another technician catch up on work. It wasn’t worth my life (and thank them for that.)

    So, ever the logical monolith, I have arrived at the conclusion that I love Seattle, or, maybe I’m beginning too. Like my mother before me, in all of her “messing,” maybe I also have a desire to mess until I achieve some un-achievable level of perfection and happiness. I certainly talk to my therapist a lot about it. “If I move to the desert I’ll be happy. If I get a better job I’ll be happy.” If transition has taught me one thing, it’s that my happiness comes from being a better me, from achieving my internal goals. I am safe. I am warm. I live in a liberal city that’s oh so wet and cold in the winter, and absolutely beautiful in the summer. I have friends, and I’m hoping to make more. I’m in a relationship with a beautiful girl, and my dog is insane, but so sweet. I have more cars than I need (which makes me happy.) I could work to have these things anywhere, but I have them now in Seattle, and that’s just fine with me.

    So I’m not going to spend my time looking to escape. I’m going to be me where I am now. I’m going to build, instead of run. Now, more than ever, with the very doom of our way of life looming in our overcast future, it is time to look around and begin to fortify what foundations we have against the coming storm.

    So I’ll make my stand here.

  • WA50501 Protest 2/5/25

    I finally got around to editing my shots from the protest on 2/5/25 at the WA Capitol.

  • It’s calm now

    I think we all could use a breather. The anger and frustration came to a head last week. I realized I had been giving it too much power, and it was affecting my relationships. I’m still mad, but it goes to show you that being all in on anything isn’t the way.

    I’ve adopted a itinerary of preparedness. It’s too early to be throwing bricks (much to my chagrin) and this will be a marathon, not a race. Make no mistake about it, I plan to fight, but I intend to live my life, too.

    I tend to learn the same lessons over and over again. I consider myself a person of above average intelligence, but I am also incredibly stubborn. Patience has never been a strong suit. Usually I am able to put my head down and conquer any task with enough force of will, but this isn’t something that will be over soon, or easily, or probably bloodlessly. We are so far from the point of needing our full strength, and if it is wasted now, then the battle is lost before it has begun.

    Now is the time to be making allies, and plans. Plans to live to fight another day. Plans to live in general. I refuse to devote all of my time and energy to “the cause,” not because I don’t believe in it, but as a 35 year old woman, who is just starting to live her life, I actually do have higher priorities.

    I could be killed tomorrow. I could die of some strange disease. Would it be more of a tragedy that I didn’t get to give my life for freedom and liberty, or that I never had a life to give at all?

    Falling into the trap of wasting our energy now is exactly what they want. It’s important that we don’t give in. That we remember why we’re fighting; not just for our selves, and our country, and democracy, but for our lives. Lives that most of us haven’t even begun to live.

  • It should be an act of love

    I’m sitting here confronting the fear and pure aversion I have toward switching to injections. Every time I think about stabbing myself in the leg I get a cringe feeling that runs up my spine. Yet, with the way things are going, I see no choice but to switch to injections in case I need to source illegal HRT drugs from elsewhere.

    Now, beside the evidence that injections are wildly (read: anecdotally) considered the “most effective” route, that’s not the point. I don’t want to do this. I have been having great results with just pills, and despite how much I do dislike being on a testosterone blocker, I’m rather happy just taking pills everyday for the rest of my life.

    The point here is the only way I can imagine being able to stab myself with a rather long needle every 5 days (I’m aware of DIY hormones that are longer) is to build up this sort of righteous anger inside. What does that say about me that anger is such a motivator? I’m not sure, but with the recent events happening in the US, my ire is firmly directed to one place.

    Which brings me to this post. I don’t want to be angry. I feel sometimes that by being trans and living my life out and proud, I’m committing an act of defiance. There is anger there that replaces what I think is the most important part about being transgender.

    Being transgender is one of the greatest acts of love that you can do for yourself. We cannot forget that. I’m doing this for me because I want to love myself. I want to feel comfortable being me. That’s all it is. I spent far too long hating myself, my body, my life. I didn’t want to feel like I was just waiting to die. I wanted to like being me.

    I loved people, and was kind, but I didn’t love me. Every bit of compassion I had toward others was just a hollow gesture. Every success I had was done out of a sense of “doing what I should do” and felt so empty that I never had pride in it.

    That’s all gone now.

    Things aren’t perfect. I will still carry a feeling of defiance and resentment until equality and sense is restored. I don’t know how to convince people that they should care about people. I’m going to try though. I’m going to fight and scream and sing, but most importantly:

    I’m going to love myself.

  • I Don’t Have to Tell You Things Are Bad


    Everybody knows things are bad.

    I’m not sure what this is yet. I know I’m going to be writing it in first person, which is different for me, but the self is very important here, because I’m a part of this. I don’t usually journal, or blog, in this case, but considering I haven’t written much of anything in the past decade I can’t really say I do any of this. I suppose you can consider this a record of me, that hopefully stands the test of time, helps some people, and lasts long after I’m gone, which, unfortunately, might be soon.

    My name is Traea McGrady, and I am a trans woman living in America at the beginning of 2025.

    I am angry.

    However, though anger may be my dominant emotion at the moment, I haven’t lost hope. Anyone paying attention knew that the road we were going down was bad. I have seen every hope I had that goodness would prevail dashed upon the rocky shore of fascism, but it has not all been spent. This is not the end, nor the beginning of the end. Trans people will always exist. We always have, and always will. The laws of man are microscopic in the face of the laws of nature. What’s important now is that you don’t lose hope. You aren’t powerless. Every day you wake up and be who you are you chip away at the fortress of evil that stands before you.

    Inside of you right now is a storm of emotions that is ever changing, and overwhelming. I feel it too. We’re all frightened for our lives, and for our futures. There are people out there who hate us, and truly want to see us wiped from existence. These things are scary. So feel scared. Feel scared, and depressed, and furious, and overcome. Cry yourself to sleep. Have aggressive sex. Smoke pot and eat an entire pizza.

    Do that for a few days if you need to. It’s okay to not know what to do. After you’ve felt those emotions, that pain, sadness, anger, whatever it is, you take that and you use that. Be sad and write a crappy blog like this one, or some terrible poetry. Draw, paint, make music. Take those emotions and feel them and remind yourself that you are alive and that this sadness exists just so that you can be happy. This anger is inside of you so that you may know peace. As long as you are still capable of feeling you are still alive.

    Let creation be an act of resistance. It is still early. We don’t know the extent of the weapons they have to use on us, but we do know that we can make our own. Everything we bring into this world that comes from deep within ourselves is one more marker that says “I am here, and you can’t ignore me.” Every protest song, work of art, late night conversation, and vertically filmed video is more evidence that we do exist, and more evidence that they are wrong.

    The time might come when we have to destroy to protect ourselves. I pray every second of every day that it does not. Until that time comes, I will do everything I can to make sure that if I do go, the crater of my absence will be impossible to ignore.

    I suggest you do the same.