When I first joined the boards, I thought this was a lot further off in the future, but the idea of still hiding months from now is killing me, so I'm taking the final steps to prepare myself for coming out: tell my parents and work.
After I accomplish both of those, I'm making a Facebook post and changing my name across social media, and I also wrote a much longer blog for people who are interested in hearing a more elaborate version of things.
If you have any advice or critique, I'd love to hear 'em. Apologies in advance for the length. I uhh, had some stuff to say.
FACEBOOK POSTDear friends,
I hope everyone here knows me well enough to know that I stand up for people's right to love who they want to love and be who they want to be. I advocate for everyone to be their truest self. Until today, I have been a tremendous hypocrite, as I have not been my truest self.
For a long time, most of my life really, I have known myself to be different. Social conditioning forced me to repress those differences to avoid ridicule and shame, and I tried to ignore things I knew to be true because they were looked down upon.
Since Brandy and I have been together, a few of you have remarked upon how I seem happier, or seem more willing to discuss my feelings, and you couldn't be more right. No one has done more to help me accept myself and feel comfortable in my own skin than she has. For that, I am forever in her debt, and for that, I love her dearly.
Today, I feel more like myself than I ever have, and I feel a calm I previously did not know existed. That level of personal zen comes hand-in-hand with something that I'm finally ready to declare to everyone:
I am trans.
I like to think I have surrounded myself with people for whom this will not negatively impact our relationship, but it's hard to know for certain. If by chance I have miscalculated, and this news bothers or offends you, please just go quietly. This isn't really up for debate, and it's not something I want to argue about.
For everyone else, I want to address the elephant in the room: Yes, this does finally conclude my slow descent into becoming the crazy cat lady I was so clearly destined to become.
On a serious note, I'm not going to pretend this won't be weird for some people, so if you want to talk, I'm available.
TL;DR version:
Hi, I'm Ashley.
If you're curious to know more, I prepared a blog to give people a more thorough understanding of what I've been going through, which you can read here: (link will go here)
BLOG POSTI play Power Rangers with friends on the playground behind my apartment, and make an excuse for the imaginary villain to body swap my character with the Pink Ranger. It suddenly becomes important to me that we keep continuity of story next time we play. I don't understand why. I am 8 years old.
I share a computer with my friend at the school computer lab. We play some stupid educational game with an alien cartoon character mascot. I call the alien cute, and he accuses me of being gay. I don't even know what the word means yet, but the tone of his voice tells me to deny it vehemently. It's the last time I use the word for over a decade. I am 10 years old.
My parents buy me a Ghost Rider t-shirt I really want, despite it being an adult XL and coming down to my knees. I wear it to bed like a nightie. I wear it to school, and a group of boys mockingly question if I'm a boy or girl. I never wear it again. I am 12 years old.
My visual communications class has boxes of wardrobe options for when we shoot our projects. In one of the boxes is a plaid schoolgirl skirt. At the end of class, I pretend I left something in the studio, and I shove it in my backpack. I wear it late at night when I know my family is asleep. Before long, the shame gets the best of me and I stuff it deep in the bottom of my garbage can and throw it out. I am 14 years old.
I fall in love with a pair of leather pants at the mall, and my parents buy them for me at Christmas. I wear them to school. Once. Questions of my sexuality litter the hallways and I can't get home to pull them off fast enough. I am 17 years old.
If you know me, you probably know me as the kind of person who doesn't care what other people think, and dresses/behaves accordingly. Sorry for lying. Truth is, I've spent my life crippled by the judgment of others. Any remote display of femininity throughout my life has been swiftly called out, mocked, and/or shamed until I stopped displaying them entirely, and recoiled if anything feminine were to be suggested to me.
Last fall, I literally locked myself in a bathroom at a party when friends tried to spray glitter on me.
Last summer, my girlfriend playfully came at my toenails with a nail polish brush, and I literally pulled away like an abused puppy.
That is who I had become.
Society had beaten me down to the point that any expression, however innocent, that was not explicitly masculine, was poison to me. It was shame.
