RentMen:
What are your lifestyle specifics that makes who you are?
TigerStevensFTM:
My transness has influenced every part of my life and continues to affect how I perceive and interact with the world. I have been perceived as a straight female (when I was a teenager), lesbian (during college), straight man (just after transition), gay man (a bit later), and now as a queer man with a very strong trans identity. I can say with certainty that people treat men and women differently and I can also testify to the way gay and lesbian people are treated differently. I feel I have lived multiple lives in one lifetime.
RentMen:
What do you enjoy most about yourself?
TigerStevensFTM:
I love my ability to be radically authentic - a process of showing up in alignment with my evolving truth especially when it defies social expectations and risks disapproval. A process of becoming and unbecoming over and over again. A process of listening deeply inward and showing up outwardly from a place of honesty, vulnerability, and unapologetic uniqueness. I have fought to get here and it is what makes me feel like I am thriving in a society that is currently trying to destroy me and all trans people. I refuse to be invisible. My resilience is a super power.
RentMen:
If we sat on the beach and drank wine and ate great food just you and I, what would you tell me about yourself and your life?
TigerStevensFTM:
I would share with you my search for radical authenticity and figuring out that shame is a colonial, patriarchal, cisheteronormative construct designed to control, contain, and coerce. I would share with you that any shame you carry is not yours, it never was, and you don't have to make room for it in your life. I would share my journey so perhaps, you too, can claim the right to be unapologetically you.
RentMen:
What are 5 things you can’t live without?
TigerStevensFTM:
Beyond the necessities which many of us in the western world take for granted such as shelter, food, water, and other things to meet our basic everyday needs, I would not want to live without companionship of some sort, natural beauty (my source of wonder and awe), my cordless Hitachi magic wand vibrator, moisturizer/sunscreen, and books. Could I survive without these things? Absolutely. Would live be truly fulfilling? No.
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