Hey everyone, so it's August which means people are going to be going away to
college, potentially for the very first time, coming in September. And I just
wanted to talk today a little bit about that because it was scary when I went
away for school the first time. A little backstory about me, I transitioned when I
was in grade 12 so by the time I was going away for university I was like-
[Whispers to self] 'July, August, September' [Talks to camera] so I was two months post-op for Top surgery and I had been on
testosterone for I don't know, like five months or six months by that point in time. I
had my legal name changed I had not had my gender marker change on anything and
I really just wanted to go to school as a dude. like not a trans dude, just a
dude and I could talk about transness as freely as I wanted to but I could be a
dude regardless of whether or not I talked about being trans. So that was
really important to me. I went to school four hours away from my hometown I was
going to live in residence by myself I didn't know anybody who lived there, it
was in Ottawa by the way, um. So I was a little bit worried didn't know what was
going on told, myself I was going to be stealth but didn't really know what being
stealth even meant or looked like or how I'd be able to do it. Things like that..
and it worked out for me in that regard.. I mean being trans worked out for me and
being a dude at my school worked out.. the program didn't, I dropped out but that's
a whole different story. So one of the scary things I'm going to talk about
right now is that the year before I went to Carleton University a trans dude got
beat up in a bathroom there. So that was a little bit scary.. again I was in
residence I chose not to have any roommates whatsoever which was I thought
was going to be impossible because of the fact that you get put on a waitlist
if you want a single bedroom but I emailed the people I was like 'hey I'm trans so
for safety reasons I think you should let me be in a single bedroom' and they
were totally aligned with that they were like 'yeah that's the best move
whatsoever' I was actually kind of scared going in I was scared about- to
tell anybody I was trans because I felt like it was going to be like
high school where if you tell one person then all of them the entire high school
knows. I liv- I lived in a small town by the way so in that sense I thought
maybe like if I told the residence people that, I don't know they were like-
then everybody that I lived with in res was going to know and that like every
single prof that I ever interacted with would know and then the 500 people I had
classes with would know. I don't want to give advice on how to be stealth but like I
just want to give advice that like you can make it through university as a trans
person.. like you can do that, you know what I mean? and like if one person in
your school finds out that you're trans that doesn't mean that everybody now
knows which is like so different from high school and not what I expected like
you have the opportunity in college or university or whatever to be out about
being trans within say the LGBTQ Center or in one of your classes and that
doesn't necessarily affect every other place you go at the college, you know what I
mean? like I could have talked about transness or whatever in my Women's
Studies class but then not talked about it in my communications class and
there's essentially no overlap in the people that were in those classes that I
noticed anyway so it never really would have spread around. Advice for not
necessarily being stealth but if you're going to school and you haven't gotten
your name changed or I mean or your gender change but like for me I didn't
and I just kept saying that I was a dude anyway and then later on through the
year I got my gender change by the way on my paperwork but anyway like you
haven't gotten your name changed it's totally fine for you to use like your
preferred name so like your name and just like tell professors ahead of time
that's like the best resource of like you were in a position where you feel
like people aren't going to automatically assume what your pronouns
are like correctly then there's opportunity to email your profs
beforehand or talk to them like five minutes before class whatever usually
like you're not having the first person to ever ask that of them and if you are
then like I don't know like just tell them you know what I mean? like all they
need to know about you is that these are the pronouns you use this is the name you use
and like they- say like 'oh my name may appear is this on here but my name is
like my preferred name is actually this' because transgender people are not the
only people who have a preferred name and they need
to be respected regardless. When I applied I said that I was male like I
checked out for the M box whatever and did all that for every part
of my application to school even though that's not what my other documents said
and then I got there and it was fine like I never had an issue with doing
that I don't know if you're supposed to have an issue with that but like
honestly your gender doesn't really appear on anything as far as I can tell
like in the front end of things... maybe in the back end the system
will know that their gender is there but I never got anything that had my gender
on it anyway. In regards to like medical transition I live in Canada in Ontario I
