I used to believe that cruelty made me powerful.
When I presented as male, I knew how to raise my voice to end an argument, how to slam a door hard enough to jolt someone into silence, how to throw or break something I owned so I wouldn’t have to face what I was really feeling. The world rewarded me for these performances. People called me confident, strong and authoritative. Some even revered me.
I wasn’t strong. I was terrified.
Behind every outburst was a child who had buried her truth so deeply that all that remained was anger. I didn’t know how to be vulnerable, so I clung to control. I didn’t know how to say I was afraid, so I became the kind of man who forced everyone else to be frightened of me.
And for years, I got away with it. That’s what privilege does: it makes harm invisible.
I knew who I was before anyone told me otherwise.
When I was 4, I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor, pulling a blanket around my shoulders and pretending it was a dress. I knew, deep in my bones, that I was a little girl. It wasn’t because someone told me, or because I’d seen it on television or read it in a book — I hadn’t. This was 1980 in rural Virginia. We didn’t talk about things like that, and there was no internet yet.
But I didn’t need influence to know my truth. I felt it every time I looked at my mother’s clothes and wished they were mine. I felt it when grown-ups laughed and told me to “man up” because I cried too much. I felt it when I prayed at night for God to let me wake up as a girl.
My family didn’t take it seriously. At first, they thought it was funny when I slipped into my mother’s heels or wrapped a towel around my head and pretended it was hair. “You’ll grow out of it,” they said. Or worse: “Stop acting like that before people think something’s wrong with you.”
Eventually, they told me outright I was wrong — sick in the head and an abomination. When I was beaten, I was told they were taking the softness out of me. After so much reinforcement, I believed them. I buried who I was and built a mask.
In my town, masculinity was a matter of survival. You didn’t get points for being soft, kind or creative. You got them for being loud, for fighting back, for shutting people down.
By the time I was a teenager, I had learned well. I lowered my voice to make it sound deeper. I walked like my stepfather, broad and heavy. I mimicked the boys who seemed untouchable. And when I realized people responded — teachers praised me, friends admired me, girlfriends flinched when I raised my voice — I doubled down.
Cruelty became my currency, and privilege was the bank that never ran dry.
I didn’t know the term “toxic masculinity” back then. All I knew was that when I yelled, people stopped what they were doing. When I broke things, people listened. When I cut someone down, others laughed. It was the only power I thought I had, and I clung to it.
But when I was alone, the mask slipped.
I would sneak into my mother’s room when no one was home, open her dresser, and run my fingers over the soft fabrics I wasn’t supposed to touch. Later, when I had money, I bought lingerie at Walmart, hiding it under layers of clothes in the back of my closet. I’d try it on late at night, staring at myself in the mirror with equal parts longing and disgust. Sometimes I felt beautiful. More often, I felt monstrous.
There was no internet forum to reassure me, no trans YouTubers to explain dysphoria, no representation in movies that didn’t make people like me into a punchline. There was just me, alone in the dark, certain I was broken.
So in the daylight, I compensated. I lifted heavier weights at the gym. I drove too fast. I picked fights with people I loved. I threw plates at the wall so I wouldn’t throw myself through it. I performed the manhood my world expected from me, even as it hollowed me out.
One of the clearest memories I carry — and one of the hardest to admit — happened when I was dating a single mother.
Her son was maybe 7, bright and full of life, endlessly curious, the kind of kid who asked “why” about everything. He talked back sometimes, but in the way children test boundaries, as they search for where safety ends and freedom begins.
I saw none of that. What I saw was a lack of discipline — and failure.
I remember standing in her kitchen, my voice rising as I told her that her parenting was weak. I told her that her lack of discipline made her a bad mother, that she was raising a child who would amount to nothing. I said I could do better, that I would strip away the boy’s softness and mold him into something “substantial” — the way I had been molded.
I wasn’t thinking about what made that child unique or what he needed to thrive. I only thought about breaking him down the way I had been broken and forcing him into a shape that wasn’t his.
I still remember the look on her face — shock, hurt and something else: pity. She didn’t scream back. She didn’t throw me out. She just shook her head, eyes full of a sadness I didn’t yet dare to feel for myself.
At the time, I thought I was right. Now, the memory sickens me. It is proof of how deeply cruelty had colonized my thinking and how much I had confused domination with love.
When I finally began transitioning, I thought I was stepping into freedom.
I thought I’d be embraced for my honesty, or at least respected for my courage. What I didn’t realize was how much of my power had been tied to the mask I was tearing off.
The shift was immediate. Friends who once invited me everywhere stopped calling. Strangers who used to nod in approval now smirked or muttered under their breath. My voice, which had once silenced rooms, was suddenly mocked, interrupted or ignored altogether.
