Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago, I was planning on writing a bit of an introduction. There are a handful of new folks subscribing here and I wanted to say hi and give y’all a little taste of what you could expect to see in your inbox since you so graciously decided to join me in sharing a little bit of space in this world together.

I’m still planning on doing that. But not yet.

A few days after I arrived in California after moving across the country, I got a call that I knew was coming, although maybe not quite so soon.

My father was entering his final days of late-stage dementia. I got on the first flight the next morning and over the next few days, I sat with him and my family as he transitioned into whatever happens next.

He passed away, two weeks ago, on July 31st.

I don’t know if I’ll share much more about that here. But I will say that he was a really good dad. There’s much more to say about him than that but for now… I know that he loved me, he was proud of me, and he knew exactly who I was all the way til the very end. I miss him.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been wrangling disparate thoughts as they careen through my mind. Grasping at them and attempting to capture them in voice memos and notes on my phone when I can. Feeling as if I should store them somewhere until I can figure out what to do with them. For now, my discombobulated, disorganized thoughts are simply in storage. I’m visiting them often, sifting through them, pulling at threads or simply letting them sit and breathe.

There’s no rush.

Something that I keep coming back to is how much the rest of the world keeps moving when yours seems to stop.

Grief has me feeling like I’m floating through many of my days. Finding moments of lucidity and clarity and productivity only to find myself buried deep in cerebral mush, muted sounds… a subaquatic distortion of awareness where I forget that people are going to work, to school, to restaurants and living their lives until the trash truck snaps me back as it rattles, hisses, and rumbles down the street.

There’s a whole world out there, and I’m just kind of, sort of, in it.

But I’m here. I am still planning and plotting and working and living. My pace is just much slower. At least for now.

I’m spending a lot of time thinking. About my dad. About all of the grief that has escorted me into the present. There’s been so much grief lately. I’ve mourned not only my father but my home, my autonomy, stability, my friends, my health… and more.

Yet, I still believe that this is all in passing. Moments of astounding sadness are still simply moments. There will be moments of equally astounding joy in my future. In fact, even through pain, I’m working towards crafting a joyful existence. I’ve found a home to box again. I’m tired and sore and very out of shape. But I’m boxing and moving again. I have a surf lesson scheduled on Sunday. I’ve found a place to finally unpack my bags. To settle in. To make my own.

I’m ok.

I’ve got a lot to say and a lot of plans.

I’ll be back soon.

The kindness, camaraderie, solidarity, and love I’ve received keeps me buoyed and bobbing, surfing, and punching. Thank you so much for sharing this space with me.

Much love,

-Ash

Cancer is a thief.

Two beautiful souls are simply gone this week.

I have tried to figure out what to say about it and I keep coming up empty.

I think it’s because I feel empty.

I’m gutted in fact. For their families, for those that loved them. For our small, queer cancer advocacy family.

I learned a few months ago about the difference between writing from the wound and writing from the scar.

Loosely meaning: writing about pain when its sharp and searing and fresh (the wound) versus writing once the wound has dulled with time and distance (the scar). A little perspective. Not healing per se but I think perspective applies here.

Today, I’m writing from the wound. I may look back on this and wish that I had given myself time and space to process before putting words to the page and sending them out into the world.

But I also think it’s important to share what this particular wound is like.

I’m not going to memorialize my friends right now. I will do so, but likely in private or in a small group. But not here. Or maybe here, but later. I don’t know…

They were both young, creative, artists, travelers, queers. They had big lives stretched out in front of them. Families, partners, a child. From geographically different places yet brought together by cancer. They were light. Big bright shiny beautiful lights that will live on regardless of where their physical bodies rest. But they should still be here today. How could we lose them both, in one week? The loss is staggering. These words do no justice to who they were and the marks they leave on this world…

I wrote this as I tried again to process my own grief:

At first, it’s crushing grief and sadness at the finality of it. They are just no longer here. At least not the way they were.

My mind soon drifts to myself. Which makes me feel awful. Selfish.

But how do I grieve them yet somehow not consider my own possible recurrence?

My renewed mortality.

They were younger than me.

That feels particularly cruel.

My mind is bouncing off a million thoughts and questions.

“How can you think of yourself? It’s ok to think of yourself. Stop thinking of yourself. Remember them. That pinches. Their families. Their partners. That really pinches. Unfair doesn’t cut it. I don’t have words. We need to find a way to grieve collectively. Let’s plan that. Do something. Keep moving. Yes, plan something. Doing something is a distraction but I can’t sit with these spinning thoughts. So do. Do something. Anything.”

I’m in a quiet, slow moving panic that feels like wading through a muddy swamp in concrete shoes.

I’m detached from reality. Going through the motions only to forget what I’m in the middle of.

I need to stop.

Sit.

Stop deflecting. You’re going to have to feel this. So feel it.

I sit.

Tears squeeze from the corners of my eyes. I reach for deep slow breaths but can’t quite feel my lungs fill. More tears.

I’m profoundly sad. Every cell in my body feels empty.

The depth of this sadness is not for me. Or my mortality. It’s for my friends. For their futures. For the indelible marks they had not yet left.

I don’t know how long I sat. And tried to breathe. And quietly wept. And thought of my friends.

We weren’t close in an every day way. We didn’t talk on a regular basis. But we shared something. A nuanced understanding of this particular mashup of queerness and cancer.

We checked in on each other. We encouraged or just affirmed each other.

I wish…

I won’t go there. I won’t wish I had done something different or better.

I’ll not shame myself today.

Cancer teaches us to set boundaries. To protect ourselves. To say no. It’s a kickstand. You had cancer. No other explanation needed. If you can’t show up for that day, ‘nuff said. I’m tired. I had cancer. I’m tired. A lot. The cancer card… the kickstand.

I don’t think we measure love in likes and DMs. I think it’s measured in knowing. Knowing that someone has shown you they care. They don’t need to tell you each week how much they care. Although following up and checking in over time establishes a rhythm of trust even if that rhythm is faint and distant.

Is it about doing “enough” or about doing what you can? Do we mutually agree that what we can is enough?

Cancer is a thief. It stole my friends.

I wish the only grief I felt was for them.

But this cancer cancers my mind and I can’t shake the impending doom.

So I float. Grieving my friends. Myself.

There no trust in peace. But for some of us there’s still living. Living before the thief tries to snatch us up again. So we live on with them imprinted on our hearts. Captured there… young, vibrant, and boldly queer. 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏳️‍🌈

A note to readers: I struggled mightily with whether I wanted to share this publicly. I still don’t know if I want to. But I decided to put it out there.

When grief is present and overwhelming, trying to figure out if you’re in the frame of mind to put something out into the world is a particularly vulnerable and uncertain task. But I think back to the darkest moments I’ve had and often the things that buoy me while I’m sinking are seeing my own thoughts and struggles reflected in someone else’s. It alleviates my isolation by reminding me that I’m not alone on this earth or in my pain. Others have been here before and will be here after. The pressure to say the right thing or the perfect thing can be paralyzing. Yet the ongoing and repeated decision to remain visible also compels me to share even when it feels foreign and uncomfortable. To me, this is community. My hope is that sharing this moment and my pain will find those who need it. Thanks for seeing me through it. 🏳️‍⚧️ ❤️‍🩹

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I’m recording voice memos as I drive because I feel compelled to have an artifact of what this was like as it was happening, not to have a tidy narrative of it through the distortion of hindsight.

It makes me uncomfortable to quote segments of long and winding thoughts into neat snippets and put them out there for others to digest. They are unfiltered thoughts and it’s a bit intimidating to share them.

Yesterday as I drove, I was feeling myself shift. I was feeling layers of anxiety slowly being shed. I was feeling the direction of this move take hold. The tangibility in committing to it and seeing it through. Yet also the uncertainty of it all.

I noticed that I spend a lot of time placing value on things being good or bad. So, I started to wonder… if I stop evaluating and defining the worth of experiences, I might be better able to perceive them. It’s an interesting concept and one that I have no idea how to achieve. But one that I’d like to explore more.

What happens when we stop grading our lives, people, and experiences? When we stop rating them, and giving them prescribed value? What happens if we observe rather than evaluate?

I don’t have answers to any of those questions. But I like thinking about them. And I like having the time and opportunity to sit with them. It’s possible that doing so may give me perspective in the future that I’m too close to decipher today.

These dispatches feel like clues to a larger mystery that eventually, I’ll refer back to in order to help guide my way.

I’m starting to learn that might be what this move is about… Searching for clues and trusting myself. It’s about staying open to possibility, being curious about myself and the world around me. And letting it take the shape it’s meant to take.

It’s uncomfortable but so was cancer treatment. So was sitting in the “breast specialists” office two weeks after top surgery in a pink gown. And so many other moments in between. Discomfort isn’t the antithesis of happiness. For me, it’s a catalyst for growth.

So, here’s to being uncomfortable. Literally, my ass hurts from sitting in this car for so long. And more figuratively as I pontificate while I roam somewhere around the American West. I’ve crossed the threshold to those bluer pastures. So let’s go see what secrets they hold!

Trans is beautiful.

Trans joy is resistance.

🏳️‍⚧️🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵

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Day 2 was a doozy of a day. I drove for about 11 hours. I was tired before I even got started so I drank a lot of soda and did my best to keep my mind occupied.

Being left alone with your thoughts for days on end while driving across the country isn’t exactly for the faint of heart.

While Day 1 was a pretty easy day and I was buoyed by the excitement of getting on the road, Day 2 felt like an emotional hangover.

I explored some dark corners of my mind. I was kind of fighting myself while simultaneously at war with the world around me when it occurred to me to just feel it all. I decided to relinquish control over my feelings and let them exist.

I let myself feel them, examine them, and move through them until I was done. I didn’t have to hold on to it all. I have been holding on to it all for so long. Unknowingly. I’ve been grasping tight to my own narrative and it was eating away at me.

So I started voicing my thoughts. It was gutwrenching and ultimately cathartic.

So, for today’s update, I’ll share some of those thoughts. I won’t give you a long preamble. I’ll just say that this is raw and in the moment. It’s not happy or pretty or uplifting. But it’s real.

Watch the video below with sound on to hear my take on the irony of loving yourself when the world hates you for doing so.

I’ve got some more tips coming too. But for today, I think this is enough.

If you’ve sent a message or commented, restacked, or even thought of me, thank you so much! This trip is so complicated and I can’t tell you how much life it gives me to hear from y’all. I look forward to bathroom breaks and gas station fill ups to see your kind words and remember that folks out there care about me and what this trips means.

Trans rights are human rights.

Trans liberation now.

Trans is beautiful. 🏳️‍⚧️🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵

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The wide open road, new playlists and podcasts loaded up on my phone, a cute dog, and 8 days of adventure and exploration lie ahead.

