When I publicly came out as trans, I was keenly aware of how much privilege I was giving up in transitioning from a white (seemingly) cis man to a white trans woman. But I was also very much aware of how much privilege I still had. Which is not to say femme white trans ladies have a lot of privilege in our society, but we certainly have more than every trans woman of color.
On top of that, so many trans people lose spouses, family, friends, homes, and jobs when we come out, and I basically lost none of that. So I remain remarkably more privileged than most trans women, and I recognize that and I wanted to USE it to help people.
I’m a writer, it’s what I do. So I had the thought that I would chronicle my transition, and talk about things cis people might never realize about society, and do what I could to take as much pressure off of other trans people as I could. I had no idea how long I’d be writing them, I thought I’d just talk until I ran out of things to talk about. But that never happened, because so many more things keep getting added to the list. Things I myself never even realized (and couldn’t have) until well into my transition.
So here we are, two and a half years after they started, and there’ve been over one hundred installments (this is 119!) and my mega 24-thread deep dive into the intentional trans allegories of the Matrix movies will be released as a book in the summer of 2023. And it’s that book that actually got me thinking about my Trans Tuesdays as a whole. I was a little hesitant to turn the Matrix threads into a book at first, even though many people who’ve read them have asked for exactly that.
But a very small percentage of the population is on social media, and a book could reach an entirely new audience of people. And so many people have told me how those Matrix threads, and these threads in general, have helped them. And that’s the whole reason I started these. I just want to help people. To be as much of a resource as I can. And that led me to the realization that these threads could reach a lot more people if they were also in another medium.
I don’t speak for all trans people. All I can give you is my own perspective. But with the podcast, now I can also give other trans people a platform to talk about these same issues, to share their thoughts on what being trans means to them.
I want to celebrate us, to share the beauty and complexity of our existence with the world. And whether you read on social media, read them from the website, or listen to the podcast (or all three!), thank you for joining me on this journey.
Tilly Bridges
Executive Producer
Pendant Productions
