Ale:
Do you mind telling me your name, your pronouns? How old are you, and where are you from?
Kayne:
My name is Kayne, I’m 36, and I was born in Virginia, and my pronouns are they and he.
Ale:
I want to start by asking why you wanted to participate in the project.
Kayne:
I’m really into projects that incorporate art and story, and it looked like a really cool project. I think I applied right after the election happened, so it felt timely.
Ale:
Yeah, we started the call-out right after the election.
Kayne:
It’s really important to just be authentic and get trans stories out there in the world because we’re actively being erased by this government right now, so there is that part.
Ale:
I would love to try and draw a parallel between your reproductive journey and your gender journey. I don’t know which one started first, maybe it all started at the same time, maybe there’s no difference, but if you want to start off by telling me when was the first time that you experienced either of these?
Kayne:
It’s kind of fuzzy because I don’t know what would be the first.
Ale:
I know, it’s purposely a very broad, open-ended question, up to your interpretation haha.
Kayne:
I was one of those kids who grew up in a pretty binary town, a very cis and heteronormative white, small, rural America town, and I never quite fit in from the get go. We would go to church on Sundays, and my mom would ask me to put on a dress, and I would fight her tooth and nail. I felt like I was being forced to do something that didn’t feel authentic to me, but I didn’t have much language for it at the time. Eventually, in middle school, I kind of buckled to what was expected of me, and I started to try to be more feminine, but I never felt at home in my body.
Then in elementary school, I would play with the weirdos, or I would always be playing football with the boys. From very early on, I didn’t quite fit into whatever gender was expected of me, so I was labeled a tomboy. I think there’s a misogyny inherent in the way that we gender children because to be a tomboy is cool and that’s an okay label, but to be a sissy is such a big shame. So I feel a little bit lucky that my choice wasn’t derided, that I was accepted as a tomboy, and it was just who I was, but there’s misogyny that underlies that, right? Because you don’t want to be like a girl, but being a boy is cool.
Ale:
In this society, the closer you are to masculinity, the more accepted you are.
Kayne:
Exactly. I remember this trans masc person, I don’t know how they identified, but a masculine presenting AFAB [assigned female at birth] person came to campus when I was in college and did a slam poetry thing, and I was just so drawn to them.
Ale:
Was that your first time meeting a trans person?
Kayne:
I don’t know that they were trans, but they were definitely butch. I guess that’s the term that I was using back then, but I was like a magnet. Anyone who’s a performer, there’s such a strong magnetism. I love watching people on stage, but that was the first person I was drawn to like that, and it didn’t click for me that it had something to do with myself. Then we moved to New York City after grad school, and all of a sudden, I was passing people on the street who were masculine presenting, and who didn’t fit into the boxes that I was given as a kid.
Every time I would pass someone in the street, it would take my breath away, and I was interpreting it as attraction, but then I started to grapple with the idea that maybe I’m queer. It took me a while to even admit that to myself through therapy, but then I came out to B. [partner], and it was this whole thing.
Ale:
How did B. take it?
Kayne:
It was interesting because I kind of ambushed him, and this is kind of when it ties into reproductive health because he wanted to have kids, but I didn’t know who I was. I just wanted to spend my 20s exploring and adventuring, and I had this huge aversion to having kids, so I went to therapy supposedly under the guise of asking why I have this aversion to having kids. What came out of it was that I’m queer, and I haven’t explored that part of myself yet.
When I came out to B., I wanted to be super sure, so I’d had months to think on things, but then just dumped it all on him. I brought up all of the stuff that we could do together. I told him we could have an open relationship, and we could be poly, and we could live on a farm in upstate, and have different partners, and he was just like, whoa. We both grew up very conservative, and he was still kind of in that mindset, not conservative, but heteronormative. Then we went to couples therapy because we—I—wanted to do it right, and if we were going to open up our relationship, I wanted his buy-in.
Ale:
So he didn’t take it that well, but you guys are still together, so obviously you figured it out. How was it coming out as trans?
Kayne:
It’s funny because you know how I said I kind of dumped the whole “I’m queer” onto B., and it really shook our relationship? It took us a while to get back from that, but he’s been so supportive over the years, so when I started to question my gender, I decided from the very beginning that even if I don’t know where this is going, I want to let him in on the process. I don’t want to just figure it out and then dump it again, because what if this time it does ruin something?