At first, I thought I might be gay, but the label never fit. I was attracted to women. For a long time, I resigned to the idea that I must, then, be a pervert. Hiding, wearing women's clothes in the dead of night. The idea that, even if that were the extent of it, there was nothing to be ashamed of, never crossed my mind. I was taught this was to be hidden and repressed by any means necessary.
I did everything I could to be invisible. I didn't show up for yearbook photos in high school. I dressed in ways that wouldn't draw attention. I stayed out of conversations about sex among my friends to the point that I gave off an asexual vibe. Ever since I've had a computer of my own, any time I looked up porn, or anything related to sex in the slightest, I would do it in a browser separate from my main one, that was not included in my program shortcuts, so any third party using my computer would never stumble across my search history. I did not want to be thought of as a sexual being, because my sexuality had been deemed unacceptable.
No matter how hard I denied it, or how far I pushed it down, the urges and feelings always surfaced again before too long. "Am I trans?" became a question only Google and I would entertain, late at night when I felt the most confused and vulnerable. Inevitably, I would find something, anything, to substantiate an answer in the negative. 10 things point to yes, 1 to no? Well, I guess that's proof that I'm safe! At the time, of course, I either didn't realize, or denied that simply asking the question was pretty much an answer in of itself. It never occurred to me that my friends weren't wondering the same thing. I had never been sure, so maybe no one was. Right?
Last year, I slowly began exposing myself to trans activists, authors, artists, etc. on Twitter. The longer I followed them, the more I began to feel fingers pointed at me.
This innocent tweet thread from a great trans comic artist felt like an accusation. It may as well have been a DM. It was around this time that the feelings started taking real shape, and stopped being willing to be silenced. They would come back more frequently, and more fully formed every time, until it finally hit me like a truck.
I was driving home from visiting my parents in November when suddenly the thought, for the first time ever as a clear statement, entered my head, took hold, and never let go:
You are trans.
Prior to this moment, it had never been so plain in my mind. The thought had always taken the form of a question, or some unnamed nebulous shame.
I spent the hour long drive home on the verge of a panic attack. What triggered this? Where did it come from? What do I do now? I've admitted it. It happened. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. I was terrified at the cacophony of implications this would have on my life. Scared to death of the reactions of my friends and loved ones, despite all evidence suggesting it would be fine. Petrified of the effect this would have on my career in film; an industry not known for being super inclusive to cis women, nevermind trans ones.
I slowly, over the course of six weeks, calmed myself down, accepted who I was, and sought support from online communities while I built up the courage to tell my partner and closest friends. As it turns out, any fears I had about coming out to those who matter to me most were hilariously overstated, and everyone has been incredibly kind and supportive; a privilege I wish everyone in the LGBTQ community could share.
My girlfriend has somehow managed to bear the weight of this massive change with incredible grace. Whether it has been a word of encouragement before I sit down to out myself to a loved one or a second opinion on how my makeup skills are coming along, she has been my rock in a situation full of uncertainty.
Initially, I thought this post would wait a lot longer than it ended up being. I had this hilariously naïve idea that I would be able to last months without coming out to anyone. I had this grand plan where I wouldn't tell anyone until after the holidays were done and over with, and then I would plan to maybe, hopefully, be out by my birthday in late April, after having been on HRT for a few months, and developing a new voice via speech therapy.
That plan, adorable as it was, went out the window when my girlfriend and I went out, with me as my true self, for the first time ever, to go on a shopping trip. What began as a nerve wracking proposition became one of the most liberating experiences of my life. I can't recall a time I felt more comfortable with myself. After that, I spent pretty much every remaining day of my Christmas time off without the aid of my Boy Disguise™, and loved every second of it. I didn't want to go back to the old me. A little buffer time to come out to my close friends individually later, and now we're here and I can finally share myself with everyone; the daughter my mother always wanted and never knew she had. I have truly never felt more empowered, more confident, or more me. With that said, I leave you with this:
My name is Ashley Cooper, I'm a queer trans woman, and you can go <not allowed> yourself if you don't like it. I spent 31 years ashamed of who I am, and that ends today. I'm done hiding, I'm done denying, and I'm done giving a care what you think. 2017 can bring it.
*No Profanity Please*
