I’ve said this not infrequently, but I am very happy to be trans. Like, given the option to be some cis take on who I am, whatever that could possibly mean, I would say no. I wouldn’t ever want that. What I would want is to have understood myself and received necessary care some 30 years ago. But that’s different.
I am exactly the person I want to be, aside from the damage from the neglect and other people’s problems, right. I don’t want some other body in order to fit someone else’s ideas of propriety. Self-determination is more important than fitting into a broken, wrong-headed world.
I genuinely don’t understand cisness. For decades I played along with what other people told me about myself, because I didn’t know I had another option. But I didn’t like it. I did the bare minimum. I knew they were wrong. I just didn’t have the language to piece together how. I’ve never had a situation where people have known what’s right for me or acted in my best interest. Everything those with control over my life has told me has been wrong, often maliciously. I’m the only person who knows me. Why should I trust their judgment about my very being?
I want to be who I am, not who someone tells me I am. I don’t want to change any part of me so that my idea of who I am matches the ideas of someone who doesn’t give a shit about me. Why would I do that? What purpose would that serve? The only problem with my body again is the years of neglect, that I’m doing my best to mitigate now. Otherwise, it’s a part of who I am. And I like it. What’s wrong with it? Why should I give up what I have just to make other people feel better with who I correctly say that I am?
I just don’t get this narrative one hears, of wishing one were born in another body or whatever. It sounds like some kind of a confused cis fairy tale. Why the hell would i want that? What would it even mean, to a non-binary chick? What I want is love. I want acceptance. I want respect. On my own terms. I’m not going to apologize for my existence. I’ve already done that since as young as i can remember speaking.
I’m great. Being trans is a part of that. If I were to start over with a blank slate, the only thing I’d adjust is knowledge—not having to live in ignorance for all those years. To know that I deserve care.
Considering how old this body is and what a young trans I am, I think I look pretty good mostly. Some things will never be perfect. Other things are a work in progress. Generally, though, i am in good spirits about this. (Which again is so novel to me.)
I say this, as I am not having a particularly pretty day, and it has been frustrating me. But you know. not every day is gonna be a winner. It’s up and down, and today isn’t the end of everything; it’s the beginning of everything else. We’re done with the doom. Azure doesn’t need it.
For decades I’m used to every day being the start of the end. But it’s really not. It never has been. It’s just the start. On prior record, I’ve still got plenty of good days ahead of me. Probably my best is far ahead—way over the horizon available to me today. Yesterday was fine. Nothing is consistent, but there are patterns. and I’ve finally caught mine. not ever gonna let it go.
Being this new in a body this old, it’s kinda like getting a used car or a fixer-upper of an old house. you got a project ahead of you, fixing the damage and maintaining the bones of the thing, but you can make anything your own. Play up the strengths. It’s all in how you wear it.
I’m going to need a bigger bra soon. This isn’t gonna be viable forever. When I measured back in September, my bust was just under 40 inches. It’s now at just about exactly 42. which would in stupid American sizing make me, what, 36DDD. (In UK sizing, 36E.) Which is to say, that estimate of about a cup size a month still holds. For how long, until we reach stasis?
I’d been sort of wondering what was up with them. Again I’ve no sense of proportion, and they haven’t been actively sore for a while—and also I keep having these distressing detransition dreams, which leave me in a weird state on waking, wondering if everything is still as it should be. As it turns out: yes.
Beyond the breasts, I’m starting to gain a little shape in general. Still early, but it’s a real start. Since I did those measurements, my hips have gone from 40 to 42 inches. Which is… not insignificant, for two months of growth.
I need to get a better mirror, and a camera lens that doesn’t flatten everything out, and lighting that replaces some impression of the depth lost to two dimensions. But, yeah. Once I’ve got the concrete numbers in front of me, I can see it.
So it’s finally happening. We’re really doing this. The boobs are great of course—really, really good, as it turns out—but what we’re really here for is the hips. The hips and the butt, and the thighs, and the face. As for that—well. It’s harder to measure for sure, but it’s becoming clear to me that we’ve got some major changes there too. Beyond appearances, even. When I press my tongue into my cheek, the flesh is easily twice as thick and resistant as it used to be. I’ve noticed some difference since way back, but lately, it’s unquantifiable but so obvious.
