I grew up in a particularly religious household, where homosexuality was regarded as practically worse than murder. My mother, who is by all accounts a lovely woman after some significant mellowing out in recent years, raised my brothers and me with a hefty dose of religious fear. We were taught early that sinning meant you went to hell, and being queer was a one-way ticket to an eternity of pain and misery.

I was a feminine child, so I frequently found myself on the receiving end of my mother’s piety. From a young age, I was beaten, bullied, and attacked…

As is the nature of words, language evolves, morphs, grows, contracts, twists, and ever-changes as society itself evolves. When we strictly attach ourselves to the language of the past, we are bound to find ourselves stuck in the past. I have often come across people bemoaning that “transsexual” is no longer completely synonymous with “transgender,” some clinging to themselves as “transier than thou” because their definition of trans aligns more with the words we used in the past.

Words like transsexual and transvestite are not wrong, per se, but they do not apply to all of us. Therefore, they have…

Sophie, a Scottish transfemme musician, died on the 30th of January in a freak accident that sent shock waves through the trans community.

I was familiar enough with Sophie’s music through the Los Angeles trans drag community, and something about Sophie’s death has struck a different chord than other high profile trans deaths. When other girls in our community die, it’s rarely because of an accident. We’ve grown numb to seeing trans women die from suicide, overdose, and murder.

But a trans death from a tragic accident? That’s rarer.

Sophie died when she climbed to the top of a balcony…

While I am no expert on meditation, I have been on a long journey to mental health. Following a mental breakdown, I paired up with my very first therapist in 2016 after years of struggling with my mental wellbeing. In a nutshell, I have been diagnosed with a myriad of comorbid conditions and dispositions such as autism, PTSD, major depression, anxiety, and ADHD within the last four years. …

The Vagus nerve, also called the tenth cranial nerve and more antiquatedly referred to as the pneumogastric nerve (and sometimes “the wandering nerve”), runs from the base of the brain, through the neck and throat, reaching down to the lower abdomen and is generally responsible for the regulation of internal organs like the esophagus, lungs, heart, stomach, and intestine. Basically, the vagal nerve sends signals from your organs to your brain, activating the parasympathetic nervous system's functions like immune response, heart rate, gut function/digestion, vomiting, swallowing, coughing, sneezing, and even your overall mood. [source]

In recent years, the vagus nerve's…

I came out about three years ago as a transgender woman and have learned a lot about my community in that time. Before coming out, I was largely isolated from trans issues and knew little of the battle between transmedicalists and nonbinary trans folks until I found myself caught in the thick of it. I have encountered much ire from folks who identify as “old-school transsexuals” in response to my assertions that nonbinary people fall under the trans umbrella. …

Earlier this year, I finally received an autism diagnosis after years of searching for answers to why I operate so differently from most other people in my life. Much like coming to terms with my trans identity, there is a “before” and “after” context to this discovery/diagnosis. Who I was before discovering my autistic traits and who I am after is subtly different, in the sense that I no longer hate myself for not conforming to a neurotype that does not and could never apply to me. I know now that the way my brain works both a superpower and…

Among autistic folks, there is a concept called “masking” by which we compensate or hide as neurotypical(NT) to survive an ableist and neurotypical-centric society. Basically, it’s sort of like being in the closet, but rather than a closet itself, masking is often more like having a dry cleaner’s carousel of neatly organized costumes and outfits that fit multiple scenarios and situations. We may not realize that we’ve put on a certain mask at all; we sort of pop into it when a certain situation arises that demands that particular behavioral switch. …