me: wasn’t allowed to be upset as a child and realize that being upset is ok and not bad and won’t end everything

me at 13: gets distressed when actually upset and shuts down as a human being, closes off and doesn’t express anything unless entirely alone

me now after years of therapy: tries to express distress and being upset in hopes of learning that being upset is not bad

my father who coincidentally never let me be upset as a child: you are taking it too personally. simply, do not let things viscerally upset you. you will be fine. there is no judgement here if you want to let it ruin you but you shouldn’t let it ruin you because it will never change and that is that.

I feel like iruma has accidentally called certain teachers/demons mom/dad, like kalego, baal, and both of his friend's mom's

Ok im not sure whether you mean like that's something he'd totally do or that's something that has already canonically happened (which im pretty sure id know of if he canonically called someone mom or dad i would die)

But anyway this is something i can see happen cause iruma is literally collecting patental figures like they're pokemons, and he'd be so fucking flustered and embarrassed he wont be able to look anyone in the eye for a month. But! Who would he call his mom/dad first?

Now listen, im just gonna skim over opera cause they're nonbinary and accidentally slipping would mean to misgender? them and i dont want that. Or maybe opera doesn't care but im not taking any chances, but feel free to tell me any hc you have for our resident cat! Or anyone really i love reading headcanons

So, after recent events, and against every bet the babyl staff may or may not have had, i think he'd first slip up in front of amaryllis, azz's mom. Why? Other than the fact that she would be merciless when teasing him and i enjoy iruma's suffering, just look at what happened in chapter 297 and literally every other interaction between them, giving him advice and dressing him up and being overall affectionate with him like he's her own son. She's every bit the mother his egg donor could never dream of being! And the teasing would be out of this world. No one else will tease him like this queen

Now, the one who's got the most bets placed on (There's no way they dont have a bet on this ok?) Our dear grumpy birb, to the delight of dali and mortification of iruma, kalego! This is very much self explanatory, but what would be his reaction? He'd freeze up because Nope nope nope he's not ready to be a father he's not ready to be IRUMA’S father nopenopenope and then he'd go. Doesn't matter whether it's the middle of the class or he's walking off a cliff he is removing himself from this before opera somehow finds out. He is not going to be a part of this family he is not dealing with this he is Not Blushing fuck of Shichirou! (Everyone somehow finds out and my lord does kalego get teased. Iruma just wants to skip school until he forgets this ever happens (he never will) but his grades aren't that great so he can't TvT)

I want him to call balam dad. No, i want the whole class to call balam dad. The guy needs to be loved. He deserves all the happiness in the world. And yes, it'd be kinda embarrassing, but! The kids are teasing him! This means that they're comfortable around him!! Seriously i love balam so much he very much does not deserve being feared as much as he is

Now, for the ultimate embarrassment, the one who'll laugh their ass off and will not hold back in teasing the poor boy, the one who iruma cant hide from, Arikled. Ali-san is total dad energy, no one can convince me otherwise. And iruma will literally want to die cause he's Arikled. Why did he have to call Arikled out of literally everybody else dad

So I promised y’all a high school kinnie storytime. Suffer/enjoy.

First off, for some context, I was generally a dick in high school. Nobody has to be a social butterfly, and if you’re more focused on your education than having lots of friends at that age, hey, good on you. I’m not dragging that. I’m saying that I was -- again -- a pretentious little piece of shit. 

Now, being a pretentious little piece of shit, I sought people who didn’t follow the usual crowds and didn’t agree with the most common points of view in my school. These people were, in my mind, smarter. Better. More worth my time.  

However, being rather bored and lonely and wanting at least one friend, I kind of shrugged off some red flags that showed up among the people who did meet my stupid fucking high standards. I didn’t ignore these red flags, but shrugged and went, “Well, if I don’t hang out with them, I won’t be hanging out with anyone.” 

So, here are the key players in this magical tale of bullshit. 

If, by some fucking miracle, either of them manage to find this (because they are most definitely on tumblr), I don’t want some shitsplosion out of my laptop screen -- so, fake names.  

Marc, who claimed to be an aroace trans boy. (I say “claimed” because... you’ll see.) 

Z, who was apparently nonbinary, also I can’t remember anything about their name other than that it had a Z in it. 

Alright... So I decided to start a writing club. Marc, Z, and some others showed up because I’d been polite to them in classes and such. We also shared some interests. Mainly Steven Universe and Tumblr. (The others aren’t really important, so I won’t mention them beyond that.) 

In the first meeting, we shared our names, pronouns, hobbies, and years of writing experience. Marc and Z didn’t come up with any hobbies aside from “Internet”, “anime”, and the dreaded “social activism”. At this point, the logical bit of my brain was like, yikes. 

But it gets way, way worse. We also shared our Tumblr urls (my high school Tumblr is still out there, btw). I will now list some of the shit that I encountered on their blogs. 

“Soft confused transboy, they/them or he/him” on Marc’s about 

Undertale Sans in front of green/yellow/black flag as Marc’s icon 

Some edgy, fake-deep line in Z’s about (I don’t remember what) 

“They/them, xe/xem” in Z’s about 

A whole fuck ton of SU Peridot posts from Z 

Posts on both blogs @’ing each other, tagged with “qpp”, “pda”, and related shit

“lol Big Gay!” and “ewww straights!” jokes all over both blogs 

Yeah. Yikes. But still, I was pretty desperate for something to do. 

So I kept talking to them. I thought Marc was alright, so tried to find out more about him. Eventually we got round to talking about crushes, orientations, etc. I asked Marc what qpp meant. 

