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What Etiology Can’t Say

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If asked at the beginning of my trans journey would I want to be AFAB, I’d have said yes in a hurry. To not have to worry about the process of transition, one that our society has riven with pitfalls and danger, sounds awesome. I would have sooner lived as who I was meant to be. In the last few weeks, I’ve changed my tune. I like the freedom to find out what femininity means to me, what I want and don’t want. It’s a creative tableau for womanhood. Once, the notion of such abstract thought would have surprised me. Yet with every euphoric effort that works and does not, clarity emerges on who I — Allison Julia Whitney — want to be. And what I am becoming.  But of course, society wants to define gender for us. Even the most well-intentioned of the cissssss have wanted to know why. Why why why. The only people I’ve subjected myself to the world salad that is my etiology are my loved ones. Everyone else who happens to know I'm trans that is not trans themselves can f off.  When did...
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"Alex, You're Glowing!" Nickelodeon, Natalie Merchant, the Pink Opaque and Me

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There are distinct memories we carry from our childhood years. Some are real but most are a knitted assortment of fractured recollection, sensory encounter, flattened context, life experience, and shifting perspective. What we are remembering is not what actually happened, it's how we remember it from the last time we thought about it. And if you live long, you create a train of thought where jangled memory defines present reality. All that to say, I have many distinct memories about driving home in the back of my mom's car after visiting my grandparents. The son is setting and I, for reasons that are unclear to me, am feeling maudlin. My mom didn't get to experience much of her young adulthood before I was born, so unlike most of her contemporaries that favored Madonna, White Snake, and other 80s music, she would always have on alt stuff from the 90s, perhaps to try and enjoy the moment. And not Nirvana or Pearl Jam, but the kind of acceptable pop stardom for parents. Alan...
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