“The experience of giving birth is so intense and life-altering, to take this extreme pain and turn it into something as miraculous as a tiny human coming into existence, that takes so much determination, grit, strength, and endurance and I’ve never felt so powerful, which I guess for better or worse is associated with masculinity”
At the time that I was starting to change my presentation, I was working at the LGBTQ Center in Manhattan, and for one of the events, I wanted to buy a suit, I did, and I felt so giddy about it. I saw myself in the mirror and felt like it was right. I was talking with the woman whom I had fallen in love with, and she was like, “Why do you think this is so important to you?,” trying to get me to think about approaching it with curiosity. The first time I thought about it consciously, this thing happened when I was going into the women’s bathroom, and there was this woman behind me yelling at me that I was in the wrong restroom. It was my turn to go into the stall, and I felt attacked, so I said I’m a woman, and ran into the stall and sat down, and had a panic attack. I thought that was not true, I’m not a woman, but that’s what she wants to believe to make herself feel better.
Ale:
The number of times that I’ve heard people’s first experience of transness has been through the lens of transphobia is so disappointing. How did it go after that experience?
Kayne:
I was on a trip to Jamaica with B., and we did a couples resort, and it was cool, but it was also very binary. All the women were called “my lady,” and all the men were called “sir,” and the waiters would come up behind me and would say “sir,” and then when I would talk, they would apologize and say “excuse me, my lady.” It was a weird experience. But one night, we were getting ready for dinner, and I was putting on my button up, and I told B. that I was feeling more gender fluid and that sometimes I feel like I’m a gay man with him, and he was just so kind and wrapped me in a hug and say “let’s go to a gay bar together.”
Ale:
It sounds like B. was your main support person for this. Were there any other people at all in your community whom you were talking to at the time?
Kayne:
One of our trail family members is nonbinary, and I have a best friend from college, but they don’t live up here, nor does my trail family. There aren’t a lot of people in [the area] that I’ve found are trans or nonbinary, but I’m slowly starting to find friends and building community up here, and I just go out with B. as a gay man sometimes.
Ale:
In the midst of all of this happening, how did having kids with B. come about?
Kayne:
I knew I was nonbinary by the time I was pregnant with A., and we had to do fertility treatments. I went to my primary care doctor, and they ran some tests, and they told me that my androgen levels were too high and that I might have PCOS, which is interesting because some people say that PCOS is one of the conditions that could be diagnosed if the person is labeled under the umbrella of intersex, just because of the hormone. One of the questions for PCOS is, “Do you have unwanted facial hair?” and I have this little mustache, but the way they framed it is so assumptive, like what makes them think I don’t want it? It doesn’t bother me, and the framing of it is assuming that if you are female-bodied that you don’t want facial hair.
Ale:
So when you were pregnant with A., you were also thinking more critically about your gender. Did you ever think about how one thing might complement or affect the other, being pregnant and transitioning? Do you remember what was happening internally at the time?
Kayne:
I was so excited to finally be pregnant, because it had felt like it had taken forever. I wasn’t thinking much about gender, other than when people would say “pregnant women” this and “pregnant women” that. Not all pregnant people are women, but it was what it was, I never really corrected anyone and just kind of mentally chafed when someone said it.
I felt like I needed to have long hair because there’s an expectation of femininity when you’re pregnant, but right around the time I got pregnant with C. [A. and C. are 19 months apart] I cut my hair off again, and I was doing these workouts and I felt really strong and masculine. I was ripped and I didn’t care that my hair was short while I was pregnant with her, I just didn’t think about it in that way. But again, it was the whole “pregnant woman,” this “pregnant woman” that that was bothering me the most.
Ale:
Did you experience any dysphoria or euphoria while you were pregnant?