He gave me some long winded explanation that didn’t actually explain much. What I understood from it was that a qpp is a friend who you love, but aren’t in love with. (Which is... just a best friend.) 

Z gave a similar explanation. And I thought... alright. I guess that’s that. Weird, but eh. 

Until one day, a ‘tag something about your crush/s.o.’ post appeared on my dash from Marc tagged “I kissed my qpp today!! I’m so happy!!!” And I was... confused. Didn’t Marc, as an aromantic person, not fall in love? Didn’t kissing someone and getting those warm fuzzy feelings mean you were in love with them?  

I decided to do some digging. An initial scroll through Z’s blog revealed surprisingly little of interest... but then I found, buried somewhere in their links, a “me” button. So I clicked it. Selfies. I was about to click off before I reached the very bottom and, being in public, had to do a double take to ensure no one was behind me. A bikini selfie, yay! And Z was 16. Butt out, tits out, all of it. Tagged with, you guessed it, “body positivity”.  

Now... I’m not insulting overweight people (Z was a little overweight) for liking themselves, feeling confident, etc. I’m not even insulting them in particular wearing bikinis, even if I don’t like bikinis in general. I’m saying that at 16, Z should not have been posting sexy selfies under the guise of a movement that claims to be built on self acceptance and confidence. 

So, I pulled away from Z some. 

That left me more time to talk with Marc. I didn’t say a word about his relationship (bc that’s what it was) with Z. Looking back, I find it odd that throughout our entire friendship, Marc didn’t mention dysphoria. Of course nobody has to tell all their friends all about their dysphoria. There was just no “Ugh, I got misgendered earlier” or anything about “pre-transition, I...”  But anyway. 

I started looking through Marc’s blog again. There were a hell of a lot of Sans posts and it didn’t click with me back then that Marc may have been a fictionkin. I don’t recall if he tagged the Sans posts with anything kinnie-ish, but holy fuck, there were a lot. It was weird. 

Also weird was that as the year went on, Marc stopped showing up to writing club as often. I asked him what was up, and said that if he didn’t want to be in the club anymore, he should just let me know - because that’d be okay. But no, he made some excuse and walked away from the conversation. 

The next day, I got a text from Marc saying (not verbatim, but still): “Hey, my anxiety has been really bad lately, and my doctors are saying not to participate in social clubs like this. I’m too tired. Really sorry!” 

 I said it was fine and didn’t think much of it. He and Z still spent a lot of time together in the halls and such; I didn’t put a ton of thought into that, either. 

Sometime the next week, a writer friend of mine (who was also in the club, and not annoying or shitty or anything), invited me to a GSA meeting. I was bored and decided to try it out. 

When I walked in, guess who the fuck I saw? 

Marc and Z.  

He could not even meet my eyes. I’ve never seen a person look that fucking guilty. My writer friend could tell something was up, smartly wanted no part of it, and excused herself. 

Marc had been attending GSA meetings the entire damn time, while claiming that he was following doctor’s orders by leaving writing club. 

Fucker. 

That’s the last I saw of Marc and Z.  

And all the things that add up to suspiciously kinnie-like behavior... 

Z’s neopronouns 

Marc’s weird mogai-ish version of aromanticism 

Marc’s Sans icon and Sans posts

Z’s fuck ton of Peridot posts 

Both Z and Marc encouraging each other’s behavior 

Marc’s lying and fake anxiety claims 

“soft transboi” 

So... that’s that. 

I’ve got more cringe-inducing stories, too. I can tell y’all about: 

A girl in bio class who was a complete ballsack

she was obnoxiously, overly sweet 

she used her mental disabilities as an excuse to act ignorant 

she thought being gay was a choice 

she clearly had no respect for transgender people (with legitimate gender dysphoria) 

was a complete pain in the ass to my favorite teacher 

I did something passive aggressive to her because I was done with her shit 

Two girls in anime club who were also huge ballsacks 

appeared to hate each other 

one was very small, quiet, and a loner 

other was loud, edgy, and unironically said “we’re here and we’re queer!” 

quiet one 100% lead me on  

loud one was a fucking dick to me

there’s a plot twist 

bonus: loud dickish one tried to be my friend and I was not falling for it

-K 

Y’all it’s so wild how discussions of transphobia are constantly centered around trans women, and anything that actually focuses on trans men (when it isn’t demonizing and silencing them) is just stuff like “you’re allowed to be feminine uwu” or “your pronouns are valid!” or “your body is beautiful no matter what it looks like”.

When people only focus on the violent transphobia that trans women face, when discussions of transphobia forcefully exclude trans men despite the topic in question effecting both trans women AND trans men, it’s no wonder people are going to think it’s at all acceptable to talk about how trans women have it worse and trans men have “masc privilege” and whatnot.

Not to mention, any violence trans men face pre-transition is written off as “misdirected misogyny” and treated as unimportant or a “whoopsie”, and no one bothers to look into it or take it into account. In fact, the violence and mistreatment trans men face pre-transition is treated as even more evidence that trans women have it worse, because if that mistreatment is viewed as “misdirected oppression towards anyone who identifies as a woman”, that includes trans women and excludes trans men.

Not even taking into account all the “misdirected misogyny” I faced, let��s go over the specific transphobia I’ve been through, despite only being out as a trans guy for four years, rarely leaving my house except to go to a very liberal and accepting arts school the first two years, rarely leaving my house at all the last two years, and having a very nice and accepting family. 

For the sake of brevity and simplicity (due to the fact that before I came out, most of what I’ve been through would be labeled “misidrected misogyny” or would be nearly indistinguishable from ways GNC girls are treated), I’ll stick to things that have happened since coming out.

