Two zines in one -- memoirs from transfemme authors Imogen Reid (Accept Yourself or Die) and Kat Rogue (Crossdresser), published by Sheer Spite Press earlier this year (April 2024). The book itself is gorgeous -- 6" X 9" and about 100 pages with cover design by Sheer Spite mover-and-shaker Lee Pepper.
Imogen's story focuses mostly on her time (pre-transition) growing up Morman and grinding away on her church mission. I've spent enough years in gay and queer circles to know how traumatizing, generally, growing up in this particular church can be and Imogen covers the details well. The mission itself turns into a particular sort of gendered hell for a pre-realization trans woman -- that way those of us in the deep closet often feel like a spy in the midst of boys.
Based on context clues, it sounds like Imogen was born around 1980 or 1981. That youngest millennial cohort of trans women whose 20s and early 30s overlapped with changing health care policy and gay liberation. The ones who started demanding something better than the mid-century models that trans women had been dealing with for decades.
Kat is eight years younger than Imogen, and thirteen younger than me. Her story focuses on her years of crossdressing and her slow realization that she was, in fact, trans. Unlike many trans women, Kat seems to carry little to no shame for her time moving through cross-dressing circles. She describes the shame she felt at the time.
I used to be ashamed about people seeing me identify as a crossdresser. It's the term I first used with my friends and parents. I felt shame that I couldn't admit to myself what I wanted because decades of internalized transmisogyny and the overt threat of violence made me feel like I wasn't trans and definitely wasn't a woman.
That's due in no small part to the individual-centric model of our shitty neoliberal, society. It affects people in the closet by forcing us to be the ones who individually enact "coming out", while everyone else is positioned as being the ones who deal with it, their shock and reactions justified, the comfortable feeling of "ah, this person didn't come out because it was their own problem in a vacuum and I didn't contribute to it whatsoever!" ---> AS OPPOSED TO a true community that prepares at all times for the infinite ways we can support each other, which is often confused with pseudo-supportive sentiments like "we always knew" and"we don't care" and "we were waiting for *you to figure it out" which frames pacificity and active silence as a form of legitimate support, BUT ANYWAYYYYYYYY
but appears to have the shame well corralled, and a clear understanding of where the true problem lies. Given that 2025 will see a more famous trans women writer publish a (nine-year-old) story that drips with the post-transition shame and anger towards her crossdressing years, Kat's message is refreshing. I've had my own long journey of reconciliation with that younger girl who only allowed herself a bit of goth transvestitism -- becoming the pet of cis bohemians -- and it's good to feel a little less alone in treating her with kindness instead of shame.
All of that is enough for me to forgive Kat for terribly owning my generation earlier in the zine.
But, I'm not talking about the Internet as it stands now, or even as it stood ten years ago. 3G? Wireless? What? I mean 90's Internet. Dial-up. I was born in 1988, so the Internet of the 90's didn't mean anything to me. If you're a Gen Xer and did a hack or wrote code or installed Mosaic or did some deep web shit to take part in chat rooms, I don't know about that.
When I started to wrap up this review I found myself wanting to say something like "while not vital or containing new revelations, these two short memoirs are well executed, a fine example of the genre, and worth reading". That's all true enough, although I find myself pausing at the "not vital or containing new revelations" part.
I remain intrigued and interested in filling in the gaps of the shadow trans history that lurked below the surface of the gay liberation movement -- but it doesn't feel as vital as it did two-ish years (or even four months) ago. With a few years under my belt of living as an out trans woman, I don't need the blueprint this sort of memoir provided me in those early days. They're more a comfort read at this point -- a warm recognition of a shared experience or bits of unknown history pulled into my processing machine.
However -- for that woman on the edge of realization, acceptance, and making her first big step into her new world? This sort of writing remains incredibly vital, and I hope enough of us keep writing about our experiences in a way that can let those next transition cohorts/micro-generations know they're not alone, and that the paths and opportunities ahead of them are myriad.