Jojo
Hi there, this is Jojo Katsbulas with the Kansas Trans Oral History Project and today I am in conversation with William Boyer. Will, can you start by telling us your pronouns and where you are from?
William
My pronouns are He/Him. I’m originally from Topeka, Kansas, but I’ve lived in Emporia, Kansas for almost 10 years now.
Jojo
And how did you come to deciding upon those pronouns for yourself?
William
It took me a while. Whenever I first realized that I wasn’t cis, I kind of played around with a lot of different gender identities. I experimented with being gender fluid for a while, but eventually I just kind of realized that no, I am a man and I decided that he/him was the most apt to describe how I felt about myself.
Jojo
Kind of, these days you would describe your gender as a man… a trans man?
William
Yes.
Jojo
I gotcha. Is there any other words or any other feelings that you would use to describe your gender?
William
My friends and I have a running joke where we describe things “as gender” and everybody agrees that my gender is: blue raspberry.
Jojo
Okay, hell yeah, that’s awesome. I like that. Yeah. Does that, I know that that’s just like a fun, like thing, a fun joke with your friends and stuff, but does that have any significance to you? Do you feel like a blue raspberry truly resonates with you at all?
William
Yeah, I do actually. It’s actually my favorite flavor of, like, the non-traditional, like, candy-type flavors. I think also too, you know, like it’s, blue raspberry is not necessarily something that really exists within real life. And I feel like, you know, sure, gender is real and it’s valid, but also, like, it’s so unique to everybody’s own experience that I think that calling myself blue raspberry as a gender really kind of encapsulates that absurd quality that I feel gender has just inherently.
Jojo
A super individualized experience.
William
Yes.
Jojo
I gotcha… So you said you were born in Topeka and you lived in Emporia. Can you talk about if you ever heard the term “Trans” in those communities and/or if you remember your first time hearing those terms in those communities?
William
So I was introduced to the term “transgender” on Tumblr actually, sometime in high school. I don’t remember exactly what year it was. I know it was in high school because that’s when I got Tumblr for the first time. And it was really just me and my friends who were also on Tumblr discussing that. I don’t really remember necessarily getting deep into conversations about gender with, like, my family, you know, other classmates that weren’t necessarily my close friends or anything…
Since coming to Emporia; Emporia is actually where I came out first. I went to Emporia for college. And I came out on campus before I came out to, like, my broader circle, I guess you would call it. So like, most of my family, a lot of my more, like, acquaintances from high school, family, friends and stuff… I was out on campus before I was out to them. And since I’ve been in Emporia, because of the way that the politics have shifted, I started living in Emporia broadly in 2016. That’s when I went- started going to college. And because of the way that politics have shifted, I’ve definitely heard “transgender” a lot more in Emporia.
My circles tend to run pretty progressive. So usually, whenever I hear people talking about transgender people, it’s usually in a positive light. But sometimes, in like, the Facebook group that we have for the Emporia community at large, I see people that think that it’s just some form of ideology. It’s a choice that you make. People don’t- it’s a lot of, like, the general, like, anti-trans rhetoric that you hear in those spaces. I don’t- I fortunately have never had the experience where somebody’s been outright terrible to me because I am transgender. But in passing, I will see people post on Facebook or say things in our community that are anti-trans. And it’s… It’s nice to often see that a lot of times those people are getting shut down by allies and other people. I’ve seen a few people that have been nicer, I guess, after being explained gently to them, what it means to be trans. I don’t know that that necessarily means that they’ve flipped and are accepting of trans people, but at least they have opened their mind a little bit.
Jojo
Yeah, so do you think kind of on that, on like that kind of online community there on Facebook, there’s a pretty decent mixing bag of both allies and kind of the opposing side?
William
Yes, I would say, I don’t know whether like, I wouldn’t be able to give like a percentage or anything because it’s also, because of the way that some people have acted – I would say on both sides, to be honest – but with the way that some people acted on both sides; The mods on the Emporia Kansas area chat have put a lot of restrictions on what sort of things we’re allowed to talk about in that group, which I think makes sense because it is supposed to be about, you know, what things that are happening in Emporia. So I don’t know necessarily that, like, we need to be having the big old Trans debate in a…
Jojo
Exactly, I got you.
William
Yeah.
Jojo
Are you more in that sphere with Emporia or do you have any experience in that, that area in Topeka as well?
William
I don’t really have much experience with the Trans Community in Topeka. I have like, you know, some friends, or acquaintances really at this point, for the most part that I know are in the community. But, I really- if I was going to say, like out of all of the Trans People that I know that are in Topeka, I only talked to two of them really. And one is way more consistent than the other. So I don’t have a ton to do with the Topeka community anymore, largely because by the time I did come out, I was solidly living in Emporia.
