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Out October: “I Came Out As Transgender When I Was Fifteen.”

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Another Out October Project story that highlights being true to yourself. This one comes to us from a transgender man who lived his life in the wrong body from day one. He lost all hope and then found someone who had been there before, someone who helped him see himself for who he was, and helped accept himself.

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I came out as transgender when I was fifteen. I dropped out of school and started living full-time as the person I knew I really was inside when I was sixteen. When people give me hell for dropping out, I take it lightly. Because I know that my reasons are valid, and it wasn’t just a matter of “I’m too cool for school, so I’m dropping out.” People at my school were cruel about my being pretty androgynous and “mistaken” for male half the time. So obviously it would have been suicide to transition there.

When I left school I started working at a fast food place, but didn’t come out to my boss until after I’d worked there for awhile, because I got to a point where I couldn’t handle living a lie. I had to present myself as male, or ultimately, I would have wanted to die. There was no more living if I had to hear “she” one more time, or my birth name. Either of those things sparked a rage deep inside of me that I couldn’t comprehend. Those were my choices. And at that point, I chose to live.

There would soon be plenty of other times that I would have to make the same choice. My boss didn’t support my decision and wouldn’t allow me to wear a name tag with my chosen name, so I wore it in secret when she wasn’t there, or I wore no name tag at all. The thought of the customers seeing the wrong name on my name tag and not percieving me as male gave me chills. I’d try my best to hide in the back doing dishes all night instead of facing the world with a lie pinned to my shirt. Eventually I quit and got another job where I was allowed to wear a name tag with my chosen name and only the managers were aware I was trans.

I don’t remember exactly when, but I knew from a very early age that I wasn’t what everyone seemed to think I was. I knew I was a boy. It was that simple. It was everyone else that was crazy. As I got older, that got harder and harder to get through people’s heads. Puberty and the departure of childhood were like a slap in the face. I had a rude awakening. I wasn’t what people said I was, I wasn’t exactly like the other boys….so I felt like nothing at all. I didn’t understand it, and didn’t hear of the term transgender until I was fifteen. So at that point I learned to mask the pain that I didn’t have words to define.

I started cutting when I was thirteen. For some, it’s because they go numb and long to feel. For me, every twinge of pain was comfort and I longed to go numb. I wanted to make my body unrecognizable…because in my opinion, it wasn’t really mine. It wasn’t male. I was male inside. And the incongruency was driving me insane. When I was sixteen I was admitted to the psych ward three times, all for cutting and suicidal ideation.

Only once did I really attempt to kill myself. I took my grandmother’s blood pressure meds, thinking that I’d just pass out and die. Luckily, I didn’t know pharmacology back then and the pills I chose were only diuretics and didn’t hurt me. I figured that was a sign I should live, so I just mutilated myself a little more to stay alive. The pain kept me going. The self punishment of the body I didn’t want kept me sane. To this day I have scars up and down both arms and legs from that period of my life. To an extent I regret it because they’ll never go away, but I don’t bother hiding them with sleeves anymore. I get alot of questions and sneers about my arms, get called emo, but I quit caring after awhile. I have no shame in surviving.

My grandma passed away when I was seventeen. She was the only blood relative who believed in me, said she’d still love me no matter what I was. She was more of a mother to me than my biological mom and losing her was hard. I did the only thing I knew how to do to survive — I masked the pain by hurting myself. Shortly afterwards, I was finally diagnosed as ADHD which I know I’ve had all my life, just never could get to see a doctor. Things looked up for awhile once I was on meds.

But I still felt completely empty and alone in spite of living my life full time as male. I didn’t think that it was possible to get on hormones or get surgery living in my area because it’s not a big city, so I had no hope of that. I thought I’d be stuck only half of the time passing, never being fully perceived as male to the rest of the world. And I couldn’t handle that. Not a day went by that I didn’t think at least once of running my car off the road and joining the only person who ever loved or believed in me.

The day I turned eighteen, I moved out. I had a full-time job, my license and still no GED but at least I had money coming in, and I didn’t care where I went, I was just getting away from my abusive mother come hell or high water. Luckily, some friends took me in and allowed me to live with them for several months. While staying with them, I met my ex-girlfriend. All my life I’d questioned my sexuality and I still wasn’t sure, but being a naive lust-struck young man, I went along with dating the first person who ever confessed to see me as a guy regardless of my body.