And having absolute data for everything else—the breasts, hips, thighs (which, oh yeah, are a little bigger too)—sure does help support that idea, even if i can’t easily check it. What are the chances that this one thing that’s supposed to change at roughly the same time as that other stuff, and looks like it is, actually isn’t?
I mean, look at this. I did not use to look like this:
No makeup or anything. Fresh out of the shower. (Though, after my first-ever go with a hairdryer!) I feel like that moderate asymmetry from over-engagement of the jaw muscles on one side is starting to smooth out, the more hollow side filling in and the other slimming down. Just a bit. The lips, the eyes. Just all this subtle stuff I can’t put my finger on.
With all the empirical changes, the verbs are also starting to click. All these facets of posture have fallen into place for me, basically at once. In the past, I’d always considered posture to be this stifling concept—holding one’s self rigid to this expected form, for the benefit of other people. A masking behavior, to present a false image that matches what people expect to see.
But there’s another side of that, that’s about not performance but self-affirmation, self-care, holding one’s self together; asking yourself who you are, and trying to back that up so that you feel good and that the physicality supports and reflects the mentality of it all. Creating this physio-psycho feedback loop.
It’s also interesting just how many elements there can be to posture. It’s not just standing or sitting up straight, right. It’s about engaging your body toward certain kinds of desired readiness, removing stress where you don’t want it. And the dimensions to that are everywhere! I’m noting and working out posture issues in my lower back and my hips; my upper back and shoulders; my neck; my jaw, throat, and tongue; my eyes, my lips; my legs, my arms. I’m just actively holding so many things differently, consciously reshaping my form so that I can carry myself the way that I want to. And for all that, despite my ADHD and lack of of executive function, it’s not as much juggling as you’d think.
And again, this habituation, it’s not for anyone else’s benefit, or to match some kind of a social code. I’m not performing; I’m conducting system checks. There’s all this information that goes back and forth, as I settle into the person I know I am and whom I want to be, and as I existentially embrace her.
This is a lot happening at once, as things have tended to be since maybe August, but it’s good. I feel like this body language business is some basic shit I’ve been lacking my whole life; the art how to Be.
So much of my transition, so much of my adjustment to what’s actually right for me, seems to be a matter not of taking things on and forcing issues but of just letting go. The posture business, it’s less about manipulation than about learning to let go of tension—allowing myself to snap back into a natural and comfortable and healthy form, as compared to how trauma had taught me to hold myself. It’s exactly the opposite of holding stiffly in some some uncomfortable position. Hell, my changes in posture allow me to move in ways I never knew I could. who knew that hips were hinged like that?
There is an ongoing sort of monitoring, at least until the habits form and I can free that space to think of something else—guiding one’s muscles and parts and even more existential mental moving parts. But that stiffness and discomfort, that’s not what we want at all. This is more like a brace, to help heal from injury.
I talk a lot about this dividing line, and how I am not the same person as the previous caretaker for this body, but seriously, all my memories prior to maybe a year ago feel so unreal. It’s getting harder and harder to remember specifics, like grasping at a dream.
I may have mentioned that my taste for food has been shifting since my transition. This is pretty normal, of course. Change your body chemistry, your body is gonna start bothering your brain for different complementary materials. In practice it still feels so odd.
It’s hard to navigate. I’m autistic, right, and I’m very particular about what kinds of sensory input I can deal with. It’s taken decades for me to explore and branch out and work through what’s acceptable to me. Since my tastes calcified somewhere in adolescence, they haven’t really changed; they’ve just expanded. I’ve managed to tack things on, break through barriers, develop things further. But it’s all hooked into the same architecture, same basic assumptions that have never shifted. Now I can’t safely fall back on any of that.
I used to be all about sugar and carbohydrates. Whether it’s my metabolism or my neurology, I dunno, but I couldn’t function without a constant input of quick, easy energy. (Even then, functioning was a philosophical matter.)
Now the things I naturally assume I’ll want, I kind of shrug at. They’ll sit there, and I can’t really imagine eating them. In their place, I don’t always know how to read the new signals. It took so long to figure out the old ones. But definitely acids and oils and fats. It’s all about savory things now, which… really weren’t a major concern before. I’m super into stinky cheese and fermented things. I find myself drawn to just, raw vegetables in a way I wasn’t overly. Stereotypical as it may be, I seem to crave as I never have. I was always into, like, gummy and hard candy, right? All sugar, no fat. This is almost the flip of that.
