Michaela Sue

I spent last weekend at Capricon, in Chicago, with my girlfriend and whole family. It was a nice time together with the family I've been pulled into now that I'm dating an old friend, us having discovered some feelings for each other now that we've both transitioned. I've known her husband even longer. An all-trans polycule of people who've known each other for decades. Their kid has known me her whole life and has taken me as a bonus mom, something I'd never imagined possible. This was my first time at Capricon since 2020 at the very very end of the before times. It is so nice to have a girlfriend and family all COVID careful. We had our air filters running in the hotel room, all of us are always in respirators when among others. So nice to be able to be safely together in the room, and to eat together in the room in safety. Capricon was one of the most-masked groups of any size I've been in since the early days when anyone gave a shit. Still far less than even half but so nice to not be alone. It was also the queerest, trans-est gathering I've been to that's not specifically a queer event. The kind of place people were casually outing themselves. You know, like, "that was back before I was on T!" It's interesting now to be in a new phase of transition and to be at a con in a dress (and even my first corset!) as a woman and it's just ordinary, six years ago I was a bearded lady and the dresses got a lot more attention. It went shockingly well for me then, but I really like how things are for me now even better.

@xap It was really nice to see you again after all this time! And so many other people I hadn't seen in ages! And it is really nice for me to have this family to do things like the con with.

@a @liamvhogan @jenn anyone wanna write a fedi client in AWK?

@juliaserano@mastodon.social Pandemic started, went out in a mask and suddenly everyone just assumed I was a woman, and that was cool. Looked into HRT in November 2022 and saw a doctor, herself a trans woman, in January 2023 and started HRT. Changed my name on my work ID and e-mail with the then new policy allowing that without a formal legal process that I hadn't done yet. Now have a passport and social security card with new name and gender just by filling out the forms, no gatekeeping. None of this felt remotely possible to me in the old days so I don't know what it would have been like to attempt it then.

@juliaserano@mastodon.social I figured out what the thing with Wendy Carlos vs. the other name on the other record sleeve was as a kid sometime in the early 80s, personally know a couple people I knew were trans in the mid zeros, wasn't until 2014 with increasing visibility around me I finally realized I'm trans, too. When I was a kid I figured there were maybe a couple dozen in the world, obviously I wasn't going to end up being one. And of course back then, what did that feel like? How would you know? What would you *do* were all total mysteries. And then 2015 through 2020 gradually did a nonbinaryish social transition, had some sort of social group such as it was on tumblr, ended up being a person with a beard wearing dresses at work and in normal daily life and it went totally fine. I did not try that earlier in life, who knows, maybe it would have been fine in the 80s or 90s also, but I have my doubts.