In this episode of A Dignified Life, host Dashae Engler sits down with Lilly Johnson, a trans woman living in Illinois who receives gender-affirming care in Iowa. Lilly shares her personal journey with gender-affirming care, the challenges of navigating different state laws, and the emotional and medical realities of being a trans woman. They also discuss the trans panic defense, respectability politics, and the importance of visibility and support for trans people. This episode explores resilience, agency, and the ongoing fight for safe and accessible care, providing listeners with an intimate and educational perspective on the trans experience.

Host: Dashae Engler
Guest: Lily Johnson
Audio Producer/Editor: Dashae Engler (Edit help wtih Caroline Siebels-Lindquist, Mary Boldinova, and Keila Perez Serrano)
Text Editor: Dashae Engler
Transcriber: PremierPro
Music Credits: 月夜のダンス by TAVC City Pop

Transcript

00:05

Host: Hello, everyone. I’m Dashae Engler and this is A Dignified Life podcast. In this episode I’ll be talking to a trans woman who lives in Illinois but receives gender-affirming care in Iowa. We’ll be getting into her story in a little bit. But first, I want to take a moment to talk about the trans panic defense, because it was cut from the episode and it was something she was concerned about.

This is one of many examples of what trans people go through. And if they don’t go through it, it’s a fear that they have that could possibly become their reality. The trans panic defense is a legal tactic used to argue that someone’s violent actions is justified after figuring out someone’s gender identity. Although this defense is banned in Illinois, it is not banned in the governing state where she receives gender affirming care. Iowa.

Iowa has a very interesting history politically. This former swing state is becoming more and more conservative. But we’ll talk about Iowa in the next episode. The trans panic defense is important to highlight because although Johnson is protected in the state she lives in, when she travels she falls vulnerable to whatever laws that state does and doesn’t have, showing the importance of Illinois setting a standard for all states.

When talking to Johnson, we discussed her journey and how she found her own agency. Let’s get into her story.

1:10

Host: Hi, Lily. How are you today?

1:21

Guest: Hi. I’m good. Good to be here.

1:25

Host: Yeah. So can you kind of tell me a little bit about, like, your gender affirming care, like how it started? It’s like you live in Illinois, but then you also get gender affirming care in Iowa, correct?

01:42

Guest: Yes. So my psychiatrist went to the University of Iowa and she knew we were very, very good at what they did. So some endocrinologists at the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital, because at the time I was seeking gender affirming care. I was under the age of 18. My parents are both super supportive and my mom really wanted me to have the best care there was.

She wanted to not just find what was convenient, but find what was what would be, you know, highly recommended. It was interesting. We took a while to get the first appointment set up. I mean, it’s a 3 hours drive and the first appointment actually got canceled because of Iowa State Law. Like, right before I was about to get care, so I had to wait another few months until I turned 18. Luckily, I was close to turning 18, so it wasn’t a huge issue for me, but it affected a lot of their patients.

They basically weren’t able to take any new patients, but they could still see current patients and they were able to take new patients who are over the age of 18. And I was able to get prescribed, you know, hormone treatment. And I’m 20 now. I’ve been doing that for two years at this point, almost three.

And they’re right now with how things are in the world. If any federal law changes, there’s a very good chance that Iowa will cave long before Illinois does. And Illinois will likely have to move our care to Illinois. It’ll be a shame to have to move if that happens. But I mean, I have a lot of friends who are getting gender affirming care around here in Illinois. I know that there are good places, and obviously, if I’m lucky enough that there are options, but it’s more of you wanting to stay where the people know you.

03:43

Host: You’ve been going on this journey with them. And that’s kind of like why you’re fighting hard to stay in Iowa.

03:55

Guest: Yeah, they’ve been absolutely wonderful. I mean, it’s a three hour drive and they’re like, you know, a six hour round trip. The way that they’ve handled anything ever going wrong is just perfect. They gave us gas station gift cards to, like, pay for gas for the gas of driving up there for these appointments.

It was a wild time. But I think, you know, that’s the kind of, you know, wonderful care you can expect somewhere as acclaimed as they are. And they’re really I mean, they’re taking the current legislation hard. You know, it’s a hard hit, but I mean, they’re still doing as much work as they can as they’re allowed to.

04:59

Host: So I kind of wanted to switch gears a little bit. Yeah. And to talk about, like you as a person, like in your childhood, what was an informative moment that you still think about today?

05:22

Guest: I mean, the interesting thing is, is, you know, I didn’t really realize I was trans until I hit puberty and, like, it felt wrong. The incorrect puberty and the dysphoria and the just the depression and all of it was just weighing on me. And it was obvious that there was something that needed to change. But, you know, before that, when I was a little kid, I think there were little signs that were really obvious at that moment. But looking back, it’s like, that was definitely something going on.