All of this is comprehensible, right. I know what my body is doing and why. It’s just, there’s a lot of identity in this.
As I say, Azure is not the same person as that shell she stomped around inside, or that stomped around on autopilot as she largely slept. If you could even call them a person.
I hadn’t factored how much of my prior sense of self, such as it was, had been scrubbed by that last decade. by this total breakdown of my humanity. Which… in hindsight was weirdly helpful for finding the person buried beneath all that and clearing the room for her to finally grow properly.
But she still inherits all these memories and notions and understandings, and many of them no longer apply, or are fading in ways that are hard to predict. And it’s… really confusing. I’m starting from zero on so many things. This life is just so completely new.
Now over six months into HRT, there have been some clear effects. My body has taken well to the regimen, reacting strongly even to low starter doses. It seems obvious this was something my body was starving for. The first thing I noted, within moments of the first pill hitting my bloodstream, was how much clearer my head got. This thick fug that’s always been a part of my mind, it lifted a little. Soon I became able to feel emotions. Like, viscerally, physically. I had always thought of the term “feelings” as poetic, but now there was this burning sensation in my chest. Looking online, it seems like the shittiness I had felt every day since I was maybe eleven, it’s… similar to menopause. It seems like for decades my body was physically waiting and looking for chemicals that it wasn’t getting, and so just made my life hell demanding them. Just mentally, emotionally, this has been a revelation. Is this the way normal people feel, because suddenly I feel like a real person.
The physical side also kicked off quickly. Skin, scent, eyes. What small hair loss was happening in the corners of my scalp turned right around. I am still waiting for some more pronounced fat redistribution, around my face and hips and thighs. As impatient as I am for that, my body has other priorities at the moment, it would seem.
So.
Despite frequent pressing questions from medical staff, I wasn’t really asking for boobs. The notion didn’t factor into my ideas for myself. I’m not a sexual person, right, and that was the frame I used. Now, though, I am struck daily with how cool and validating this is. It’s just this obvious marker that I am who and what I am. That I exist. That my body belongs to me. That this is all really happening. And, it’s just neat.
People are people. Humans are not particularly sexually dimorphic. Any differences between what we arbitrarily define as the two sexes are subtle and inconsistent. As a result, then, any small change makes a big apparent difference. Psychologically, more than physically.
I just wasn’t prepared. It felt weird or pervy to dwell on. But, it matters. So many people have laid claim to me over the years, telling me what I could or couldn’t or must do with my body, most of which just caused me to hate myself more, dissociate further from this tangible thing I was attached to. This body, it belongs to me now. It is an aspect of me. This part of me, this physical form, it’s becoming a thing that I want to inhabit. That I am starting to feel attached to, that has begun to reflect me. I am turning into an actual person, who exists in the world.
With boobs.
Look, boobs are hilarious. And cool. And I get to have them now. Because I am kinda-sorta a girl. So I get the Cracker Jack prize.
I feel like I just went back to complete some certification I was forced to drop several ages ago. Picking up life wherever it was I left off.
I am real, and I am awake. And maybe someday soon I will be able to push through my trauma and take care of myself. Make a home. Build a world that I want to live in, filled with kind and sincere weirdos who just appreciate each other for who they are. I deserve to be a person. And I think I am figuring out how to make that work, bit by bit.
Of the three main Gems, Garnet’s story has always seemed the most muted and hazily defined. If you go back with the understanding that she is trans (as one of many dimensions to the metaphor she embodies), her whole character arc of learning to be honest and open about who she is, embracing her inner complexity and allowing herself to be vulnerable, it takes on a lot more color. It all starts to open up and make sense in a similar way to Amethyst’s and Pearl’s inner journeys.
From the start it’s just taken as read that Garnet is who she says she is. But she asserts this so strongly as to be rigid in her attitudes toward herself and her potential, and as to not let anyone in. She has to learn how to be a verb, and not just a noun. A person, not just an identity.
There’s this sort of fear that letting people know her too closely, or performing outside of this narrow definition she’s made for herself, will negate her identity, cause them to respect her less on her own terms. Which is not an entirely unwarranted fear, as we see in the show.
So her journey is about learning that essential trust in the truth of who she is, so that she doesn’t have to be defensive about it, protect it all the time. So that she can feel free to just live.