Jojo
In Topeka – that’s where you grew up in Topeka – could you tell me about your childhood and your family life. You know, growing up through about age 12 or up to high school if you want to go that far.
William
Yeah, my childhood is kind of a weird murky point for me, I think partially because I was existing in… I think for me the biggest thing is that my childhood is that like looking back on it, I understand that I was Trans my entire life. I know that a lot of- some trans people are like “you know, like, well I was a girl and now I’m this,” you know, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily true for me. I think that I just didn’t have the words to describe what I was experiencing.
My childhood wasn’t bad. I- you know my parents were great, my grandparents were great, but like, there were things where you know like it was a constant struggle between me and my parents to get me to, like, wear clothes that they felt were appropriate and that I would actually like to wear. It wasn’t until we had the genius idea to let me start shopping in the men’s section, that that went away.
I was talking with my- I was talking with my grandmother – one of my grandmothers – I have two grandmothers that are living. I have Grammy: and that’s my Mom’s mom. And then I have Grandma, who is my Dad’s mom. I was talking with Grammy and she told me that she and my grandpa, Poppy – who is now deceased – …they had suspected that I was some form of queer since I was about five years old. Largely because I had a lot of stuffed animals that all had He/Him pronouns and they didn’t know how to quantify that, but they knew that something wasn’t quite right. So there was just that sort of thing where in my childhood, they were like, clearly I had this connection to masculinity my entire life, but everybody was just like, he’s just a tomboy. You know, like, he’ll out of it eventually.
I wish I could remember… maybe 11 or 12; My sister and I were playing with the neighbor kids and there was something that we were talking about where we were like ‘well the boy has to do this in the relationship and the girl has to do this in the relationship,’ and I said that I wanted to do what the boy was doing in whatever conversation we were having. And I remember that my sister and the neighbor kids made fun of me relentlessly for this! And I don’t think that they were being, like, intentionally mean about it, but it was mean and-
The thing was: Is that I told my parents that they were being mean to me about this and I don’t know if anybody else in my family remembers this but me… But my parents asked me, “well, do you want to be a boy?” and I had just been bullied for saying that I wanted to do something masculine, and so I said no, because I had just learned that that was not something that was acceptable. You can’t wish to be something that you’re clearly not, you know?
So yeah, I mean, like it was fine. There was just like those little things where like, yes, there’s clear connections to masculinity, but we’re just writing it off because, you’re just a boyish girl, not, oh, there might be something else going on here.
Jojo
And do you think the term, like the actual phrase ‘tomboy’ was used for you growing up?
William
Oh, it 100 % was. I used it for myself. Multiple people in my family used it for me. That was a term that I grew up with.
Jojo
Do think that was pretty common amongst your communities, whether that’s just in school or with your parents, friends, or whoever it may be? Do you think tomboy was fairly common?
William
Yeah, I do. I never really heard the opposite phrase ‘Tomgirl’ very often. Where we’re seeing somebody that’s been assigned-male that’s acting in a more stereotypically-feminine way. I never really heard that. Tomboy was something that was applied to me and a couple of my friends throughout our lives.
Jojo
Sure. Any other significant experiences that jump out to you from growing up through age 12 there?
William
No, not really.
Again, it’s just like those vague feelings of, like, always being connected to masculinity in some way, and everybody just kind of – including myself – just wrote it off until I couldn’t anymore.
Jojo
I got you, just experiencing that kind of mismatched gender there. Okay. Did you and your family practice religion or other forms of worship at all?
William
Not really… I did go to a Methodist church for several years with my Grandma, but that was always, like, that was a choice that my sister and I were given. Like, we didn’t have to go to church if we didn’t want to. So like, yes, I grew up going to church, but I would not necessarily have considered myself, like, growing up in a church, if that makes sense.
Jojo
Yeah, 100%. How would you describe your relationship to religion or worship these days? Has anything changed or is it still, kind of, if you want to participate, you will?
William
There was a couple years ago, my friends and I got very into… I don’t want to call it paganism, but like, I don’t really know a better term to describe that. And I practiced that, but I would say that in general, I just kind of go with whatever I think is the best at the moment. Like, it’s sort of a come and go. Like, if I need something, you know, like I might reach out to a Christian God or I might reach out to, you know, one of my friends’ gods. It doesn’t really matter to me.
I don’t, I think that things like paganism sort of appeal to me because there’s less of a convoluted history there with regard to gender. I mean, cause a lot of like mythology will talk about, you know, like gods going between different genders and that appealed to me because if you’re in the right, you know, not fascist neo-Nazi communities that often pop up in places like this, most places are pretty accepting. But that also doesn’t mean that I feel unaccepted by Christians because both of my grandmas are Christian and they are some of my biggest supporters, so I still feel connected to Christianity in that because They are Christian and they are there for me.
