Sans Seraph

Tag: trans

  • 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.

  • No contact

    I’ve been dealing with an interesting emotion recently.

    My childhood was not what you could call “good.” Sure, on the surface things seemed to be fine. Sure, there was the slow financial decline, that saw me continually sheltered in smaller and more modest dwellings the longer my childhood ran on. There was also the crusade of isolation from any sort of extended family, either due to my mother’s machinations, or my father’s lack of care and alcoholism. Then the emotional abuse and turmoil that extended to both me and my grandmother perpetrated by my mom. Also my absent father’s complete lack of interest in any real part of my life beyond obligation. However I was “given anything I ever wanted.”

    What I wanted though, was a home that didn’t feel like a warzone, or some sort of free range prison. I wanted a father that showed some interest in my life beyond when I was young and cute. I wanted a mother that wasn’t so obsessed with me that she stunted any sort of self discovery I had to force me to stay on the “right path.” It was never about what I wanted. It was about the status quo.

    An interesting thing happens after your egg cracks, where you start noticing all of the signs. I didn’t think I had a lot of signs that I was trans, but it’s so obvious now that I carry significant regret that I didn’t figure things out sooner. I think the original thoughts that there might be something different about me starting forming in high school. They would then rear their head again in waves until I finally cracked in early 2024.

    When I finally came out to my parents, they treated it exactly how I expected them to. I had hoped that there would be some sort of understanding, if not an acceptance. I was met not with love and willingness to understand, but hatred. So poisoned by the rhetoric of hating the “other” were they that I suddenly went from their child to something subhuman.

    Nine days after I gave them the news, on the day of my name change hearing, my father texted me from my mother’s phone. He informed me that my mom seemed to be suffering from a stroke, and he was taking her to the hospital. I tried to contact him to get any information, but to no avail. In late February I received a text from my mother, full of errors and jumbled words, informing me that she had been home for three days. The text was essentially lamenting how I now hated her.

    It was never about me. I was never expected to be my own person. It was never their desire that I forge my own path, or be happy. All that was required of me was that I fell in line and continue the crusade; of capitalism, progress, genocide, whatever our fearless white leaders told us was our god given path.

    As one might guess, that went over well.

    So I chose not to respond to her message. I will probably never speak to my parents again. I feel relieved by that. To know that I can finally heal from all of that. From the emotional pain, the fear, the bitterness. I am very sure had I not been so marked by them I would have accepted myself as I was far earlier. I’d be in a better place now, not that I have regrets. This is my karma, after all.

    This speaks to an interesting parallel in the soul of our country right now. The people in charge are mostly the people that are of my parent’s generation. This country is going through changes. The world as we know it is entering a new era, and much like my adolescence, the ones in charge are fighting tooth and nail to do what they think is best, with no regard to the flow of time and progress. We as a nation are being gripped by the cold, dead hand of the past and are being pulled into the graves of our forebearers.

    So afraid of their world changing in ways they don’t approve of, our leaders seek to freeze our lives into a form that never actually existed. Blinded by the fog of nostalgia for a time where it was only good to be white, Christian, and male, those in power will hold us fast and sink to the depths as they breath their last. One final send off from the me generation.

    So we “go no contact.” We must no longer let those who refuse to work for the future keep us in the past. If they see fit to ignore the laws, we should too. Keeping working the National Parks, and keep paying those park workers too. Refuse to clean their houses. Boycott their products. Approve that trans person’s passport. “Playing dirty” doesn’t have to mean throwing bricks and torching teslas.

    You can be your own person. We have spent far too much time doing what we’ve been told. If they refuse to see us, then we should refuse to listen to them.

    What of those that are listening to their parents, then? Those who are happy in their clouded misery? It’s okay, we all have to figure it out in our own time. It took me until I was 35 to figure out I was trans, and one day you’ll figure out that all of this hate isn’t who you are too.

    And you’ll be better for it.

  • To arms

    I’m going to war, and not in anyway I imagined I would.

    Surely, with all of the other issues that we are facing currently in this country, something as simple as gender-based discrimination in auto insurance wouldn’t be so vile as to beckon the full fury of my tenacity and wit.

    Yet here we are.

    The saga unfolds as thus: on 3/1/25 I noticed my auto insurance payment had been processed. I realize that my deadname is still on the account, so I proceed to change it. Afterall, I don’t want there to be some insurance SNAFU where I have mismatching documents.

    My insurance company makes it very easy to change my name. I just update the driver information. Everything is right there, even gender. So a few clicks, “Traea McGrady, female” and it’s all set to go, and hey, my premiums will even increase by $45.19.

    There’s something about that last part that doesn’t sit with me and it shouldn’t with you. I don’t like to jump to conclusions though. So I try the same process again, this time just changing my name and leaving my gender as male. This time my premiums do not increase at all. From this cursory reconnoitering I seem to have come back with the information that if you identify as female, you are charged more for auto insurance, full stop.

    Of course everyone knows about the “pink tax.” Everyone knows that we live in a patriarchal society, but here was damnable evidence that women are being treated differently just because they are women, and while I was extremely flattered and affirmed in my gender for being included in this, it still doesn’t make it right. Afterall, not but seconds before submitting my information with an updated gender, according to my insurance company, I was not any more at risk, and thus did not need to suffer an increase in my premium.

    Calling my insurance company got me nowhere but more confirmation that, yes, by identifying as female, my rates would go up. I do have to say that my insurance company was very helpful and the people I spoke to on the phone did try to find me any other discount that would reduce my rates. None was found.

    It was at this point I realized I had a choice to make. I could let this go. I probably should have, looking back, but I love a good fight, especially one with words as the weapon of choice. Not only was this blatantly misogynistic, but also felt punitively transphobic. At the behest of one of my friends, I filed a complaint with the Washington state Office of the Insurance Commissioner. The conversation that unfolded can be seen here, in reverse chronological order:

    The summary of the above is this: gender is a factor in insurance underwriting in the state of Washington. There are also rules in place that make it so that special cases cannot be accounted for outside of the bounds of the official rate plan. These rules are part of the Washington insurance law.

    The biggest take away from the above though, and much thanks to the transparency and service by Michael Harman, the Compliance Analyst from the Office of the Insurance Commissioner, is that there is something that I, as a lowly citizen, can do about it. Following the link he provided me has yielded a form which I can use to start the process of revising the law that says the gender can be a basis for underwriting of insurance in the State of Washington.

    It isn’t the hill I saw myself dying on, but the longer I sit here, in the moist grass, sun on my face, dodging in and out of the Seattle gloom, I think this is a fine place to get low.

    Stay Tuned.

  • 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.