I feel self-indulgent writing this out during the long telegraphed implosion of the western world, but then that’s exactly what our problem today is, and where the subject of this piece began; selfishness.

10 years ago at this time of year, when I first came out as trans, I felt supremely selfish. There was no question in my mind that I needed to come out, I looked ahead at my future and I could tell that to stay living as a man would lead to my death within 5 to 10 years. I couldn’t look ahead and see anything I felt was worth living for, but at the same time I felt that I had been selfish for choosing my own life over continuing to play the role I had played for so many people who loved that person I was pretending to be. Even as she supported me, I knew I had hurt the woman I loved and had been in a relationship with for nearly 7 years – virtually the entirety of my 20s. I had numerous students – both as a karate teacher in Canada, and as an art (and also karate) teacher in Thailand – all of whom loved and admired the old me. Was I robbing the people around me of that person?

The conversations around trans people today are quite different from 2015 – for both better and worse – and such notions of trans people being selfish are more popularly dismissed by narratives of trans joy – as they should be. But I think this barrier of selfishness is something that is still experienced by most trans people. We must push past the sense that we are being selfish, or rather, in my case certainly, I felt I had to consciously decide that I was going to be selfish in order that I might live.

Transition was perhaps the first major time in my life that I did something purely for myself. Since the rest of my life was just some role I played for others, I easily picked up the habit of people pleasing and self-sacrifice. I continually shrunk myself down and deferred to others. Despite, or perhaps because of, being a big muscle man with big hair and a big personality, I always felt I had to be the ‘bigger person’ and usually let others have their way. I tried to always be helpful, avoid conflict, and just couldn’t say ‘no’ to people. I suppose I finally reached my breaking point and said ‘enough is enough’ and did the one thing I always wanted to do but didn’t feel I was allowed to have.

Why should I have to sacrifice myself all the time?

Why should everyone else’s feelings always matter more than mine?

Why should I be so concerned about taking care of everyone else if I don’t even get to be happy?

I stepped through the door of selfishness and gave myself the one thing I truly wanted, and from then on I focused on myself. I developed and curated the new person I wanted to become – or, more accurately, I peeled the way the layers of protection I had built up to survive my old life, revealing my new “true” self within. The one who was struggling for breath under the accumulating weight of a life she didn’t want and never asked to lead.

There is so much that can go into even just the outward facing aspects of a transition. New clothing, makeup, and jewelry. Attaining healthcare and document changes. Hair Removal. Voice training. Shaping my body through diet and exercise away from the muscular man I lived as into a more slender and traditionally feminine form. Excitedly tracking the progression of HRT’s effects. Feeling fear, inadequacy, and dysphoria. By necessity, the self becomes the primary focus as it is reconstructed.

Trans people are often accused, primarily by bigots, of being self-absorbed. But the reality is that we are feeling joy in ourselves for the first time and we are thrilled in our growth and exploration of a wondrous new world that gives our lives the color and meaning that we had always been told our lives should be, even as we felt gray and empty inside.

But then there comes the barrier. It varies from person to person, depending on what their transition goals are and the levels of access they have to attaining them. For me it was around three years into transition. The process had definitely begun much sooner, perhaps one and a half years in. But after I felt I had generally attained all of my transition goals in 2018, I began to feel lost. So much of my life in the previous years had been driven by my reconstruction of myself. So much of how I had operated had surrounded a sense of forward progression. Every day I was out there, working on that gender. Even at my lowest points, I looked ahead to the future and the hope of attaining my lifelong dreams. But once I had reached that point and felt at peace in my body and in my life, what now? I had to reassess how I operated and what I was living for. Was I purely to focus on my career in a similar “selfish” fashion as my transition had began? Luckily, by this time, I’d connected to other trans people and become active within some aspect of the broader trans community. I once again felt that responsibility to care for others.

The full embrace of caring for community after being hurt by community takes time. I grew up wary of the notion of community – it always seemed to be, at best, a burden of meaningless, one-sided obligations, and, at worst, a vehicle for brainwashing, group-think, and distrust of outsiders. These days I always say “You can’t really be a part of community if you can’t be yourself in community.” As self-sacrificing as I was, I always felt disconnected from the people around me, with rare exceptions. As long as I was living as someone I didn’t want to be, I was always going to feel like everything I did regarding other people wasn’t for myself – but in a way that fostered alienation rather than connection. It felt coercive rather than voluntary. Just as it is a long process to rebuild the self, it is a long process to heal the self. This cannot come purely by focusing on the self. It comes by relearning trust and by regaining a sense of investment in something beyond the self. The wounded self protects itself by cutting itself off from others. Coming out of that shell is difficult and scary and it takes time, but once you are able to stick your head out and see that it’s not so scary and that there are others out there who you can trust – that’s when the healing really begins.