(quick clarification before I start: I was at a public school for a short time in this time period, but most of my time was at the arts school)

Someone who was my friend since 6th grade (who ngl, was a pretty shitty friend considering she was constantly hitting me and calling me worthless and embarrassing and annoying etc.) started screaming at me in front of the whole school. Yelling at me for wanting a sex change, and for liking girls.

Not too long after this, I got messages from an ex boyfriend of mine, threatening violence on me if I went through with a sex change.

People at my school would regularly come up to me and start harassing me about me “wanting to be a boy” (they would also consistently harass me for liking girls, but that’s a matter for another post).

One of my closest friend’s exes started talking to me for the first time after finding out I was a trans guy, sending me a lot of sexual messages and being suddenly interested in dating me.

When I went to a behavioral health hospital because of suicidal ideations, the moment a boy there discovered I was a trans guy, he would constantly touch me and run his hand up my thigh before I had time / ability to pull away etc.

Whenever I’d tell a man that I’m a boy, the typical reaction would be to give a long hard stare at my breasts.

When I was 15, after finding out I was a trans guy, an adult started sending me intimate details about their sex life.

Once a week, a group of pro-lifers would be protesting outside my school. Whenever I walked by, they’d harass and misgender me (as well as other friends of mine who were trans men).

An ex boyfriend of mine (a different one than the one I mentioned before) messaged me asking all these intrusive questions about my genitals, sexualizing me and saying how he’d still love to go out with me if I had a vagina, etc.

While I already had more than enough instances of people making invasive and inappropriate questions about my genitals and sex life, one that really stands in my mind is when someone did that to me at church. This someone was an young adult, and also the boyfriend of a woman I’d had a crush on for as long as I could remember. In front of her, my ex, and I believe some other people, he asked very graphic and embarrassing details about my genitals and I was so shocked and embarrassed I could do nothing but answer to the best of my ability.

There were plenty of instances of transphobia I faced from staff members in hospitals, and I won’t mention every single one, but a general synopsis is staff members stopping everything to rudely point out that I’m “not actually a boy”. It was to the point where I was self-harming inside of the behavior health hospitals, a place I’d gone to for help with my suicidal tendencies. They treated another trans guy I saw there like that, too.

I briefly had a teacher who was known for targeting the trans men in her class and misgendering them and being very rude to them. Unsurprisingly, she was rude to me and didn’t actually teach me anything, ignoring me and focusing on the other students in her class.

During another hospital stay, the psychiatrist assigned to me would blame all of my mental health problems on my HRT. All he knew was that I took HRT. He silenced me and spoke over me when I tried to explain to him what was actually going on and how I knew that that wasn’t the case. At one point he yelled at me, which can be pretty damn scary in a small room alone with an older cis man who has complete power over you.

When I went to visit relatives, I got stopped at airport security because my body was “suspicious” because I’d said I was a man but I “clearly wasn’t”. I got publicly groped as they “checked things out”.

I got called the f slur on multiple occasions. 

A friend’s trans girlfriend groped me because she was “curious about how it felt”, then lied about it and victim-blamed me and intimidated me (and her girlfriend) about it later.

I was taking a walk at the local park, and this guy approached me. We chatted for a bit, then he said he knew what my sex really was. Thankfully he left and didn’t do anything to me, but I was terrified.

In this specific example, I don’t know if it was transphobia or “misdirected misogyny”, but I know that I was passing a fair amount of the time by then, and most of the time when I wasn’t people still made it obvious that they knew I was trans. Anyways, while I was at the park, an adult man preyed on and molested me, and I was very nearly trafficked.

A separate time, I decided to take a walk around the park at night. An older man approached me and told me about how he could tell I was trans, and what a great prostitute I would make, and how he’d be totally down for having sex with me etc.

Last park story I swear, and this is at a different park, but while I was swinging, a guy approached me. He started talking about trans people getting violently raped, and about the time he beat up the woman who yelled at him to pay child support, and about the fact that he knew I was trans, and then he started hitting on me.

Dear God okay I won’t get too deep into this, but long story short I had a partner who would make fun of my body and all the changes HRT was making, made me feel like shit about it. Sexualized me, raped me. Coerced me into shaving my legs and putting on makeup. Etc. It wasn’t a fun time.

This is all just off the top of my head, and it’s not even getting into all the ways I’ve been treated within the trans community, or all the inherent pain and loneliness and dysphoria that comes with being trans.

Hi I’m the anon who ranted about cis people. I’m still angry hope you don’t mind rant round 2. Haha thanks for calling all my peers assholes you’re right they mostly are. It’s weird because I’ve noticed a lot more casual transphobia in college/uni than I did in middle school or high school. My theory is it’s because these idiots think they’re so smart spouting pseudo-intellectual bullshit. I just keep getting blindsided in a perfectly pleasant conversation with some cis people when 1/?

Totally forgot where I left off on part one whoops. Anyway the conversation always seems to work it’s way around to gender and someone will say “oh I don’t understand all these genders people come up with” or “people will say they’re anything nowadays” cue condescending laughter at these ‘silly people making up new genders hahaha’ or like “well it’s either boy or girl there’s no in between” and these people are going to be teachers and for fucks sake we’ve all met trans kids in the field 2/?