I got some stuff done at the doctor, and it was all constructive; better than a worst-case scenario. Then a nurse who wishes to remain nameless offered me a lift. I guess they’re technically not supposed to do this, but her partner was waiting around to pick her up at the end of her shift, so she went down and asked him to use that time to drive me home—all the while gendering me semi-correctly.
She did keep asking to make sure I wasn’t a serial killer, which I tried to assure her I wasn’t. I was a little unclear on how to respond to that, especially after the first time. I also approached the endeavor with a certain amount of caution until I saw everyone involved. And, when I saw the scenario it was clearly fine.
I’m so unused to people just… doing nice things that the moment I was dropped off I started to feel so guilty. What am I not doing? I thanked them both profusely. Should I have… done something else? Made some gesture of my own? I don’t know how these things work. Was I rude? Did I act like a jerk? I just. I’m trying to figure, sometimes people are just nice, and leave it at that.
On top of this, all the gendering (which I’ve been getting regularly of late, often in the strangest scenarios). I mean, I know it’s part of her job to be sensitive to that sort of thing, but, like. Again, it’s a lot.
Just. Oh my God, I don’t know what to do with someone just going out of their way to do something like this for me, for no reason, and against policy. I’m kind of overwhelmed.
Normally the worst part of check-up appointments is the hour-long trudge home after the blood draw. Today I got to just decompress, and drink the complementary ginger ale; spike my sugar back up a little. Normally I am completely wiped out by the time I get home, but this time I had enough energy to actually get groceries (where I continued to get ma’amed, somehow, despite looking like a melted slug).
Agh, interacting with people is so strange. I don’t know what I am doing at all. Just, accept it.
Every so often I feel like a girl. And my whole body gets warm. The world starts to feel real. Everything begins to make a little sense; I feel connected to some kind of a story. It just comes to me, a realization. A toggle. And there it is, and somehow I’m human. Complete.
I’m not used to feeling like anything. Just this fuzzy ball of consciousness, resenting my humanity. This goes back forever. As far back as memories make sense. I’ve been an abstraction, unable to recognize or tolerate the entity holding my place in this game I cannot understand.
Now there’s this anchor. I’m still a space cadet, and I’ve got a whole host of distractions. But, I have a tether to this body and the world it inhabits, and now I know the truth, and sometimes when I don’t think about it, I find myself back on the ground. And I finally get it.
This is that sense of self it seems that everyone else has by default. They’re worn and damaged and a big old mess that I need to keep toiling away to repair, but they exist, and I like the model and the controls make a kind of sense to me. Sometimes I wake up, and they’re me.
And it’s just… kind of astonishing. There I am. There I’ve always been. What did I wake up from? It’s like that morning haze where you clear away the dream logic and sort out where you are and what day it is and what you need to do this afternoon. Except so much more vivid.
It comes when it comes; brains do what they do. When it does, it may follow my evening meds. It’s not hard to connect those dots. What strikes me, though, is how not just right but transparent it feels: this wave of Self and Reality and Truth. The pills are only a catalyst.
This gender business, I don’t mean to play by anyone else’s rules. I’ve been messed up for far too long, and this is my own scenario to sort. I’m going with whatever seems true and correct. And where I get that wrong, I will adjust. I’m a girl, in the lower-case. I’m just me.
Details aside, TERfs are basically gender-swapped incels. Or perhaps more to the point, I’m surprised I haven’t seen much comparison between TERfs and Gators.
They both base so much of their rage in this concept of, “How dare you fakers take away these things that make us feel special and different; get out of our reserved space.” It’s not even a matter of appropriation; it’s of disgust and shame, filled with strawmen:
What if someone thinks I’m one of you?
What if I am forced to like penises?
What if someone takes our panty shots away!
It’s this need to feel individually special, basing it in these external factors and declaring they’re endemic, and freaking out more than anything at the threat of their identities being eroded by letting too many of the impure past the gates. (Ergo, the route to Nazism for all these groups.)
It’s complicated, as whereas Gamers are clearly not a marginalized, vulnerable, or protected group, fully half of our society is still considered slightly less human than the other half. But there’s a difference between looking for equity and human rights, and making a clubhouse—and TERf ideology is entirely like Gator culture. It’s about how we have our own things; we’ve made our culture where we can pretend no one else exists but us, and we’re the powerful ones; now you go away—which is, like, that’s a mockery of what feminism is and stands for. It’s exactly like the Games-Are-Art-but-Keep-your-Politics-Out-of-Games business. What are you doing? Not what you profess you’re doing. You’re not actually trying to make things better. You’re just feuding. But, that’s also where the MRA/incel ideology comes in—this toxic feudalism, where instead of addressing the problems you’re facing, you stake camp, build up an echo chamber, and make everyone outside the walls a bogeyman.