Jojo
For sure. Absolutely. I’m Delighted that you have that. I think that’s a thing that’s not so common in this area. So I’m- I’m happy to hear that you have that. In a more broad sense – kind of, answer this question, however, you feel – How do you think growing up in Kansas impacted your development as a trans person?
William
I think, despite the fact that I have quite a liberal family, I think that there’s still a lot of stigma around things like gender identity. Because my parents, to my knowledge, never really talked to me about those sorts of things. Like, it wasn’t necessarily that it was taboo. It was just like, well, we don’t really need to discuss it.
You know, also, I grew up not too far from the Westboro Baptist Church, so one of the things that I would do frequently is I would read the sign that they would have outside because it was right down one of the streets that I went down most frequently. Sure. And just- I didn’t really have words to describe how that felt at the time because I knew that there was something wrong with it. And now I understand that, you know, that was hatred that was directed at me, even if I didn’t know it at the time. But I also think on the flip side, I think that even though Kansas can be quite a conservative state, I think that a lot of the communities, like the smaller communities, are a lot more supportive than people tend to think because I feel safe in Emporia. I do. And a lot of people will be surprised by that because it’s a relatively small town. It’s quite conservative overall, but I’ve never really had an experience that’s made me feel truly unsafe.
Uncomfortable, yes, but unsafe, no.
So I think there’s a big difference between like Kansas at large and having to deal with like… the overall political ramifications of having, you know, a conservative legislature that is legislating against trans people and how they are able to, you know, exist within their own bodies versus the community support that I have seen throughout my life.
Jojo
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I totally agree with that, that the communities that exist within campus seem to feel a lot more supportive than the governing structure of the State does.
So on that topic of community, can you kind of describe what people have been most important in your life or what communities have provided those safe spaces for you?
William
I will say my college community, especially a lot of my professors, provided me a lot of safe space to sort of explore and get used to living as a trans person. I’m still in contact with several of my professors to this day because we forged such a strong connection, partially because I spent six years with them doing two degrees, but also because they were supportive of me and whenever I had questions or felt concerned, I knew that I could go to them and get help.
Emporia State Pride was a group that I spent a lot of time in, while I was in college. That allowed me to sort of see maybe where some of the needs are in the Emporia community is like sort of what education is needed there. And as somebody who grew up in an education based family and who has, know, I have a deep love for queer history in general, that was something where I felt that I could help with that.
My friends have been a huge help- Most of my friends are some form of trans, if I’m being perfectly honest. That might be leaning more towards gender non-conforming or might be non-binary, might be trans women, trans men. But having such a close group of people that have such similar but opposite experiences at the same time was really important. Also, I mean, my family have been very important to me. My parents, my sister, my grandparents, all very important where they were very supportive and just sort of… even though it might’ve been a little bit rocky at first, because it’s a big change for everybody, my family have been very, very supportive of me and have been extremely helpful.
Like, I just had top surgery at the end of last year. so I got to spend a week recovering with my grandmas because they were just like, “yeah, we have an extra room. Let me, let us help you out.” You know. My parents drove me to my appointment and drove me back and then would drive me other places. When I was recovering from top surgery, one of my coworkers actually put together a meal train for me, like even before I asked for it, she was just like, “hey, I would really like to do this for you, can I do this?” And I had all sorts of people from my work bring me food, or send me gift cards, so that I could just get delivery and didn’t have to worry about cooking or anything.
Jojo
That is so wonderful, that’s so wonderful.
So in those communities, in regards to work, your hobbies, where do you find yourself experiencing community outside of your home?
William
I would say a lot of mine is online at the moment. I never really got super back into being in person after the pandemic. I was not very much of a crowd or outside person in the first place in the pandemic really did not do me any favors.
There, Emporia has like a Pride Parade every year. so there were always, there was always one group that I could join to, you know, like march in the parade with, or I could just go and attend it there.
I would say, you know, my community is really wherever I need it to be. I’m very lucky in that I have such a wide range of friends and people that I can connect with, whether that’s in person, online, some sort of hybrid thing. I’m very lucky in that I am able to reach out to those people and say, “hey, I’m experiencing this” or “hey, have you ever experienced this?” You know? And being able to reach out and get those connections, and if people that I don’t know immediately can’t help me, there’s usually somebody who can point me to somebody that can help me find that sense of community that I need.
Jojo
Absolutely. It’s so good to rely on other people for community and support. So I think that’s wonderful too. So you talk about experiencing community mostly online. What areas online are you experiencing that in?
