He is absolutely amazing..He was so beautiful.This is Aiden. Pretty cute, right? He looks like your average, fun loving teenager.
But he isn’t. He wasn’t.
Aiden no longer walks this earth with us. Why?
Aiden wasn’t always Aiden. When he was born, he was a girl by the name of Caitlin. When she hit highschool, Caitlin began to feel as though something wasn’t right. At first a lesbian, Caitlin realized that perhaps she wasn’t even Caitlin. Perhaps she wasn’t even a girl. That’s when Aiden was born.
The school that Aiden and I attended tried to accommodate Aiden’s needs as best they could. They gave him the key to the one stall unisex teacher’s bathroom, they tried to change his name from Caitlin to Aiden on all of his classes’ rosters. But not everyone could be so kind. Some teachers treated him differently, even refusing to call him Aiden. And the students? They called him cruel names, made fun of him, and even referred to him as a girl expressly against his wishes. I was so proud of Aiden when he got his name legally changed as well as his gender. I remember being elated when he told me he was going to start testosterone. He was finally getting what he wanted. He was going to make his outside match who he was on the inside.
Unfortunately, he dropped out of school in the middle of his junior year, unable to take the taunts anymore. He told me he was going to come back when his year graduated, and graduate with my class.
That never happened.
On April 22nd, of 2010, sometime in the early hours of the morning, Aiden hanged himself.
At approximately 9:10 that morning, I found out that one of my dearest friends committed suicide. I honestly can’t find words to describe the hollowness I felt.
I’m sure there were other extraneous reasons that caused him to take his life, however it is certain that the years of torment he endured, the torment that lasted up until his final days, was a leading factor in his decision to kill himself.
This bullying, the bullying that stole one of my favorite people from me can be stopped. But it won’t go away on it’s own.
It’s up to you to take a stand against these acts of unkindness. If you hear someone in the hallway say the word “fag”, or even worse, if you see a peer being harassed, don’t just walk away. Say something. Stand up for the kid, or make it known that some people are offended by the cruel words others use. Losing a good friend is one of the most terrible feelings I have ever experienced, and probably will ever experience. And worst of all, it could happen to anyone.
Reblog this post if from now on you will make it one of your goals to take a stand against bullying.
I love you, baby. I can’t believe it’s been two years since I last saw you. But I know you’re still with me. Hope you’re making hell, wherever you are <3
He is so beautiful.
Such a waste… so sad :(
Chest reconstruction surgery
Chest surgery is the most common surgical procedure sought by trans men. The goal of chest surgery is to create a contoured, male-looking chest. There are two basic procedures that are typically performed to accomplish this goal:
Double incision/Bilateral mastectomy
Keyhole/Peri-areolar incision
There are a few other surgical variations used for chest reconstruction, including the “inverted T” incision, the “pie wedge” method, and other combinations of incisions that a surgeon may see as the best approach for the patient. These methods are not covered in great detail here, as they are not nearly as common as the above two approaches, and because they are similar to the other approaches except for the resultant scarring. For example, the inverted T approach is quite similar to the double incision method except that the incisions run vertically down from the nipple to the bottom of the pectoral area, and the resulting scar ends up looking like an anchor or an upside-down letter “T.” The pie wedge method is also similar to the double incision, but uses a curved incision from the bottom of the nipple toward the underarm. The surgical method chosen will depend on the body type of the patient and the skills/preferences of the surgeon. In general, guys with larger chests (cup size C or larger) will benefit most from the double incision method, while guys with smaller chests (preferably A, sometimes B) can opt for the keyhole/peri-areolar procedure. The inverted T or pie wedge procedures can be used on guys with medium sized chests (B or C); however, these procedures tend to be used less frequently than the other two approaches because the scarring is not always preferred (as compared to the double incision method). It is best to discuss the options with the surgeon(s) you are considering. Whenever possible, ask to see photographic samples of the surgeon’s work. If you can see an example of their work that shows a patient with a similar body type to yours, so much the better. There is a web site (www.transbucket.com) that serves as a repository for FTM surgery photos and information. The site can be searched by procedure type and by surgeon. Another good resource for FTM surgical information and advice can be found on the FTM Surgery Info Group on Yahoo (groups.yahoo.com/group/ftmsurgeryinfo). These can be invaluable resources when considering which surgeons and procedures may be right for you. See also the resources list below for further information.
Topic Suggestion: FTM Stereotypes (continued)
True, not all FTMs identify as straight. Human diversity is a rich tapestry of varying gender identity, expression and sexual orientation.Due to a recent ask that I just posted, I think we need to elaborate on FTM stereotypes.
Just because we identify as men does not mean all of us are into just female-identified people.
I’m starting to get kind of unhappy with so many people saying we’re just into women. Yes, some of us identify as straight, but some of us identify as queer and are into many types of people.
Please take that to mind in your future questions.
Thank you.