It’s all so fucking middle class. It’s so barfy. It’s just like these MAGAs demanding they get their pedicures and food service. It’s not about the feet or the food; it’s a power thing. They base their identities on a unique superiority over another group based on various signifiers of an in-group or social success or whatever. It’s this mode of thought that interprets respect as obedience, rather than as compassion.
We perceive (correctly, in the case of women; LOL in the case of Gamers) that society does not afford us our due respect, so we will make our own club tailored to our whims where we get to pull all the strings—as opposed to, you know, working to make the real world kinder.
Kindness is for rubes. This world, it’s all about who wins. (Ergo in part why Gamers go fucking ballistic about difficulty levels and things, i guess.) if you win on your own terms, that takes away from our indicators of power and value. Don’t you fucking dare sell your Bitcoin.
All these groups, they’re microcosms of this capitalist nightmare we’re caught up in where we’re pitted against each other for power and resources and our precious bodily fluids; encouraged to factionalize while the gentry sucks the last juice from the husk of society. This is what the ruling class wants from us; it’s what it’s always wanted. Just so long as we keep thinking we could be one of them if we play the game right, and that the only thing stopping us is everyone else in our way—then none of us will think to look up.
And if you happen to not give a shit about winning, and just want to live your life without suffering and as compassionately as you can within the limits of your current understanding, then you’re not playing the game. You’re breaking the rules. You’re negating all their hard work. Time to doxx you, and rid the world of this dangerous anarchist element.
These groups are all the same. All that distinguishes them is the signifiers; the purity badges they wear. Fourteen words, and all. We’re the pure ones. Society is war, they all say, and we’re gonna win, y’all.
And this is how we lose each other. This is how we lose ourselves. This is how we lose the world that we live in. All out of fear someone else has a better bike.
A notable element of the dynamic is the mechanism of picking a demographic who is more vulnerable than the group and labeling them a danger to the group’s identity and way of life; an infiltrating power representative of all the group stands against. Doesn’t matter who; it’s all Mad Libs:
For Gators, women and queers and racial minorities are everyone oppressing them by suggesting different angles to the medium than a cishet white male power fantasy.
For incels, women unfairly control the bedroom
For TERfs, trans women are men trying to, uh, colonize femininity.
Never mind that one for one, each of these outside groups is substantially more vulnerable in society at large. It’s just that when you live in a (gamer) gated community, you’re not a part of society. Society is the danger. And oh no, here it comes. Fetch your rifle.
Note also the way that these groups conflate power and pleasure: identity is self-actualization, is power. Consent and autonomy for others are the antithesis to joy for the self. The thing that your existence threatens to diminish or take away from me, make a mockery of, it’s the thing that gives me carnal joy: pedicures, sex, a certain kind of boring videogame, sex without a potential for penis. This is what freedom means; never checking with someone else first.
Capitalism, baby. The middle class. The power to do what we want, with no questions. You’re not my dad.
Under capitalism, kindness is weakness; it’s submission to someone else’s power. I’m no wimp; I won’t bow to you; how fucking dare you ask me to be kind.
And yeah, for all these groups predation goes right along with the ideology—so of course they project and expect it in others, so as to distract from or justify their own behavior.
This being the Internet, I’ve been getting some pushback in the wake of Unleash the Light, and my reference to Demantoid and Pyrope as cis-Garnets, much like Hessonite.
I mean. Look. I get it, cisters. You’re not used to looking at anything except through a binary cishet lens. But this is a show substantially by non-straight, trans, or gender-diverse creators—from the top on down. It’s got layers and layers of metaphor that it can use in different situations to talk about different things. And one of the things it’s always gone out of its way to talk about is diverse identities.
Fusion is there to talk about a million and six subjects; some of them broad and universal, some extremely specific and delicate. From a human perspective Stevonnie really should be anyone’s first hint that a fusion of two different people is going to create some existential issues around identity and presentation, but it goes much deeper than them.
Gems don’t have sex or gender the way humans do; they have type. For the purpose of storytelling, Gem type stands in for all manner of social structures: class, race, sex, gender. The dynamics are different—due to different biology (if that term even applies to a Gem) and systems of power—yet familiar. How the metaphor applies, to talk about real-life issues, depends on what the story wants to address at the time.