And like honestly I’ve read about non binary teachers getting their pronouns respected and being aloud to be out and having support from their school district and it gives me hope and then I hear this bullshit in classes from my damn peers, future god damn teachers and I think “well great I’m going to spend the rest of my life stuck in the closet door only being out to a select group of people. Fuck. Guess I better get used to constant never ending misgendering” anyway sorry I’m just mad. 3/3

Hiya anon! Heck yeah, rant all you want, your peers really do sound like the Worst, you have every right to be mad. While I have no doubts there are awful people in the world, surely not every single one of your peers are horrible? Maybe? Are there one or two decent people there you can band together with? I’m trying to get my head around how that many transphobes could possibly be in the same class. I like to think that when confronted by a trans/nonbinary kid, they would have the decency to be respectful, and that they’re acting up in front of their peers to seem ‘cool’ or something, even though their behaviour is disgusting. I don’t know. You really won the lottery when it came to sh*tty classmates anon.

If its any consolation, there was a genderfluid teacher who used neutral pronouns at my old school, and people respected their pronouns and got along with them well. In fact, loads of the teachers at my old school were very pro LGBTQ+ acceptance, some of them even had posters and stuff in their classrooms. The world isn’t all bad, sometimes the bad people are just more noticeable than the good. And as a whole, I’d say the world is becoming more accepting of LGBTQ+ people, so please don’t lose hope. There’s still a good chance you’ll find an accepting school, and have your pronouns respected. For every bad person out there, there are good people too. xxx

Love~ Clover

Draft for me coming out as agender on Facebook (please comment/send me messages about this)

Note: I’ve done my best not to hint what gender I was assigned at birth, so if there’s any clue in this text about my assigned gender, please let me know.

In the early months of 2015, I came out as asexual, then later as aromantic. This is going to be another coming out post, but one that is much longer. And if you read this, I thank you for taking the time to do so. If you happen to know my family or relatives, please keep this to yourself. I’m not ready for them to know, but I can’t hide the truth from everyone anymore.

It’s been a long journey, and after months of questioning, I’m sure of who I am. It hasn’t been easy, especially as I had to do it alone, since most of my support is based online. In the real world, I struggled through the dysphoria and the misgendering alone. I had to play the part of someone whom everyone thought I was. I often felt like I was in someone else’s body, like my life was a film, that I was portraying the character that everyone expected me to be.

When I was a kid, I used to think about gender. Gender roles and gender presentation. I wondered how people assumed that someone who had long hair and wore dresses was a girl or a woman. How people assumed that those who had low voices and certain body types were boys or men. I thought about how people got labels slapped onto them at birth, based on their physical bodies. How did people simply assume what a stranger's gender was based on appearances?

And what about individual identity? How did people know they were girls or they were boys? If a woman had to have a mastectomy because of breast cancer, wasn't she still a woman? If a man had gynecomastia, wasn't he still a man? Body parts, or the lack thereof, didn't define one's internal sense of self, or so I thought. Yes, I might have been born with certain physical characteristics, I wasn't denying that. What I was questioning was what I had been assigned based on my physical traits. Acknowledging that intersex people exist and that sex isn't a neat binary, it was a matter of what traits I had that got me labelled as one binary gender or the other.

It was only when I started to approach my late teens that I began to question who I was. For 16 years, I lived a life unaware of the possibilities out there, but it wasn’t blissful. Sometimes, I would wonder why I suffered so much in the single-gender school that had been my primary school. Every time, I would drop the matter, assuming that it was just a normal part of growing up. Other times, I would wonder why I didn’t fit in with other children or teenagers of the same gender. Most of all, I just wanted to be one of them, to be normal.

It wasn’t until late 2015 that I suspected I might not be cisgender. As most of you know, I had discovered my identity as an aromantic asexual earlier that year. In the later months of 2015, I questioned my identity once more. This time, I ended up questioning my gender. I wasn’t comfortable with my birth name anymore, and so I seized the opportunity to use a nickname, since that was the only way I could go by a new name without being questioned. I’m lucky that my nickname is gender-neutral, and is often viewed as a name belonging to the gender that I was not assigned at birth.

2016 was the year I started to socially transition. I started to go by my nickname, preferring it to my birth name, but I was limited in the settings that I could go by Ray. In early 2016, two friends of mine (who happened to be the kids of my parents’ friends) playfully joked about my nickname and imagined me as a university student pretending to be a guy and a girl at different times, both of whom were named Ray. In March of that year, when we met up to watch Zootopia, they suggested that I dress androgynously, since they would be calling me Ray, which is a gender-neutral name. This made me realize that the name Ray was a better reflection of who I was than the name given to me at birth.I changed the name on my school email, so that whenever I emailed a teacher or collaborated on a Google document, my preferred name would be seen. I changed my name on Facebook to make sure as many people as possible saw it. In class polls on WhatsApp, I signed my name as Ray. Every time my anthropology teacher addressed me as Ray in front of the whole class, I felt a little more like myself.

June was the month things started getting interesting. There was a squad of bloggers with similar URLs based on music keys, and I decided to make one such blog. I created a Kik group with the music key bloggers, and one of the people in it referred to me using pronouns that I’d never heard being used to refer to me. At first, I was surprised, but it was positive. I guessed that the reason was because Ray is not usually associated with my assigned gender. This led to me questioning my pronouns, wondering if I might actually prefer pronouns associated with the other binary gender. And of course, I thought about whether this was just a phase, that I was really cis and I just wanted attention. But as always, being seen as she/her didn’t feel right. There was always the jarring sensation that whoever was talking about me was actually talking about someone else.

What I remembered about the whole gender saga, as I like to call it, was that when I was queueing to use a public bathroom, I got a sudden wave of severe dysphoria that left me in tears for the rest of the afternoon. It was the most intense dysphoria I had ever felt. After that, I could no longer pretend it was just a phase.

From then on, I thought of myself as agender. But there were times when I wondered if I was actually cis. How did I know that this was really me? It was only a day ago, on the 27 of June, that I watched some videos on YouTube, and the agender label felt so right. This confirmed what I had realized about myself a year ago: I am agender. I read a prayer for agender, nonbinary and GNC folks, and cried (as I always did when reading that prayer) because I was tired of feeling like I was a sinner for not being cis, as I had been taught.