William
So when I’m on Facebook, which is not as often these days because I have taken a large step back from social media in general because of the, I guess, anti-DEI things that a lot of social medias have implemented. I’m in a few groups here and there where, you know, like if somebody needs like…
I was actually on the board of a local homeless shelter that is for youth, but also, like, very specifically caters to queer youth. So if I know somebody who needs help, I can go to them to find resources for that. Also, I volunteer with them on occasion.
So Facebook is Facebook groups or like Facebook pages where I know I can reach out to things. There’s that.
A lot of my friends from college have moved away to different cities or different states. So we’ll often do like Discord hangouts or, you know, like, might come on Zoom or something like that so that we can watch things together. And I’ve met, you know, other people through that as well. So even if I’m not necessarily talking to those people all the time, it is nice to know that I can just go pop into a Discord that I’ve had muted for two weeks and say, “hey guys, what’s going on?”
Jojo
How’s everyone doing? Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I gotcha. Awesome. Can you describe your relationships with other people of trans or non-binary genders? I heard you mentioned that you have a lot of friends that are trans or non-binary.
William
Yes, I do. If I were to look at my phone right now, actually, I am pretty sure that the top maybe five messages would all be people that are either trans or non-binary. Yeah, I am 100 % correct. The top five on there are all people that are trans or non-binary. Those are the people that I’m talking to the most often. And I find that a lot of times we’re not necessarily talking about gender because at this point a lot of us have been Trans for so long, though like it’s really more of like a passive thing that we discuss rather than an active topic.
But like one of my friends, I’m on testosterone and I cannot give it to myself. It freaks me out. I don’t like putting those needles into myself. So one of my friends who’s also on T actually, I go over to their home once a week and they do my shot for me because I can’t do it. So like there’s this extreme like- there’s just an extreme bond that I have with these people because I know that they’re gonna have my back for the most part. Like there’s always, you know, there are gonna be clashes in any friend group. There’s gonna be stuff that happens, but these people that are in my life are some of the most important. Some of them I’ve been friends with for well over a decade. Actually, I have been friends with one of these people for 21 years now. Those relationships to me are maybe the most important in my life. Even over, I would say family, sometimes just because as much as my family loves me, there is not that same sense of connection where it’s something that we all go through. And I know that my family tries to understand their best. And I appreciate everything that they do, but there is something special about being surrounded by people that have similar experiences to you and something that is so personal.
Jojo
Absolutely. Yeah. Someone who can, even, even if they’re not experiencing the same thing, can understand what it is that you’re going through. How would you describe ⁓ the process of transitioning here in Kansas?
William
I think that I have been incredibly lucky in relation to some of the other people that I know. I think a lot of it comes down to whether or not you have access to good health insurance, which I am very lucky to have.
It has not- I have not really necessarily struggled with any part of transitioning in Kansas besides anxiety for the most part. Like, all of the doctors that I’ve met with have been very supportive, very helpful. There’s been really no issues there. It’s really come down to me trying to get over the social stigma, I guess, of transitioning.
In my original coming out post on Facebook, I am pretty sure that I said, “yes, I am planning to get surgeries and go on hormones. And that’s all you need to know because it’s not your business.” because I didn’t want people to start questioning me over things that I didn’t feel like they had any right to question me about.
And I get it because people are gonna be curious. And I think that’s perfectly fine. I think you should be allowed to be curious. I think that you should be allowed to ask questions, but you need to understand that the person you’re asking questions of, has a right to those boundaries. And it made me very anxious to come out because I was really worried that I was going to get a lot of negative reaction because, well, that’s just sort of the world that we live in. You can never really truly guess what people’s reaction are gonna be.
And I did have some people that I no longer speak to, or unfriended me on Facebook after I made that coming out post. But at the same time, I also found that there were people that I was completely surprised by. I have a friend who’s Mormon, who reached out to me and was like, “I want to know more, can I ask you more questions?” Which is just not something that I expected. So transitioning in Kansas was for me not necessarily about lack- like, not necessarily like…
There were barriers. I mean, obviously I had to go to therapy to prove that I was mentally sound enough to go on testosterone to get surgery. But in general those barriers to me were pretty easy to overcome once I got past the anxiety of setting up those appointments or talking to people to help me get those appointments set up.
So it was really more- my transition has been really more, the biggest barrier has been my own anxiety about how people will react rather than actual barriers. But I’ve had friends who have had those barriers put up against them where like their insurance either doesn’t allow them to get the surgeries or the medications that they need, or they’ve been met with doctors who are like, “well, are you really sure?” So I’ve been lucky with my transition in Kansas. And I have to chalk that up to having people that will help me advocate for myself, and being really, really privileged to have good insurance that will cover things.
Jojo
I think it was really well said how you said that everyone deserves the right to their boundary, to, everyone deserves the right to their privacy, especially when it comes to medical happenings. So I think that was really well said.
Do you have any sort of recommendations for how we can work to overcome that social stigma that exists around transitioning here?
