[Vol. 39] Yes, It Really Was Just a Phase
And thank god I've grown out of it.
Ok, I need to clear the air about something for ya’ll today.
For years, ever since I was a kid, everyone’s been out here saying: “It’s not a phase!” They say that we’re born this way, that we didn’t have a choice.
I think that’s a load of bullshit.
I wasn’t born that way. I had a choice and I made it. It was a phase.
And thank god I’m over it. The phase in question? Wanting to be a straight, cisgender man.
It was not a pretty phase, but now I’m settled (or getting settled, more like it) in my true identity – the one I really was born with.
Instead of telling you, “it gets better”, albeit a powerful (and accurate) phrase, I’m gonna start telling you, “Trust me, it’s just a phase. Wanting to be straight and cisgender so bad? Yah, don’t worry, that’ll pass.”
Now, obviously, like with every single volume of this newsletter, I speak for no one but myself here – I hope that much is clear at this point. Nevertheless, this is the kind of message I wish I could share with my younger self.
You don’t want to be straighter. You don’t want to be a man’s man. You don’t want these things – not really.
You want them because it’d make it all easier for you; because you’re tired. I get that, I do. But those things will never be you, and spending your days in pursuit of them will only ever make you feel like you’re always one step behind.
I know it feels like this will be the defining struggle of your life right now, but trust me, it’s just a phase – one of many.
Once you get out into the world and see everything that queerness can be, everything that it can make you, and everything it offers, you won’t be able to imagine your life without it.
Sure, there’ll be days where you wish more than anything to be anyone else but who you are, but here’s the big secret everyone’s been keeping from you: Everyone has those days (*cue the Hannah Montana nostalgia).
That’s not a by-product of queerness, that’s a by-product of being a human being.
Why do you think self-help books top the bestseller charts year after year? Why do you think America got so obsessed with meditation and wellness and self-care, commodifying these things until they turned into billion-dollar empires?
We’re all a little bit restless in ourselves. We all want to be things we’re not sometimes. Most of us have, at some point in our lives, been made to feel like we’re somehow other; different; not enough.
Trying to erase your queerness will not settle that inner turmoil for you.
In fact, it’ll most likely backfire – stoking the flames rather than smothering them.
So what do you do to escape this phase and when will it pass you by?
That, I cannot tell you. What I can tell you is that the defining lines of this phase are a lot blurrier than you might think.
I’m mostly out of it, but sometimes I’m a little in it again. It varies. It changes.
And that’s ok. You have to make peace with that, otherwise you’ll be right back to feeling like you’re not enough.
Here’re some thoughts I’ve had that help me:
1. I wouldn’t recognize myself if I wasn’t gay/genderqueer. That’s a scary thought.
2. If I were straight/cisgender, I wouldn’t see the world in the way I do. I’d lose the experiences that’ve honestly made me a more empathetic, creative, and loving person.
3. My life isn’t harder because I’m gay/genderqueer, it’s the world I live in that’s harder on me. The onus does not fall on you to do any changing.
4. Being gay/genderqueer is fun. Simple as that. You have a tie to the LGBTQ+ community (the wildest bunch), you get to rediscover yourself in a way most people never do in their entire life, and you get to fall in love with that person.
There were times I thought my queerness was nothing but an extra load of baggage. These days, I can’t help but see it as a gift I’ve been lucky enough to get in this life.
Cheesy, but true nonetheless.
For me, it really was just a phase. Most days, I don’t wish to be straight/cisgender anymore – not even a little bit.
Here’s today’s icy cold cup o’ joe ☕️
MONDAY 05/03: Idaho’s Transgender Sports Ban is Facing Backlash in Court (Surprise, Surprise)
Let’s catch up to speed here. Idaho is not a state many people have on their mind. I’m sure it’s a lovely place. All I know is that it’s the potato state. So there you go.
But now I know another thing about the potato state: Apparently, it was the first U.S. state to pass an outright ban on transgender women and girls from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity (that is, the gender they identify as vs. the gender they were assigned at birth). That happened in March of 2020.
But the ban never went into effect. An injunction issued by U.S. District Court Judge David Nye in August of 2020 threw a wrench in the whole thing early on.
Now, I’m no lawyer, but as far as I know an injunction is just a bandaid. What this really comes down to is if the plaintiffs actually challenging the ban in court are successful or not in proving it unconstitutional.
One of these plaintiffs is Lindsay Hecox, a transgender women and student at Boise State University in Idaho. Hecox is taking the ban to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, no less. She wants to run track at Boise State; this bill, if it were to bypass the injunction, would make that dream impossible.
While one can argue that transphobia is really what’s at the center of this debate, the surface level issue that’s being ping ponged back and forth here is this: Do transgender athletes have an inherent physical advantage over their biologically female peers?
While the knee-jerk reaction to that question might be, “well … duh, they do”, let’s look at the facts here.
Transgender athletes competing in sports is not a new phenomenon. They are generally required to meet certain criteria of testosterone suppression before they can even think about competing. This is not the wild west, it’s not a new frontier, and trans athletes are not simply walking onto the field or the track without complying to these regulations first.
Both the NCAA and the International Olympic Committee – two of the biggest athletic regulating bodies both nationally and internationally – allow trans athletes to compete (so long as they meet said hormone criteria).
There’s no evidence to support the fear-mongered idea that trans athletes are robbing women of their rightful athletic victories. David Nye, who we can thank for the injunction on the trans athlete ban in Idaho, wrote this in his ruling: "The Proponents' failure to identify any evidence of transgender women causing purported sexual inequality other than four athletes (at least three of whom have notably lost to cisgender women) is striking.”
A blanket ruling banning certain children and young adults from competing in sports they love, forming bonds with their teammates, and having the coming-of-age experience of being a member of a team is, in my eyes, just not it.
There are well-documented and well-proven ways to regulate trans athletes in sports, so why wouldn’t legislators move in that direction instead? Smells transphobic to me.
P.S. Hecox didn’t make it on the Women’s Track and Field team at Boise State last year, and that’s not because some law blocked her from joining (it’s not a law *yet*). She wasn’t fast enough. She says she’ll try again in 2022.
And that was That’s Gay, Volume 39. See you in Volume 40, folks!
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