Sounds fun, right? The truth is, yes, there’s some fun to be had. But the logistics and the implications are not exactly what I’d call fun.

Tomorrow I’ll start a new leg of my trip right here on Substack. Follow along with me from the road while I point my car toward bluer pastures. For safety and privacy, I won’t be telegraphing exactly where I’ll be and when, but I plan to share daily updates, tips, and notes as I move across the country.

I’ll share what I can about dog-friendly travel, bathrooms, hotels, gas stops and route choices. I will also share what it feels like to make this decision and carry it out in real-time. The emotions, the psychological toll, and some moments of relief and humor too.

If anyone wants to grab lunch or meet up along the way, message me and let’s see if we can connect.

Over 400,000 trans people have moved since the 2024 election. Texas is leading that migration, with nearly 20% of respondents in a recent Plume poll indicating that they are getting the hell out of Texas.

Count me in. Officially, I have already left Texas.

I moved to Austin, TX in 2019. That move was full of promise, high hopes, and some naivety. Having grown up in a smaller blue dot in a smaller sea of red, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into.

Three years later, I would begin the medical part of gender transition. Within weeks of taking my first T-shot, my trans joy would turn to disbelief when I was diagnosed with breast cancer after a tumor served up an unwelcome surprise during my gender-affirming top surgery.

By 2025, I had emerged from the collision of gender transition and cancer treatment completely scathed and demoralized, yet also somehow hopeful, purposeful, and resolved. I had stumbled haphazardly into advocacy and found a voice. I declared to anyone who would listen, “If everyone leaves Texas, then how will we ever fight back?” I was staying. And fighting in the ways I knew how.

That summer, Texas passed a shiny new anti-trans bathroom bill.

In 2026, around the country, state by state, laws and policies designed to humiliate, erase, and harm trans people continue to be passed.

Speaking of 2026, the Texas legislature has been pretty quiet on the anti-trans front, right? Right. Because the Texas legislature meets every other year, rather than every year. But that quiet has contributed to a new heaviness. It feels like a countdown to some sort of impending doom. It’s erasure in the form of dreadful anticipation.

That erasure has been working. I don’t typically fear for my physical safety day-to-day, but I fear for what will happen to my rights if I stay in Texas. I have been sitting here waiting for the shoe to drop when the legislature is due to meet again next year. They’ve already laid out some of their plans for 2027 and it’s ugly. I don’t know what will happen, but my guess is that Texas will do whatever they can to invalidate my ID in 2027 and continue to attack trans folks who reside in the state. Being forced to carry an inaccurate ID? That’s my red line. The deal breaker.

But let’s back up to the end of 2025 real quick. After facing a couple of cancer-recurrence scares (no recurrence though!) I was exhausted.

Everything felt hard. The things I leaned on heavily to recover from cancer had started disappearing. My boxing gym had closed and I was struggling to find a new home that felt safe, inclusive, and welcoming. I tried to join a master’s swim team so I could train and fall back in love with a sport that gave me purpose and joy when I was younger. I wanted to use my new, trans, cancer body. But the swim teams I contacted weren’t sure if I was allowed to join. Because I was trans.

As I took stock of everything, I was alarmed at just how small my world had become. I couldn’t find a deep breath. I had just fought so hard to tear down the walls cancer built around me. Yet there they were again. Closing in on me.

I realized that if I wanted to keep advocating, if I wanted to have a quality of life steeped in community, movement, freedom, happiness, and dignity, it wasn’t going to happen in Texas. I agonized over the idea of leaving. Was I weak? Was I giving up? I got through cancer, I could get through this too.

But it wasn’t about proving strength or sticking it out. I was just done suffering. I have suffered enough and I don’t owe suffering to anyone to prove my worth… in advocacy or in general. In fact, if I was going to advocate at all, then I was going to have to take care of myself or there would be nothing left of me.

So, I decided to leave.

I understand how much privilege exists for me to decide to leave. Many people whose safety is at far greater risk do not have the luxury that I have. If you’re reading this, find a mutual aid fund and throw some cash toward it so the folks who need assistance can find safety. If you aren’t sure where to look, let me know.

Once I made up my mind to leave, things went fast. Too fast. I sold my home more quickly than I imagined. In a style true to myself, I also found out that I needed to have my fourth major surgery in four years right in the middle of when I was planning to leave Texas. So, I put a pin in it for a couple of months. Sort of… I moved out of my home and found a temporary place to stay while I recovered from surgery. Once my doctor cleared me to lift more than 20 lbs, I packed up the car, the dog, and hit the road.

I’ve completed the first leg of my version of trans migration. I left Texas and came back to Indiana for a few weeks to stay with family.

Tomorrow, the final leg starts and I’d love it if you’d join me along the way. I’m ready to find a deep breath at the end of a long, strange trip. To get to know new surroundings and hopefully find some community and a way to live my life in safety. In peace… in mind and body.

• If you’re considering a similar move: let me know. Let’s talk.

• If you’ve already made a similar move: be sure to count yourself in my friend Leo’s Trans Collective Migration Map.

• Please pass this along to folks you think might benefit from following along.

Send your podcast, playlist, and audiobook recs my way. Send me some encouragement. Share some ideas or tips you’ve heard from others. This whole thing sucks, but I’m determined to find some good in it, so help me find some joy along the way.

Don’t forget, trans joy is resistance.

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Look, I get it. Trans people are scary terrorists and those that fear or misunderstand us would like us to not exist at all.

But here’s the thing. I exist. I’m right here in flesh and blood… and piss.

Like most people, I pee. Every single day. Many times a day.

Unfortunately, sometimes I have to pee outside of my own home.

Like last weekend when I drove from Texas to Arkansas to Tennessee to Kentucky to Indiana.

Yup! It was like driving through the greatest hits of anti-trans legal landmines. I drove for something like 18 hours or so in two days… with my dog Lou and no one else.

During those 18-ish hours, I had to pee a few times.

Now, I’m a pro at holding my bladder. Because I’ve never looked like I belong in any public bathroom. As a kid with short hair, cut off jorts, and a proclivity for GI Joes and Matchbox cars, I can’t tell you how many times I got not-so-politely asked to leave the women’s bathroom. Not just as an adult… but as a 10 year old.

That chorus never stopped. When I finally transitioned, bathrooms unfortunately didn’t get much easier. Inconveniently enough, my transition has also neatly coincided with a rash of new laws and bathrooms bills (among other horrible hateful anti-trans shit). So, while many tell me I have “passing privilege”, I’m scarred from an entire lifetime of urinary trauma. And I agree, many would never suspect that I’m an undercover trans operative seeking to undermine bathroom laws at every turn.

So, I will not discount the privilege I have in passing.

But passing only gets you so far.

So, back to my road trip... I love a road trip! A good playlist, podcasts, and audiobooks on deck. The open road, an excuse to eat shitty food and explore a few places I’ve never been before with my sidekick Lou to hold down her spot in the backseat. LFG!!

Before I got on the road, I made sure to pee about 6 times just to stock up on some goodwill with my bladder. Since Texas is the size of a medium sized country, it was going to be a minute before I left the state so I judiciously sipped water as the day began. But as the tunes started playing and the road extended in front of us, eventually, I wanted to get really crazy and have a soda. The cold fizz of a can of Diet Coke is one of the few beverage satisfactions I indulge in these days so, indulge I did!

After a couple of hours and a trip around Dallas, I kinda needed to pee. So, I started strategizing.

“Let’s get out of the metro area… I just want an easy on/off the highway thing so this doesn’t turn into a 30 minute stop.

But not too far off the beaten path. Cause that’s probably bad.

What about a rest area? Well… some of those work but others are basically a big community outhouse… probably not enough privacy.

Ok, what about fast food places? They have bathrooms with stalls… usually.

Small gas stations are out… they might have a stall but they might not. And even if they do, who knows if it will have a door.

No! Let’s go to a big truck stop. They have big bathrooms and lots of stalls!”

A few exits later and I pulled up to a Love’s, got some gas, and walked inside. “Welcome to Love’s” a woman cheerfully greeted me from behind the counter. I was trying to be as small and unassuming as possible but returned her greeting with a quiet “hello”, kept my head down and walked into the men’s restroom. I quickly found an empty stall, washed my hands, and got out of there as fast as possible.

We were off to a good start. It was a little nerve wracking but truly, easy peasy.

Eventually, what felt like 6 days later, I finally saw the sign welcoming me to Arkansas. I can’t say I was particularly excited by that welcome. I mean, Texas is one of the worst places in the country for trans folks but Arkansas isn’t much better. Same for the rest of my destinations… Tennesee? Nope. Kentucky? Eh. Indiana? Not really. I digress…

Inevitably, it was time to pee again. The strategizing started again. Love’s had worked pretty well so I was on the lookout for the next exit with one. As I pulled off the highway in rural Arkansas and into a Love’s parking lot, I got excited! This one even had a dog park. I’ve got this thing figured out!

Then I realized that half of the gas pumps were out of order and the line for gas was long. I didn’t want to pee here then have to drive down the highway just to make another stop again in a few minutes for gas. So, I ventured off to find gas and a bathroom. No big deal.

I watched the signs for the next best exit and thought I had found what I needed. Not a Love’s but what looked like a promising stop. I pulled in, got gas, gave Lou some water and ran inside to relieve myself. I had made a mistake!

I opened the door to the men’s bathroom. One urinal. One stall… which was really just a toilet behind a flimsy partition. The two were so close to each other you could hold hands and pee next to one another. NOPE! Not a chance, especially because the urinal was currently occupied and its occupant didn’t look like someone I’d like to hold hands with. I hightailed it out of there and decided to try the Wendy’s across the street.

Fortunately the men’s room at Wendy’s was empty and there was a stall, with a door. Unfortunately, that stall had cracks in the door wide enough to fit a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger through. So, it was a race against time to void my bladder before someone walked in to see me. I won that race and hopped back in the car. Exasperated and stressed, yet also relieved.

The rest of this trip was the same. Each time I had to pee, more strategizing, negotiating, and sometimes making 2-3 stops in order to get food, gas, and a trip to the loo sorted out.

By the time I had finished my trip, I was so tired of thinking about bathrooms, I wondered if it would have just been easier to strap on an adult diaper and pee my pants instead.

If I “pass” and it’s still this hard for me, then tell me… tell us, where would you like us to pee?

Where can we fulfill our biological duties that keeps us safe? Where can we do the exact same thing that millions of people are doing at any given moment on any given day that most of you don’t even think twice about?

Clearly, I don’t have an answer. But I do have a full bladder.

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Then something jogged my memory… “wait, what’s the date today? Oh shit, it’s the 6th!”