I came out to my friends on Snapchat as agender, and I told two of my IRL friends about my pronouns. One of them agreed, while the other made excuses (as it seemed to me), but eventually agreed to use they/them pronouns to refer to me.

Now it’s past 3pm on 28 June 2017. It’s Wednesday. Not that any of this matters, but keeping track of such specifics gives me some comfort. Maybe one day, I will look back on this post, and re-read the thoughts of my 18-year-old self. Whatever my future self’s thoughts are, I hope that future me will be the person that I want to be.

Shadow People

For today’s Caffeine Challenge #13 (prompts here), I tried to branch out a little with a character a bit different from my usual. This is a little bit horror, too, which is not generally my thing. Warnings for: bullying, physical violence and misgendering.

Leo ran to the side door as soon as the bell rang, shouldering his way through the crush around the lockers and slipping around the corner. The sun—oh thank god—was streaming through the big glass doors as he skidded to a stop and turned to face the white-painted cinderblock wall.

An observer, if such person had existed, would have been interested to see that his shadow was not that of a curly-haired teen. On the wall before him a grey shape stretched and wavered, and baggy jeans became the smooth straight lines of dress slacks. The wrinkled shirtcollar straightened to crisp points, and a hat formed atop the narrow head, wide-brimmed tilted just to one side.

“I’m sorry,” Leo said, clutching his notebooks to his chest. “I know you said not to do this at school, but I saw his truck outside. I think he’s waiting for me.”

The figure on the wall twitched, the shoulders rolled and long-fingered hands splayed wide.

“I know,” Leo said. “I know, but I can’t fight him alone, and if I don’t show up he’ll just go after Jack again, you know he will.” He bit his lip, looking up and down the hall. “I’ve only got a little more time before history, I don’t know what to do.”

More twitching, a ripple traveling up the wall. The hands folded, waved, cupped together like an empty bowl.

The minute bell rang, setting off shrill echoes.

“I’ll do it,” Leo said. “I’ll do anything, you know I’m good for it.”

The figure tipped its hat, then faded, until only Leo’s own outline remained.

He went to class.

He couldn’t concentrate. His leg shook under his desk, his knee jumping up and down like it had a will of its own. He dropped his pencil once, then again, then a third time. The fourth time Frances handed it back to him with a scowl. Leo tried for an apologetic smile, but it didn’t feel right on his face. Too thin, too full of teeth.

He couldn’t take any notes. He worried metal spiral on his notebook instead, flicked the corner of the paper until it turned soft-edged and pieces started coming off. His eyes kept seeking the windows, looking for some sign, but Dallas’ truck would be by the back door, on the other side of the building, and there were too many trees for the Hat Man to get enough contrast for a message.

“Leo,” Mrs. Garner said, “Can you tell me the year President Reagan took office?”

“I...” Leo tried to think. He’d studied this. He’d done the homework. He knew this. But all he could think of was the look of rage on Dallas’ face when Jack yelled back at him, and the shock of the fist in his ribs when Leo had gotten between them.

Half the class was looking at him. Someone sniggered.

If he could get to the hall he could find a good spot and at least check in.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t remember. I think I might be sick.”

Mrs. Garner frowned. “There’s only thirty minutes of school left,” she said. “And if you go to the nurse you’ll lose participation points for today,”

“I know,” he said. “But I really think I might throw up.” He tried to look pathetic and nauseous. It didn’t take much effort. He could feel sweat sliding down his temple.

“Alright,” she said. “Josephine, please escort Leo to the nurse’s office.”

No, no no.

“I can get there myself—” he tried, but she shot him a quelling glance.

“You know the rules, Leo.”

He did. He did. Leo knew all sorts of rules.

Rule number one, his whole life, was don’t let anything happen to your sister. Jack was four years younger and three times smarter than he was, and every year that rule got harder and harder to follow. Jack picked fights with bullies. Jack showed off in class and corrected the teachers. Jack skipped grade after grade, so that he only ever had had one year of peace in middle school, of just being himself and making friends and not constantly putting out her fires. Even when he was a freshman, she’d been taking advanced classes at the high school already, working on math he knew he wouldn’t get to for at least another year.

And then, four months ago, Jack had declared she was his brother, not his sister, and what little equilibrium Leo’d managed to maintain tipped out and spilled.

It wasn’t that he minded having a brother. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Jack had a right to decide. It was just that everything got a little bit harder. Their parents didn’t really understand. They tried, but mom insisted on saying tomboy, and they didn’t see the point of re-painting Jack’s room. And where before Jack had mostly gotten written off as a girl who was too much trouble, now it seemed like every bigoted idiot in town had an opinion, and that opinion had to be expressed in jeers and yells and fists.

Rule number one had gotten him a lot more bruises, the last few weeks.

Rule number two was: don’t look at the shadows. It was Dad’s rule. Don’t look at the shadows. You don’t want them looking back.

It was a stupid rule. Tell a kid not to look at the shadows and they’ll go peering into every closet in the house and investigate every shady corner. But nothing had really happened before his sophomore year of high school. One day Leo had been toweling off at swim practice, sort of staring vaguely at the concrete and thinking about whether he could get a snack before Jack got back from track, and his shadow had waved at him.

He’d waved back. Two different hands, moving independently. And then the shadow had snapped its fingers and pointed at him, both hands tilted into finger guns, a gesture he never used, and a hat had appeared on its head.

A few weeks later he started talking to it. He’d had to talk to someone.