- Dino
I believe in trans people. Not because we are magically insightful. Not because we are full of arcane shapechanger wisdom. Not because we are more or less great or holy than anyone, in our way. We have among us wonderful people and people who do and say terrible things. We have our crooks and our hypocrites and our abusers and our traitors, same as anyone, right alongside our heroes and champions and grand examples of high character. We are a mixed bag, you and me and you and you and you. We don’t have any more or fewer secret Mysteries in our blood, wherever it bleeds from. We’re people, with our tiny daily mistakes and triumphs, our hopes and our hopes for forgiveness. I believe in trans people. Not because we have suffered, though so many of us have suffered. We have hurt in ways that have transformed us as individuals and communities, and we’ve talked about that. I’ve talked about that plenty. We all know the numbers and the statistics and the terrible stories, these days. We pass them around as something that’s a little bit heartbroken hagiography and a little bit campfire scare gossip. We know who has sneered at us, and who has shut the doors. We know all of this. You certainly know this about me, by now, where I’ve left blood to sink into the dirt, where I’ve looked into same dark you’ve looked into, where I’ve gotten lost, where we’ve all felt alone. The thing is, we’ve defined ourselves in those terms. Justified ourselves in those terms. Believe we are here, we say, showing our scars and fresh cuts. Believe we are real. Believe we matter. Believe that we are people because what we have been through, people do not deserve, and I hope you see we didn’t deserve it. We have aligned ourselves, symbolically and narratively, with our suffering: our dysphoria and abandonment and grief and martyrdom. And all of those things are true, and they will stay true, at least until we change this society and go to the grave with it, ceding the field to happier generations. But I want to propose an alternative–and not the alternative that has been offered before, either, the carnival-glam alternative that presents us as the glitter-crusted disco-ball jesters of a new postmodernism. That’s true for some of us, too, and I won’t deny that. I just want to suggest something simpler. I want to suggest that we believe in us because we, as a people, are marked above all by our integrity. There is not much you can say that describes all trans people. We are a broad and heterogeneous bunch. But you can say this: contrary to what the cheap punchlines and propagandists, the frat boys and the Womyn’s Landers, the sketch comedians and the murder defendants would have you believe, we are not united in a grand campaign of deceit. We may not be magical, or magically virtuous, but we are, as a people, astonishingly honest. You look at those numbers we’ve let outline us–the grief and the blood and the hurt, writ vast and cruel–and that is a truth. But I believe the greater truth is us: we looked at that world–that heartless world that tears us up and turns us away from every hearth-fire–and we looked at the option of deceiving it into letting us in, the option of pretending to be something we weren’t in order to survive, and we said, to a person: no. No, we will not lie, even in the face of starvation, of isolation, of loss, of torture, of death. No, even to escape the risk of a world that will never treat us right, we will not lie. We will not pretend. Not today. Not again. At some point, if you are here, and reading this, and calling yourself a trans person or something like, no matter how many compromises and illusions you had to throw up in front of you to make it to today alive, you eventually said “no more.” You refused to lie, even if only to yourself. I believe in trans people because, above all, we know something about the great and terrible worth of the truth. Not because we have paid that price–it has hit some of us harder, and some of us have come through nearly unscathed. Not because whatever we have suffered has made us more special than any other person. Because each of us is a person who looked out at a very dangerous, risky landscape and chose, eventually, to travel through it because the truth mattered most. We know something about the truth. We know what it is worth. And we, as a people, surrounded by those who do not believe us and want us to pretend for them that they are right, chose that truth knowing it might cost us everything. Even if it didn’t. Even if it never does. Today, here and now, we as a people are a people of astonishing integrity. Integrity! How many times have you heard that word and trans people in a sentence? How many times have you heard us defined not by our dysphoria, not by our danger, but by our integrity? I believe that is what this boils down to, though. Our integrity. We are people who have chosen, in the silence of our hearts or shouting from the rooftops, to cultivate integrity no matter the cost. We are people who insist that our internal worlds must be married to our external worlds. That we will be true to ourselves even if we are the only ones who know it is the truth. It’s not that we’re somehow inherently virtuous or upright beyond anyone else’s gifts. It’s that we made choices. Good choices. Brave choices. They say character–integrity–is who you are in the dark. Well, I have been in the dark for a long time. Many of us have. And we have discovered, in the end, not our weakness, not our vileness, not our artificial dishonest infection-on-the-world failure to be real people, but the quality of our character. And we have made choices since then. Some of us are cruel and dangerous people who take from others and reproduce pain. Some of us are paragons of kindness and hope. Most of us, like me, are somewhere in the middle, some of the same mix of choices and mistakes and wicked joy as anyone else on the street, scattered and various as the birds of the air. But all of us, mean and glorious, made that choice, once, that choice of radical integrity, that choice to love the truth and commit to it, dark or bright, hell or high water. That cannot be taken from us. Any of us, the killers and healers and thieves and parents alike. It is more than our losses and more than our gains. It is more than the families we do or don’t have, the ideas we espouse, the places we stand. Somewhere, deep inside, we will always know that one day we chose the truth knowing that that truth might not be kind to us, and we held tight to that truth while it burned on and on. I believe in trans people. I believe in us because we have been honest, at least once, in a way few people on earth have been asked to be. I believe that is what makes us so frightening. That integrity is written all over us. You can see it in the dark. There is no avoiding seeing in us that choice to hold onto the truth even if no-one else would stand with us and do the same. That is enormously threatening. It is no wonder that so many people and communities claim that admitting us among their number might destroy the foundations of everything they know. Integrity is contagious, see. It is hard to look at the way we know the truth and not be tempted to look at your own truth, and that truth’s consequences. It is hard to pretend, with us in the room. It is hard to make excuses for your own lies and compromises and little self-betrayals. So people try very hard to make us the liars. To make us the fakes. To push us out of the room so we don’t hold mirrors up. It’s not that we’re special. It’s just that, every one of us, whatever we did before or since, we made a choice. We believed. We committed. We moved. With everything mobilized to erase us and keep us from truth-telling, we had the strength of spirit to choose truth anyway. I believe in trans people. I will believe in trans people until there is no more believing to do.