Four years ago, on June 6th, 2022 I took my first testosterone shot. After months of therapy and consideration, it all led up to that single day. I had gotten my prescription, took all my needles and supplies and went to my doctor’s office. A nurse there walked me through exactly how to do the shot. She watched me and gave a few pointers as I put the needle into the tiny glass vial full of liberation.

I gingerly pinched some of the meatier part of my belly, took a deep breath and pushed the needle into my abdomen. Slowly pushing the plunger down until the contents disappeared into my body.

It was official… I had started T.

I wasn’t 100% sure back then exactly what I wanted out of this whole thing. I mostly just wanted to feel whole. To feel like myself.

It was hard to decipher what I wanted out of the potential changes coming my way. Did I want a full beard, what about a mustache? What about back hair?? I definitely did NOT want back hair. A deep voice? Yes please. To stop going into the women’s restroom and getting dirty looks? That would be a nice treat. Although, I wasn’t excited about the premise of the men’s bathroom either.

The good news is that I had time. The changes from gender-affirming hormone therapy don’t exactly happen overnight. Often, it can take months or even years. I mean, you didn’t go through puberty all in one night, right?

You do not have to take hormones and get surgeries to be trans. But for me, starting T was at least some sort of marker of “transitioning”. As each weekly T shot went by, I found myself exploring what gender meant to me. Unfortunately, much of that exploration centered around trying on many of the tropes that the cultural binary calls masculinity. In hindsight, those early days were less exploration and more performance.

I was taking my cues from the world outside. Looking for other trans guys, cis guys, and cultural norms to tell me how to act. To be fair, since I had spent my whole life never really fitting into the neat corners of the specific boxes we’re supposed to check, I was stuck in performance mode.

As it began to dawn on me that whatever the hell I was performing STILL didn’t fit. I was distraught. I’m on T. I’ve had top surgery and I definitely feel closer to something. Some intangible thing I’ve been trying to put my finger on for my entire life. But it just wasn’t clicking. I was as disillusioned as ever. If this didn’t fit either, then what did? WHO THE FUCK WAS I??

It didn’t help that at the same time, I was juggling the soul crushing experience of top surgery uncovering breast cancer.

The all consuming cancer thing took over everything. I was exhausted, dismayed, isolated, and still, had no idea who I was.

Finally, I threw in the towel. I decided I couldn’t manage the daily overwhelm of what was physically happening to my body from chemo combined with the emotional and psychological destruction that came from a gender-identity-crisis/cancer sandwich. I couldn’t quit chemo. So I quit testosterone. It was a reactionary, momentary decision. Born from frustration and lack of control. Cold turkey. I just stopped T entirely. For about 3 weeks, I stopped the injections. I stopped the performance. And I just did cancer.

After a few weeks of that, I decided that I wanted to go back on T. I didn’t like being off of it either. But I just had no idea where to go. So, I started my injections again. By then, cancer had taken a prominent lead in my day-to-day, and I was too exhausted to perform anything anymore. I was just trying to get through it all. I was existing.

Simply existing is not the way I want to live my life. But it gave me space I didn’t know I needed at the time. It allowed me to settle into my transition and into myself. It led me to choosing boxing when I needed a physical outlet. Choosing boxing slowly gave me the confidence to keep making choices simply for the sake of doing things that were new and interesting, judged against the sole criteria of, “I’ve never tried that before, why not?”

The overwhelm of trying to do chemo and gender transition simultaneously was brutal and not something I’d recommend. I was simply too tired to keep performing anything. The curtain had finally closed on this act I’d been playing for my entire life.

When that curtain closed, something subtle happened. I started discovering instead of performing. When I had the energy, I spent time doing things because they felt fun or restorative. I did new things simply for the sake of doing new things. I now inhabited a different outer shell that could do things that the previous shell wouldn’t allow me to do.

The confidence I gained from boxing combined with the curtain call of performance provided new tools that I didn’t quite know how to use yet. So I started tinkering, toying. Experimenting. Trying things on, not because expectation told to me to but because I told me to.

I was jumping out of planes. Defining a new career. Charging toward something undefined. I was seeking. Unbeknownst to me, underneath it all, I was emerging. Without a lot of pretense and without the trappings of the expectations I had placed on myself and let others place on me.

Today, I can’t say that I never perform. I don’t even think performing is bad. Sometimes it’s survival, sometimes it’s all we know. Sometimes it’s intentional. Sometimes it’s entertainment. But for me, the particular performance I leaned on for so much of my life put me on a path of disillusionment that somehow, cancer cured me of.

Doing cancer and gender transition at the same time was the most painful experience of my life. Worse than anything I could describe and I’ll live my entire life never finding the right words to fully explain it.

I took a leap four years ago.

Starting T lent me the courage to get top surgery.

Top surgery led to finding the cancer that was already surging inside me.

We caught it early. It saved my life.

The cancer was removed.

The performance stopped and I stepped into Ash.

I’ve always been Ash and I always will be. 2022 Ash is vastly different than 2026 Ash. Through the tinkering and toying, I’ve given myself soft clay to mold over and over again. After the brutality of it all, I’ve earned the right to shape myself however I want.

I don’t know what 2028 or 2040 Ash will be like.

For the first time, not knowing is liberation.

Trans liberation now. Trans rights are human rights. Gender-affirming care saves lives. Trans is beautiful.

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Recovering from having a hysterectomy has been challenging in ways that I didn’t anticipate. But that’s not exactly a surprise. I’ve learned from all of the health care “stuff” I’ve dealt with over the past few years that you just can’t anticipate everything. Prepare as much as you can but prepare for the fact that some things are going to wallop you in the face and you may just have to stand there and take a punch.

Weeks 1 and 2 were pretty much what I expected. Lots of discomfort. Eat, take pills, sleep, check in with your body, question everything, try to not to panic, make a few calls to the doctor’s office, get some reassurance. Rinse. Repeat.

Weeks 3 and 4 were rough. Really, really rough. There’s a difference between being tired, exhaustion, and fatigue. We all have general definitions for these words and I have my own.

Weeks 3 and 4 were a mix of tired, exhaustion, and fatigue all at once. I expected after two weeks to start to feel a bit better. Start to ramp up the walking. Put some miles in. My head would begin to clear and things would start to return to “normal”. Of course, it wouldn’t be perfect but I’d be on my way to better and brighter days!

When week 3 started, I wasn’t ready to go back to work. But I gave it a shot anyway. Two hours later, I was bedridden. Eyes closing the moment my head hit the pillow. Waking a couple hours later and feeling a whisper better, but just a whisper. I was a walking (sort of) version of that whole “hit by a truck” feeling. For every day I had where I felt my energy return I would try to add a little more walking. Or a trip to the grocery store. The very next day I was flat on my back again.

This hasn’t been a case of overdoing it… doing too much too fast. I truly feel in the moment, that I can walk that extra ¼ mile. Or run that errand. I’m not trying to rush the process or be a hero. Mostly, I just needed some more chicken or felt bad for my dog Lou as her activity level is closely tied to mine.

Speaking of activity levels, nothing could tell a more clear story than the image below. A screenshot of the up and down nature of the distance I’ve walked from the day after surgery on 4/14 to today 5/13. The graph below looks not unlike investing in energy stocks right now. Turning on a dime. Deep valleys and a few highs. But nothing consistent.

So, I’ve made a shift. Let’s call that shift acceptance. Accepting that this is going to take how long it takes. That I can’t will myself through it and that maybe the last few years of cancer, surgeries, and west nile virus have finally all stacked up against me.

Not only acknowledging it. But truly accepting it. That’s been the drill. Honestly, that acceptance has come more easily than I had imagined. Mostly because I’m too damn tired to put up much of a fight! I have acquiesced and in a way that’s been liberating. I might celebrate my newfound self-awareness… but for real, celebrating sounds way too tiring.

Yea, yea, I know… healing isn’t linear. Trust me, I KNOW. I do. But this has been so confounding. So long. So drawn out. There’s no pattern to follow, no reason it seems. Wake up. Systems check. How heavy are my eyes? Is that a headache? Wiggle the toes, stretch my arms above my head. Every muscle screaming, aching, and stiff all at once. Feeling my way to the bathroom, flipping the light on to have a look at myself. Pulling at my skin, rubbing my eyes, finding ANOTHER white hair growing with the other little hairs making an attempt at filling in around my chin. Realizing that I feel like I’m 1000 years old. Oof!

Work has been interesting. It’s magic right? We take two weeks off, come back and we are a machine. Cranking out emails and contributing thoughts and ideas, attending meetings, deciphering insinuations, reading between lines, checking boxes. Nope. Not here.

Writing anything, including this, is like strapping concrete blocks to my feet in thick mud and trying to run as fast as I can. Faceplant! My thoughts are mushy, and distant. Reaching towards them for them to disappear in my grasp to never return. Did I mention I’m tired? Bouncing from half baked thought to unbaked concept to “what was I about to do?”. It hasn’t been pretty but it has been humbling.

This next part is directed at no one and everyone. It’s not an accusation but an awareness that having cancer helped me build. People are around at the beginning. Offering meals, errands, encouragement. Y’all are wonderful, beautiful, selfless humans who take time out of your own busy lives to help improve someone else’s. A+++++++

But in weeks 3 and 4, the chorus fades. As is expected. Again, we are human. We have lives. None of those lives are easy. A “pop-in-pick-me-up” here and there is really all most of us can give right now. And even that is hard to muster sometimes. So, there’s no issue over here with hearing less from fewer people.

But it reminds me of a pretty icky feeling from doing chemo. The idea that life is still happening outside of this small space I take up right now. People ARE going to work and contributing to society. They are going to shows and dinner, and dates and experiencing the world beyond H-E-B and the ½ mile outside of their homes. There’s an entire world out there and right now, I’m not in it. I’m not playing. Hell, I’m not even on the bench and I’m not even sure if I’m in the crowd.

THAT’s the part that I try not to linger on but scares me the most. It’s the tiny reminders of those nits and picks that remind me of the darkest days I had during cancer treatment. When I watched the world go by without me. Wondering how I would ever live a life beyond survival. I’ve made a promise to myself to never sink to those depths again. But the slivers of those reminders are teaching me something… I know the signs now.

Not only do I know the signs, I know what to do with them. I cannot force myself to recover any faster than I am right now. I am resting and eating as well as I can and walking an appropriate amount and taking care of myself. I’m being gentle on myself and kind to myself. I’m loving me. It’s not glamorous, it’s not cute and it’s isolating. But I’ve been here before. I’ve been through worse before. I have come out stronger each and every time I’ve been here. I’ve learned more. So, I’m recovering, I’m learning, I’m accepting, I’m acquiescing, I’m resting.

