Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (A Transgender Memoir) - Softcover

Bird, Jackson

 
9781982130770: Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (A Transgender Memoir)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1982130776 ISBN 13: 9781982130770
Verlag: Simon Element, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

An unflinching and endearing memoir from LGBTQ+ advocate Jackson Bird about how he finally sorted things out and came out as a transgender man.

When Jackson Bird was twenty-five, he came out as transgender to his friends, family, and anyone in the world with an internet connection.

Assigned female at birth and raised as a girl, he often wondered if he should have been born a boy. Jackson didn’t share this thought with anyone because he didn’t think he could share it with anyone. Growing up in Texas in the 1990s, he had no transgender role models. He barely remembers meeting anyone who was openly gay, let alone being taught that transgender people existed outside of punchlines.

In this “soulful and heartfelt coming-of-age story” (Jamia Wilson, director and publisher of the Feminist Press), Jackson chronicles the ups and downs of growing up gender-confused. Illuminated by journal entries spanning childhood to adolescence to today, he candidly recalls the challenges and loneliness he endured as he came to terms with both his gender and his bisexual identity.

With warmth and wit, Jackson also recounts how he navigated the many obstacles and quirks of his transition—like figuring out how to have a chest binder delivered to his NYU dorm room and having an emotional breakdown at a Harry Potter fan convention. From his first shot of testosterone to his eventual top surgery, Jackson lets you in on every part of his journey—taking the time to explain trans terminology and little-known facts about gender and identity along the way.

“A compassionate, tender-hearted, and accessible book for anyone who might need a hand to hold as they walk through their own transition or the transition of a loved one” (Austin Chant, author of Peter Darling), Sorted demonstrates the power and beauty in being yourself, even when you’re not sure who “yourself” is.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jackson Bird is a YouTube creator and LGBTQ+ advocate dedicated to demystifying the transgender experience. His TED Talk “How to talk (and listen) to transgender people” has been viewed over a million times. Jackson is a recipient of the GLAAD Rising Star Digital Innovator Award and lives in New York City. You can follow him online @JackIsNotABird.

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Chapter One: Sorted CHAPTER ONE sorted
It’s a testament to the all-consuming pervasiveness of gender in our society that the very first thing we do to babies is sort them into genders. In fact, for most, it’s the very first words ever spoken about you. When you’re born, the doctor or midwife shouts, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” and from color-coded hospital hats to the balloons greeting your arrival in the recovery room, your life is predetermined.

My parents didn’t want to know the genders of me or my brother before we were born. With my older brother, my mom was pretty certain throughout her pregnancy she’d be having a boy, but when he finally arrived after an agonizing thirty-six-hour labor, she didn’t ask about his gender. The very first thing she said as my newborn brother was swaddled into a blanket was, “Is the cafeteria still serving food?”

My mom, God love her, knew that getting a solid meal was way more important for her capacity of being a good mother than knowing whatever gender her baby apparently was.

Image
Me and Mom

Still remembering how hungry she’d been after my brother’s birth, she took no chances with my labor. When her water broke on a sunny Kalamazoo afternoon about a week before my expected due date of Mother’s Day, she was in the kitchen fixing lunch for herself and my brother.

“Austin,” she calmly told the two-year-old as she chopped watermelon, “we’re going to have to go to the hospital soon to have a baby, but first we’re going to eat lunch.”

She finished with the watermelon, spread mayonnaise on their bologna sandwiches, and they sat down to enjoy their lunch while my dad sped home from work to drive them to the hospital.

As determined as she was to get one last good meal in, by the time my dad arrived, my mom admitted that things seemed to be moving fast. The three of them headed to the hospital as my mom’s contractions came closer together.

There had been a whole list of friends and family members who volunteered to watch Austin during the birth, but my unexpectedly early arrival on a Friday afternoon meant nearly everyone on the list was busy. The person able to get there the quickest was my dad’s mom, coming from a two-and-a-half-hour drive away.