William
Honestly, I know that I said like, you have to have, you like, you need to understand that people have boundaries, but you also just need to be able to be asked. And I know that there’s a there’s a big push in the thing where it’s like, well, you’re not entitled to, you know, know everything about my transition, but I’m coming from the place of: I don’t think that people are gonna understand and open their minds to transitioning if they aren’t allowed to ask the questions.
Usually on my coming out anniversary, which is about once a year, usually I just say, “it’s my coming out anniversary, ask me what you want. I do reserve the right to say, I don’t feel comfortable answering this question, but I want you to be able to ask these questions.”
Yeah, not- I don’t think that every trans person should be, have to like, be educating all the time; I also don’t want to educate all the time.
Sometimes I just want to exist.
I think that you just there needs to be there needs to be conversations on both sides because people who don’t understand, or are afraid of transitioning, fftentimes, they just haven’t been able to talk to somebody about what it really means, you know.
Even people that I was close to, had questions for me. They were like “Well why? What what what led you to this?” and it was helpful for me, I think, in getting over that, sort of, social anxiety because I found out that really people weren’t- they weren’t questioning because they were trying to judge me… They were questioning because they truly didn’t understand and wanted to.
Jojo
I gotcha. Yeah, I think coming to that understanding is almost impossible to do without that at least a level of communication that they’re able to ask some questions and get some sort of understanding. And it definitely helps coming from someone that they’re decently familiar with.
William
Yeah, I think it’s a lot more helpful to talk to the people that you know in your life that are trans. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be, like listening to the activists or whatever because some people may not know a Trans Person or think that they don’t know a Trans Person. So I think it’s just really needing to be open-minded and listen to what the other side has to say. I mean, I’ve had conversations with people about like, “well, you know, hormone therapy, that’s a really scary thing,” you know, like, “is it really all that well-tested?” It is actually, hormone therapy has been a thing for decades, but a lot of people don’t have that background knowledge. So they don’t understand that like, actually this is a lot more common than you think it is.
It’s just not something that’s talked about. I try to operate from believing that people are just in a place of benign ignorance rather than malicious attempts to get me to say something or malicious ignorance where they’ve heard things and they’ve just chose to believe that it’s not true, you know?
Jojo
Oh yeah. How do you think your transition- how do you think this point in your transition is maybe different from where you might’ve expected yourself to be at the start of your transition?
William
Well, I didn’t think I would be thinking about making myself less visibly trans. I… I’m not ashamed of the fact that I’m trans, but I’m also currently living in a political climate where it’s maybe not as safe to be as visibly trans. And I think that there’s two sides, like don’t dull yourself, that’s what the opposition wants, you know, versus like, it is a matter of safety. And I think I’m currently writing a line of- I’ve, like- there’s no way for me to like un-transition at this point.
I’ve been on hormone therapy since 2019. I just had top surgery. So there’s no way for me to really, like, un-transition, but I have found myself maybe being a bit less vocal about being Trans. So my social transition, I feel has actually kind of regressed in a way is simply because I am living in a political climate where being trans is dangerous. Maybe not as dangerous as, you know, like where, you know, like, like the, you know, like deeply conservative States, but it’s still dangerous. So yeah, not something I expected really.
Jojo
Do you feel like you associate with the term assimilation at all in that regard or or is that not not something that you would associate with?
William
I think I do associate a little bit with assimilation. There is a part of me that’s even outside of, like, that political thing where I’m just kind of ready to just live as a man. Rather than, you know, like The Visible Trans Man in my communities, you know?
Like, I was thinking, I like my job and I don’t have any plans to leave it in the immediate future, currently, but I was thinking about how nice it would be to start at a new job where I didn’t have to worry about having to change my legal name midway through.
Which I did get my name legally changed and my HR department was great about it. But there was still like six months where I was at work and anybody who knew could easily find my dead name at that point. So there is a part of me that I think does want to assimilate at least a little bit and where I’m not having to visibly like- and like- visibly verbally out myself at any given moment because of, you know, like job stuff or legal stuff. But at the same time, I don’t want to just be perceived as a cis-man because I’m not and my experiences are different than that of a cis man’s. And I think that that’s important for me to be able to talk about that.
Jojo
Yeah, absolutely. Perfect. Do you have any intergenerational relationships with LGBT People?
William
Yes, I have friends that are in their 40s and 50s that I talk to frequently about this.