And the Hat Man had listened. Leo wasn’t really sure how it worked, but it did. He talked, the Hat Man heard him, and whatever he gestured back sank into Leo’s brain like water into a sponge. It wasn’t words, it was understanding.

It wasn’t until the Hat Man started taking action, until he broke away from Leo’s shadow and managed to do things that affected the real world that Leo realized why the rule existed. A touch of a shadowy hand to a shadowy glass and his mother’s drink toppled over. A shadow puppet bird arced over the wall and Raoul was cursing at the sky and mourning his hat instead of yelling at Leo about the broken lawn mower.

It was magic.

And it had a cost.

Small things, mostly. Things Leo was happy to give. A lamp set on the end of his desk, so the Hat Man could share his snacks and play with his pens. The blinds left open in his room, so the Hat Man could move around freely on sunny days and bright nights. Walks in the sun, no matter how hot it got. A trip to the natural history museum. A stencil collection that threatened to burst out from under his bed. Watching movies with a light on.

And time. Always, always, time. Time talking. Time exploring. Time shifting his weight and leaning in front of light sources, so the Hat Man could get a better look. And every time the Hat Man did something, Leo could feel some part of himself change. After three years he was starting to get the feeling that if he stood under a spotlight he might just disappear entirely.

He tried not to think about it too much.

Thursday was cloudy. There wasn’t enough contrast anywhere to have a real conversation. And Dallas had gotten smarter this time. He’d brought friends.

The caught Leo when he tried to sneak Jack out the side door, rough hands wrenching them apart and fists in his ribs. He tried to fight back, tried to kick and punch his way to Jack’s side, but there was a wall of snarling faces and grabbing hands between them. He could hear Jack’s yells, insults and curses and a wordless scream of rage. He tried again, using elbows and shoulders and knees, and caught a glimpse of Jack’s backpack whirling through the air before he was picked up from behind. He saw a slice of sky, slate grey without even a hint of sun, and then someone ground his face into the asphalt and the beating began in earnest.

He woke up in the hospital.

“Your arm is broken,” the nurse told him, “and two of your ribs. We had to do some stitches over your forehead. We’d like you to stay off your feet for a few days.”

“Where’s Jack?” he asked.

“She’s resting,” the nurse said. “Your parents asked that we put her in private room, but I can take you to see her in the morning.”

“He,” Leo corrected. “You can take me to see him. Jack is my brother.”

The nurse’s eyes went wide. Her lips pursed.

“I see,” she said. “Alright. I’ll make a note on—on his chart.”

“Thank you.”

She left, and Leo turned to watch the shadows.

“It’s never going to end, is it,” he asked the wall. The Hat Man shrugged.

“I’m graduating in a month,” Leo told him. “Mom and Dad are already livid I didn’t get my applications in. They’ll want me to get a better job than mowing lawns. And Jack’ll still be at school.”

He sighed.

“I wish I could protect him the way you protect me.”

The Hat Man straightened. There was a way, he said. If Leo was willing to pay the price. He could join the shadows on the wall, and skip between patches of shade, and live as the Hat Man did.

“What’s the cost?” Not that it mattered. Leo knew he’d pay it. The Hat Man knew it too.

You won’t keep your life, he said. You won’t exist without the light. You won’t have a body. You won’t eat, or sleep, or dream. Whatever future you might have had, it won’t be yours.

Leo bit his lip.

“But I’ll be able to protect Jack,” he said. “Right? No matter where he goes?”

The Hat Man nodded. As I have protected you.

“Okay,” Leo said. “Okay. Tell me what to do.”

Open curtains, the Hat Man said. Press your palms to the wall where my hands are, and close your eyes.

Leo did. It was painful, and awkward, and twice he had to catch himself from falling and take a few measured, shallow breaths, but he did it.

And the Hat Man said, good.

When he opened his eyes, daylight was streaming into the room and the pain was gone. He tried to sit up and look around, but he could only turn his head one way.

He could see himself, ten feet away in the hospital bed. He was talking to his parents.

Leo raised his fists. He swung his arms. He yelled, but nothing happened. There was no sound. After his parents left (never looking at him, never even glancing at the wall because you don’t look at shadows), the Leo on the bed turned to face him.

It said, “You knew the consequences.”

Leo gestured as best he could, tried to convey his surprise, that he hadn’t understood, that it should’ve been explained better.

The Hat Man said, “I did what you asked.”

And then he turned away from the wall, and called the nurse, and asked if she could take him outside, just for a few minutes. Just for a breath of fresh air.

“I thought you’d want to see your brother,” the nurse said, and Leo remembered: Jack. This was for Jack. He had to find Jack.

On the way back, if Jack was awake, maybe, the Hat Man said. Leo felt himself dragged along as his body was moved to a wheelchair. It didn’t matter how he struggled, or how he raged. The best he could manage was knocking over a cup of water on the bedside table.

The nurse cleaned it up without even looking at him. Then she wheeled them both out into the corridor.

There were more shadows here. Mostly small ones, underneath people’s feet. The Hat Man gave him a pleasant smile, and flicked his fingers lightly, and Leo spun away.

A doctor rushing between rooms. A gurney pushed down the hall. He slid from shadow to shadow, slipping under doorjambs and peering at the occupants, looking for any sign of Jack. It took longer than he’d expected. He had to check four floors, and the sun was almost setting when he slipped into the shadow at the foot of Jack’s bed.

Jack was sitting up, picking at his blanket listlessly. His left arm was wrapped tight, but not in a cast. A bandage around his head made his freshly cropped hair floof out wildly.

