gender

You know how they say big things always come in threes? On March 31st this year I had three big things to celebrate, which is a nice change of pace from last year’s three big things, which were decidedly less fun.

March 31st 2026 marked my four-year Van-iversary.

Four years since my husband and I quit the grown-up jobs that were slowly killing us and invested our theoretical house deposit in two one-way tickets and six months’ worth of rent in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Four years since we filled our folks’ sheds with a decade’s worth of hand-me-down furniture, expensive kitchenware, second-hand books and records, and a couple of pricey-but-priceless artworks—all the trappings of a couple in their late twenties who finally graduated from undergrad sharehouses to cosplaying as adults.

Four years since we farewelled our family and friends at what will likely be the only “retirement party” we’ll ever have, and flew across the world to a city we’d never been to and where we knew one person. Vaguely.

Four years since we rented the first (and only) place we looked at, a basement suite advertised on Facebook marketplace by a new account with no profile picture. Turned out fine, they were a lovely family, and I’m pretty sure I sealed the deal by complimenting their ugly dog.

Four years in our 500sq foot flat with two windows and a resident mouse called Jonathan. Four years is the longest I’ve lived in one place since I was a child.

And each day of those four years, I’ve woken up feeling a bone-deep sense of gratitude. I can walk out my front gate, head four blocks north down our magnolia-lined street to the park with the pollinator meadow and beach access, where you get a flawless view across the inlet to the mountains, where it snowed on our first Christmas, and where I saw the northern lights. Twice!

Four years that I’ve been able to say I get to live here!

It’s been four years since I looked in the mirror and saw myself buried deep beneath a lifetime of trying.

Four years of gently prying that moldering heteronormative mask out of fingers stiffened with the effort of clutching it like a lifeline.

Four years of deep exhales, of space and safety and community and sliding scale counselling. Four years of freedom and finding a happiness I didn’t think was possible for me.

And that’s just the first big thing to celebrate!

March 31st is also Trans Day of Visibility, which feels fitting as it’s really only since moving to Vancouver that I’ve been able to become visible to myself, let alone others. It’s a day that highlights Trans JOY, so it’s kinda nice to celebrate the joy I’ve found here.

The joy of visibility is so much more than being seen, though.

It’s being asked my pronouns when meeting someone new, or even better, when the other person introduces themself with their pronouns first.

The joy of visibility is hearing a grownup customer tell their kid “go ask that person, they look like they work here.” It’s working in such an accidentally queer workplace that they/them has become the default until otherwise corrected.

The joy of visibility is making the conscious effort to “be the me I want to see”, and finding out it’s actually working. It’s being told that you actually are the visible queer person (Cool Gay Elder™) in someone’s life that makes them feel like they, too, are possible.

But the biggest joy is feeling known and seen by people who just get it. So that means that I get to build my friends’ flatpacks and lift their heavy boxes, and then they call me strong and handsome, and it goes straight to my head.

It’s dancing at the birdhouse and being hit on so respectfully that you forget for a second that you should probably tell them you’re married… and when you do, they’re so nice about it and say “well, what a lucky person” and they wish you well, and somehow that whole experience is one of the hottest things that’s ever happened to you.

This year I went all out: maximum visibility, maximum joy.

On March 31st, I submitted my very trans, intensely personal thesis about nonbinary intelligibility and identity in middle-grade fiction, thereby ensuring that I will remain visibly trans in one pocket of cyberspace for the rest of the internet’s existence. How’s that for something to celebrate!

I am trying to get more comfortable with the idea of celebrating myself. It’s something that doesn’t come naturally, perhaps the result of growing up in Australia, terrified of being the poppy that grows too tall, only to be eviscerated by the same people in charge of doling out the fertiliser.

After a lifetime of moderating myself to be just enough, never too much, believing that any sort of self-recognition is boastful, I’m re-learning what achievements actually look like, to me.

So, aside from the big things, like acknowledging the fact that I’m graduating from my second master’s degree tomorrow (entirely paid for by a federal scholarship, which inherently values the importance of my gay little research!), I’ve been celebrating myself in less obvious, more honest ways…

Like the fact that I allow myself space to be bad at (some) things and give myself room to grow.

Despite gaslighting myself for the past three years, I actually can drive in Vancouver.

I can do nearly 2 push-ups. My goal is five—and has been for the past three years—but this time I think I’ll get there.

I have no idea how much I weigh anymore, and that thought doesn’t panic me. I’m just letting the soft animal of my body love what it loves.

I’m learning to trust my own opinion more instead of being swayed by whoever is talking the loudest at the time, and sometimes I can even sit in the discomfort of holding two different ideas at once.

Sometimes I ask for help when I need it.

Sometimes I am even capable of being deeply honest in therapy.

My grey hairs are really starting to come in and I’m genuinely thrilled about it because it’s proof that I’m getting older

I am healthy

I am happy

I am still here

And I reckon that’s something to celebrate

When I was 30, I came out to my parents via Facebook Messenger. Not my finest moment, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. In my defense, my track record for coming out is pretty abysmal.