I did not- I guess I don’t really ever think about, like, the generational differences in, I don’t know, maybe it’s the fact that I have two history degrees, but I don’t know that I know generational differences the same way that other people do. Because to me, having these history degrees that I have whenever I talk to intergenerational, you know, like in my intergenerational relationships, to me, I just see how things have evolved from when they were my age, say, and I can see how that’s you know those are still having an impact on me today right now. One of the people I talk to the most is also a historian and so we have a lot of really interesting conversations about that because they are in their 50s and I’m you know in my I guess I’m in my late 20s now I’m 27 but I you know. Like we just talk about, you know, how things were different for us. And it’s a really interesting conversation because we have that connection, that historical connection between the two of us. We’re really able to talk a lot about like the evolution and how things are impactful.
One of the things I think is the most interesting and that I really like to talk about with the people that are older than me are the ways that language has evolved, especially around trans identities because like, words that we were using, you know, and like say the 70s, these are not the same words that we are using today. So I think that for me, my intergenerational relationships are a lot of seeing how things have evolved and how far we still have to go and what’s changed and what still needs to be changed
Jojo
100%. You talked about how you talked about these conversations with older people. Have you had any experiences where these conversations are now happening with the generation below you? Or is that since you’re only 27, is that kind of not quite there yet, but just curious if you’ve had any experiences there with the younger generation?
William
Yeah, I don’t, I think I see those a lot more online. I think I see the conversations that the younger generation is happening online rather than they’re coming to me and talking about them. Largely because I don’t have a lot of friends that are that much younger than me.
Actually, my youngest cousin was convinced I was a boy for- even before I did, I think that I’m most worried about with the younger generation, is trying to force people into boxes. Be like, well, you like you have to be gay and that means gay means this thing, you know, or you have to be a lesbian, lesbian means this thing. I don’t think that that’s helpful. I think that that’s just a new form of identity politics that is not helpful in changing the oppression that we all face. Because like, yes, we can talk about how gay men and lesbian women experience different forms of oppression, but when it comes right down to it, both gay men and lesbian women are being, you know, they’re being targeted homophobically. So we don’t really need to be, we don’t need to be looking for the differences between the identities. We need to be looking for the similarities because that’s what’s gonna unite us. That’s what’s gonna make us the strongest. Yeah, that’s my- That’s my biggest fear with-
I will say too, I see this in my generation as well. There’s a lot of community in-fighting. And I get it because I do think that it is important to talk about the different forms of oppression, that it can’t be the only thing that we talk about. We have to be looking at our similarities. We have to see how we can unite to make things better for everybody.
Jojo
I think progression is very reliant on unity. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any additional thoughts, anything else to say about the topic of community at large?
William
Not really. I will say for me personally, like I said, a lot of my community takes place online for various reasons. I do think that one of the things that I would like to do personally in terms of community and that I would like to see a lot of other people do in terms of community is actually go out to things in person. Because when you are around people in person, it’s a lot easier to, I think, see the similarities. Because you’re not having to worry about, you know, like, parsing text, like, tone through text or anything like that. You’re just kind of around these people and you can see, you can see different body types, you see people of different races, different abilities, and that I think is so important to being able to build communities. So I need to be better about going out in person into these communities, but I think a lot of other people also need to be better about going out in person in to their communities.
Jojo
1000%. I’m one of those people. I’m right there with you. I feel like I 100 % agree with you there. Yeah. Cool. So we’ll move from community, on towards identity. Can you tell me about what aspects of your identity are most important to you?
William
I mean, I have said, you know, like I don’t, as much as I do want to assimilate into society as a man, just in general, rather than being like The Vocal Trans Man, I do feel like being Trans is an important part of my identity. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the most important aspect of it, but it’s an aspect that does impact my life in most ways. My favorite joke is that, even though I am always Trans, I’m not standing at my stove making pancakes and being like, “I’m Transgender and I’m making pancakes.” And those are two separate things. But it is important to me that I am able to acknowledge that I’m trans and that it did take me, it took me about 18 years to acknowledge that I wasn’t even cis and then maybe another two years or so to come to terms with the fact that I’m a trans man.
But outside of that, I think that my- the important parts of my identity are really more related to how I can help the world at large. If that’s through education, if that’s just through sharing some funny memes about, you know, different things; I think I’d rather see myself as an educator when it comes to my identity about a lot of different things, not just being trans, you know?
Yeah, like sure, I’m trans and I’m going to educate people about being trans because it’s something that I’m pretty knowledgeable about, but it’s not the only part of me that I want to educate people about.
If I had to, if I honestly had to put like one descriptor to my identity, it would be educator. It’s what I am.
Jojo
I like that. I like that. Are there any specific important influences on your sense of self?
William
Well, I just described myself as an educator and both of my parents and my sister are early educators. So I would say that growing up in a largely education-positive household, I think that that was a pretty important influence. But I also- I do pride myself on being fairly independent. I do try to rely on people and I’ve been learning to rely on people more, I don’t have to do everything myself, but I like that I am independent and I’m able to sort of make those choices about where my life is going. And I think I get that from my family, in general, being just very supportive of where I wanted to go in life.