So Austin joined them in the hospital room, where the nurses turned on the TV to pass the time and my mom did her best to hide her pain from the toddler—even after being told things had moved too fast for her to receive an epidural.

Her labor continued to progress rapidly, and eventually Austin was taken out to the hallway by a nurse and given some toys to play with. Shortly thereafter, our grandma arrived to keep him company, and within the hour my mom had started pushing.

The whole labor lasted less than five hours and went so quickly that the nurses didn’t even pause to switch off the TV. I entered the world at 5:25 P.M. on May 4, 1990, to the static murmurings of The Oprah Winfrey Show playing in the corner.

My mom says that throughout the entire pregnancy she wasn’t sure what gender I was. While she’d had a preternatural knowing that her first child would be a boy, she insists she never had a clue about me. She was so stumped, she even considered asking the doctor at her ultrasound appointment, despite her and my dad agreeing they didn’t want to know. (She didn’t, though.)

It wasn’t until she was admitted to the hospital to give birth that she finally got the definitive sense I was going to be a girl—at least as far as we were all concerned for the time being.

Assigned Female at Birth?

Assigned Female at Birth, or AFAB, and Assigned Male at Birth, or AMAB, are the preferred terms to use instead of “biological male/female,” “born male/female,” “natal male/female,” “male/female bodied,” “genetic male/female,” etc.

When you break it down, it’s a lot more difficult to distinguish what a male or female body actually is, or what it means to be “biologically male/female” or “born male/female.” Is a male body one with a penis? What about men who lose their penises due to injury or illness—are they no longer men? Does “biologically female” mean someone with XX chromosomes? Not to be presumptive, but have you had your chromosomes analyzed? Most people haven’t. And what about the one in one hundred intersex people in the world? Many of their chromosomes, reproductive organs, or external anatomy don’t match with our cultural expectations of male or female. There are countless examples of men and women not lining up with the typical definitions of male and female—even before we get into discussions of transgender people.

The terms AMAB and AFAB are also useful because lots of trans people bristle at the phrase “born male/female.” We were born as ourselves. Just because we didn’t realize we were the gender we are right at the beginning doesn’t mean we weren’t this gender all along. Additionally, the “assigned” part of these terms emphasizes that we were sorted into a particular gender before we had any say in the matter.

One last note: Knowing this accepted term, some people might be tempted to ask trans or nonbinary people what sex they were assigned at birth. This can quickly turn into a faux-polite way of asking what’s in their pants. Consider why you need to know. Even when you’re using the “accepted” language, your question can still be rude and invasive.

Prior to having kids, my mom had promised herself she would raise her children as free from the binds of gender stereotypes as possible. She’d grown up with the strict gender roles of the 1960s and ’70s and was fed up. Especially if she had daughters, she wanted to make sure they knew they could be tough and self-reliant, and that they had more choices for their futures than just being wives and mothers.

So when I showed signs of boyishness even from the beginning, it wasn’t immediately a cause for alarm. My mom was happy to see that I was an independent spirit. Her first inkling that maybe there was something more going on, however, took place when I was just over two years old.

We were swimming in a kiddie pool she’d set up for us in the backyard on a hot summer’s day when my brother Austin got out to pee in the bushes. I toddled behind him, trying to do the same. When it wasn’t working, I got upset and my mom gently explained how girls’ bodies are shaped differently than boys’.

This in and of itself is not a unique moment. All toddlers have to be taught at some point that girls’ and boys’ bodies are different. And I think plenty of toddlers would be upset to find out they can’t do something as cool as peeing in the bushes like their big brother can. But I wasn’t just throwing a normal toddler tantrum, my mom says. I was telling her, very soberly, that it was wrong. It was wrong that my body couldn’t do that.

She tells me now that she had a brief moment of thinking maybe there was something more to my words then, but again, I was a toddler, and toddlers say all kinds of weird things. So she let it go.

But moments like that kept happening. My mom, a talented seamstress, often sewed my brother...

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Verlag
Simon Element
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1982130776
ISBN 13 
9781982130770
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
336
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande

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