#### [[video_TransComingOutStory ]] **Creator**:: [[Abigail Thorn]] **Source**:: [Identity: A Trans Coming Out Story | Philosophy Tube ★ - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AITRzvm0Xtg) **Covers**:: **Summary**::****** This video is the coming out video for [[Abigail Thorn]]. The first half of the video is performed by actor playing Abigail in "boy mode" (in the closet and pretransition). The video talks a lot about two different views of identity, one of [[DesCartes]] which viewed [[identity]]/personhood as purely our thoughts and memories, and the other of [[Audrey Lorde]] which viewed identity as a mosaic of all the different parts that make up us. Lorde was a black woman, Lesbian, fat, communist living in times when those were far less accepted (the 1960s) and she could not separate her physical existence in the world from her identity. DesCartes was able to question every aspect of existence except for his own thoughts and found his [[identity]] in that while everyone around Lorde forcefully stripped her of her thoughts (at least the ability to share them and be listened to and respected). In the second half of the video the actor is replaced with the real Abigail Thorn fully transitioned and finally revealing her trueself to her audience. She relates the [[experience]] of being transgender to being assigned a crappy job at birth and then everyone around you telling you that you could never switch jobs. Not everthing about the job is bad, and you can find joy in it, but it ways on you until you break, or give up, and while transitioning doesn't make everything instantly better it makes life so much more easy and bearable that you can finally start to enjoy it. # Notes - What's like to be [[Transgender people]] - whole life, identity come apart and come back together as you - Audrey Lord wrote a book called Zami: and new speeling of my name - Biomythography - a blend of facts, history and philosophy - black woman, Lesbian, fat, communist in times when those were far less accepted. - DesCartes questioned everything until he realized he could not [[doubt]] that he was thinking - I think therefore I am - DesCartes - thought is the only thing that we can gurantee exists - Zombie problem - can you be real without thoughts - Black people are very used to the idea that other control large part of their life which makes it odd to question whether the world is real or note - Other people had to convince Descartes that they were real while lord had to convice other people that she was real - Identity => what it's like to *be* `_______` - Lord's model of identity was not just one thing it was a mosaic of all the aspects that make up her - "there was usualy some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody's comfortable prejudices of who I should be. That is how I learned that if I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." - Locke said that memory was the imporant aspect of being human - Our memories [[change]] over time because our attitudes change as we look back - Remembering something is an act of interpretation => does that make you a different person? - Being transgender is like being in the trenches, you can't do it for your entire life - It's not really like "being born in the wrong [[body]]" but it's more like you were assigned a crappy job of being a boy when you were born and always told that you could never switch jobs. - You finally get a new job and it's not instantly better but everything that made the old job so bad goes away and makes everything just a little bit better - When other people talk about being trans they only talk about the [[suffering]]