“I’m really interested in weaving together trying to conceive, coming out, and grief. In birth, in labor, there’s a time called transition. Right before the baby’s born, you move into transition, and it means they’re about to be born, and it’s the most painful part of labor. Then there’s also a transition in death where, if you know anybody in hospice care, they’ll say “oh, this person’s moving into the transition phase of death,” and then obviously, gender transition”
Kayne:
I didn’t. I’m glad to have been born into a body that can create life. The experience of giving birth is so intense and life-altering, to take this extreme pain and turn it into something as miraculous as a tiny human coming into existence, that takes so much determination, grit, strength, and endurance and I’ve never felt so powerful, which I guess for better or worse is associated with masculinity.
But there was also a sense that my self-expression was on pause while pregnant, since I was clearly read as female by anyone who saw my belly, and I couldn’t bind because it was already hard enough to breathe with a baby crowding my organs. I always knew it was temporary, and I loved that I could be more masculine in appearance or with my hair while embodying what is typically a feminine experience. I liked messing with the binary in that way. It fed into how my transness is most alive while I’m confusing people’s assumptions and fucking with them.
Ale:
You also had a miscarriage, want to tell me more?
Kayne:
We got pregnant on the first try for our third kid, but it always felt like something was wrong. When I found out I was pregnant, I was spotting, and I had this anxious dread, nothing felt right. I was crampy and gassy and spotting, and I would call the midwife, and they said it was normal. At seven weeks, I went in and there wasn’t a baby. I was pregnant and having all the symptoms and tired and nauseous and food aversions, but it was just an anembryonic sack. It was a missed miscarriage, but also an anembryonic pregnancy is the term for it. I was really devastated. That was the winter after Roe v. Wade was overturned, but because we were in Connecticut, I still had access to abortion care.
They prescribed me a pill. The next day I came home, cried, watched all these documentaries about miscarriage, and then the next night, I took the pill, and sat on my couch with my cat. My cat was lying on my stomach like a little heating pad, like if she could tell something was up. I was expecting it to feel like a heavy period, but it was closer to labor. It was very painful, and it was like this very long, intense contraction that never let up.
Finally, I felt something release, and I went to the bathroom, and the embryonic sack came out. I held it and looked at it and told it I loved it and said goodbye, and flushed it down the toilet.
Ale:
How were you feeling afterwards?
Kayne:
The rest of that year, in the winter, I was working through the grief and just wanting to try to get pregnant as soon as possible. That whole year, I was really taken up with two things: the anxiety of trying to conceive, and the grief. We would try when I was supposedly ovulating, but because I have PCOS, it’s really hard to tell when I’m ovulating. We would have sex for days on end, and hope that it was during the ovulation window. I was being very hyper vigilant, monitoring everything about my body for weeks, and it was really stressful.
Ale:
Did you have space to enjoy or experience your gender during that time at all?
Kayne:
Around that time, I was sitting on my computer in the living room looking up trans tape, and B. came in and he was like, “what are you doing?” And my instinct was to shut the computer and be like “nothing,” but no, I needed to let him in on this journey, it’s not a big deal. I told him I’m looking up trans tape and then I ordered it for Pride that year. When I first put it on, it was on a random Wednesday night, and I went to the store to shop for clothes, and I had a moment of euphoria in the car, feeling the air conditioner through one layer of fabric on my chest. I have been binding for so long, and I was just so used to having layers and feeling sweaty, but this was different.
Ale:
It is safe to say that it was amid the births and the miscarriage that you came to term with your transness?
Kayne:
Yes. I wrote this essay about the word transition. I’m really interested in weaving together trying to conceive, coming out, and grief. In birth, in labor, there’s a time called transition. Right before the baby’s born, you move into transition, and it means they’re about to be born, and it’s the most painful part of labor. Then there’s also a transition in death where, if you know anybody in hospice care, they’ll say “oh, this person’s moving into the transition phase of death,” and then obviously, gender transition, so weaving those three transitions.
Ale:
When you finally got pregnant for the third time, how did that process go?
Kayne:
When I started the diagnostics process, I went into it asking for them to just give me Clomid, the ovulating drug that helps you release an egg. I know it works because it was what helped me get pregnant with A., but they made me go through all these diagnostics, which was different than the fertility clinic in the city. It was a cookie-cutter process, and I didn’t feel listened to. I got she/her all the time, and I never corrected anybody because I just didn’t want to be a bother or whatever, so I was being misgendered all the time. People were using “your husband,” which I don’t prefer. I always say my partner, and people don’t pick up on it, and it’s annoying.