It has forced me to slow down. I notice birds chirping on dog walks. I’m not balancing emails, texts, and reminders while enjoying a few moments outside with Lou. I feel the warmth of the sun on my shoulders, the ground beneath me supporting my aching legs. A breeze rustling through trees, providing respite from the almost-summer Texas heat. I feel the world around me. Alive.

I know that at any moment, I can be back here, in some form of recovery again. Feeling my world get smaller, isolation creeping in. Chasing the wide-open expansive life I yearn to live.

So, when I feel well enough, I’ll be shining, smiling, laughing, swimming, surfing, and doing whatever the fuck else I want to do. Because I’ve earned it. ¼ mile at a time.

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This past Friday (4/17), I got really good news. I was on the 4th day of post-op recovery from having a hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. Meaning, I had just had my uterus, cervix, both fallopian tubes, and both ovaries removed. (biological, anatomical words are over now).

This was my fourth surgery within the last four years. Along with gender-affirming and cancer surgeries, I’ve had rounds of chemo and radiation and lucked out by managing to catch a nasty case of West Nile virus as well. It’s been… a lot… on my body and my mind.

During the last 3.5 years I have spent a lot of time feeling good about my body. Much more time than ever before. It’s been a bit of a cruel irony that after 40 years of denying my own existence, the moment I decide to step into it fully, my body has been under what feels like a constant assault. For every moment of pure euphoria, there have been equal and often reactive moments of crushing disorientation and unbearable pain.

It has been a push and pull, a washing machine, a grind where one of my greatest lessons has been “don’t trust good news”.

So, on Friday, April 17th when my surgeon sent me a brief message through my online patient portal:

Subject: Message about your results

Body: Ash the surgical pathology report is all negative. I hope you are doing well!

It was like every cell in my body went to war with each other.

I was ecstatic. I had no idea how much I needed to hear that message. I was terrified. This is good! When things are good, the only thing that comes next is bad. I wanted to tell everyone I knew. I wanted to keep it a secret. I’ve learned too well that telling everyone your good news, then having to tell them the next round of bad news feels embarrassing…naive. Each time, making me smaller and smaller. More withdrawn.

A hysterectomy is a pretty routine procedure. So, why all the drama?

For a lot of transmasculine people and trans men, getting a hysterectomy is a necessary part of their gender transitions, if they are able to access the surgery. There’s privilege in receiving care that is being outlawed state-by-state and currently, many cannot have access to the care they need to survive. To be clear, that means that some, won’t survive the assault on trans healthcare.

At the moment, getting a hysterectomy is near the bottom of things I am interested in. But, my body has decided that it wants to be as trans as possible and is forcibly removing the parts that remind me of the biological aspects of my birth. When I had top surgery in 2022, while on the operating table, my surgeon found a tumor that no one expected to be there. I had breast cancer. That discovery, the fall out, treatment, and life since has been a path of devastating acceptance and growth. But if I hadn’t had gender-affirming top surgery, that tumor let me know that I was having some sort of top surgery, no matter what. Thanks again to my luck and privilege in accessing and affording gender-affirming care, we found the tumor early that day in 2022 and spared me from a far worse cancer fate. SCORE for gender-affirming care!

Now, at the end of 2025, I was having symptoms and pain that shouldn’t be happening. Some bleeding and pain after 3 years of testosterone therapy wasn’t normal. So, back to the oncologist I went. More tests and scans showed something new. Fibroids, and a mass on one of my ovaries. Those tests and scans also showed that the mass was probably not malignant. Certainty could come via surgery though. Three years later, my body is kicking out its biological parts again. How trans of me! 🏳️‍⚧️

While top surgery was the height of gender euphoria, hysterectomy sounded about as euphoric as the time I wore a dress to the junior prom and hated literally every single second of my life until I put my jeans, sneakers, and Bob Marley T-shirt on and went back to being myself at the end of the dance. I was not enthusiastic about the premise of this surgery.

After having cancer, I was also not about to mess around with some mass growing on a body part I didn’t need or want. My grandmother died of ovarian cancer. I’ve already had hormone positive breast cancer. I like a rush and some adrenaline, but this was not a gamble I was willing to take. So, there was only one option. Surgery. As soon as possible.

Surgery went well, I’m recovering and getting familiar with being uncomfortable again. Parts of post-op feel a bit like going through chemo. The “wake up in the morning and why does this feel like this, do I need to call a doctor?” feeling is one that’s all too familiar. The trauma of it being the first way I evaluate my day each morning feels like a raw nerve. But, generally, I’m feeling ok. After all of this, I know how to navigate this part.

What I didn’t know how to navigate was the good news. There’s no cancer! The mass? Not cancer! Pathology was clear!

This was the expected outcome. I knew going into surgery that my symptoms were not likely due to cancer. But after that top surgery surprise, there was a very persistent little thought, sitting in the back of my mind saying “what if…?”

So, I wanted to post my good news for the people who show an interest in the things I share about my life. As soon as I posted the good news, I immediately questioned doing so. I’m a classic over-thinker… I’m working on it. Still, I was worried that my post was insensitive. Maybe even inappropriate.

I started to spiral, quickly. When I shifted towards advocacy, I made a lot of new friends. Many of those new friends will not receive a message in their online patient portal that confirms they still do not have cancer. Instead, many of them will receive reports of metastatic disease progression. Hopefully it’s more “no progression” than “progression”. But I have a lot of friends who won’t get the message that I received.

That knowing weighs heavily on me. I love these friends. I love these people. It felt a bit tone deaf to be posting my happy “you don’t have cancer” message. Why would I rub this in their faces? How could I do that to these gorgeous, incredible, humans that I adore?

At the same time, cancer patients, survivors… whatever you want to call us, are not pathetic, weak people only existing for your sympathy. We are also not fierce warriors placed on pedestals we never asked to stand on. We are humans. Just people who have met extraordinary circumstances while often living pretty ordinary lives.

So, where’s the humanity in my own life if I don’t remember why I am here? Being trans means that much of the world today seems to want to violently squash me out of existence. Having cancer made me feel insignificant, broken, and less than human. Doing cancer and being trans at the same time… I have never felt more small, more unworthy, and more like an alien than I could possibly comprehend.

So much that when I receive good news, one of my first responses is fear and secrecy. I do no justice to myself or my peers in both the trans and cancer communities by living in fear and choosing to silence myself. By refusing to celebrate or at least share my relief when things are good. There’s no humanity in going quiet when my voice has power.

If we are talking about lessons, it isn’t “good things lead to bad things”. The lesson is to celebrate the good because it’s fleeting. Impermanent. It’s to remember that silence is the quickest path to erasure.

So, I hope my good news doesn’t cause another person pain or offend them. It’s the last thing I want. If it causes you pain and you are reading this, I am so sorry. I can imagine how conflicting that pain feels. I may not stand in your shoes but I can empathize. Your feelings and pain are justified and there’s space for that here too.

I worry that the biggest offense of all would be to remain small and silent and driven by fear so much that I forget to show up at all.

I got good news. And that’s good news. So, let’s enjoy it for a moment. Before it passes.

Trans joy is resistance. Trans rights are human rights. Gender-affirming care saves lives.

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Share Transcer: The audacity to have cancer while trans

I’m selling my home today.

I often say that having cancer involves making a bunch of shitty choices from a bunch of shitty options.

No one wants to have chemo. But it’s often the best choice if you don’t want to die. So… shitty options and shitty choices. That’s the macro but often it shows up on a much more micro level.

Towards the end of chemo, I woke up one day and my pee was brown. Like REALLY dark. So, the daily weighing of options and choices began. Do I call the oncologist’s office now? Calling will mean waiting on hold for anywhere from a few minutes to 30 minutes. I think I called about something yesterday. Or maybe the day before. They must think I’m insane. Half the time I call and it’s “just keep an eye on it and call us back if it gets worse”. So, I could save myself the annoying hold music and the embarrassment of another call. Or, I could just make sure that I’m ok. My pee has literally never been this color. It looks unnatural. Unnerving. I guess I’ll call. So I called. They wanted to see me. They ran a bunch of tests. I was fine. The next morning, my pee was normal.

Run that on repeat for weeks and months on end and it’s a grind that many folks just never really grasp.

So, today, after a string of really shitty options and shitty choices, I will walk into an office building, sign a bunch of papers and hand my home off to a stranger. He will buy my home for almost the exact amount I purchased it for 7 years ago. Yup… I will be walking away with virtually nothing to show for it. And while that part makes me angry and resentful, it’s not the main source of the loss I feel today.

The shitty choices and options are a great source of devastation, disbelief, and uncertainty.

Stay in Texas? Or leave? That’s been the question since the results of the 2024 election became clear. In 2025, it was stay! If everyone leaves, then who will be left to fight? By the end of 2025, it was leave! The whiplash of the nonstop attacks on trans people is unbearable.

The gnawing subtlety and erosion of what it means to feel safe has been eating away at me. Each headline. Each week another bill. Another policy. Another lie. It feels like being in a vice that you can’t escape. You can see it and feel it closing in on you but you are trapped. Sometimes someone gives the vice a good, hearty crank and you find yourself in full fledged panic. Other days, its barely perceptible. But you know the vice is still slowly closing in on you.

The ONLY reason that you aren’t hearing headlines out of Texas like the recent criminalization of trans existence in places like Idaho, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas is because the Texas legislature meets every other year. They aren’t passing more hateful laws for one reason and one reason only. They aren’t passing laws right now because they aren’t in session this year. Sure, there are special sessions. Like the one we saw last summer when they passed an anti-trans bathroom bill that was attached to a flood relief package. Because of course, trans people using restrooms has everything to do with flood relief.

But the clock is ticking in Texas. After another year of watching each state ratchet up their hate towards trans people, I can only imagine what will happen in Texas next year. But I expect that being trans in Texas will mean facing fines, jail time, and devastating dehumanization when legislation meets next year.

So, in an effort to escape the vice that I seem to reside in, I made the decision to sell my home. I really like my home. It hasn’t always been like that. For a long time, this home was a reminder of every shitty thing that has happened over the last few years. It was a reminder that every time that I had tried to leave before this, that I was stuck. I was going to move in 2023. Then I got cancer at the end of 2022. So, those plans got put on hold. Then, in late 2023, I thought I might try again. I made it all the way to Seattle. I had hired a property management company, emptied my house, driven to Seattle and would rent my home out while I decided if Seattle or the PNW would be a good place for me.

Two days after I arrived in Seattle, I lost my job. So, I would head back to Austin. Back to my empty home. As I was sitting on a brand new mattress on the floor of my room, after driving for days, something shifted. I decided to reclaim it. I was fresh off of cancer treatment. Unemployed. But full of purpose. I had no idea what I was doing but I was going to fight for trans people like me who have to deal with cancer in a system that doesn’t see us and often doesn’t seem to give a shit about us.