I later found out that she was gay, and “didn’t know what she was having sex with,” and needed me to stop transitioning, or break up with me. Being the person I was back then I couldn’t lose her no matter what so I stopped transitioning for a brief period of time. I still regret that, because that’s the only reason that some people I know now, know that I’m trans. We ended up breaking up for other reasons and after some drama, I became homeless.

Being homeless was basically the make-or-break period of my life. In the end it made me stronger because it taught me how to survive and be grateful for what I had. I got kicked out in early December and was homeless until late January. Being homeless teaches you how to survive, and survive for you, or you simply don’t make it. I never really wanted to stop living as male, I only did it for my ex. And now I had to live for me.

I bounced around shelters, took a bus to the nearest big city to try to start over, came back home, and finally gave up, stayed put, and slept on couches or outside in my car. The reason I didn’t go back to a shelter is because that was when I decided to live full-time as male again and obviously a shelter wouldn’t allow me to stay with the men. Being the stubborn person that I am I refused to have that happen. Life became slightly more livable once I was presenting as male, but there wasn’t a day where I wasn’t relentlessly reminded by my own brain that my body still was developing into something I wasn’t, and I couldn’t stop it. That thought alone still made me want to die. But I never could get the guts to do anything about it.

It was at this point that I met the two best friends I could ever ask to know. I hung out at the gay bar downtown a lot, and they were entertainers there. I asked to perform on a talent night which they hosted. One of them happened to be a transman…and the other his wife. I got to know them by emails first, then we talked a lot in person. He started T that March. In May, he was reading up on my blog posts of anger and self destruction and suicidal thoughts due to dysphoria. He suggested that his T doctor might do informed consent..meaning that I didn’t need a letter from a therapist approving me to start T…all I needed was a letter saying that I was seeing a therapist, period. He was right and I started T that month.

That was five months ago. Since then I’ve got my life together. I found a job, got a car, got into my own apartment, am getting my GED, legally changed my name and gender and on top of it all….I finally like the man I see in the mirror. No, it wasn’t easy. It took a lot of relentless time and effort, but it paid off. At five months on T I pass 100% of the time and I’m stealth at work. I don’t have to hide anymore, because to the world at large, I’m just the name and gender they see on my ID, which is finally correct.

Oh, and a side note. I finally came out as gay. Like I said, I’d questioned my sexuality all my life and once I started T I became comfortable enough with my own body to figure out that I never admitted being gay to myself because pre-T I felt like I had to compensate for the masculinity my body lacked…so there was no way I could admit to be gay….because if I said I was gay, people might mistake me for a lesbian instead of a gay man. Now that I haven’t heard she in months…I’m confident enough to present myself as who I really am. I’m very open about being gay, but don’t really tell people I’m trans unless they need to know.

One of these days, I’ll have the money to pay for my top surgery. Until then, I’m living one day at a time and reminding myself that all things worth having take time. I won’t lie, alot of days go by where I still feel alot of dysphoria related to my chest and genitals and having to wear a binder, and I toy with the idea of suicide. But now I have a support system. I have two amazing best friends. They’re the reason I’m still alive right now, because if I hadn’t met them I wouldn’t have started T when I did and I would have more than likely been another gay and transgender suicide. I still don’t realize how much I mean to them or them to me. When I feel like shit, I talk to them. He’s been there himself, and his wife is the most supportive loving person I’ve ever met, who sees no gender in people.

All I have to say is you gotta live for you. You will have friends and family who reject you, call you a pervert, a freak. Don’t listen to them. They’re not living your life. In the end you gotta live for you, or you’ll always feel empty. Some people say it’s a choice to be gay or trans, but it’s not. As my best friend said, ultimately the only choice we’ve made is the choice to stop living a lie. It gets better. But for it to get better…you have to choose to keep living. That is the ultimate form of revenge, of getting back at people, of proving to people that you’re not just some faggot, some queer, some tranny. You’re human. We all deserve to be loved, and live.

Remember, there are always options.
The Trevor Project: a 24-hour hotline for gay and questioning youth: 866-4-U-TREVOR (488-7386)
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-TALK (8255)

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News

‘Huge Problem for Trump’: Joe Rogan Gushes Over Kamala Harris

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6 hours ago

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September 17, 2024

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Populist podcaster Joe Rogan, the highly-influential commentator whose audience reflects a strong segment of Donald Trump’s MAGA base gushed over Vice President Kamala Harris in his latest episode.