The world that had rewarded me for cruelty now punished me for authenticity.
“I thought about how many times I had laughed at someone else’s expense, how many times my silence had meant complicity. For the first time, I understood what it meant to be reduced to an object of ridicule.”
I’ll never forget the first time I walked into a store wearing a dress. A group of teenagers laughed loudly enough for me to hear, one of them whispering “tranny” like a slur and a punchline rolled into one. My face burned, but I kept walking. That night, I thought about how many times I had laughed at someone else’s expense, how many times my silence had meant complicity. For the first time, I understood what it meant to be reduced to an object of ridicule.
Privilege hadn’t just shielded me — it had blinded me.
Losing that shield forced me to reckon with who I had been.
It’s easy to romanticize transition as a clean break — a “before” and “after” with a tidy line in between. My reality was far messier.
I had to face the harm I had caused. I had to sit with the memories of partners I had silenced, of friends I had intimidated, of people I had dismissed because I could. Transition didn’t erase those choices. It made me confront them in sharper relief.
There were nights when the shame felt unbearable. I would lie awake wondering if I deserved to be happy — if my past cruelty had permanently stained my future. But shame, I’ve learned, can either cage you or teach you.
For me, it became a teacher.
Transitioning stripped away my illusions. Without privilege to hide behind, I had to learn new ways of being in the world. I had to practice listening without rushing to dominate, apologizing without excuses, and allowing myself to be seen without armor.
And I discovered something I never expected: vulnerability — the thing I had feared most — was a source of strength.
Today, my life is quieter. I don’t slam doors or raise my voice. I cry more often, and I’m not ashamed of it. I love my partner with a tenderness I once thought would destroy me. I write stories that come from the deepest parts of myself — not because I want to impress anyone, but because they are mine to tell.
I’m not free of cruelty — I don’t think anyone ever is. But I no longer mistake it for power.
What unsettles me is how easily I could have stayed that way. If I hadn’t transitioned — if I’d kept swallowing myself to maintain the mask — the world would have gone on rewarding me for cruelty, especially in today’s political climate. I might have been promoted at work for my “confidence.” I might have been admired for being “tough.” People would have nodded as I silenced others, never knowing silence was the only thing I feared in myself.
That’s the danger of privilege: It doesn’t just protect the person who holds it — it starves everyone around them. It props up the version of you that hurts others while killing the version that could heal you.
Becoming myself has cost me friends, safety and privilege. It has forced me to confront the worst aspects of myself. But it has also given me something I never had when the world called me powerful: peace.
What I’ve learned is that privilege can hide the truth, but it can’t erase it. Cruelty can feel like control, but it’s just fear wearing a mask. And selfhood isn’t a destination — it’s a practice, a daily reckoning, a choice to become, again and again.
For me, becoming meant admitting the harm I caused, accepting the ridicule I endured and choosing to live authentically anyway.
For you, it might mean something else. But the work is the same: to face the parts of ourselves we’d rather bury, to strip away the masks that hurt others, and to build lives rooted not in dominance, but in truth.
Because in the end, survival isn’t about power. It’s about becoming — and I am still becoming.
Becoming doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Every day, I watch new pieces of anti-trans legislation appear across the country, each one another reminder that my very existence is debated in public like it’s up for a vote. The contempt and disdain aimed at trans people is relentless and disheartening.
I live in a very rural and conservative part of Virginia, nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. For now, most of the laws haven’t reached into my daily life, but they hover close enough that I move through the world with constant caution. When I cross into Tennessee, I make sure no one sees me enter a restroom, and I also ensure that no one is inside when I leave. I live with the fear that my gender-affirming care will be restricted or outlawed. I imagine the current administration creating a task force — something like ICE but targeting LGBTQ+ people, beginning with trans people.
Even the small things weigh heavily: I keep my voice soft in public because it isn’t “femme enough,” and I know the wrong person may hear me and decide I don’t belong.
And yet — despite all of this, I have no regrets. Even after being ostracized by my parents and siblings, even in times of isolation and fear, I feel exhilaration and joy in living freely as who I am at my core. I don’t speak for every trans person, but the ones I know personally share that same joy. And I believe most of us want just one thing: to live our lives in peace.
That’s the truth about the so-called “trans agenda.” It isn’t indoctrination or destruction. It’s survival. It’s selfhood. It’s simply the right to grow old.
Maya Fisher is a transgender author from the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. Her debut novel, “Reborn In Shadows: From the Ashes,” won Best LGBTQIA+ Fiction in the 2025 National Indie Excellence Awards and was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress. She is the founder of One-Legged Woman Publishing LLC, dedicated to uplifting underrepresented voices. Her work centers resilience, queer identity and truth-telling rooted in Appalachia.
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