Ale:
Why don’t you tell me your name, pronouns, age, and where you’re from?
Jo E:
My name is Joey, I’m 28, and my pronouns are they/them. I’m from Michigan, but currently calling San Antonio home.
Ale:
What made you want to participate in the project?
Jo E:
I wanted to participate in this project because I feel like trans masculine people are kept out of the conversation when we’re discussing reproductive healthcare and reproductive justice. There’s something about this kind of intersectionality that isn’t easily digestible or easily condensed into storylines or soundbites. Trans masc folks still have periods, still need to go to OBGYN, and there are people besides cis women needing reproductive health care. So often, trans health care and reproductive health care get siloed, but it’s important for all people to share their stories in ways that are intentional, nuanced, and where they feel empowered.
Ale:
That’s my goal with the project, to bring trans and cis people together in the fight for bodily autonomy. It’s such a tactic of the far right to create separatism and capitalize on the scarcity mindset that comes with moments of crisis, which is how fascist states are created.
I want to start at the beginning and talk about your experience growing up in a Christian Nationalist cult.
Jo E:
I’m the oldest kid in my family and I have five younger siblings. I was homeschooled from kindergarten through 12th grade and that was a choice my parents made to shelter and protect their kids from the evils of the world. I grew up in a Fundamental Christian Nationalist Cult and was raised to believe that America needed to be a Christian nation, we needed a Christian president, gay people shouldn’t exist, and abortion was bad. Being the oldest and being raised as a girl, there were a lot of expectations of being the third parent. I was raised with extreme gendered ways of being, and it’s sometimes hard to talk about it with specificity because it was the air I was breathing. I’m still continuing to learn new things about myself that I thought were normal growing up, but that are actually just part of Christian patriarchy.
Ale:
How do you feel about that part of your life now? How did you escape?
Jo E:
I’ve been doing a lot of work to become my own person because being an individual was not a thing, in that world you’re part of your family unit. It only started to happen when I was 19, when I moved out and got my first internship at a newspaper. My dad left really suddenly when I was a freshman in college. It was rough because I became parent number two. I got promoted haha. By then, I was discovering my queerness and my transness, so I knew I had to get out. After that, everyone in my family had to figure out life without a patriarchal family structure, without the patriarch. They are still very culturally Christian, but it’s not the same.
Ale:
You obviously had been dealing with gender for a while, but when was your first trans experience of gender?
Jo E:
One of my first clear trans memories was in fourth grade. When Sunday school and programming started to get separated by gender, I was really frustrated. But also being so deep in a biblical Christian version of femininity made me hate it. Now, I think my own inherent femininity is beautiful, and there are aspects that I love, but I also love my masculinity. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I found that I had met my first trans person when I heard my mom talking with another mom in secret. It was a trans femme and they were using her dead name, and I just remember thinking, “Wow, how does someone just transform like that?” But the biggest thing I took from that was how being trans is not something for children’s ears.
Ale:
So basically, your first experience hearing about trans stuff was through the lens of transphobia.
“I’ve been recognizing how modesty and purity culture still impact me now. There are aspects of the trans experience that are very much about other people’s perceptions, and that’s when you could really see how purity culture only aims to control the feminized person.”
Jo E:
Yes, I couldn’t dye my hair because God didn’t make any mistakes, which resonates so much with the line that gets used often when it comes to trans experiences and how I first came to understand my gender. You often hear “I was born in the wrong body”, granted there’s so much more nuance to the trans experience and some people do feel like their body doesn’t quite fit, but there still needs to be room for bodily autonomy and to alchemize your body however you want it to be with whatever you have available.
Ale:
The language of being born in the wrong body and the connection that has to religious beliefs shows the influence that Christian Nationalism has had even on the most private aspects of our lives, it’s so damaging.
Jo E:
That’s how it was for me, and I’m sure some people do have that exact trans experience, but I don’t feel like I was born in the wrong body. There are just some alterations I would like to make, and I should be able to do that without having to have a doctor’s note telling me I could.
Ale:
So many cis people already do get alterations.
Jo E:
I’m sorry, but Elon Musk had gender-affirming surgery, those hair transplants? Haha
Ale:
All the gym bros taking testosterone, gender-affirming health! A lot of the health services that trans people benefit from were not created for us, but there’s still a double standard.
Jo E:
Absolutely, it’s gender policing. There’s so much of my gender that was policed as a young person, things like if I was immodest, I would cause a man to have lustful thoughts, going to cause a man to sin. I’ve been recognizing how modesty and purity culture still impact me now. There are aspects of the trans experience that are very much about other people’s perceptions, and that’s when you could really see how purity culture only aims to control the feminized person.
Ale:
I want to hear more – how has your gender experience been since the days of policing when you were young?
Jo E:
Once I started dying my hair and expressing myself through clothes and being very visibly trans, I was being noticed, but I wasn’t someone people would go home with, I felt like I couldn’t attract anybody. I chased a lot of relationships and people who were not good for me or were not reciprocal. I wasn’t looking for a partner, but I just wanted something consistent, I wanted to be loved. I was looking for love and acceptance. At one point, I had sex with somebody who was not responsible, and who didn’t really take accountability for their actions when the condom broke, and in the middle of moving and finals, I found out I was pregnant.
Ale:
On the topic of pregnancy, you wrote a really cool piece for The 19th* about your reproductive health as gender-affirming care, and you mention your abortion. Would you like to share more?
Jo E:
Yes. When I got my abortion, I felt a lot of shame, and I only told one person, my friend Jamie. I only told her because I was going to stay with her before moving, and now that I’m remembering, I took the last round of abortion pills the day I was driving all my shit to her house. I was really scared that she was gonna be like ‘Well what’d you do to deserve that?’ because I’ve been conditioned to expect that kinda reaction, but she was extremely supportive.