Leo took a chance and stretched up the opposite wall, filling in the edges of Jack’s bowed shadow. He shook himself out, and Jack turned, like someone catching movement in the corner of his eye. He stared.

Leo waved.

With a look like someone waking from a dream, Jack waved back.

that happened like 3 yrs ago and im still mad about it especially bc they didnt even make half an effort to ever use the right pronouns around me. that whole semester fuckin sucked wrt gender shit bc 

i had teachers go out of their way to just not use ANY pronouns regarding me

teachers misgendering me in front of the entire class and then reprimanding me for looking a little annoyed and not correcting them immediately, still in front of the entire fucking class btw

and SO MANY ppl calling me she and then backpedaling at the speed of light when i briefly corrected them. like the time i got “UH UM I MEAN NO I WAS TALKING ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE” when they were giving a critique of MY piece on the wall

An Interview With a Trans Substitute

“Missoula district was really supportive and accommodating. MISSOULA.

I grew up in Columbia Falls

There were two students in big sky high school (brothers) who’s parents called in and rose a big stink over my teaching any of their classes at all.

The school’s response was “well, miss class then.” I was told at the beginning of the day that I had one student in two different periods that I was required to send to the counselor’s office immediately. Heard from another teacher (prior friend) about why. The admin never even told me about it. There was NO change to how, when, or where I could do my job over it.

When I first started subbing, I was covering my tattoos b/c I wasn’t sure their stance. When I called and asked district coordinator about it, she said they didn’t care at all. I never had to cover them at all. Especially nice given that while I used to be able to EASILY hide them all, girl shirts are all designed for cleavage whether you have any or not, so almost none of my shirts could cover the ones on my chest. always wore my sleeves rolled up all day, so everyone saw my tattoo sleeve. Aaaaall the kids know I have tattoos and gauges. When I started with MCPS, Missoula county public schools, they have a checklist sheet you mark all the classes you’re willing to sub for. Grades and subjects. I could give a damn, I can BS my way through anything so I just checked them all without thinking about it. Then I got an assignment to teach gym. Oops. So I dropped the job and called sub coordinator to ask about it, since many gym teacher offices are IN the locker rooms…..  She said she didn’t know, she had never thought about it either. She said she’d look into it and get back to me. Got a call a couple of days later. Ver batim, she said I “could move through any bathroom or locker room in the entire district. Whatever you’re comfortable with.” Frenchtown is not so…. Free. When I asked them, he said that he knew what he had to say, and what was “probably the right answer.” They were implied as not the same thing. I told him that Missoula didn’t care about me and bathrooms and locker rooms at all. He said “yea, that’s probably the right answer. There’s a gender-neutral bathroom by the front office…” I told him no, flat out. Then pointed out that behind me were the FACULTY restrooms. Which, btw, are SINGLE Person bathrooms. One room. One toilet, one sink. I’m honestly not sure I understand the point of separating them at all. What’s it fucking matter if there’s only one person allowed in? after I pointed that out, he conceded I may have a point and didn’t push the matter, but I could tell it made him uncomfortable. He didn’t even respond to the gym issue. But, I found out later that every gym period in the junior high, there is an extra (female) faculty to be there at the beginning and end of every period. Bc the jr high him teacher is male, and they require the locker rooms be “checked in on”. Can’t trust kids to change their own clothes, naturally. Except, when *i* teach gym. Then, there are two extra faculty assigned to be there. I’m not allowed in either locker room. Not that I at ALL want to go into the boy’s locker room, but it just goes to show they don’t have a stance beyond “no, you can’t exist in here.” I stopped trying. Beyond that, Frenchtown has never done anything outright against me. But from the beginning I felt like the entire school staff were watching me. Not keeping tabs, just always cautious. Less welcoming. Missoula was ALwAYS welcoming and kind to me. Never an issue at all. The admin never once even mentioned to me that they had ever been contacted about me. At all.  No changes. It’s not that they were hiding anything, it was just such a non-issue, they didn’t feel the need. If I had to guess given my experience speaking and interacting with the admin, I don’t feel offended at all. It just more than anything feels like “it affects nothing, so we didn’t want to bother you about it.” I heard about it second hand from other faculty. Though, I had noticed that every admin in all the buildings greeted me by my first name. I had never met them. They all just knew who I was on sight. They’ve had board and admin meetings about me. Its not that they didn’t address it before… those meetings were never because THEY needed to talk about it. It was to deal with the parents. Or, more rather, to decide how to respond to parents when they got angry (they were) phone calls about me. I only know any of this because I heard it second hand from other teachers. I have no idea how many times they were contacted over it, all I know for sure was that at least 3 schools got at least 2 calls. I get the feeling there were a lot more…. From what I heard (again, second hand info. Take as you will), that the jist of their “pre-determined formal response” was along the lines of: “we understand you have an issue with this. Please understand we don’t care. We are not going to discriminate against an effective substitute for these reasons. If you don’t want your children to attend class with this substitute, then you can come and pick them up from school for that period, and drop them off again after. We’re not in the business of babysitting kids who don’t want to go to class.” Second hand jist. But that’s how it was told to me. The only incident I have specific knowledge of (big sky), I was also told by teacher friend that the kids could have cared less. It was only the parets raising a stink.