I never really fully moved back in to this condo. But I made it my home. I have one spatula and one serving spoon. I have a few pots and pans. I have one cup and nothing else to drink out of other than a water bottle or two. I finally bought a full set of silverware a few months ago. But it’s mine. I went through the worst moments of my life inside these walls. And I went through some of the best here too. Most importantly, I learned who I was and who I wanted to be here.

Trans people are fleeing their homes in unprecedented numbers. I have an incredible amount of privilege to own a home that I can sell. But I feel like I’m being forced out of my home. On someone else’s timeline. Because I sure as hell wouldn’t be selling something that I’ve put thousands and thousands of dollars into at the lowest point of the market in Austin in years if I had a better choice. But that’s where the shitty choices and shitty options come in.

This is the reality of being trans in America today. This isn’t a headline. It’s the real life of a real trans person. This isn’t normal. I refuse to be a criminal in my own home. In my community. Simply for existing. Don’t read this and accept it. Because while I will accept that there’s only so much I can do and only so much I can control, I refuse to accept that this is ok. That we should be forced to lose so much for so little.

There will be a lot of choices to wade through soon. Because not only am I selling my home, I will be having a surgery I didn’t expect to need in under a month. I have a place to stay while I recover from surgery. But after that? I don’t know where I will be. I had hoped selling my home would provide a little financial support for my next steps. That isn’t going to happen. So, I will take it one step at time.

So, I’m selling my home today. A home that I’ve grown to love. For all it’s flaws, it has taken good care of me. And I’ve taken good care of it. The smell of the fireplace on a cold winter morning. The way the light filters into the bedroom. Staring at the ceiling fan while my body aches too much to move. Thousands and thousands of dog walks around the neighborhood. If I could carry these memories and so many others on my back, I would. As of today, this home will be someone else’s.

I have no idea where I will be living after this. I don’t know when I will figure that out. I have to have surgery first and give myself the time to recover fully. I will have to leave the affirming care team that has gotten me through cancer, then west nile virus, and numerous post-cancer scares. I have no idea where I’m going. But I’m well practiced in making shitty choices with shitty options. I’ve got cancer to thank for that.

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Thanks to the following folks for their continued reporting on the issues I’ve linked to. Follow them, pay to subscribe to them, support and share their work.

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I’m not ok. Lots of people aren’t ok.

What’s happening around us isn’t ok.

I was supposed to do something this week that I had been looking forward to for months. It was my chance to reset and refresh. I had placed the highest expectations on the outcomes.

It was not a secret that my mental health has been suffering and after months (years?) of repeated and brutal assaults on my well-being, this was going to be the thing that fixed it all. Or at least gave me the space to make sense of it, process it, and do so in a way that was supportive, healthy, and steeped in self-care.

That didn’t happen. The realization that this thing I had been clinging to for months was gone before it even started was unfathomable. The pain of losing a thing that I was so dependent on was more than I could bear. The worst part about looking forward to something so much is handling what happens when it doesn’t come to fruition. I didn’t have the spoons to handle this loss at this time. The pain of losing it was not worth the possibilities it promised. It was a setback that I couldn’t afford and couldn’t comprehend.

That’s saying a lot after facing some unimaginable setbacks over the last few years.

I don’t know how to feel better. The old tricks aren’t working so well. And the new ones come with a set of expectations that can’t survive the eventual disappointment.

I am struggling.

I am working and advocating and speaking out and on the outside, it looks like I’m busy.

Inside I’m suffering. Nothing feels good. I’m isolated. I don’t know who my friends are anymore. I don’t know who to depend on or who the next person will be to not show up when I need them most.

Ask for help… I’ve recommended it to people. I recommend it for myself. It’s hard to do because it makes us feel weak. It’s hard to do because it makes us feel vulnerable. It’s hard to do because what if you ask for help and it doesn’t come? What do you do then? If you ask for help and it doesn’t come, on top of whatever you needed help for, you now also have to handle dismay, disappointment, and rejection.

Yet, we likely can’t shoulder life without help.

I know that I need help. I just don’t know what type of help I need. The help that I hung all my hopes on is gone. The self-care, the quiet break, the fulfillment of community that I needed so badly didn’t happen and I’m not going to get it back.

So, I’m left feeling worse than ever. No respite in sight and nothing to look forward to.

In the context of all of the pain being doled out to so many right now, this may all sound trivial. And in time it will be. Because the sorrow I feel today won’t last forever.

But it feels oppressive and real and insurmountable right now. I’ve been trying to manage it and to navigate it. But it’s tearing me down. It’s not getting better yet. But it will.

I won’t give up. And I will keep asking for help. And I will keep trying new tricks and relying on old ones too. It’s hard to have hope in a world and for a world that seems so ugly right now. But I’ll keep trying. And working. And I won’t give up.

There’s no advice here. No clever insight. No desired outcome. No algorithmic popularity.

I’m just a person being broken by the world trying to sustain the blows.

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Erin Reed just dropped a story about a new development in trans sports bans, this time in the state of Washington.

Washington is a state that most trans folks think of as “one of the good ones”. Yet, over 400,000 people have signed a ballot initiative to prevent trans high schoolers from competing as their identified gender.

But it gets worse… way worse. How does the bill suggest that these high schoolers (who are children) prove their gender? By enduring genital inspections as one of the available gender verification methods. This isn’t hyperbole. This isn’t some inflammatory knuckle dragging, mouth breather sitting in his mom’s basement in some grimy corner of 4chan… this is written into a ballot initiative and supported by over 400,000 people that are perfectly ok with some random person, inspecting their children’s genitals for the sake of playing high school sports.

As an athlete who played sports as a child, high schoooler, and in college, I can’t remember a single person ever needing to look at my genitals for any reason. Forget sports… even as a teenager, not even my doctors were looking at my genitals. Not as long as I was healthy and didn’t present with a true medical reason that needed to be treated.

Isn’t that the same for most of us? Who is looking at children’s genitals (or adult’s) unless there is a medically necessary reason?

And no, proving your gender to arbitrary people in order to join the wrestling team is not a medically necessary reason. Now, in the past, or in the future.

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So, let’s not pretend that examining the genitals of children is doing anything to protect anyone.

Let’s take a little trip down memory lane. Do you remember what middle school and high school were like? Even if you weren’t trans, how comfortable were you in your body as a teenager? As your classmates all developed at different rates and you watched some have what you didn’t or you developed in ways that you wished you hadn’t.

Can you imagine on top of all of those teenage hormones, peer pressure, and a very rapidly changing body what would happen if someone who you don’t know and certainly don’t trust forced you to show your genitals to them. By most measures, wouldn’t we call that sexual assault? And at best, are we suggesting that we traumatize children in the name of “fairness”?

Yet many suggest that something that we would normally associate with sexual assault is a perfectly fine suggestion if it means that a small handful of athletes can be dehumanized and punished in the name of “protecting women and children”. Don’t trans women and children also deserve protection? Especially from abuse?

I guess instead, we’d like to set a new precedent. Sexual abuse is ok, as long as the person you’re abusing is trans.

Just like the newly passed bathroom bill here in Texas, who exactly will be in charge of enforcing this? Who will be examining your child’s genitals? Will you be present for this exam as a parent? What happens if your child is intersex? Where will these exams happen? Who will make sure kids are actually safe? What school official has the legal rights to look at genitals anyway? How will they be certified and trained to do such a thing? Which kids will need to have to endure these inspections? Is it all kids? Or just the ones that look a certain way? Who decides? I mean, this is as sensitive a topic as it gets. How do we protect some kids by violating the sexual wellbeing of others?

We have a similar issue in Texas right now. Thanks to our freshly minted bathroom ban, we are left with a lot of questions. Who are the bathroom police and how are they trained in recognizing who is allowed in which bathroom? How will it be enforced? No one knows. But we now have bathroom police here in Texas. And recently trans activists were barred from using the bathroom at the Texas State Capitol building, issued a criminal trespass citation, and detained by Texas State Police. For exercising their first amendment rights to protest the passing of the bill. And for having the audacity to want to use a public restroom that aligns with their gender. A steep penalty that will hopefully result in a lawsuit, yet still, no one asked to see their genitals (I don’t think). They did however ask to see ID. To use a restroom. Like so many anti-trans bills in existence today, there’s absolutely zero thought or planning going into how to enforce new laws and policies. If the Texas bathroom ban is any indication of how poorly something like this will be enforced, imagine how this lack of preparation when it comes to inspecting children’s genitals may harm them.

There’s a history that ladders up to the highest level of sports of men, taking advantage of athletes. Larry Nassar and Jerry Sandusky may ring a bell. Both men committed atrocious acts against children, and athletes of the highest caliber. Their victims were children. They were the type of men that you would trust to care for your kids when you aren’t around. They were the men that were placed in the most delicate of situations with your kids to uphold and protect their safety. And while those cases garnered much of the attention, we have seen cases of sexual abuse across sports and across continents. We have seen more incidents in USA Swimming, Wrestling, Taekwondo, and at schools like Ohio State and Michigan State. Sexual assault is already an issue in youth and competitive sports. So, the response to trans kids trying to play sports is to further an already established problem by appointing someone to inspect what’s in a child’s pants?

I mean, what are we doing? Seriously, how is this an option? How is this something that 400,000 people in a state full of the “good ones” support? This is appalling. It’s disgusting. Its unfathomable. Yet, its real.

As a parent, how can you sign your name to something like this?

This is where we are as a society. To promote “fairness in sports” we turn to forcing the nonconsensual examination of children and teens to bare their genitals to an untrustworthy source. Because let’s be honest, if you’re willing to inspect a child’s genitalia and you aren’t a doctor or professional that’s highly trained to do so for a medical necessity, you shouldn’t be trusted around kids. Periodt.

Look, I get it. The President of the United States is an adjudicated rapist. He’s implicated in the biggest sex trafficking and abuse scandal in the history of this country and many people are complicit in not just excusing it or turning a blind eye but actively participating in trying to cover it up. The party of pedophilia seems to find another way to double down on their love of sexually assaulting children. So, yea… I guess it’s not that hard to imagine how we got here.

But let’s be clear. If you support this type of legislation, you should be ashamed of yourself. This is sick. I don’t typically like to wag a lot of fingers or judge folks. But this is beyond finger wagging. It’s hard enough to be a teenager. It’s even harder to be a trans teenager. These aren’t concepts we are talking about. We are talking about real, live people (children) who will carry the trauma of sexual assault with them for the rest of their lives if this kind of thing gains traction.

This bill is a long way from becoming a reality and as Erin Reed reports, the state legislature in Washington still has to decide whether this initiative will make it’s way to an official ballot. I sure hope that the legislature in Washington shows us who they are. I hope that they prove their “good one” reputation and this thing gets shut down before it even has a chance to proceed.

