I didn’t “come out” as transgender until a month and a half after I turned 28. I say come out because it’s hard to visualize a time before; I personally don’t see it as I was a girl and then I wasn’t, but rather, my coming out was the realization of my true identity and sharing that with the world. I wasn’t born a girl, but I was assigned female at birth, and raised in that manner.
Why did it take me so long to come to terms with my masculinity? Well, I didn’t know it was possible, or an option. I knew something was “wrong” with me, in that I felt awful about my body, my skin, my brain, it all felt itchy and tight. But I was raised in a family of strong women, and both my parents taught my younger brother and I that women could do anything men could do. When I struggled with feelings of dysphoria, I kept wondering if perhaps I was simply afraid that I couldn’t do or be something because I was a woman. I didn’t know my dysphoria was telling me I was a man.
Before I go further, I want to make sure I’m very clear here. The transgender experience is not universal or even common. My path and experiences vary greatly from other trans people, and just because I experienced a specific confusion or timeline, does not mean all people do.
I’m condensing the timeline here. I had started to wonder if perhaps I was gender non-conforming, a title I still could potentially use, because I didn’t feel like I aligned with the performance of womanhood, but I still didn’t realize that could mean I was something else. In my mid twenties I started to understand, and to wonder, if perhaps, I was actually a man.
I struggled with that thought for a few years. Between the audacity of the thought itself (how could I be a man when everyone told me I was a woman) and some deeply rooted trauma surrounding men and masculine behavior, I spent four or so years inching towards the realization and acceptance that I was, in fact, a man.
I was binge watching Shameless, the American version, a show I loved intensely for a period of time. I can’t go back to it, the way so many of the characters are just terrible people, which is arguably the point, upsets my delicate heart too much. I had already openly wept when Mickey Milkovich came out as gay to his father, in the most absurdly ridiculous and violent Milkovich way, and promptly gets beaten by said father. It was an unapologetic moment where a young character, Mickey was at most 18 at the time, comes to terms with his own identity.
And then we meet Trevor in Season 7. Trevor is brought in as a romantic love interest for openly gay (since season 1) Ian. He is a social worker for a local LGBT organization, and meets Ian on the street asking for directions. The character arc on the show is not great, and I think they did him dirty by the end of his run in season 8, but I will always love Trevor. Not revealed immediately, because you don’t just know, Ian finds later that Trevor is a transgender man. He is portrayed by actor Elliot Fletcher, also an openly transgender man.
I promptly had a panic attack.
Not because he’s gorgeous, though he is and I’m a queer disaster incapable of rational thought, but because I had never seen a transgender man before. By this point I had seen trans women, notably Laverne Cox from her run on Orange is the New Black, but seeing trans women didn’t connect to my brain the same way. Seeing Elliot, seeing Trevor, regardless of how I feel about the writing now, was vital to my continued existence.
I had so many questions now that I knew it was possible for someone assigned female at birth to be truly male in their heart. Is that what I had been feeling? But I wasn’t very masculine-I’m highly emotional, cry a lot, love bright colors and glitter, I could go on and on about the ways I am not “manly” but at the end of the day, I am a man, and I was able to start healing myself and learning myself when I saw someone like me on the TV. Someone who was just being himself, who wasn’t trying to emulate a machismo caricature of masculinity, which many of us are guilty of in the early days of social transition.
Trevor, and Elliot Fletcher, will always hold a special place in my heart because of this. I was unhappy, unwell, and fighting against a body I didn’t understand before I knew who I really was. Transitioning saved my life, made my life have value again, and made me enjoy being myself. Who knew Shameless would be the push I needed?
Queerly Beloved 
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