As for the students in general, I for the most part haven’t had any real issues. Sometimes I think I may have heard the purposely misgender me, but they’re pretty quiet about it. No outright defiance (for that reason, at least implicitly. They’re still teenagers). I’ve been told by students on a few occasions that other kids had been making fun of me or being disrespectful when they knew I couldn’t hear, but I never really heard anything. At least not that I was sure enough of that I could say anything. My hearing is juuuuuust bad enough that I cant always tell for sure what pronoun someone uses. Especially if its under their breath. But nothing outright disrespectful to my face about it. I think they know what would happen to them if they did…. Its so hard for districts to get and keep good subs that they take any reports of behavior issues VERY seriously, for any reason or sub. If i said that they disrespected me in that manner, the whole world would come down on their head and they know it. I’ve gotten a few questions in poor taste, but its due more to benign curiosity than any kind of prejudice. It’s also an interesting pretense…. Everyone knows, apparently, they ALL talk about it (students), they all know I’m trans. Mostly. They’re fairly sure, they all know it’s the rumor. But no one has ever been actually TOLD about it. Its ignored. They THINK they know, but not enough to be sure. So, I get the occasional question. “is that a wig?” is one. There was one incident where they seriously raised their hand in the middle of class lecture to ask “are you trans?” My favorite response, is to point out that that’s NOT a question they want to be wrong about….. its like asking someone when the baby is due. If I’m NOT trans, that’s reaaaaaally insulting and worrisome. Once I point out to them the nature of the question they asked, they get this reeeaaaaally horrified look on their face…. Its fucking hysterical. I love it. Its aaaaaalmost worth it. But my usual response otherwise was “no, I’m a woman.” So, they know. Sorta. Mostly. But not for sure…… its awesome. I generally raise my eyebrows at them and make them consider their question. Most of the worst insults and misgendering by students is mostly perpetrated by the trouble students I’m already being stern with.  I do not take their shit. And they KNOW it. Its part of my legend….. But a lot of students think I’m plenty amusing, and I get stopped all the time around town by kids saying hello and asking when I’m coming back. So, yea. The kids being douches, were already douches. Worst kids are still Frenchtown, but again. They’re still teenagers. Anyone is going to have some bullshit. And if they don’t insult with trans, they insult with something else equally offensive. My teaching experience in MCPS has been truly stellar. Not one concession has ever been made on the point, and not once has ANYone employed by MCPS EVER brought the fact that I’m trans up at all. On the FEW times its been a topic, *i* was the one to bring it up. They’ve been phenomenal. Kids have been pretty chill. All things considered, even Frenchtown has been at least moderately reasonable. The never said I COULDN’T teach gym, they just needed locker room people. To be fair. Just a different feel, and they were aware of the more rural attitude of the parents in general, and seem more nervous over it. No faculty has ever insulted me on purpose. Although, I have mixed feels over the woman faculty (ftown art) who approached me to express her support and that she was glad they had a trans teacher, and she’d heard about me and had to meet me. Mixed, because her saying so pretty well proves that she picked me out cold from a crowd….. but people don’t think about that implication. They’re usually always trying to be nice and supportive, in any case. Nice lady, though. She likes me.

Oooooo, one other thing to bear mentioning. I HAVE been approached by several students (quietly, away from other kids), who wanted to ask me about being trans. But, because they thought they may have been trans themselves….. they wanted to know what to do/go/talk to/proceed in general. I always pointed them to anne harris and mentioned that I didn’t point them to anyone. But they’re the only ones I’ve ever not denied it to. They’ve been pretty chill, and just trying to reach out because they were confused about themselves. In that respect, I’m glad I was in the schools particularly. Even, almost, a little, MAAAYYYYYYYYBE glad they could tell. So they knew they could ask. I met one little girl in 6th grade who came to me at start of period to tell me that the role sheet had the wrong name, and what to call her. The knowing look of gratitude was really rewarding. I’ve even been left notes from kids who wanted to support and express gratitude for having me. A couple were totally anonymous. They just showed up on top of my paperwork. So, in that respect, I’m really happy to have been a part of the schools systems in that age group of “flux”. When they really needed an adult that they could actually KNOW wouldn’t judge them for it. I never told anyone I was a “safe resource” or commented on “safe space.” Never had to. At least two of the kids who approached me on the topic were in Frenchtown. They obviously had no idea what to do. So, I’m pretty grateful I could be that for people. For most everyone else, it’s still a good thing to have a visible (hesitate to call myself a “role-model”) adult in their school/non family who is an obvious source of support/info/encouragement/comfort. I think its really good for them to interact with people that way in a CASUAL manner, NOT implicitly for that reason. I’m not a novelty alone, I’m just THERE. Novelty, but it’s not WHY I’m there, or WHY I’m talking to them. Its not even discussed or mentioned. No need for (so this is trans person, be respectful, who knows what trans means? Be sure to treat her normally. Don’t single her out anyone, that would be passé….” The pretense is half of what makes it so damn perfect. Not SURE. Not talked about. Not special. Just….. there. No different. Esp. when I do teach gym. It shows them that its perfectly NORMAL, benign, and simply a fact of life. Nothing to make any kind of issue over. No different. Just real people. Professional adult. Not pointing it out or trying to bond over it. Just Being there is plenty educational.

It’s one of the main reasons I liked doing it. I was terrified at first. I’ve subbed before in great falls, pre-trans. I know I can do it, am good at it, respected for it by faculty. I know I’m good at my job. I was terrified they wouldn’t even consider hiring me for fear of “putting their neck out.” Not wanting to stir crap with the parents. (enemy of ALL faculty and admin). But they surprised me. Not even Frenchtown ever brought it up first. Ever. It was MY question about what policy was. I was never told I couldn’t or shouldn’t teach ANY subject by EITHER district. Even ftown gym. I was especially impressed by them, given their rep for history toward lgbt students. No student group of their own, not allowed, they’re lumped into “diversity group”. But it was never mentioned, not even during hiring or interviews. It was never truly a problem for anyone. So no real “bad” experiences at all. They’re trying to be better. “

- Shannon Sorensen