A Bridge That’s Also a Home

My daily work involves designing interfaces, so to me, a website is just another kind of canvas—shaped by intent, filled with message and meaning.I guess social media could do the job, too. But there’s something different about writing longer essays: they make room for depth, for slower thoughts, for a kind of intimacy that doesn’t translate well in feeds and timelines.

This isn’t a work project.
It’s my space to be messy, curious, and seen.
The long format is for the rabbit holes.

✏️ So what am I going to write about?

Not work (hopefully). This is for the things I’m curious about—and conflicted over. Some of it will be controversial. Much of it lives in the body, or in identity, or in how those things are defined and politicized.
I’m a fairly opinionated person, so yes—I will complain. But I also want to hold space for growth. For nuance. For hope. My views often make me an outsider on both sides of the political spectrum. But I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I believe, and even if not everyone agrees, I think it’s fair to say: my voice still matters.

I know I’m tired of pretending I don’t care.

Due to my views and how I conceptualize my own sex and gender, saying that I feel alienated from the trans community would be an understatement. Many fellow trans people share this misalignment—some choose not to voice their disagreements, others congregate in sparse, dedicated transmedicalist spaces, and some avoid trans communities altogether. It’s been twelve years since I came out, and I’ve walked all three paths at different points in my life. Each one has its own arc—each worth reflection.

The last few years have been an attempt to embrace the post-transition life I’ve built and leave my medical history in the rearview mirror. In many ways, that decision brought me the most peace—akin to going no contact with unaccepting people from the past. But what many people living stealth won’t tell you is that it’s a lonely space to be in.
Yes, everyone faces challenges. But our struggle has its own particular flavor—difficult to explain, and often impossible to understand unless it’s lived. It exists largely outside the ethos of the general public, which distorts our image for its own convenience. Without a community or story of our own, we’re denied symbolic structure. We’re forced to map our pain—and our dreams—onto frameworks that were never meant for us.

The past has its own way of returning. Its marks don’t disappear—they live in us, whether we acknowledge them or not. And they can either fester, or bloom. So there is value in having an ethos of our own—community, heroes, stories, and art. Not to bring a cultural revolution, or to invalidate others, but to heal. To live fully, with meaning, and without shame that was never ours to begin with.

Community that doesn’t work

I don’t want to erase all the positives that mainstream and transmedicalist spaces bring. But I think it’s important to name how both of them are seriously underserving certain types of trans people. This isn’t a plea for a perfect community built around my subjectivity, or for one that puts people like me on a pedestal. It’s about erasure framed as inclusivity—and cruelty sold as scientific truth.

I believe we’re in dire need of better framing. Something that’s a little bit like a bridge—and also a home. But someone has to build it first. And that requires a productive vision of the future, which both camps, to a large degree, lack.

We don’t need to deconstruct or destroy.
We need to create.

Maybe this website is a naïve attempt to try that. But even if no one joins me, this narrative is still valuable—because it creates an in-between space where I can breathe freely.