This is going to be a public post. Amazing!

I guess I'll do some backstory, since if you're reading this you may not know a lot about who I am. Anyway, the two important things are:

- I'm transgender and I'm coming out. Kind of slowly. But kind of now. :P
- I have a brother with PDD-NOS, which is a form of autism. He's ten years old. He's not low-functioning, but definitely not on the normal-to-above-average intellect Asperger-y side of the spectrum.

You put it together and you get this. It's a social story pretty much, and targeted at a kid who's not superb at abstract thought. But for a neurotypical (not autistic) younger kid, maybe 6 years old and over, it could be good too.

It is not all that genderqueer-inclusive, and it's very VERY simplistic. I'm sorry for that; I sure as hell don't like it either. But learning about genderqueer, and dysphoria and such -- all that requires a lot of theory of mind. My bro doesn't seem to have much theory of mind.

It is very loosely based on a brochure called Your Mum's Adventure (warning: PDF), written by some folks at a charity called GIRES. Sorry for stealing some of your wording, GIRES! I'll take it down if you're mad! :P

This isn't that interesting -- it's really sentimental, which is silly but comforting -- and I won't be spamming it all around or anything. But if you know a small[ish] kid who could do with this sort of story, here it is. And enjoy.

( Read more... )

This is backdated to February 11, but that's a lie. :P I wrote the bulk of this post's explanation-bit in September 2008. Wanted to add some stuff, clarify some stuff, about the initial post. This is gonna go public too, so I figured it might as well be categorized on the same date. Most of the actual content is, if not the same, very similar.

...

Right. Ever since I put that story up on the web, I've been a little unhappy with it. That's not exactly the right word. Perturbed.

I didn't like its lack of inclusion for anything but the, uh, "wrong-body" model of transgender. That model doesn't really apply to me anyway (or to many trans people I know in general). It's too freaking easy.

And ease is what my little bro needs, which is frustrating. He says himself that he doesn't like change, that he has a hard time being flexible. These are some of the most obvious traits about him, both to him and to others -- characteristic of autism, yeah.

Abstract thought, weird sociological Thingies, the sheer wtfness of our culture's treatment of gender ... that kind of thing is a second language to him. I mean, it would be like this to some extent even if he was neurotypical. Eleven-year-old (yeah, he's 11 now) cissexual boys usually don't make super-great gender theorists. Although I'd love to be proven wrong on that :P

But the text still wasn't working for me. And I've just about got an appointment for hormones, so it's pretty well time. There are parts I wish I could go over -- about how there are plenty of cis women more masculine than I am, and I'd still want to transition even if I were a feminine person, and how "masculine"/"feminine" is different from core identity.

So. But. I rewrote and clarified the text. I scrapped the bits from GIRES -- it's mine, mine, mine now.

I'm still not entirely satisfied (in some ways it's more brother-friendly and trans-worse), but ...

( Here it is. )