I’m old now, getting close to 40. I’m not going to be the hot, young Superstar who’s the center of attention. Just as I’m not going to be facing the brunt of the hardship that is very soon to come for our people. But I do have a lot of experience and a lot of skills and, dare I say, some wisdom. I’m so fortunate to be a mentor and godparent to so many wonderful, young trans people. Seeing them thrive, and doing what I can to help them gives me so much joy and hope for the future. I feel almost like I have been transported back to the beginning of my transition, but this time, it’s not about me, it’s about us.

I love all of my kids and I’m not going to let them take a single God damn one of them. I’m going to protect these kids at all costs. I will keep living for them, just as I would die for them, if it came to that.

But even outside of such dire things, I feel greater ease and comfort in my more casual role as a karate teacher. I also feel a deeper connection and investment in my students. I liked being a karate teacher before I came out, but I feel so much well better as a female karate teacher. I feel like I’m truly able to shine and thrive and give everyone my best self now that I am myself.

You can only be in community if you can be yourself in community.

(OK I can’t help but make this a little bit political)

There’s a lot of reasons why the transphobes hate us, but not the least of them is that they do not want anyone to have an investment in community. To care for the vulnerable among us, to have compassion for others who are different from us, to feel connected to one another across racial, gender, and class bounds; these are not things they want us to have. They want everyone alone so they can’t fight back and so they can sell them things. Almost ubiquitously across the pre-colonization world, what we today call trans and queer people across cultures occupied some kind of religious or spiritual role. Perhaps a person who in some way bridges the separation between men and women, bridges other boundaries? Perhaps such people are connected to other worlds of possibility? They may try to use us as a means to divide people, but we need to keep doing what we do best and bridge the gap between worlds.

I feel like the reason why Western Society is at the place that we’ve come to now in 2025 has to do with a similar limit that people have come up against. The limit of selfishness. The limit of focusing upon your own personal gain. The system has reached a breaking point and people are being told empty promises of how they can Make Selfishness Work Again. If you just keep doubling down on helping yourself and hurting others, then maybe the rich people who own everything won’t have to give anything up, either. Many of the people around us have never felt fully happy in their lives, even as they occupy more privileged positions, no doubt because our society is practically selfishness incarnate, and the “community” that we all live within is of the sort that just takes, while not allowing its members true freedom to live as they please. Liberal elites, who serve the same corporate masters the vile racists who now run the United States also serve, cynically offloaded the system’s contradictions onto everyone else under a twisted guise of some kind of community-minded morality – scolding and lecturing people for being racist or sexist or homophobic, and then in the last few years, transphobic, while not actually *doing* anything about these, or anyone else’s problems. Don’t get me wrong, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia are all grievously serious issues that are now only getting worse, but there is something profoundly alienating in being blamed for the ills of your society by the people who hold the reins of this society that increasingly exploits you. I’m frankly not surprised many people gave into the temptation of selfishness and said ‘enough is enough’ and voted to brutalize their neighbors so that they might somehow prosper. It’s disgusting and terrifying and incredibly misguided, but it’s not surprising. These are people who haven’t moved beyond selfishness, and unlike the wonders of genuine self-expression found in transition, they are likely to not find what they are looking for within selfishness. If there is a way out of this, it will be through enough people transitioning out of Selfishness and into Community.

  My hope for any trans person reading this, if you feel scared and alone or at the limit of what you can do, is to look for others to be invested in. Whether it’s your fellow trans and queer people or some other community of value and meaning to you, be out in the world heal your wounded and untrusting heart. It is time to transition out of Selfishness and into Community. Show others that you live and that they can live too, if they wish. Plant a garden and help it grow. For whatever difficulties the future holds will be easier together.

If you get value from my art or writing or the voice videos I put up for free on Youtube, please consider donating to my Patreon or Ko-Fi. I have a really hard time asking for money during times such as these, but every little bit of support helps this trans woman artist survive.