Ale:
So the whole experience wasn’t great?
Kayne:
It was bad. I had a hysteroscopy, and they cleaned up my uterine lining, and then they wanted me to go on birth control to regulate my period afterwards, and it was horrible. The hormones, the estrogen, whatever was in those birth control pills made me crazy, I felt awful. I felt so emotional, crying at the drop of a pin all the time. I felt really crazy and cranky and miserable and inadequate. I called and told them this is really messing with my psyche and they were like “just finish the cycle,” and I was like, can I just not? I made the decision to go off of it five days early and I didn’t tell them.
“Immediately postpartum, I didn’t feel as tied to my transness. It felt very far from me and probably because of the hormones and the medications, and breastfeeding. I felt very female-bodied at the time, and nothing felt super important identity-wise, and it still doesn’t.“
We got pregnant with my third baby exactly a year after the miscarriage. The miscarriage baby would have been born in September 2023 and she was born in September 2024 which turned out to be really good, because I got to work through a lot of gender stuff and identity stuff and my older two kids got to grow up a little more mature, and they’ve been great helpers.
Ale:
How did it go when you finally got to work through a lot of the gender stuff?
Kayne:
I changed my name, I told some close friends, and then in November, I went to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving, and I was gonna tell everybody. I was prepared to be like “hey I’m trans, nonbinary, I use they/he pronouns and this is my new name,” but it was so hard, I was so stressed out and anxious about it, and my dad did not take it well. He asked me, “If you’re not a woman, how did you have babies; how do you have babies if you’re a man?” It was awful, left me disassociating for a long time.
Ale:
Was being pregnant with your third baby easier or harder on your gender journey than the first two times?
Kayne:
When I got pregnant with my third, I wanted to really square away the gender stuff and kind of put a cap on that before announcing that I was pregnant. I wanted people to know I’m trans, nonbinary, before I’m like a pregnant person. One of the things that happened after I came out to my family is that some friends came over, and one of my neighbors asked, “Are you planning to transition?” But in my brain, that’s what I was doing. I had just changed my name, my pronouns, and if you look at me, do I not look like I’m fucking with gender? She meant it as if I plan to medically transition, with hormones and top surgery and stuff. At the time, I wanted to just have a third baby, and even though I know the gender journey is ongoing, I just wanted to put a cap on it.
Ale:
To wrap it up, how do you feel about all of it now? You had your third baby only seven months ago!
Kayne:
I still feel like I’m coming up for air, figuring things out. Immediately postpartum, I didn’t feel as tied to my transness. It felt very far from me and probably because of the hormones and the medications, and breastfeeding. I felt very female-bodied at the time, and nothing felt super important identity-wise, and it still doesn’t. I’m very acutely focused on my baby and her well-being, and my identity is definitely on the back burner, but I can tell it’s going to be important to me again at some point. But there are moments when I still don’t feel like myself. She’s seven months, but it takes a very long time to claim yourself as yourself because babies take so much from you. She’s up all night, and I’m exhausted, and she’s hungry, and I’m feeding her, and my body isn’t mine right now. I’m still interested in hearing other people’s experiences, but not necessarily embodying my own at the moment. Nursing her, my breasts are bigger than usual, and I can’t use the trans tape because of the milk. But I think there would be a time when I’m able to present more masculine, even though I still wear a lot of masculine clothes, and I’ve been thinking a lot about testosterone once I’m done with whatever hormones are flooding through my body right now.
[Kayne shared they had postpartum depression and were hospitalized after they gave birth to their third baby]
Ale:
Have you been able to find some community care through all of it?
Kayne:
I’m in this text thread with a bunch of transmasculine folks, and we had a dinner party last week. I took my baby with me, and I felt a little bit out of place because I was the only one with a baby, and she was requiring me to go in and out of the conversation, and I felt kinda bad at the end. But I did meet somebody who’s nonbinary and is taking testosterone at a lower level, and I never considered that as a possibility, because in my brain, if you go on T, you’re committed, but that sounded interesting to me. I don’t necessarily want to lose hair or have male baldness haha. But we’ll see. One day at a time. I don’t have to decide on anything until it feels right.
