Kaine Flynn

Dr. Jill Parrott

English 101

19 September 2025

Understanding Transgender Identity Through Language

I didn’t have a problem with being a girl until I hit puberty. When it turned from wrestling and Minecraft to training bras, I began to feel a distance between my body and my true self. At first, I assumed this was just my mind’s reaction to my changing body, but as time went by the distance grew. It took a while, but I finally learned the cause of this disconnect: being transgender. Learning this specific language to explain my identity has given me an open-minded perspective and helped me transition into, and accept being, a trans male.

Growing up in rural Georgia for the first 12 years of my life was amazing, but had one detrimental flaw: a lack of diversity. I had never met a gay person, and definitely hadn’t met a transgender person. Without exposure to people like me, I never had the language to explain or imagine the real version of myself. In Helen Keller’s essay “The Day Language Came Into my Life”, this sentiment of realization is prominent. She explains how she felt lost before being taught ways to express herself. As her vocabulary expanded, so did her worldview. Her story relates to mine through a shared feeling of being disconnected and slowly learning how to bridge that gap.

At a young age, I could feel a difference between me and other girls. I didn’t care how my hair looked, I hated bows, and I loved playing kickball with the boys during recess. ‘A tomboy’ is what I was categorized as, and I was fine with that. To me, the difference between being a girl or a boy was as trivial as pink and blue. The way I went about girlhood was like method acting; I performed my assigned role to prepare for the real thing. We learn about gender roles during childhood, but most of those roles aren’t imposed on us until we get older. Being a kid is like a free trial to society, so it wasn’t until I became a teenager that these roles started to take effect.

By the time I was 13, I knew that I wasn’t a girl. I didn’t have the vocabulary for what I was yet, but girl was definitely not on the list. Growing up, my parents always made sure I knew about gay rights and how they would accept me if I came out as gay. This open-minded language was extremely helpful with my journey but failed to explain the imbalance between my body and my mind. It wasn’t until I saw the word “transgender” on the internet that I started to connect the dots. Being exposed to this label opened my eyes and validated the feelings I had been experiencing my whole life.

A year passes, and I slowly begin to migrate to a more masculine presentation. Short hair, baggy clothes, and chest binding were the staple of my outfits. I heard about “top surgery”, a procedure to remove your breasts, and “HRT”, hormone replacement therapy, but those terms felt so outlandish at the time. I began researching the process of getting on hormones and a month before my 17th birthday, I injected myself with testosterone for the first time. A few months later, my voice had dropped a few octaves and I began to grow facial hair. I was getting to experience things I once thought were out of reach, feeling more empowered than ever before.

Still having to uncomfortably bind my chest everyday, I became literate in the different types of top surgery. Smaller breasts are obviously easier to remove and create much less scarring, so they have separate procedures. “Keyhole” surgery involves removing the breast tissue from a small incision on each side of the breast. “Periareolar” or “Peri” surgery involves removing the breast tissue from incisions along each nipple. Larger breasts require more drastic procedures, such as the “Double Incision” surgery, an operation involving 2 large incisions across the chest. By gaining knowledge of these different approaches, I was able to decide which would work best for me and my future.

Getting on Testosterone and receiving this procedure were the best decisions of my life and changed things in ways I thought were impossible. Now equipped with knowledge and proficiency in this community, I am able to understand and explain my identity as a transgender male. This has caused me to see society from a unique perspective, one that analyzes the prescribed roles in society. Also, going through this literacy journey has given me the opportunity to connect with other marginalized groups through common struggles and experiences. Becoming proficient in the language of this community has guided me in becoming an active and supportive community member, as well as providing me with a special point of view.

Work Cited

Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came Into My Life”. The Commons: Tools for Reading, Writing, and Rhetoric, edited by Jill Parrott, Dominic Ashby, and Jonathan Collins, Eastern Kentucky University, 2022, pg. 163-165.

Understanding Transgender Identity Through Language by Kaine Flynn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike-4.0 License.

Flynn, Kaine. “Understanding Transgender Identity Through Language.” The Commons: Tools for Reading, Writing, and Rhetoric (2nd ed.), edited by Jill Parrott and Dominic Ashby, Eastern Kentucky University, 2026.