Cross-Gem fusion is undeniably queer; Ruby and Sapphire’s relationship makes that as clear as possible. They’re queer in human terms because to us they both present female; they’re queer in Gem terms because they’re crossing type boundaries. To be homogeneous is to be straight—following the plan of society and their created intention—and to be heterogenous is to stray from the path.
There’s way more to unpack just in that parallel, but again the metaphor is multifaceted. When two Gems fuse cross-type, they create a new person—a person who is not defined by a designation or role on emergence, but who finds their own name and identity. As it happens, Gem names and identities are hard to extract from types. So, they pick a new type. We see the thought process in action when Steven and Amethyst first fuse, and the Gem who would be Smoky first comes into being.
When Ruby and Sapphire chose to permanently fuse, they decided they were a Garnet. Which is totally their choice, and is great and all. The thing is, there are other Garnets. More to the point, there are assigned-at-emergence Garnets, like Hessonites, Pyropes, Demantoids: Garnets who were made to be Garnets from the start. As it happens, our Garnet—CG Garnet—looks a heck of a lot like a “natural†Garnet. She has a similar build, the same general hair. Garnet is a Garnet because she has decided that’s what and who she is, not because she was told that’s what she was. Which is to say, Garnet is trans.
Up until the Homeworld appendix to season five, the point is fairly subtle. Unless the question of “natural†Garnets leaps into your mind, or you dwell really hard on the implications of Stevonnie, you may not think too hard about what it means to create a whole new gender-of-sorts. You may not even clock different Gem types as partially a matter of gender. You may overlook the color scheme of Cotton Candy Garnet, which in hindsight is… potentially the least subtle symbolism in the entire goddamned show. But I really don’t know how it’s possible to watch “Together Alone†and miss this point.
By the end of the show, it’s not even subtext anymore. It’s just text. It’s just the show, explicitly telling you, Garnet is trans and that makes Homeworld Gems uncomfortable. The point is so on-the-nose that it would be hilarious if it weren’t horrific.
Yet, in that, it’s also amazing. After five seasons of general tolerance on Earth, our first official visit to Homeworld comes wrapped in scoffing at Garnet’s identity and consistently misgendering Steven. It comes with a story of conversion therapy, centering around Pink Diamond’s original Pearl with whom she so inappropriately dabbled. Even the most irredeemable human, Kevin, stopped short of misgendering Stevonnie, because come on, what kind of a monster would do that? Well, a monster like a Diamond, as it happens.
That is the threat of Homeworld. The “She’s Gone!†segment is, like everything in the show, a complicated and imperfect metaphor, but the surface-level trans allegory is clear enough to have launched a thousand articles, in the mainstream as well as the queer press.
Dialing back, though, we have Garnet.
In a broader sense it is important that Garnet be trans inasmuch as her transness seems to have inspired Rose Quartz to fully accept and commit to her own transness. Except for Rose, it wasn’t even a matter of fusion. Her becoming was a matter of sheer personal will and desire.
Even if Steven didn’t exist, the “She’s GONE!†scene would still apply. Rose is Rose; she’s not Pink Diamond. Gem types, again, are as much a metaphor for sex and gender as they are race and class. Rose has lived for millennia as a Quartz. Everyone accepts her as a Quartz. As even Blue begins to cotton to around the first act of “Change Your Mind,†Pink was never really a Diamond at all, and every effort to make her behave like one only ever made her miserable.
Low-key, the entire story of Steven Universe is about Rose’s fight to live as the person who she chose to be, not the person she was created to be—and about the unresolved issues she left behind from that struggle, that were beyond her ability to cope with. For all her intentions and all the change she went through, there was still something she lacked—and until she met Greg, she could never quite put a finger on what that was.
To fix all her problems would take an even greater metamorphosis. One that slightly waters down the allegory at the climax of “Change Your Mind,†but that contains within it layers of transformation and resolution that can apply to many more aspects of life than any 1:1 representation could achieve.
There are lots of kinds of change we go through. And lots of kinds of change we can make in the world.
The first brick at Stonewall came from a trans woman, Marsha P. Johnson. As it happens, Garnet was also [to dubious canonicity] there. The same way she was at the moment that Rose’s whole universe changed—the day she realized what she could be.
