Your Friendly Neighborhood Trans Man

Most people have some sort of routine when they wake up in the morning and another one when they go to bed at night. For an able-bodied neurotypical, it might look something like this: Shower Get dressed Make and eat breakfast Brush teeth for the morning and then something like this: Set out stuff for the morning Put away anything you used today Brush teeth But for many people, whether they have a chronic illness or a disability or a mental illness, these steps are too big. I know I'm supposed to brush my teeth twice a day. I know I'm supposed to eat more than just cereal when I'm left to fend for myself. I know that I should shower every day and change my sheets every two weeks. But I have a certain amount of energy to use every day. When I wake up in the morning, I'm far too tired to shower or make myself real food, and I forget to brush my teeth and sometimes even to take my meds. When I come home at night, I've used up most of my energy and I r...

So, as a trans guy who didn't come out until I was 14, I was raised in the same way that a cis girl would be. My transfeminine friends, in their late teens, who still aren't out to everyone, were raised like boys. This is messed up, because everyone should be raised the same regardless of gender or agab (assigned gender at birth), but we weren't and kids still aren't. If you ask a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist), trans women have male privilege until they come out as trans, and trans men don't. To a certain degree, they're correct, but that in no way means that trans women are privileged over trans men, and especially not over cis women. The thing is, my friends were raised with what most people would call male privilege. They were never sexualized or objectified, they were never told what they can or can't be, and they were able to walk places by themselves once they reached a certain age without fear of being harassed, assaulted, or murdered....

So, I don't know how to get your name changed in other states, or especially in other countries. My process was also a little more complicated because I'm 17, so I my mom had to file it for me. And since we couldn't afford the $400 court fee (and I think there were other, smaller fees as well), we got a fee waiver. The first thing you need to do is find your local courthouse online. There you can find documents that you need to print and fill out. I believe they have one form that you need in order to file the case, and another if you need a fee waiver. The first form asked for an old name, a new name, who's filing it, and why you need to change the name. That was a bit confusing for us, as it's not always clear when it wants the filer's name and when it wants the name that's being changed--in most cases, it's the same person. In our case, we had to explain that my mom was filing for a name and gender change for her kid. The fee waiver isn't neces...

Lose Loose is pronounced with a hard s. Like looss. But for some reason, everyone keeps spelling lose (pronounced more like looz) with two os! I have no idea why, but I rarely see the word lose on social media. I see it all over the place in ads on how to lose weight, so I'd think the spelling would sink in eventually. Their / They're / There It's harder for me to explain why their is a possessive pronoun and there is a place, but for some reason that isn't messed up as much. People will put their or there in place of they're, or vice versa. Here's how I explain it: they're is a contraction. It's one word made from two words. You can tell that by the apostrophe. It means they are. Your / You're Same explanation here. You're means you are. Whenever you see an apostrophe in a word that isn't before an s, think of what two words could have been combined to make that contraction. Mentioning 's, though: Its When I see someone s...

I graduated recently, and I had a party afterwards. People who went to the party gave me money (which was for some reason a surprise--I thought I'd only get it in cards from family members in other states who felt guilty about not coming), and my sisters in Colorado sent money to my sister here to give to me. The expectation fell upon me to give people thank you notes, except for my sisters, who I could send messages on Facebook. It took a few days, but eventually I got out my phone and sent them a message. The thank you notes I'm still procrastinating on. "But if you haven't written the thank you notes, how come this is your 5th blog post in the last 24 hours?" Well, the thing is, with some of that money, I was able to get a laptop. It's a little harder to get out than my phone, so I won't be on it all day, but it's a lot easier to start up than anything I could type on before. And I don't know if it's my writer's genes or being raised by...

I just wanted to post some art. So here.

So, as I said in my welcome post, I'm a jack of all trades. This doesn't mean I can do everything, but I do a lot of stuff and I'm pretty good at some of it if I do say so myself. Right now I'm the lead in a play, and I'd tell you more about that in hopes that you'd come see it but that would require y'all to be in my area, and I doubt that's the case. Unless I end up sharing this on Facebook, but I've already talked about the play on Facebook. So yeah, no point in talking about it here. But I am a singer/songwriter. So far I only have three songs out on the internet, and I haven't gotten anything professionally recorded, but I hope to soon. My YouTube has a bunch of covers and all of my original songs that I've put out there so far. This month I'm going to post a bunch of covers for Pride, but I won't end the month with an original because, surprisingly enough as a queer trans man, I don't have any songs related to me being qu...

I'm not entirely sure all of what I'm going to be posting, but this is mainly to update on my transition. There may be some random writings as well, and I may promote my shop or my music, but this is basically a side blog for fun. If you want a serious blog, you can go to a group project I started, LGBTake . That's pretty much a news source for LGBT people, with some articles that are more like Buzzfeed than CNN. But then again, who likes CNN more than Buzzfeed? I'm a jack of all trades, but I'd say I'm pretty good at some of the things I can do. I still wouldn't call myself a master, though, because I know so many people that are better. To be fair though, most people who are better than me at art aren't as good at singing, and most who are better than me at singing aren't as good at math. So I'd say I'm pretty lucky to be at my talent level. Maybe it's to make up for my cooking. Like how I have great hearing and 20/15 vision (that'...