“She’s nailing it,” exclaimed Rogan, who has 14.5 million followers on Spotify.

A “dudebro” with a predominantly male audience in the 25-44 range that spans the partisan divide, Rogan heaped praise on Harris’s team.

“They did an amazing job from the moment Biden drops out, forcing Biden to drop out, whatever they’re doing, whoever’s writing those speeches, getting her to deliver them, coaching her, she’s nailing it,” Rogan said.

READ MORE: ‘Megaphone for Hate’: Vance’s Slam of Dem ‘Rhetoric’ Backfires in ‘Streisand Effect’

“Whoever’s helping her. Whoever’s coaching her. Whoever’s the puppet master running the strings…” he said, serving up a “chef’s kiss” gesture, as NJ.com reported.

“The difference in that debate was not a difference in who’s going to have better policies, who’s going to be better for the country,” Rogan observed. “The difference in the debate, in my opinion, was who was better prepared.”

Rogan did not quite endorse Donald Trump in 2020, although he did tell listeners he would rather vote for Trump than Joe Biden.

“There’s a moment here when Rogan imitates Trump in the most cartoonish way imaginable, and that, I think, tells you a lot. For many people, Trump made them laugh at politics. But now they’re laughing at him,” remarked John Stoehr of the Editorial Board.

“This is a huge problem for Donald Trump,” commented digital marketing strategist and Obama campaign operative Tim Fullerton. “If Joe Rogan turns on him and starts praising Kamala Harris like he is here – Trump is toast.”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Remigration’: Trump Continues Attacks on Immigrants With New Vow of Forced Deportations

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OPINION

‘Megaphone for Hate’: Vance’s Slam of Dem ‘Rhetoric’ Backfires in ‘Streisand Effect’

Published

9 hours ago

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September 17, 2024

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Freshman U.S. Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, in a speech and in a 1200-word social media post on Monday attacked Democrats for what he claimed is “rhetoric” fueling the two alleged assassination attempts on his running mate, ex-president Donald Trump. His efforts were both refuted as false and hypocritical, and served as an invitation for countless examples of how he and especially Trump have been engaging in dangerous rhetoric.

On Tuesday Vance continued his attacks, claiming he and Trump now deserve apologies because the dozens of bomb threats inflicted on Springfield, Ohio, after they both lied about immigrants stealing pets and eating them, allegedly came from overseas.

“I’m still waiting on a correction and apology from the left wing journalists,” Vance wrote on social media. “They lied about these bomb threats to silence us.”

Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine told reporters there had been 33 bomb threats against 22 facilities in Springfield in under a week after Trump’s false claim Tuesday night. But now, without any proof, Republicans are claiming the bomb threats came from overseas, as if somehow that absolves them of any guilt for having fueled them.

READ MORE: ‘Remigration’: Trump Continues Attacks on Immigrants With New Vow of Forced Deportations

Vance admitted to CNN that the allegations, which led Donald Trump during last week’s presidential debate to lie that immigrants are “eating the cats,” and “eating the dogs,” was a story he had created to advance his agenda.

The Atlantic’s David Frum, a conservative and former Bush White House speech writer, on Tuesday wrote: “The difference: The upsetting things said by Trump and Vance are not true. The upsetting things said about Trump and Vance are true. Trump really did mount a violent coup against the Constitution. He and his relatives really did take bribes in office, including from foreign governments. He really was helped into power by Russian espionage agencies. He really did steal secret documents from the US government after his election defeat. And Vance really did, and by his own admission, intentionally “create stories” for political advantage that put residents of his state at risk of physical harm.”

Vance responded: “I’d say the most important difference is that people on your team tried to kill Donald Trump twice.”

Frum replied, “They’re going to rename the Streisand Effect after this guy.”

For those who don’t know, the “Streisand Effect” in short, is when an attempt to tamp down something leads to it being given a lot more attention.

That’s exactly what happened when Vance on Monday told Democrats to “tone down the rhetoric,” which he alleges led to the two Trump assassination attempts. He offered only one example, of a Democratic Congressman calling for Trump to be “eliminated,” from the ballot for president. A call for which he later apologized for not being clearer.

Vance’s attack led to a flood of people explaining why Donald Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous.

