- I am in the middle of the panel, still with short hair, glasses, and facial hair, looking overwhelmed and confused. Questions swarm around me: Am I trans? Am I a woman? What does it mean to be trans? Could I be trans? Do I need to change? Am I a man? Ahhhhhhh!!! What IS Trans? WHO AM I!?!
- There is a male symbol on the left and a female symbol on the right, an arrow points to the female symbol as if to select it. Text at the top reads: I definitely feel safer and like I belong more among women.
- Text at the top reads: But I also still feel like an outsider among them. Two women, one with light skin and long, light-colored hair and the other with dark skin and short black hair, both cross their arms and look judgingly at me, who stands with my back to the viewer facing the women.
- Text at the top reads: Maybe I don't feel like a "man" just because I'm not used to being an adult. A depiction like what you'd see on a mens room door appears twice, a small one on the left with the word Boy and a checkmark above it, and a tall one on the right with the word Man and an X above it.
- Text at the top reads: What if I compare myself to my siblings? One symbol representing a girl, a slightly taller boy symbol with the word me below it, and an even taller boy symbol appear in the middle. An arrow points up from a black censor box in the bottom text to the boy symbol on the right. In the text, the censored word will be represented with the letter X. Text at the bottom reads: I guess I'm more masculine than X, but we could both be trans. Honestly even if I'm not...
- Text at the top reads: How about I make a Twitter account as a girl and see how I feel being treated as one? Below is a 2015 MacBook Pro with Twitter circa 2015 open in Chrome. The account shown has a woman as the profile picture, the name is Alyssa, and the username is @girlymcgirlface. Three tweets appear: Lol wut, I'm bored, and Lol so random.
- Text at the top reads: 2 weeks later. A tweet by Alyssa @girlymcgirlface reads: @famousperson lol. It has 0 likes, retweets, or replies. Text at the bottom reads: Well, this is pointless. I'm not even getting treated like a woman, because I'm just tweeting out into the void.
- A tweet by Karen @terfymcterfface reads: Did you know there are MEN on this site PRETENDING TO BE WOMEN!?! They're trying to make it seem like WOMEN are the ones saying their awful opinions! Another tweet replying to that one from Also Karen @getoutyourpitchforks reads: SERIOUSLY??? How DARE they try to silence OUR voices by invading women's spaces!!! Text at the bottom reads: Oh no! I don't want to be lumped in with these misogynists if I get found out! I should just delete my account since it isn't helping anyway.
- Text at the top reads: I'll think of something else to try soon... A mouse cursor hovers above a button that reads: DELETE ACCOUNT. Text at the bottom reads: It's not like this is the sort of thing I'll put off for years...
- Text at the top reads: 8 years later... I am in the middle of the panel, facing the viewer. My facial hair has filled in completely and my hairloss has progressed to just a bit on the sides and some patches of light fuzz on top. In a speech bubble, I am saying: Am I forgetting something?
I'm not sure exactly how long I spent on this questioning phase in real life. It could have been anywhere from a week to a few months.
I also heavily exaggerated the terfiness of the tweets that scared me off of Twitter just because I thought it would be funnier that way. I'm pretty sure there really were actual misogynists creating bot accounts as women trying to get people to buy their beliefs.
And yes, the first name I tried technically was way back then and it was Alyssa, because that was what my mom said she would have named me (although she later said that she hadn't really settled on one, that was just one she liked).
I probably would have stuck with it or at least tried it out later on, but I met an Alyssa in the years in between, so it just feels like her name now. And I like Sabrina a lot better.
Also the last panel is exaggerating what really happened. I thought about it a lot in the 8 years in between, but day-to-day, it was sort of out-of-sight, out-of-mind. It only really came up when there was really strong dysphoria or euphoria.
The next comic is meant to be continuing on 8 years from now, but I might make one in between about some of the experiences over those 8 years, or I might save that for a flashback in a later chapter when I talk about my struggle with reconciling my strong feelings now with my lack of action over those 8 years.