went to school in Ottawa and I went to school in the Durham Region so
essentially my experience is that getting testosterone getting on the wait
list for surgery is so much easier when you're in college because a lot of the
medical professionals that work at colleges I believe have a more
up-to-date education and therefore they've actually heard about these
things so far and like again you're not usually the only college student that's
going to go through a medical transition so they've probably seen it before and
also like they're just there to give you your prescription which is nice if you
need gender counseling, obviously ask for it but in most cases it's just
people like if you walk in you're like 'hey look I need prescription for
testosterone' and they're probably gonna be like 'oh why?' you'll be like 'oh because
like I want these like effects and like blah blah I'm aware of the side effects that
may seem negative blah blah' and they'll be like 'okay cool here you go'
and like in terms of education they'll like you may need to talk to you like if
these doctors have no experience with trans people you may just have to tell
them what they need to do which is annoying for sure but it can also be
like a very positive experience so I know people sometimes I - y'know sometimes it goes
either way it's like yeah cool like I get to tell me doctor what I want and
what I need and like how to help me which i think is great but then there's
the other hand of people where they want their doctor to be the expert and they
don't want to have to like tell their doctor things and they think that
means that they're doctor is like dumb but like a doctor's ability to listen to
their patients and like understand how to like work together in order to get
the best health care I think is better but if you're looking for looking more
hands-on doctor if you go into like the clinic at your school and maybe they are
super hands-on or maybe they're a bit super hands-off you have the opportunity
to say like oh I'd like to see a different doctor here or like you can
ask them to be - for like a list of the doctors within the area around your
school as well like I think that's an important thing to know that I think
some people feel like they have to be locked into the family doctor who like
was there to catch them when they were born but like honestly people can switch
doctors dentists whatever whenever you want so that's totally fine. I will
say sometimes the lgbtq+ Center at colleges or universities is transphobic as [bleeped swearing] and that's [bleeped swearing]
up and I'm just giving people a heads up because I was a little bit shocked not saying
it's going to be the worst but just be prepared you know sometimes we think
that people who have like higher levels of education are more educated on topics
such as gender - not always the case. If you have a problem with one your profs
being transphobic say something not necessarily to them if you don't want to
say it to them but usually there's resources on campus I made a video
talking about my broth being transphobic and outside of making that video I also
went to talk to the diversity officer at my school and we got things moving in a
more positive way so that's always an opportunity I think it's important to
know that like University and high school are very different high school is very
like structured and everyone like they have like a path for you and like I
don't know I feel like the resources are way more limited whereas University it's
like it's what you make it you know what I mean? because you're paying money to be there
like you're supposed to be having the experience you want to have and like
there's a lot of resources but there's not necessarily going to be somebody
there to hold your hand and tell you what resources are there so if you have
some sort of Mentor Program at your school which usually a lot of them do
like usually can you get set up with like some person who's in their fourth
year or whatever and you have the opportunity to ask them questions. Maybe you don't need to ask
them like how do I get testosterone as a trans person or whatever but asking them
like where how do I get involved with like a medical professional on
campus, how do I like talk to somebody about discrimination, how do I like link
up to certain clubs how do I make my own, club whatever like there's opportunity
for that and then you can figure out what you want and what you need and how
to get it which is really good yeah but that's it for now and trying to think of
like anything else that I worried about when I was going in there was a lot of
things I worried about especially because I was two months post-op and I was
scared to be like a little t-rex trying to get things done when I was
there but yeah that's pretty much it don't worry school is gonna be great or
it's gonna suck and you're going to drop out and you're gonna end up like me and
get your dream job anyway so don't worry being trans does not hold you back
from anything. You can do anything. Sometimes you're going to have to get what you
want in a different way than cis people, sometimes are going to have to go about
it in a longer way, sometimes you're going to have to go to school and drop
out and go to a different school and try all these things and it's going to be friggin
annoying but honestly you can do it. You got this.
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