READ MORE: ‘Hell Isn’t Hot Enough’: Fury at Trump as More School Evacuations Follow ‘Pet-Eating’ Lies

“This isn’t easy to write, but it needs to be written,” wrote Joe Walsh, the former Republican Tea Party Congressman. “The sad truth is this: It’s not at all surprising that someone would try to kill him,” he said of Trump.

“I mean, think about it. Every day for 9yrs, he’s spewed hate, spread division, and incited violence like no other. Every day. Ever since he came down that escalator. Every day, he’s attacked this person or that person, this group or that group. In cruel, ugly ways. Every day for 9yrs he’s been hating on people and inciting violence against people. Remember earlier this year, when he actually shared a meme of a hogtied, kidnapped Joe Biden? He’s been like a juvenile delinquent who has thrown a firecracker into a crowd of people every day. Eventually, someone is going to go after that boy. Political violence must be strongly condemned. Always. It’s wrong that someone would try to kill him. Terribly wrong. But it’s not surprising. Not at all. It really isn’t. He has been the country’s megaphone for hate.”

On Monday, Walsh had noted: “In blaming Democrats’ rhetoric for the assassination attempt, Trump accuses Democrats of ‘wanting to destroy this country’ and calls Democrats ‘the enemy from within.’ Dangerous rhetoric coming from Democrats, huh?”

And conservative political commentator Charlie Sykes noted: “On the same day Ohio’s GOP guv sent state police to 17 schools in Springfield after threats of violence, the men who incited those threats are demanding that the rest of us tone down our rhetoric. This is rich. By which I mean unmitigated bullsh*t.”

RELATED: 33 Bomb Threats in Springfield Shuttered 22 Facilities in Days After Trump’s Immigrant Lie

Image via Shutterstock

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‘Brazen Gaslighting’: JD Vance Slammed for Telling Dems ‘Tone Down the Rhetoric’

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10 hours ago

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September 17, 2024

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Ohio Republican U.S. Senator JD Vance published a 1203-word diatribe Monday night filled with falsehoods and feeble hypocrisies, demanding that Democrats “tone down the rhetoric” while insisting he opposes “censorship.” Critics are accusing the GOP vice presidential nominee of hypocrisy and gaslighting the public, given his and his running mate’s lies about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets, and Donald Trump’s vicious attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, which mirror what Vance is urging Democrats to not do.

“Reject censorship and you reject political violence. Embrace censorship, and you will inevitably embrace violence on its behalf,” Vance alleged in his post on X, before reaching this dramatic conclusion: “The logic of censorship leads directly to one place, for there is only one way to permanently silence a human being: put a bullet in his brain.”

That’s how Vance’s screed ended. But it began with a falsehood: “Yesterday, Donald J. Trump nearly lost his life.”

He was referring to the alleged attempted assassination on Sunday, during which a 58-year old man who voted for Trump in 2016 before publicly expressing his regret and supporting Republican Nikki Haley this year, was found by a Secret Service agent outside the perimeter of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf course, 300 to 500 feet away from the ex-president, with an AK-47. The agent shot at the suspect, who had been waiting in the bushes for about 12 hours.

“Ryan Wesley Routh did not fire any shots, never had Trump in his line of sight and sped away after an agent who spotted him shot in his direction, officials said. He was arrested in a neighboring county,” NBC South Florida reported.

RELATED: Trump Repeatedly Blames Biden, Harris for Assassination Attempt Allegedly by Another GOPer

And while this second alleged assassination attempt, once again by a GOP voter, is disturbing, Trump did not nearly lose his life anymore than he “took a bullet for democracy,” as he claimed after the first assassination attempt.

And yet Vance wrote, “The rhetoric is out of control. It nearly got Steve Scalise and many others killed a few years ago. It nearly got Donald Trump killed twice” – a clear attack on Democrats despite both alleged attempted shooters targeting Trump were his own supporters, at least at one time. As for the Scalise shooting in 2017, seven years ago, the perpetrator had a 20-year history of run-ins with the police, including an arrest “after a 2006 incident in which he was accused of beating his foster daughter, according to court records. The case crumbled after the victim decided not to testify,” Bloomberg reported. Had he been convicted he would have been unable to own a gun.

Vance also claimed that “Kamala Harris has said that ‘Democracy is on the line’ in her race against President Trump. The gunman agreed, and used the exact same phrase.”