I also think though, that I think, my friends have also been an important influence on me, whether or not that’s helping me accept different aspects of my identity. I’m very solidly a Trans Man, but I’ve had a lot of questions about my sexuality in the last few years. And it’s been really nice to be able to rely on my friends to have those influences in my life. Well, like, well, you don’t have to make those choices.
Additionally, I would say that two of my professors while I was at Emporia State were also very big influences on me. I am still in contact with them today. I have a group chat with them that I’m pretty sure I messaged earlier today. So we still talk quite regularly and they have given me a sense that I would say that the most important influence that they’ve given to me, would be a sense of confidence and being able to express myself in ways that people understand.
Jojo
That’s beautiful. I love that.
Can you describe how being trans impacts other aspects of your being, whether that’s kind of like demographic factors, kind of like race, class, ability, those sorts of things?
William
Well, I’m lucky that I’m white. I think that, you know, that makes it very, it makes it a lot easier for me in a lot of ways because… I am not having to navigate, you know, a lot of men of color are often seen as, you know, like, there’s this, there’s these stereotypes that men of color are, tend to be like more brutish, more thuggish, whatever you want to do. So that I’ve- I’ve, a lot of the people that I follow online are people of color, and that’s one of the things that they talk about consistently. So being, really, being Trans does not impact my race. My race impacts my ability to be Trans.
I don’t know that it’s necessarily affected my class status. I- if I have to be perfectly honest, I think that’s my choice of degree and having a limited field in that.
But I do think it has affected my Ability a little bit. I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself disabled in a true physical sense, but I am reliant on medication to keep my body in a state that doesn’t affect me. And because disability is such a spectrum, that’s really hard to, think, quantify in a real way, but I do know that I am reliant on this medication, and if it were to be taken away, it would impact my life very negatively.
Jojo
Totally. I haven’t heard it phrased quite that way before. I think that’s a really interesting way to put it. That, you know, it’s not quite a disability, but it does, it’s impacting your life in a similar way that a physical disability might. It’s interesting.
William
Again, disability is such a spectrum. It’s so hard to be like, yes. I mean, like I wear glasses.
I am disabled. wear glasses, but I have these aides that are allowing me to function as, you know, like a fully able-bodied person. And similarly to if you were to take away my glasses, if you were to take away, like, my testosterone, it would affect me.
Jojo
Definitely. Very interesting. It’s so true. How has your understanding of gender or transness changed over the years since you’ve started transitioning?
William
I think I’m less rigid with the concept of gender, actually. Which is so funny for somebody that I identified as gender fluid for probably at least a year. I got very into this rigid idea of I think, know, well, I’m a Trans Man, so I need to start having, you know, like more masculine activities.
And the truth is, is that I- Just a lot of those things I just don’t enjoy. I was an animal rescue for several years, which is traditionally a pretty woman-dominated field. When I was on the board of one of the animal rescues that I volunteered with, I was the only man there for a really long time. And then we got one more man.
So I think, you know, I started understanding that like, I am this gender, but that doesn’t mean that I have to do everything that this gender says. And also having a lot of non-binary friends who, you know, like, play around with the concept of gender far more than I do. I’m just like, yeah, gender is just kind of whatever you want it to be. Really. I mean, like, even if you were to look at cis people, like no two cis women are going to be exactly the same type of woman, you know?
Jojo
100%. It goes back to what you said at the very beginning there, that individualized experience of what gender is.
William
Yeah, and I think that that’s made me a lot more- Surprisingly, I do think that was one of the things that made me more comfortable with transitioning is because I realized that I didn’t have to change myself to be myself.
Jojo
Totally. I like that. So we’ll keep moving forward. Can you tell me about your proudest moment in life?
William
I’m gonna say getting my master’s degree. I did most of my master’s degree throughout the pandemic. And it was the first period of schooling that I had gone through where I was only ever called Will. That was because I spent maybe the first year of my undergrad, I was not out.
And then my master’s degree was done entirely as myself. It was very challenging for me because like I said, I did do a lot of it during the pandemic, but I achieved that regardless. I achieved it fully as myself because in many ways, because of the fact that I did not transition right away during my undergrad, felt like I did a lot of that degree as a sort of shadow of myself. But my master’s degree, that was me. I did that.
Jojo
Congratulations! That’s a great thing to be proud of!
Now, can you tell me about your most challenging moment?
William
Yeah. So, despite the fact that my family are very supportive, I did have a lot of issues with my parents whenever I first came out. I actually ended up taking my mom to therapy because we were having such a difficult time at that point. And it took a lot for me to admit that I needed outside help to resolve the conflicts that I was having with my mom at the time. And it wasn’t just about me being trans, but I think that was sort of the catalyst for it. And I ended up taking her to therapy and we have since worked on our relationship a lot, both her and me and my dad, and we’re a lot better now.