I’ve asked this before and I will again, but if we can’t even trust the good ones, then who can we trust?

When I was in high school, I looked more like Ashton than Ashley. Under this proposed initiative, I would have undoubtedly been one of those kids required to show their genitals to prove that they are competing with the right gender. I have no idea how I would have decided whether or not playing sports was worth showing my genitals to the gym teacher. Playing sports landed me a college scholarship. It taught me countless lessons about being a teammate, hard work, persistence, and compassion. Had I not been an athlete, I don’t know who I would be today. Stripping (pun intended) kids of these opportunities, will harm them, traumatize them, and will go no further in promoting fairness or protecting anything other than hate and ignorance.

Enough is enough of this. The mere suggestion of implementing something like this is beyond appalling. It should live in some far flung, right-wing, ultra conservative fever dream but instead, it’s happening right now, in real-time. Allies, call this shit out. I know, I know. We are all suffering right now. We are all worried about ourselves, our neighbors, our communities. It’s a lot. There’s too much. But now isn’t the time to be silent. So step up for kids who just want to compete as themselves.

Trans kids deserve to play sports without a single soul asking them what’s in their pants. Full stop.

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So, I decided, why not create my own? ‘Nuff said!

Here are the links to some of my favorite Trans Substack accounts that were listed in the video above… I know I’m missing a ton so shout out your faves!

• - Erin In The Morning

• - The Trans Collective

• - Trans News That Doesn’t Suck

• - Good Queer News

• - Transitics

• - Rey and The Archive

• - Mercury Stardust

• - Queer & Trans Wealth

• - That Trans Friend You Didn't Know You Needed

• - Your Trans Cousin

  And here’s a couple that weren’t in the video but belong on this list!

• - Being Alive

• - Queer Resilience

These folks are keeping me sane, informed, and best of all, they remind me that while it may seem like all news is bad news, there’s a whole lot of good out there.

Subscribe! Pay them! Share their words!

Much love,

-Ash

Credit and sources:

Song in the video: “Transgender Lunacy” by CRKX

Translegislation

A Growing Number of Republican States Are Trying to Identify Trans Residents. That’s a Problem. - Transitics

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In trans cancer news, a story recently dropped about a trans woman who has stage 4 rectal cancer. She was having surgery to have a malignant tumor removed at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK), which is one of the preeminent cancer facilities in the country.

The patient, Jennifer Capasso was first diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic rectal cancer in 2020. Stage 4 metastatic cancer means that the cancer is no longer localized to one location in the body. It’s an advanced form of cancer that has spread to other parts of the body.

According to the lawsuit that Capasso filed against MSK, she was repeatedly misgendered, humiliated and even had her medical records changed without her knowledge or consent. When she was scheduled to have a malignant tumor removed from her lungs in March of 2022, after two years of mistreatment at a hospital that prides itself on compassionate care for the trans community, Capasso left her phone in her bag in the operating room and let it record.

The recordings revealed a surgical team that mocked her, belittled her, and admonished her. She was referred to as a man. Her genitalia deemed, “man parts”, and they didn’t stop with Capasso. They even took a swing at her trans partner by calling her a man too. Her existence as a trans woman was characterized by her surgical team, while performing life-saving surgery on her as “not right”.

As a surgical team, this behavior isn’t just appalling and disgusting. It’s dangerous. When you are living with stage 4 cancer, your life becomes a series of unending appointments, scans, medications, and procedures with numerous healthcare professionals. From surgeons, to front desk staff, to nurses, to mental health professionals… the list goes on. Dismissing your patient in the way that the team at MSK did means that more trans people will avoid medical care. More trans people will die unnecessary deaths due to medical mistrust because of situations just like this.

I didn’t have stage 4 cancer. But I had cancer. And West Nile Virus shortly after. Which means I have spent the last three years seeing more healthcare specialists than I can count. This year alone I have seen my medical oncologist, my surgical oncologist, my radiation oncologist, a spinal surgeon, a neurologist, and brain surgeon, a cardiologist, a gynecologist, an infectious disease specialist, a pulmonologist, had weeks of physical therapy, and had numerous procedures, PET scans, CT scans, X-rays, ultrasounds, and more bloodwork than most people have in a lifetime. And I don’t even have any evidence of cancer in my body and haven’t all year.

Largely for me, I luckily haven’t faced a lot of outright discrimination in those appointments. But for each and every one, I worry about how I will be treated. I know without a doubt that much of my medical team knows me, and is kind to my face and hopefully behind my back. But I’ve also been publicly misgendered in waiting rooms while begging them to update my records. I’ve filled out a thousand forms where I don’t know what to put in the “sex” or “gender” fields. Living in Texas I don’t want to create a paper trail of being trans in my medical records. I fear I’ll end up on a list or worse. So, I often don’t even answer certain questions on medical forms. Or simply put M as my sex or gender. I worry that the person at the check in desk or doing my bloodwork might be rude or dismissive of me. I worry that being trans means that I won’t receive the care I need to receive in order to stay ahead of my risk of cancer recurrence. I worry that being trans means that I won’t have the same opportunity to live a long life as anyone else.

But when you are having a life-saving surgery, one where you will be under anesthesia, after years of battling advanced cancer that has spread to other parts of your body, being able to trust your medical team should be a no-brainer. To have the foresight to make sure that you can bring a recording device INTO AN OPERATING ROOM means that medical team has broken that trust so egregiously that you are on your own. That your only recourse is to secretly record what you assume is going on so that you can advocate for yourself. So you can survive. So you can prove that you’re not crazy. That this stuff really happens to trans people and now, it’s happening to you.

This impacts care. If your surgeon thinks you’re subhuman and “not right” how can you trust that they are truly acting in your best interest?

Let’s look at how MSK wants you to think they treat trans colorectal cancer patients. The screenshot below is from MSK’s own website in an article they published in 2024 called, “Being Seen, Compassionate Cancer Treatment for Transgender People”.

All of that sounds great. But when you fail to actually provide compassionate care and you’re exposed for dehumanizing and endangering your transgender patients, it’s even worse. As trans folks, we are well aware that we live in a world where many people would happily see us wiped out of existence.

But when you tell us you will treat us well and write stories and spout off about all of your trans-friendly policies, and your commitment to our safety, then do little to actually ensure that safety, it’s catastrophic. That level of betrayal from “allies” hurts all allies. That trust is irrevocably broken. If we can’t trust the “good ones”, then who can we trust? This is why trans folks avoid healthcare. This is partly why our outcomes are worse, our rates of recurrence are higher, and why healthcare is simply inaccessible for many of us.

If you can’t get my pronouns right or agree that my gender identity has nothing to do with your role as a surgeon, then how do I know that you will actually perform the surgery to the best of your ability? How do I know that you won’t make things worse for me by not providing me with the same standard of care you would provide to cisgender patients? How do I know you won’t just “accidentally” kill me on the operating table because you don’t even see me as human?

So, again, I ask, if we can’t trust the “good ones” then what can we do?

MSK is in New York City. Did you know that NYC passed an LGBTQ+ Healthcare Bill of Rights back in 2017? Here are the 10 items listed in the bill of rights:

You have the right to:

1. Be treated with dignity, respect and professionalism in all health care settings by all providers and all staff

2. Receive compassionate, judgment-free and comprehensive care that is mindful of your sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression for all health services

3. Respectful discussions with providers about your health and health care needs, including your sexual history and current sex life

4. Have your gender identity and gender expression recognized, affirmed, documented and accommodated in all health care interactions

5. Clear explanations of providers’ requests for your health information

6. Clear explanations of all medical procedures and risks, and the right to choose or refuse any treatment

7. Access health insurance coverage and benefits without discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression

8. Choose who will make medical decisions for you if you are unable; and, if you are a minor, the right to have your voice and best interests included in these decisions

9. Decide who may and may not visit you if you are admitted to a health care facility

10. Privacy and confidentiality

Since MSK is in NYC and also prides themselves on providing compassionate care to trans folks, how many of these tenants did they violate? It looks like they violated most of them in Capsasso’s case. What good is a bill of rights if there’s no stake in upholding it? What will NYC do in this case? What happens when one of the top cancer centers in the country, that also claims to be a compassionate place for trans folks, so appallingly fails to uphold such a bill of rights? Are there repercussions or merely just a settlement that will get paid in court? Will MSK make any meaningful changes? Will there be training in competency and humility and compassionate care? Or will this just keep happening to trans people? I don’t really know how this will shake out and I’m not an expert on law or policy.

But because MSK still has to defend themselves, they aren’t denying it happened but apparently faulting the fact that someone dared to record behavior that violates the healthcare bill of rights in their city and the policies of their institution. This is a statement from MSK’s lawyers, “The secret recording captured portions of a discussion that occurred during surgery while plaintiff was under anesthesia in which staff members discussed plaintiff’s transgender status with every reasonable expectation that plaintiff would not hear this discussion.”

Wow, so the defense is, we said a bunch of horrible shit because we thought she would never know.

I’m no expert in law and policy. But claiming your privacy as medical staff was violated while violating the HUMAN RIGHTS of a patient who is incapacitated is ridiculous. If you’re going to tell the world how great you treat trans people, then get caught treating them like shit, maybe some accountability would help. Yea, I know, accountability doesn’t win lawsuits. But the next time a trans person is laying on an operating table I hope now, that their entire surgical team thinks twice about what they have to say in that room. I hope they worry and wonder if they are being recorded.

I hope Jennifer Capasso wins this lawsuit. I hope MSK faces some sort of repercussions for this. And I hope the outcome is that they make a real commitment to making sure that ALL medical personnel are trained in how to treat trans folks with dignity and compassion. And held responsible when they don’t.

But hope doesn’t affect change. So, I have to do more than hope. One way I will continue to do more than hope is to keep speaking up as a trans cancer patient and to advocate for people just like me. Every day.

Trans people deserve better. We demand better. And now, we will record your ass when you least expect it if we have to. Because we are the only ones that can protect ourselves. Good for you Jennifer Capasso. In the mind and heart of this trans cancer patient, you’re a hero. Thank you for standing up for yourself, and in doing so, for the rest of us.

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I get my health insurance through the ACA.

Much of the government shut down hinged on the fact that democrats were refusing to move forward unless we kept subsidies in place for ACA plans.

These subsidies help keep the cost of health insurance down for those that qualify.

I’ve been hearing SO many people say that if they let the subsidies expire, “poor people” will suffer.

As a society, we are really good at writing off “poor people” as a small group of people who live on the streets and inconvenience us when they encroach on our parks, grocery stores, restaurants, and shopping areas. How dare they exist! And how dare they make us see them when we’d like to pretend they don’t.

Letting these subsidies expire will impact far more people than those who need our help the most.

In 2025, thanks to the subsidies in place, my health insurance costs me $65/month.

