A day in the life of a transgender academic (THREAD)

I spent 10 minutes explaining to colleagues in a meeting why some language isn't just "objectionable" but can be actively traumatizing to vulnerable people and that trauma responses aren't about "reasonable disagreement".

Less then 5 minutes later a senior colleague repeatedly misgendered a dear friend and collaborator. I interrupted to correct her, but she continued. Other wonderful colleagues also interrupted with corrections, but she continued in her misgendering.

I could feel myself starting to experience the exact trauma reaction I'd just been describing earlier. I messaged the group that I had to step away, and turned off my mic and video so I could sit and process my feelings.

Before I understood what was happening I was sobbing uncontrollably, while the meeting continued in the background.

Secondhand trauma is not something I'd really thought about until that moment.

I knew suddenly - with absolute certainty - that if this was happening to someone I cared about in the field that it was also happening to me when I wasn't in the room (zoom?)

I didn't need any evidence of this happening to feel it's effects. The very suspicion of it occurring was enough to send me into a trauma spiral. These kinds of harms are insidious because they don't require a specific "bad actor" or cause: my colleague didn't mean to hurt me.

I pulled myself together, backchannelled with wonderful supportive colleagues (thank you @Branhammertime and @helena_mentis!) fixed my makeup, and went back to work. This wasn't the first time I've been reduced to a dribbly mess in a professional context since coming out.

This all played out before 8am. Then I went to work. I spent some time checking in on #TransNameChangePolicy items. Since I've been so vocal about this issue online I now regularly field inquiries from journal editors and publishers seeking guidance on policy implementation.

I also spent some time reading a draft from a PhD student for an upcoming conference submission. The work was excellent, except that there was a section at the start that used Harry Potter as an important example, and I realized I couldn't sign-off on the paper as it was.

Prior to coming out, we used to joke that my lab was actually a Harry Potter research group. Over the years we've made a lot of systems that were either directly or indirectly inspired by the magic in Rowling's books.

After Rowling's transphobic tirade this summer, and the wave of anti-trans hate that she incited against me and my community, I can no longer enjoy these books. I certainly am not putting my name on a paper that openly celebrates them.

Thankfully, my awesome student immediately recognized the problem, and responded to my concerns - we brainstormed alternative examples, and thought through the design space, and removed the offending reference.

This time I managed to avoid a full-blown trauma response. But these incidents and events throughout the day highlighted for me how much my transition has informed my perspective, my experience, and the ongoing labor involved in being trans in my professional world.

I had this naive expectation that transitioning would not change much in my personal and professional life. I figured I'd start presenting as a woman, deal with the awkwardness of the early days of the medical transition, and just go back about my life and work.

I hadn't anticipated how much time and effort transitioning would demand - and how much I'd be impacted by a mixture of external transphobia, cissexism, transmisogyny, homophobia, and internal imposter syndrome, trauma, dissociation, and emotional and identity expansion.

I know some trans folks who can honestly say "I'm the same person I was before, just happier." I thought that would be me.

I'm definitely happier, but I'm NOT the same.

I'd underestimated how much I'd been suffering from dysphoria, depersonalization, and derealization before.

The cognitive and emotional implications of discovering oneself to be a completely different person are immense. They are often profoundly rewarding and affirming: I've discovered a capacity for empathy and care within myself that I'd never fully explored before coming out.

But they also take a toll: I can no longer rely upon the same strategies and assumptions that I used to negotiate my professional and personal life. And the lived reality of suddenly being in a very small minority can be intensely disorienting if you aren't expecting it.

I've been in transition for over a year and half, and I'm exiting the most awkward period. I've spent more than half of my transition isolated in my home, due to the pandemic. But the labor of being "the only trans person" in any conversation has not decreased.

@OhMiaGod has talked about the trajectory of transition: how folks in their first few years are ALL TRANS ALL THE TIME, but how eventually it becomes possible to relax into our other roles and identities. I'm a teacher, a mother, a wife, a girlfriend, a queer woman, an artist.

I'm autistic. I have ADHD. I'm a researcher, a songwriter, a game designer, an activist. I'm a daughter, a sister, and an aunt.

I'm eager to get to be those other things first - to be able to inhabit the world as the kaleidoscopic spectrum of roles and selves and possibilities.

For now I'm a transgender woman, and my professional life won't allow me to forget this for a second. I'm at peace with this: the benefits to my mental health that transitioning has brought me are immeasurable. But there are days when it doesn't leave me energy for anything else.