But I do struggle to admit when I need help sometimes, and especially whenever it was somebody who was as important to me and as close to me as my parents saying to a professional, “I need help with this relationship,” that was terrifying. And I was scared to go to therapy with my mom, even though my mom was like, yes, let’s go to therapy together. My mom’s a therapist, so whenever I was like, I think we should go to therapy together, she was like, “oh, so something’s wrong, wrong.”
Which I, you know, I really appreciate that. So, and we came out, was, it was fine. I mean, like, it was still rocky and you know, it- relationships are always changing and you always need to communicate. But that was scary.
That was, that was scary to admit that like my relationship with my parents was so damaged at the time. Like I said, not just because I was trans, but that was the catalyst and there was a lot on me that made me feel like maybe coming out was the wrong thing to do because it affected my relationship with people that I love very much that badly.
Jojo
That is a very challenging moment and congratulations on being able to overcome that and take even steps that you needed to take to do so.
Do you have any experiences that you faced in regards to safety or security or insecurities in the home or food or finances ⁓ that you’d like to comment on at this time?
William
Fortunately, safety and security, no, for the most part. Like I said, I’m very lucky to live in a community where I do feel safe.
Financially, I’ve not always been the best. Part of that was because I was working a job that simply just wasn’t paying me enough. But also, transitioning is expensive: Name changes are expensive; Hormones can be expensive if your insurance isn’t good, which I’ve gone through a number of insurances and currently I’m on one that’s very good about covering my hormones. But like, you know, medical transition like surgery is very expensive. So, even though I’m in a better paying job, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m financially stable at the moment, not just because of, you know, transition, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help that I have to do these things in order to feel like myself.
Jojo
And are there any experiences that you would like to comment on in regards to mental health or physical health or addiction?
William
I- about a year after I started taking testosterone, I did go on antidepressants, which was only partially related to gender stuff. There was a lot of other things going on in my life at that point where I really needed to be on antidepressants. I’m still on them to this day. And I would actually say now more they are partially related to transition because of the political climate that we’re living in. It’s important for me to be able to continue to take those antidepressants.
I think that my physical health has actually gotten better because I feel more confident in my body because of being on testosterone and also having top surgery as well now.
So those, it’s very weird.
It feels like my mental health has maybe become more impacted by me being Trans in the last year or so, whereas my physical health has improved massively because of my transition. So, a weird little dichotomy there, but it is what it is, you know?
Jojo
Yeah. I like that. Cool. Are there any important sources of support that you’ve interacted with that you’d like to recognize at this time?
William
I would like to give a shout out to Bloom House Youth Services here in Emporia. I think that they’re doing a lot of really important work for the youth in the community of Emporia at large, but especially for the LGBTQ kids that are there.
I would also like to recognize my family, my grandparents, both living and deceased, my parents, my sister, and my friends and a couple of my professors, especially, I think. Those are people that I have relied on consistently for years. Some people well over a decade, some people my entire life at this point. And they’re all- Great resources to have. Yeah.
Jojo
Can you tell me about a time and experience or a memory where you felt truly seen for who you are?
William
This is interesting because this is actually before I came out. In 2015, which is the time where I realized I was not cisgender, I decided that I needed to cut off all of my hair immediately because I knew that something was desperately wrong. And I had had… I like not like super long hair, but like hair that was usually like around my chin down to my shoulders for all of my life up until that point. And so, my grandmother is a professional hairdresser, and I went to her and I said, I want my hair to be short. And I think that is the happiest I’ve ever looked in a photo.
And Grammy and I have talked about this multiple times. And she also agrees that it was like the first time I had ever really seen myself and she felt like she was seeing me for the first time, which again, very interesting because this was not, had, this was literally, I’m not joking, like two weeks after I realized that I wasn’t cis. So I had no idea what was about to happen. But there was just that moment where she and I looked at me in that mirror and I think that we both knew that that was me for once.
Jojo
That is so incredible.
William
The 10 year anniversary of that is coming up. And I think it’s like, it’s in mid May sometimes. So that is, it’s going to be 10 years since that quite soon.
Jojo
What a special experience. I love that. Cool. Well, I have one more question for you and that’ll be the question that we end the recording on. So before we get to that, I just want to say thank you for sharing your story with me. Thank you for chatting with me today. It’s been a pleasure.
William
Yeah, of course. I was really looking forward to this. Honestly, I talked to my coworkers about what I was doing today.
Jojo
Awesome, so last question here for you. If your next sentence could be broadcast to the world across the globe, everyone has to hear it. Is there anything you would want to say?
William
Trans people have always been here and we always will be and there’s nothing that you can do to stop that.