How to Tell a Trans+ Story
Congratulations! You have volunteered to speak at one of our Storytelling events. This is an amazing opportunity to express yourself, be seen for who you are, and influence the way that people view gender. It's our community's chance to be seen as human, deserving of rights, life, love, and goodness. You will be moving the needle of progress forward by speaking here.
Yes, speaking like this may feel imposing and scary. We'll cover that. It'll be ok. And in the end, it can be a validating, healing experience of being seen, moving you forward in your growth. It's all of that.
Our Format
You might want to know what to expect.
We have a small panel of 5-7 speakers, and after setting ground rules with the audience, we take turns telling our story. Each of us has fifteen minutes - this is a long time and you can say a lot. More about that below.
After everyone has spoken, audience members may write questions on paper, and pass them forward. We will screen the questions to be appropriate, read them out loud, and any storyteller can answer them. Or not, it's optional. There is no open mic in the audience.
And then we close. That's all there is to it.
Our Audience
The audience contains three main groups. Of course the core is going to be queer peers. We are here to enjoy and expand the community, listen, and cheer you on.
Second, often there are people in some early or questioning part of their journey. Your words will naturally light a pathway for them. You open possibilities, bring new ideas, and make wherever they are going easier. Likewise, there will be parents in the room, who want to learn how to be with their trans or nonbinary child. Your experience can make them kinder and more understanding with their own family.
And third, much of the audience will be open-minded cis people. They agree with pro-trans issues, but maybe never met one of us, or don't realize they met us. They need our stories to build a bridge into empathy, caring, and action for our community. Your story will take "transgender" out of being a category or headline, into the life of someone they met and understand. It's possible that some of them will make minor mistakes, perhaps an unintentional misgendering. This is all new to them, it's not mean-spirited. We are hoping to move them from being passive allies into active allies, with this simple act of sharing stories.
We don't aim to have any hostile or disapproving people in the audience. You can tell us the names of people to dis-invite, and we'll work to see that they don't get in. We are actively screening known baddies out. Everyone who attends has agreed to not say harmful things. In the rare case that someone breaks those rules, the MC will deal with them with love and firmness.
Approaches to Storytelling
There are several approaches to storytelling. They are all valid, reflecting different lenses, purposes and worldviews.
One is a top-down approach with a message, a goal. A storyteller begins with the point that they want to make, such as to highlight the need for a policy change. From there, the storyteller finds memorable, engaging life experiences that highlight the need for this point, and they craft a story from there.
The Public Narrative model is an example, weaving a single story around the personal, the community, and a directive for change. There are many good examples of this in political movements, including from the Obama campaign. 603 Equality has a separate training centered on this approach.
This article focuses on a second approach, which is more bottom-up and expressive. This approach has roots in trauma-informed care and survivor storytelling. The storyteller simply wants for an aspect or moment of their life to become seen. They are laying it out for the listener to connect and empathize with them in that place. It focuses on healing, expression, and validation. It embodies the power of saying it out loud, in your own words. It's more organic, and trusts the listener to find their own conclusions and calls to action.
These may seem like completely opposite ways to write a story. But realistically, many stories lean into both approaches. As you go, it's useful to have a sense of what your guiding principle is - making a point, or being heard in your experience.
What does not work well is to spin off a medley of anecdotes in a stream of consciousness. However you write this, it will take a little weaving and crafting to make a cohesive whole that an audience can understand.
From this point, our guide will focus more on the bottom-up approach.
Your Story - a Bottom-Up Approach
First off, this is a story, not a speech. It's about your life, your experiences, your feelings, much more than your theories and ideas. It's not about what we need the audience to think. Instead, we'll be direct and honest, and just say what happened in our life. The audience can reach their own conclusions. And yes, this is hard!
The mantra is to "Show, Don't Tell." If you were to simply demand that it is wrong to have to go into the wrong bathroom, they probably won't get it. If you give a story about that gnarly time you had to go to the wrong bathroom, what happened, and how it affected you, they will get it. The focus is emotion and experience, not slogans and ideas.
One way to bring up ideas, maybe about gender, is to talk about the experiences that brought you to that idea. Here you're mixing both forms of storytelling. Then there's something behind that idea, some lived experience that brought that idea to you.
We really can't ever control what a listener will conclude, but we'll give our best shot. This event will move people, there is no doubt. It is power through vulnerability.
So Many Little Stories to Tell
To start, what is it like to be trans/nonbinary, and how did you find your way to this place? Put another way, what would you want your younger self to hear? What do you want your friends to know? What is massively misunderstood everywhere, but is right there in your lived experience? What do you want to change?
Jot some ideas down, swirl them around, and see how they arrange. Here are some ideas for trans people:
Inklings of discovery - What little clues did you see growing up? Cute stories of being caught in someone else’s clothes fit in here nicely!
Your process of discovery - Was it clear or circuitous? How did it play out?
Health care - How did puberty blockers, hormones, surgeries fit into your path? How was it accessing them? Were providers kind or difficult? What does T or E feel like?