Because of my cancer diagnosis, I’m a health insurance super-user. In the past year, I’ve had CTs, PET scans, MRIs, x-rays, ultrasounds, numerous check ups, exams, and appointments. I take prescriptions, some of which I will take for years to fend off recurrence.

I use the shit out of my health insurance.

For 2026… the EXACT same plan I had last year will cost me $780/month!

That’s not an increase, that’s catastrophic.

Every freelancer, consultant, small business owner, and yes, “poor people” will be fucked by letting the subsidies expire.

But this isn’t a sentence on a news ticker on your TV screen. Or a soundbyte on Tik Tok. This is the complete destruction of healthcare in this country.

I’m not the “poor person” that your mind and the media conjures up. I will not be “slightly inconvenienced” by the expiration of these subsidies. Yet, that’s what they want you to believe.

Letting the subsidies expire means that health insurance will be a luxury item. Reserved for those with the wealth and resources to afford it. It will be out of reach for millions. Including me. Not exactly a slight inconvenience.

It’s about to get worse. Much worse.

The cheapest plan available to me is still $500/month plus deductibles. That plan will also include a lot of out of pocket costs.

This means, as a cancer patient, I will effectively lose my health insurance this year unless I can figure out how to pay $500/month (just for the plan itself), plus deductibles, plus higher costs for all of my treatment, procedures, exams AND prescriptions.

So, I will be making some difficult decisions this year. Hopefully, those decisions won’t include me delaying care until maybe, I get cancer again.

And if that does happen, I wonder what the true cost of having cancer will be next time.

If I get truly sick again, I’m not sure I’ll be able to afford it any longer.

This is another reason why elections matter and voting matters. They aren’t about “owning” the group you don’t agree with. When you seek to own others, you end up owning yourself. How many millions of people who rely on the programs that are disappearing in front of them voted for exactly what they are getting? They didn’t own the libs. They voted themselves into a world where healthcare sucks, food stamps are a way to starve the public into bending the knee, and a functional, while flawed government has been replaced by authoritarian rule in the span of a few short months.

It’s already done… 8 spineless democrats along with their republican counterparts in the Senate have decided that healthcare is a luxury item now. We have defunded critical research. We have turned our backs on science. The implications of our hubris and ignorance will haunt us for decades.

There is a “promise” to revisit the subsidies in December. That promise is possibly the most insulting part of this entire deal. They leveraged the healthcare of millions of people to line their own pockets. Those subsidies are gone now. They won’t be back in December. You’re asking us to believe that a group of people that has shown no regard for how their policies actually impact real people are magically going to give a shit now and revisit the thing they’ve been trying to tear down for over a decade? Come on. As usual, politicians used their power to serve their own needs. The only people paying for that are the people who elected them. This system is fucked and the fuckery is on full display. Right in front of us.

There is no doubt that we will be sicker and poorer as a result of the policies of today.

Groceries are more expensive. Air travel is at a near stand still. Public health has been hijacked, and now health insurance is reserved for the wealthy. We are being force fed lies while being told to ask for a second helping. The nightmare marches on.

I hope I don’t get more cancer. I hope I can make it through next year.

I just don’t know how far hope can really take me.

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Here’s the thing folks: we still have an awareness problem.

Because breast cancer isn’t just for the ladies, y’all.

Cis men get breast cancer.

Intersex people get cancer.

Trans people get breast cancer.

The lack of awareness trans people face in breast cancer means that they often don’t know what their risks are and how to mitigate them. In fact, in a recent study, lack of awareness in the context of cancer prevention was cited by 72% of people observed.

And now, it’s here: It’s the most breast cancer-y time of the year.

It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which, if you know anything about breast cancer, you know that this month is, uh… complicated.

Some folks celebrate it.
Some folks slap some pink on it and use it to sell you everything from airline tickets, to cookware, to clothing.
Some folks use it to spotlight real issues. Fertility, intimacy, identity, erasure, lack of funding, barriers to care… it’s a long list and this one isn’t all-inclusive.
And some folks just hide until November.

It’s a weird time because everyone’s got a hot take on America’s most famously branded cancer.

Lately, a lot of people have been saying: we need action, not just awareness.

And yes! Go on sis! Lead the charge. Awareness is not enough. Especially when government funding is being swapped out for Tylenol watchdogs and “innovation” is just another word for funding cuts. Who needs cures, more dignified treatment options, and overall prevention?

Without action, awareness alone will remain the pink-washed, bubble gum brigade that makes it easy to forget about all of us the moment October comes to a close. So, yes! By all means, we need action.

I can’t speak for everyone with breast cancer, but I am trans and I did have breast cancer. While I know it’s hard to believe we’re not all committing war crimes in inflatable unicorn costumes in Portland, trans folks are not all the same. But many of us have similar barriers when it comes to healthcare and cancer care.

As a transmasculine human being (read: human, not terrorist), my needs aren’t the same as many breast cancer patients. Support groups about “reclaiming femininity” or “feeling whole again as a woman.” just aren’t for me. I didn’t mourn losing the tissue on my chest, I chose to get rid of it. And I celebrated that.

Trans folks also don’t always have easy access to preventive care. We face medical mistrust, deadnaming, misgendering, concerns for safety, and a healthcare system more obsessed with our “gender assigned at birth” than science. Do we even have science anymore? Or just a brain worm masquerading as the top health official in the country?

And our support networks? They don’t always come with legal rights. The person who loves you most might not even be allowed in the hospital room if things go wrong. Between conscious clauses and ongoing anti-trans legislation, if care is denied or cancer renders you unable to make your own decisions, will the person you love most be able to legally make those decisions for you? Try navigating that while also managing a cancer diagnosis.

The world keeps trying to erase us but we’ve always been here, we always will be and we’re not gonna stop now. No matter how hard folks try.

Today we are being targeted as a terrorist organization. Our mere existence means we can be subject to government surveillance. The AG in my state, Texas has even stated, in no uncertain terms, that they are coming for us… “you cannot hide, you cannot escape, and justice is coming.”

But we keep getting cancer.

Not just breast cancer.

All kinds of cancer.

Being trans doesn’t make our lives worth less, it makes us sacred despite those who tell us our lives are worthless.

So yes, let’s demand action.
But let’s make that action gender-expansive.

To all my breast cancer sisters out there, you’re our allies! I’m not about to tell anyone how to show up in their own advocacy, but if you’re wondering what you can do to help. Make those calls to action loud and clear. Just don’t forget to add on a side of awareness for us too.

We need you. We appreciate you raising your voices. Now let’s go get us some action, some funding, and yeah… a little more awareness too.

This month and every month.

Three years…

There’s a Japanese Proverb: 石 いし の上 うえ にも三年 さんねん (Ishi-no ue-nimo san-nen). It basically translates to “three years on a stone”. There are a few interpretations of what this means but the general idea is that if you sit on a cold stone, over time, your body heat will warm the stone and you will no longer be cold. It speaks to patience, persistence, perseverance, humility. And at the end, your hard work eventually pays off.

Three years…

It’s certainly been an uncomfortable three years...humbling, hard. Not unlike sitting on a cold stone, trying to warm it up with your ass.

I’ll never be able to separate the transition part from the cancer thing. There are some things that are undeniably part of my trans experience like emotional instability (kidding!) and the excitement of meeting the “you-est” you yet.

There are things like chemo, radiation, and the shadow of recurrence that sit squarely in the cancer camp. But the timing, the impact, and the eventual outcomes have become an impenetrable weave that will never be unbroken.

When my hair fell out from chemo, it never fully came back. Is that chemo’s fault or testosterone? Or a little of both? The hair that is left is kind of curly, a new feature of my hair that didn’t exist before all of this.

We all know the price of virtually everything has gone up recently, so the fact that I only have to apply deodorant to one armpit means that stick lasts twice as long! Radiation eliminated all the hair on the left side of my chest and left arm pit along with smell, sweat and everything else. If a hairy chest was one of the transition perks I was banking on, I imagine this would be a little disappointing. But one less stinky arm pit fits firmly in the win column.

Has anyone seen my eyebrows lately? They mostly left when my hair did from chemo. And like my hair, their effort in coming back has been lackluster. But with all this extra testosterone and hair popping up in all sorts of new places, you’d think my eyebrows would at least return to their former state. But the quest for prominent eyebrows has served to be pretty elusive.

Oh and I have scars on scars on scars! Scars are often a topic in both the cancer and transition worlds. My bathroom cabinets are still littered with half used bottles of scar creams and gels. I was so sick of people cutting into my chest that I even opted to do my chemo through an IV instead of a port. That wasn’t a popular decision with my oncology team but I was not going to let another person cut into the same area of my body another time to install a port. My cancer scars and my top surgery scars trace a lifelong reminder of what I went through in order to be here today.

I had barely been on low dose testosterone for four months when I had top surgery. So, I never had a chance to experience much of that first year of transition in the ways I had anticipated. Top surgery was THE big event for me. Then it became an even bigger event. A much more cancer-y one.

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I had eleven days between top surgery and cancer diagnosis. Those eleven days were some of the few days I’ve had to experience the gender euphoria I had hoped and planned for. Of course there have been other days since and there will still be more ahead. But I’d be lying if I told you that I don’t feel a little robbed of the hopes, joys, and plans I had for those first few weeks and months after top surgery. It was the beginning of a new life. While yes, it was still the beginning of a new life, cancer-life wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. It made everything a bit indistinguishable. These last three years have been all cancer with a side of transition or transition with a sprinkle or two of cancer.

But those eleven days were an absolute gift.

This anniversary is weird. I don’t feel the excitement and elation that I see on top surgery social media posts. I just don’t feel like that. Each year feels a little different though. So, maybe next year will feel a little better.

But I am happy. Maybe not joyous… but happy. It DID save my life in many ways. But I’m also a little indifferent to the whole thing. It just seems like such a hard thing to truly celebrate.

I have no idea what my life would be like today if cancer and gender transition hadn’t collided in such a cataclysmic way. Like when Eleven popped up from the upside down.

Would I be jumping out of planes and swimming with sharks if I just embarked on a gender transition? Would I have run screaming from my established career while trying to bankrupt myself by pursuing advocacy full time if I had only had cancer.

Would I have the relationships I have today? Would I have the insight? Would I know myself the same way? Would I see the world through the same lens… the one with the rose hue and the dark frames? It’s contradictory. Devastatingly uplifting. Painfully blissful.

There’s no way to know. It happened the way it happened. I’ve seen the darkest moments of my life sit squarely next to thrills that I would have never dreamed of three years ago.