The first time I ever came out, I didn’t even realise I was doing it. I grew up in a very conservative town, went to youth group on Fridays and church on Sundays. The chaplain at my all-girls school regularly told us we were going to hell for some reason or other. Being queer simply wasn’t an option. But, there were signs. Like, developing instant, deep and intense “friendship” feelings for the first cool girl to pay you a lick of attention, and then lovebomb her with handwritten letters and super platonic mixtapes full of Death Cab for Cutie and Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Yeah. Subtle. I also spent a lot of time lamenting the fact that I couldn’t go to the boy’s school because “their music program was better,” and backing that up by taking any chance I could to steal my brother’s uniform. For drama class. Or a costume party. Or, you know, just because.

It took me a few more years to identify what was going on there; I grew almost naturally into my understanding of self, and my little neurodivergent brain thought everyone else felt this way too. Shout out to Tumblr for the confirmation bias, turns out that everyone DOES just want to kiss pretty girls and wear dapper suits and experience the deeply intense yearning that comes from being in love with your best friend! Bolstered by this echo chamber of acceptance, I slowly became more open about my identity: subtly dropping easter eggs into sober conversations, and then aggressively shoehorning my horny gay ramblings into unrelated conversations while drunk. As a millennial bisexual in a straight-passing relationship, I was deeply uncomfortable with being perceived as heterosexual. It was like walking around with a rock in my shoe.

It wasn’t until nearly a decade later, after putting a hemisphere of distance between myself and my hometown, that I actually had the space to sit down, take a breath, and take off my shoe. When I shook it out, I was left with a pile of gravel. I began to realise that I was deeply uncomfortable with being perceived as a woman. When I told my spouse that I wasn’t a girl, in what was essentially a very dramatic, queer rendition of “would you still love me if I was a worm”, he said “I love you for who you are” and wiped my snot off his shoulder. What a guy. When I told my best friends, they were mostly relieved I wasn’t calling to say I was pregnant. I put my pronouns in my work email and that was that. I’ve only ever existed as myself in Vancouver. And then my parents came to visit.

We’d been settled here for almost a year, and I was still sifting through the gravel, but I decided that I couldn’t let my parents go back to Australia thinking how nice it was to see their daughter. I wanted to be open and honest about my identity and allow them to know the real me for the first time in my life. Put the ball in their court, so to speak. And we dropped plenty of hints, or so I thought. I mean, there was significantly more body hair and gender neutral language in our house than they’d come to expect.

I spent many sleepless nights planning my grand coming-out speech. I told myself I was waiting for the right moment. I’d know it when it came. And a couple did come, but I couldn’t do it. While they were visiting family in Quebec, my spouse and I ran various plays during dinner, considering all the angles and possible outcomes. My parents came back, we spent more time together, more moments came and went. And then all of a sudden, they were leaving.

As we drove down Granville Street, I tried to will the panic away while my knees bounced and my heart pounded in the front seat. At the drop-off area, we hopped out to help with their suitcases. They said I love you. I said I hope you can see how happy I am here. Then we got back in the car, drove around the corner, and I had a very dignified little breakdown.

Which brings us to the Facebook message, meticulously crafted with the help of a stiff gin and sent an hour before they were due to board a 16-hour flight. So, a little less ball in their court, a little more lobbing a grenade into their heteronormative worldview, and then forcing them to sit with it in a metal tube with no wifi for half a day. On reflection, I probably should’ve waited. I wanted them to know, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it.

Mum replied a little while later. She said they were surprised and confused, that they loved me, and they needed time to understand. A few days later, mum emailed with some reasonable questions which I tied myself in knots trying to answer. How could I put into words for others what I’d spent the better part of a year trying to explain to myself? I typed out some stream of consciousness, accompanied by some resources and recommended reading, hoping that they’d magically understand everything, or be willing to do the work. But in the moment, my mum’s response of “well, I was a tomboy in high school too” felt less like connection and more like dismissal. So I didn’t reply. And we haven’t really addressed it since. That was two years ago.

In those two years, I’ve never heard them use my pronouns. My dad still hasn’t acknowledged my identity at all. Not once. And it’s not like we haven’t spoken in that time. I’ve been back to Australia, we’ve seen each other in person. I’m writing my Masters thesis on nonbinary children’s literature. It’s not a secret. But, we don’t talk about it. They still refer to me as their daughter. For two years, we’ve been dancing around this big genderless elephant in the room. And I’m tired of dancing.

What they don’t know is that over the past two years, I’ve only become more certain of my identity. I’ve only become more proud, more loud, more outspoken. I spend each day trying to be who I needed to see back when I was 13 and didn’t have the words to explain myself, and I’ve seen the impact that my overt queerness has on others. I know who I am, and I love who I am. But, it’s also really hard. I’ve spent so long reshaping my own worldview that the thought of having to do that work all over again, for people who I know love a version of me, but I can’t guarantee love this version of me, it’s exhausting.

But I know that if I want to be seen, I have to let them see me. I’ve done enough therapy over the past two years to know that this is, unfortunately, the only way. So I think I’m gonna have to come out to my family again. Or maybe I’ll just send them this story. Maybe then they’ll see me, and maybe they could be as proud of me as I am.

Tag: gender

Celebration!: C.’s Story

Pride!: C.’s Story