Surgery - Obviously optional - but what do you want to do about top, bottom, facial, other surgeries? What has it meant to you, if you’ve done some of those?
Parents, family - How was your family in understanding/embracing your discovery? What worked? What sucked?
Challenges - What was hard? What was super nasty hard?
Bullying - How did your peers treat you? How did your school or workplace deal with the bullies? Did you have to leave or fight or what? Did you have to quit a job or leave a school behind you? What would have helped?
Successes - What were some of your "wins" along the way, big or small?
Moments of Fabulousness - What's one moment when it all came together?
Names - Did you change your name? How did you choose a name? How does your deadname make you feel?
Clothing - What insights have you gotten about what you like to wear? About what you hate to wear? Binders, packers, tucking, all of that fits in here if you want.
Voice - How does your spoken voice play out in transition? Did you do voice training? What is it like to speak?
Body - How does your body feel? What is dysphoria for you?
Being in public - What is it like to be in public, presenting yourself as you want to be? What is it like to be clocked?
Bathrooms - What is it like to go to a public restroom of the correct or incorrect gender?
Coming out - How did you come out, and where do you want to, or not want to? It's a multi stage process for sure.
Queer Culture - What do you like about queer culture? Do you know Blahaj?
Common Misconceptions - For example, comparing Drag to Trans?
What did you need to hear, growing up? - That it's going to be ok? Things keep getting better?
Choice - Do you feel like you had a choice? When did you feel that?
Ease - Has this been easy or hard? How?
Thoughts of Suicide
Substance Use
Physical/Sexual Abuse
Eating Challenges
Mental Health Challenges
What has dating or your relationships been like?
And for intersex people, yes, it’s complicated due to variations and medical issues. It’s still all of the above, but if this is part of your background, or might be, please email to intersex@603equality.org and we can brainstorm the details! Our group includes intersex people, and past storytelling events have included intersex stories.
Weaving it Together
You can string this together any way you want. It might be chronological, or you might put similar stories together. After you practice it a few times, a natural order starts to show itself.
Fifteen minutes is a long time. You don’t have to use all of the time, but you have the luxury to go into some depth about an experience, or to follow your development over a longer period of time. Please use the time well, there’s no need to leave extra pieces of story in there that don’t really serve your purpose.
It's ok, even necessary, to talk about some things that are difficult. It's part of the path, of your path, and people need to know it. Sometimes to end something, it has to be brought out into the light. It's hard. This is a superpower. You'll be supported in talking about anything here. There's plenty of room for tears and anger and fear and more tears.
An important lesson learned from trauma informed storytelling is to pay attention to your emotional response as you tell it. If telling part of your story makes you feel overwhelmed or disassociated, maybe it's too graphic or intense this time. You are in charge of this story, and for making it safe for you to tell well. You can dial it back so it feels ok, so you stay in your mind and body as you tell it.
And, please keep your boundaries in mind. Is part of this more than you want to share with this audience today? You don't have to share everything, we all have our secrets. Your boundaries, your body, your autonomy all matter.
Practice and Embody Your Story
As you practice and play with your words, the ideas rearrange into a flow that feels natural. You start realizing that you can delete one section, and go deeper into another. You might find that you keep using the same word over and over, and find a way to fix it. Perhaps you spent far too long talking about clothes, but you never got to tell about that bully. One section may make you choke up or cry, and that's fine, so then you can practice telling the story through your tears. You'll craft this from a bullet list of ideas into a story with a body and a heart.
But, it takes time to play it through. It takes even more time to progress from simply reading the story, looking down at a piece of paper, to engaging with the audience. It can easily take dozens of reads to feel great about it. Pets make great listeners, and they don't have annoying ideas of how you can change your story. Some people video themselves, to get a sense of what they look and sound like, what their body looks like, and how their timing plays out. How do your arms and head move? Friends, therapists, family all can listen too, and tell you how it feels. You can tell them first that you don't want any feedback, you just want to tell the story, period. Sometimes you need pointers, and sometimes you just need to figure it out. Ask your Storytelling event coordinator for a listen, and they may even have a dramatic coach available!
There are several good examples of other trans storytellers online. It may help to watch a few of these to get some ideas:
TED Talk by Nicole Maines
It Gets Better has a great binge-watch list
You can bring paper notes, cards, your phone, whatever you need to stay on track. Maybe you've practiced it enough to just need the sketch of an outline, or it's all in your head.
You're not trying to get it super smooth and polished, that's for commercials and sales jobs. That’s what makes TED look over-produced sometimes. You're trying to get it real and authentically you, something that is an emotional channel to the audience.
Extra credit if you can do it expressively, looking into the audience. They are here to hear you, and you will see them react, and that will feed your feelings as you go. They are your peers and people who are friendly to us.
You'll do great. The space will be safe. You will tell your story with everything you have, on the big night. And you will be heard, and validated. It will change the audience, and the experience will change you a little, too.
Thank you for bringing your story to our planet. We need it!