I’ll be sitting on cold stones with my trans ass for years to come. Because I know that when it all feels insurmountable, if you keep going, it will change. Sometimes that change is for the better. Sometimes change just feels like pain. But persistence and fortitude eventually lead to something. Even if that something isn’t obviously good, if you pay attention, you will likely learn something about yourself. It’s information and information is good. It gives us agency and power and insight. Even if the stone warms up, it’s still a stone. It’s still uncomfortable. The process isn’t about ease or comfort. It’s about what you do with the shit you’re handed.

Cancer and gender transition. It’s not a great combo. And nowhere close to as delicious as a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. But it’s my combo.

Here’s to three years!

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So, after a couple of not-so-good weeks (months?, years?) in trans news, I figured now was a good time to write about how it feels to be trans in Texas these days.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t feel great.

They’ve banned you from bathrooms (SB 8), erased you from state law (HB 229), cut you off from hormones, and made sure kids can’t get care even if their parents beg for it (SB 14). There’s hope that candidates like can help turn the tide in Texas, but when he says he will “protect Texas families,” I keep asking: which families? Because ours are under attack.

Every bathroom ban, every healthcare restriction, every “parents’ rights” bill written in Austin gets copy-pasted in Tennessee, Florida, Ohio. Texas is the pilot program. If it works here, it’ll be rolled out nationwide. Congratulations, y’all! Austin even attempts to stake its claim as the new Silicon Valley. But maybe Texas is just the Silicon Valley of stripping human rights.

Meanwhile, I’m asking myself each day how much longer it will be safe for me to live in Texas. In fact, it may no longer be safe.

Plus, I am a cancer survivor. So, yea, trans and cancer? Not a great time to be in Texas or the US right now. I also recently had West Nile virus. Is that enough for me to get a COVID vaccine? Who knows! It might be up to the pharmacist. Or maybe the rules will change mid-sentence. I guess I’ll just hope really hard that it all works out for me.

Thots and prayers right? ‘Cause maybe the only jab I’ll get is being held responsible for another public shooting. The irony of fighting through chemo just to be told by lawmakers that my life isn’t worth saving is not lost on me.

People outside this state like to shake their heads and say, “Texas is wild.” But what happens here doesn’t stay here. Texas is the testing ground. The anti-trans bills, the censorship, the attacks on care, they get exported, copy-pasted into legislatures across the country.

Across the country, mass shootings are blamed on trans people before the bodies are cold and our names trend on Xitter every time someone needs a scapegoat. It’s open season on trans folks… legally, politically, culturally.

So yeah, it’s not a great time to be trans in Texas. Or anywhere. And that’s the point.

So, I’ll just be over here, raw-dogging the apocalypse with everyone else.

It’s hard to stay informed these days. I’ve been getting so much good info from a couple of sources, so I wanted to share it with y’all.

• is out here every single day firing off trans news that cuts out all the bullshit and gets to the point. If you want to keep up, she’s your source.

• ’s Good Queer News is a bright spot in dark times. It’s the best place to balance the good with the “oof”.

And even in this chaos, y’all just can’t stop trans joy. Trans artist, advocate, and lovely human, Mars Wright recently installed a billboard on Sunset Blvd in LA that reads “Dear Trans PPL, LA Likes You Very Much”. Last week, in the middle of rush-hour traffic, over 70 people showed up to celebrate art in an act of trans love and community.

Dear Mars, Trans people in Texas love you very much 🫶🏻🏳️‍⚧️

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It’s busy today. 20 minutes late. 30. The minutes tick by. Bodies shuffle in and out, the door constantly creaking and groaning as it opens repeatedly.

As she walks into the room, heads lift in anticipation.

“Miss Davidson…” I see half the heads in the room glance around the room as she calls out the name, looking for Miss Davidson, the other half go back to looking at the tiny screens in their hands.

I know there are only a few seconds left before she says it again. I take one more look around the room, pleading with some higher power that no one is paying attention, grab my backpack and my blanket and walk toward her. Signaling discreetly.

It’s me. The one who looks more like mister than anything. The one fighting to live in the skin that feels more like mine than ever before. I’m Miss Davidson. Again.

Here in Texas, they have decided to use a special legislative session that was supposed to help recent flood victims to shoehorn a “bathroom” bill through the state legislature.

On July 4th and 5th, 2025, Texas saw one of the worst floods in the history of US. The death toll swelled to over 135 people, including at least 30 children. Yet, the Texas legislature turned their focus toward telling folks which bathrooms they could use in state-run and funded buildings and organizations.

As a transmaculine, nonbinary person, living in central Texas, this bill affects me directly. Even worse, as a transgender breast cancer survivor, this bill has far reaching consequences.

The cancer center that I go to, undoubtedly receives state and government funding. I’m no longer receiving chemo or radiation therapy but my life will always be an unending stream of doctor’s visits, scans, and tests.

Hopefully, I’ll never have to endure chemo or radiation again. But, the odds… aren’t exactly in my favor. I take medication every day to fend off recurrence. This medication is a constant reminder that cancer could be just around the corner.

Cancer appointments can be long. Hours long. My most recent visit, which occurred two days ago, was long. It even included a bathroom break before getting a PET scan. It’s actually part of the procedure.

Step 1: Get injected with radioactive glucose.

Step 2: Wait 45 minutes

Step 3: Empty your bladder

Step 4: Get scanned

But if you’re trans in Texas, and in a state funded cancer center, how does Step 3 work exactly? Does the center lose their funding for letting us use the bathroom in order to get lifesaving care? Does the tech get arrested for allowing me to use the bathroom? Do they lose their job? What about my oncologist who ordered the scan in the first place? Or do I simply not qualify for a test that can identify cancer cells throughout my body, simply for being trans? Is my life worth less?

I have to imagine that this is what it feels like for others too. What is it like to pass through protestors picketing Planned Parenthood? Doctors and health care workers have been risking their safety and their livelihoods at Planned Parenthood for years. Patients who are simply seeking affordable medical care are forced to consider whether it’s safe to do so. Should accessing health care require patients and practitioners to sacrifice their safety? Are their lives worth less?

According to a recent poll, 1 in 3 women and nearly half of all black women have received care at Planned Parenthood. Each one of those women had to make choices between getting their healthcare needs met and their own physical and psychological safety.

I didn’t choose cancer. It chose me. But if I want to live a long, fulfilling life, I will return to the same cancer center every few months for the foreseeable future. I often say that having cancer is like making a series of shitty choices from a series of shitty options.

One of those shitty choices was choosing between receiving life saving chemotherapy and getting publicly misgendered in front of a jam packed waiting room in central Texas, or dying from an entirely treatable cancer prognosis in order to keep my trans identity a secret.

Regardless of who you are, shouldn’t we all have the right to seek out and receive healthcare without having to fear for our safety?

No one should have to worry about getting their ass kicked in the parking lot of a cancer center, simply for existing. But that fear followed me after every single chemo appointment. I walked hurriedly to my car. Exhausted from hours of being hooked up to machines, with poison coursing through my body, I couldn’t just seek respite and relief. I scanned my surroundings, weaponizing the keys in my palm until the relief of the drive home enveloped me.

With bathroom bills on the horizon in Texas and across the US, if there’s a next time for me, can you tell me which bathroom I should vomit in after chemo? Which bathroom I’m allowed to empty my bladder in before the next PET scan? Or whether I’m simply worthy of receiving cancer treatment at all?

I’m a transgender breast cancer survivor. I use he/they pronouns. And you can call me Ash.

A quick note… when I wrote this, SB-8, the trans bathroom ban had not yet passed Texas state legislature. As of now, it has. It will become law in Texas.

During the legislative process, I signed up to give public testimony on much of what I wrote above. They allowed 2 hours for that testimony and so many people showed up to speak, that the majority of us were never able to say our piece.

Nevertheless, I submitted my testimony online. If you’d like to read that, verbatim, please see below:

My name is Ash and I use he/they pronouns. I’m a transgender, breast cancer survivor and advocate. I’m here to oppose SB8. In 2022, I had gender-affirming top surgery. During that surgery, my surgeon found a tumor. It was cancer.

I didn’t know I had cancer. No one did. If I hadn’t had access to that surgery - if my insurance hadn’t covered it…who knows when that tumor would have been discovered. That surgery at that time saved me from a far worse prognosis and fate with cancer. So yes, gender-affirming care saved my life.

But what does that have to do with bathrooms?

Let me explain. I had a PET scan a few weeks ago, because when you’ve had cancer, you don’t just "move on." You live with scans, tests, and constant monitoring - often in hospitals, clinics, or public health facilities. Many of those are state-funded.

Here’s how a PET scan works:
Step 1: get injected with radioactive glucose.
Step 2: wait 45 minutes.
Step 3: empty your bladder.
Step 4: get scanned.

But if SB-8 passes, and I’m in a state-funded facility… how do I do Step 3?
Does the tech get punished for letting me pee? Does my oncologist get fined?
Or do I just not qualify for a potentially life-saving scan, simply because I’m trans?

And what if I get cancer again? Chemo infusions take hours. What happens when I need to use the bathroom? Or vomit? Should I carry my birth certificate (which also reflects my gender as male) to prove I’m puking in the correct restroom? Or even worse, if I am forced to use the women’s restroom, should I, looking, like this, scare all the women in that bathroom who are also undergoing chemo, when they see a man in the women’s restroom?

Or maybe I just shouldn’t show up for treatment at all. Because clearly, the audacity of having cancer while trans means I’m not worth the care, right?

These so-called bathroom bills are written with no understanding of their true reach and impact. They ignore logistics, humanity, and reality. They hurt trans people and they put healthcare providers in impossible positions. We continue to see how these bans affect cisgender people too. When people have to show their breasts to strangers in the bathroom at Buffalo Wild Wings to prove they belong there, we have lost our humanity as a society.

If the goal is truly about protecting women and children, then maybe the focus should shift to predators in office, or the lack of care, support, and resources for families after people are forced to give birth under abortion bans. But me, vomiting in my lap during a chemo infusion, because I can’t legally access a toilet isn’t protecting anyone.

This bill won’t keep anyone safe. But it will absolutely put lives at risk. Including mine.

Welcome to Transcer: the audacity to have cancer while trans

I didn’t expect to walk in for gender-affirming top surgery and walk out with breast cancer. But I did.

Since then, I’ve been figuring out what it means to be trans in cancer spaces and a cancer patient in trans spaces.

I’m not here to make cancer inspirational or to make transness tragic.

But I am here to bring a little light into dark places. To build community in a world that wants to erase us. To make connections where the system is giving dead ends.

Transcer is that space. Dispatches from doctors’ offices. Bathroom selfies, because the gender police want me to pee with your wives and daughters. Thirst traps disguised as PSAs. And commentary on what it means to be trans with cancer in Texas…equal parts survival guide and side-eye.

Subscribe! Since y’all are SO obsessed with us, maybe skip the fear-mongering clickbait and hear it straight from a trans person.

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