Allegheny Queer

I came out to my business partner first. It was a slow moving train and she seemed to know the destination even though I didn't. Maybe a year later I told my husband. Three weeks later was my mom, and by extension her partner. The cascade of confessions tore through my siblings, close friends, and random people. Every person I have told has been totally and unquestioningly supportive, and for that I am thankful in ways I cannot describe.   The need to tell people once I told one is intense. I still haven't told my day job and so I haven't fully outed myself on social media. I really want to get it over with but my plan at the moment is to tell my job right before my top surgery. Because that's gonna be a topic of discussion anyway. I guess if a co-worker stumbles across this site, then I will be spared a blind-siding of the office.  In addition to the desire to have everyone know and understand my identity, I have also been plagued with  intense  anxiet...

In her book Gender Outlaw, Kate Bornstein describes the need for a "third space." A place where one can be open, honest, and out. It is important to be out and creating visibility. This is my third space. Hopefully, as tolerance grows, as the government sheds it's skin, my third space will expand until the concept is no longer applicable. Hi, I'm Kati. Since I can remember being aware of gender, and my gender in particular, I have known I am not a girl. Sure, I was always a tomboy, always a feminist. I tried on a lot of costumes over the years looking for where I fit in the binary of female/male, gay/straight. As I made my way, I always came back to the same thoughts. "I am not a girl." "I do not belong with these women." "I am probably a gay man." "I am other." Other. In, but not  of . Neither here, nor there. A perineum. I am a taint. That is a dark, uncharted landscape for anyone growing up in the days before "gende...