NCRM could find no news reports making the claim Routh has said that, but you know who has? The American people.

“Americans agree that the future of democracy is on the line in the 2024 election but disagree about who poses the biggest threat,” is the headline of a December PBS News report.

“A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 62% of adults say democracy in the U.S. could be at risk depending on who wins next fall. Majorities of Democrats (72%) and Republicans (55%) feel the same way, but for different reasons.”

Vance also promoted the claim – again, nowhere to be found in news reports NCRM could find – that, he says, “suggest [the bomb threats] came from a foreign country, not–as the media suggested–a deranged Trump fan.”

It is the same suggestion made, apparently without public proof or substance, by Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine and Attorney General Dave Yost, also citing no source.

As for the bomb threats, Governor DeWine announced Monday there had been 33 since Donald Trump and JD Vance made their wild accusations that Haitian immigrants (20,000 “illegal” migrants they falsely claimed) are stealing and eating the cats and dogs of Springfield residents. 33 affecting 22 facilities including elementary schools and hospitals that were forced to be evacuated, shuttered, or searched.

RELATED: 33 Bomb Threats in Springfield Shuttered 22 Facilities in Days After Trump’s Immigrant Lie

Somehow, Vance and the GOP are claiming that the bomb threats coming from overseas (not proven) absolve them of any guilt. It does not. The bomb threats are a direct result of Vance’s and Trump’s lies attacking immigrants, which in turn are a hallmark of Donald Trump’s political career since he came down the golden Trump Tower escalator in 2015 and told the American people their problems are being caused by Mexicans.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems,” Trump said on the June day when he launched his first presidential run. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people.”

And while Vance is demanding Democrats “tone down the rhetoric,” he ignores the words of his running mate, Donald Trump, who just last week repeatedly called Vice President Harris “a threat to democracy,” in a speech before the Fraternal Order of Police.

Meanwhile, civil rights and national security journalist Marcy Wheeler blasted Vance’s massive social media post, calling it a “a fascist manifesto,” in which, she writes, the Ohio Senator argues “that false claims dehumanizing migrants is opinion the censorship of which will lead to violence, but Harris’ factual observations about Trump’s coup attempt is violence.”

Posting a screenshot, Wheeler sardonically remarked that his post “starts by feigning to care about incendiary speech, but ultimately says you have to let his Nazi buddies lie about Haitians eating kitties.”

Because it was a lie, a lie that Vance admitted to when he told CNN on Sunday he will “create stories” to promote his agenda: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

National security attorney Brad Moss debunked Vance’s public remarks Monday in which the Senator claimed, “You know the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric, and needs to cut this crap out.”

Former Lincoln Project executive director Fred Wellman summed up Vance’s remarks, asking, “So if I understand the new MAGA messaging correctly; quoting Trump and Vance’s actual words they have said on the record multiple times is inciting violence?”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson also slammed Vance, writing: “All your gifts, wasted on a dissolute con man, a rapist, serial adulterer, a bankrupt wastrel, and an eager authoritarian who has stoked more violence, hatred, division, death, and chaos than any President in modern history. You, sir, are the cause of death and bomb threats happening *this instant* in Ohio and you elide your guilt with the grace of a Harvard law grad. Spare me.”

CNN host W. Kamau Bell blasted Vance’s remarks on Monday:

“This reads like your daddy Trump yelled at you & told you to make it right. You had an all-time debacle of an interview yesterday where all you had to say was ‘I’m sorry to my home state. As an elected official it is my responsibility to fact check the things I say.’ & today more bomb threats came into the schools that your constituents send their kids to. You talk about Democratic ‘rhetoric’ like your daddy didn’t lead an attack on a the Capitol. Well, since you said we are allowed to say mean things, let me say this, you are a disgrace.”

Mother Jones national affairs editor Mark Folman added, “What brazen gaslighting from JD Vance, who literally led the way on incitement blaming Dems for the shooting in Pennsylvania — ‘They even tried to kill him’ This BS rhetoric [was] repeated by Vance and many top Trump surrogates.”

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Scarborough Tuesday morning called Vance’s speech in which he called for Democrats to tone down the rhetoric, “gaslighting of the first order.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Remigration’: Trump Continues Attacks on Immigrants With New Vow of Forced Deportations

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