Get it while it’s hot
So I ordered my Legalize Trans* shirt and it arrived in the mail last week. You should get yours now! It’s really awesome, it’s nice soft fabric, cool design, and it fits! I got a Small or whatever the smallest size is, in red (yes!), and as you know I am a small person yet it was pretty much the right size – actually it fits better than some of my shirts. Plus, it’s an excellent way to silently promote visibility and awareness.
Silently Visible
I wore it to work and got interesting reactions, the primary being “What’s trans?” Then people proceeded to make wild guesses: trans-lations, trans-atlantic, trans-coding, trans-fats (that one was really popular). The smart people looked it up in the internets and concluded “oh, transgender!” to which I responded with a thumbs up and a smile.
You see, I’m not particularly in the closet, but I’m not particularly out, in that I have never officially told most people “hey, I’m transgender!” Mostly because I would like to avoid a long winded explanation, mostly because nobody cares either way, and mostly because, at the moment, I don’t want to change my pronouns or name just yet and I’m saving that conversation for when I do.
But I’m glad I managed to stir up some conversation around the topic, even if it was just discovering a word and saying it out loud, then making the mental connection that that word refers to me.
Visit Legalize Trans* and get your shirt today!
Oh and I also got my beautiful significant other the button that says “I ❤ someone who is trans*”
genderqueer.me 
I admire you for putting a face to your blog! I’ve always shied away from posting pictures of myself (even faceless!), though I’ve been feeling braver lately…
Indeed, it was a big decision, one that I took with this very post.
I did it for several reasons:
1. People need to see I’m real. It can sounds superficial, but I appreciate when I see photos, even a tiny one. It helps me visualize the speaker and just put a face to the words. I exist, I am a person, a real one. Sometimes we lose sense of that in the anonymous jumbled mess of words.
2. While this blog is anonymous, and I’m technically not “out out” shouting it to the world…. I mean, I did wear this shirt to work, so….
3. If anyone knows me in real life ever, and for some strange and inconceivable reason, they come across this blog, I don’t care if they know it’s me. Actually, I’d rather they recognize me. Because they found this blog, somehow, so in all probability they are looking for the same information as I am.
4. Similarly, if anyone who knows me through this blogs one day bumps into me and recognizes me in real life – great! I just met a new friend. This has already happened, I’ve met people who recognized me as “maddox, from the blogs”
I can understand reasons for not posting if you are usually stealth, which I know is somewhat your case, but I couldn’t really find any other reason for NOT posting my picture.
Plus that shirt is so awesome I had to really show it off.
As an aside, I also decided to never include my face in top surgery photos, because a) it’s kind of creepy, b) they aren’t exactly PG pics and c) if they ever get used elsewhere without my knowledge or permission (which they already have actually) I don’t want my face plastered everywhere.
Yeah, I’ve recently decided the same. I’ll want to post pics of my new chest when I finally get top surgery, but I don’t want my face atop the body in case they are used elsewhere.
I will add that my top surgery pictures have been posted elsewhere, with questionable attribution and without my knowledge (I just randomly found them), so it was good foresight on my part, and a wise warning for others.