The recovery was really rough, though. I did a freelance assignment for a local newspaper a couple of days after the abortion because I thought I was gonna be fine, but I was not fine. It was a marathon and it was awful because I was bleeding a lot. Soon after, I did my move and started my internship. Thinking back, if I had missed that internship because I was pregnant, it would have absolutely changed the trajectory of my entire life and career. The fall after my abortion, I won a pretty big award for College Photographer of the Year and later on I started my transition.
“Just like with my abortion, I didn’t think it was going to be gender-affirming, but what I realized immediately after is that my body felt less woman and I love it. The more I kept thinking about childbearing as the epitome of femininity, I just couldn’t do it.”
Ale:
How do you feel about your abortion now in connection to your gender?
Jo E:
I absolutely do not regret it. Never in a million years did I think I would have a limited edition Roe v. Wade abortion, but here I am. Now I think about how growing up, the major plot point in the movies I was allowed to watch when it had to do with women was childbirth, and how uncomfortable I felt watching those scenes. What do you mean she was in pain and now everything’s fine? It all made me feel very uncomfortable. Ultimately, I felt very betrayed by my body and I had a hard time trusting it after my abortion, but I think it was because of that feeling of not wanting to be a “woman.”
Ale:
The thought of being pregnant for me—it’s terrifying—but I think it’s because of how much pregnancy and reproduction are inherently tied to femininity.
Jo E:
It’s wielded in such a way that it’s sinister and pervasive, that storyline is so icky, especially for people who can’t get pregnant, but who do want to be pregnant. I talked to somebody who recently had a baby, and she was saying how that made her feel the most woman she’s ever felt, and it scared me how that’s the narrative that is forced on people. I also have a friend who recently got pregnant in Texas in this iteration of America that we’re living under, and I just hoped they were able to find what they needed in time.
Ale:
A bill here in Texas was just introduced last week that aims to prosecute tech companies that facilitate the payment of medication abortion or any organization that helps people leave the state to find an abortion.
Jo E:
The fact that Texas is leading the fight against gender-affirming and reproductive health is having a detrimental effect on not just the amount, but the quality of doctors that are here.
Some doctors are choosing not to come here, not just because of what the laws are like and how that dictates their practice, but also in terms of their own families and what they can have medically. Controlling what people can do with their bodies feels like one of those things they can hold over you, they being men and the state, to maintain supremacy and hierarchy. Being pregnant not only affects a bunch of things in social terms, but also how you make your money, you can’t work after giving birth, and a lot of times, while being pregnant.
Ale:
Not to throw more wood into the fire, but Texas legislators are also trying to go after out-of-state abortion providers. But on the subject of having control over your body, you also got your fallopian tubes removed.
Jo E:
It’s a common protocol to remove the tubes altogether and it actually helps reduce your chances of ovarian cancer. After the Dobbs decision in June 2022, I kept thinking about the experience of being pregnant and how, if I continue to have sex with people who produce sperm, getting pregnant with an IUD, and the complications of that, could be really detrimental. So I started looking at my options, and I didn’t want to deal with the hormonal side effects of having a hysterectomy.
Ale:
What do you think getting the procedure did to your sense of gender?
Jo E:
Just like with my abortion, I didn’t think it was going to be gender-affirming, but what I realized immediately after is that my body felt less woman and I love it. The more I kept thinking about childbearing as the epitome of femininity, I just couldn’t do it. It’s very psychological – I got separated from the class of people who can give birth, and that felt so good. Post-surgery, I started seeing myself as far less feminine and exploring more with my expression and with what I was wearing.
Ale:
It’s funny how liberated you feel from gender, even after procedures other people can’t see.
Jo E:
I started testosterone not long after that and I feel like being treated as an expert in my experience helped me take that step. I thought about it for months and months and at the NLGJA conference, when I saw all these trans masc folks walking around, it gave me ideas of what I could do and it was really exciting because there is so much possibility and magic in being trans. After the election, I wanted to wear brighter colors and I also wanted to be read more masculine. Now, looking in the mirror, I feel like the grip Josie [dead name] had on me is getting looser, there’s just so much potential for things yet to be discovered.
“The way I dress and how I walk out the door need to be authentic to me, but also in a way that feels life-sustaining. That’s something I’ve been grappling with, how much of my transition is for me and how I want to be perceived, and how much is it for other people.”
The way I dress and how I walk out the door need to be authentic to me, but also in a way that feels life-sustaining. That’s something I’ve been grappling with, how much of my transition is for me and how I want to be perceived, and how much is it for other people. For many obvious reasons, the election was really triggering for me.
Ale:
How does it feel to live in Texas in the middle of your transition?
Jo E:
It’s tough. I still get read as a very loud queer woman, and there are aspects of that that come with a lot of privilege but it also sucks, there are aspects of my gender that are tied up in safety. I very rarely share my pronouns with people because I hate being disappointed, but then I really like it when people resonate with my bright-colored hair. I feel like they open up.
Ale:
It sounds like a complicated version of the good old “wanting to be perceived, but also of wanting to be completely invisible.” Do you relate to that?
Jo E:
Yeah. Especially with my job, I feel nervous about how people are going to perceive me and the politics of my identity is very much a push and pull. There’s something really powerful about how much growth and personal evolution I’ve had to get done in Texas because it’s not just about transness or queerness, it’s about creating community with all the people in San Antonio who are different, I found that community is the antidote to a lot of my isolation and struggles.
Ale:
Who do you rely on for care?
Jo E:
My sounding board includes my therapist and partner, Garrett. They are the first ones I voice big thoughts to. I have close friends in town and across the country whom I also share with, but Garrett and my therapist are the go-tos.