I remember my dad complaining about being able to like being unable to grow facial hair, and I thought to myself, like, yeah, I hope that’s how I am. I would hate to grow facial hair and just being absolutely disgusted by the idea of growing facial hair when I was in elementary school, like, I always, like all of the friends I made were girls.

And then in middle school I just, you know, I had a friend group of boys that my like cousin made and I joined them and I felt weird and I was missing when I was hanging out with my girlfriends. So it’s like little things like that. I mean, there was the way that I perceived the person that I would grow up into was like I imagined them was very nebulous.

Like I was unable to really see myself growing up into a man. People ask, How long have you known? It was like, Well, I mean, since I was like 14, but really I knew something was up a long time before that. I just didn’t know what it was until I had the language of knowing what being transgender is, is necessary for, for, for me to even realize something going on. I don’t think I would have been able to say I’m a girl. It was just something wrong and it feels bad.

And then learning that, you know, being transgender is a thing. Thinking about it like that, that’s what it is. It’s all the masculine features that make me feel sick to my stomach and disconnected from my body. And if I was just a girl everyth, it would all that would go away. And you feel like you’re the woman you want to be today. I think that I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m happy with the progress that I’ve made. I’m, you know, two years on HRT and I’ve got the rest of my life ahead of me.

I mean, even if I was on a normal schedule for puberty, I would know, you’re not really your body isn’t really fully developed after two years of puberty. So, yeah, I think the biggest thing that still bothers me, ironically, for a podcast is my voice. I’m a singer, so I like my ability to sing, but it’s just, you know, the timbre of my voice that the range that it said, yeah, I don’t know. It doesn’t feel it feels it feels off and there’s, you know, voice training and plenty of things I can do. HRT won’t change my voice.

But, you know, that’s part of why getting gender affirming care so young is important. If you are before you hit puberty and you realize that you’re trans or even if you think you might be trans, there you can take puberty blockers, which are a way to extend that time.

You have to make a decision because regardless of what decision you make, you are making a decision you can have because your body needs the hormones to live. You have to have testosterone or you have to have estrogen. And I was in a really bad place after hitting puberty. And I, I puberty blockers would have changed my life for the better.

And there are a lot of people who don’t make it through puberty, a lot of trans people who don’t make it to the point where they can feel good about themselves and puberty blockers literally save their lives. It is life saving care. You know, there’s a lot of the rhetoric of like, mutilating children. That’s not what’s happening. You never get surgery early on. It’s impossible to get surgery at a young age. You have to be above a certain age. You have to go through a crazy, extensive process that takes, you know, months of informed consent, of being told like, this is what’s going to happen. Are you sure you want this? And you have to be above an age of consent and you have to get, you know, letters from psychiatrists and therapists and puberty blockers are something that you can take.

And if you realize that you’re not trans, that it was something else that was going on, you can stop taking them and go through puberty and be fine. You know, there’s never, there’s plenty of things set in place to, to, to, to be like, are you sure figuring out that you are trans is a process that is deeply personal and takes a long time. A lot of introspection and talking with therapists and learning about what this means, what the process is that you can go through and just a lot of introspection and giving people the time to make that decision is huge.

11:49

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12:29

Host: I wonder too like for you specifically, is there any respectability politics to feel like you have to here being a trans woman?

12:37

Guest: I mean there was, you know, there was always an impulse of being like, I want to be, you know, confident and independent and not care what anybody thinks. And that’s hard to do when you feel like if someone sees you a certain way or hears your voice while you’re in the bathroom, they could get violent, it could get dangerous.

It is I, I, you know, on my college campus, there’s a lot of trans people. There’s a lot of pro trans stuff. There’s also a lot of anti-trans stuff. There’s a lot of chalk drawings. You’ll walk over things that are sort of battling forces of people, drawing trans flags and trying to say things like trans rights, trans pride, and then people coming in and crossing that out and spewing hateful messages.

And the thought that just using the bathroom in public could get me hurt even in a place like Illinois. I mean, it’s terrifying. It’s terrifying going into a bathroom. I, you know, Well, refuse to talk even if somebody goes like, hi, I’ll be like, you know, I don’t think trans people should need to pass as their gender. And I think that we as a society should open up our understanding of what is a woman, what is a man, that women can have voices, even cis women will have deep voices.

I mean, this stuff doesn’t just hurt trans people, but it’s hard to know, you can say we shouldn’t need to pass, we shouldn’t need to pass. But right now they’re in a lot of ways it’s so dangerous to be seen visibly as trans. And what’s scary is that what this legislation does and what these people want is for us to be invisible. Even if we transition. They don’t want it to be obvious that we’ve transitioned. They want to, you know, define trans people out of existence, make it, you know, if if people know a trans person and they see their struggle, they are more likely to get it and to not vote for these people who are who are saying these anti-trans stuff.

And so, you know, being visibly trans and saying you’re trans, even if you pass, is important, but it’s also so dangerous. And that’s the risk. You know, that’s the danger every day. And. Right now, I, I, I get called, sir, a lot. I get called he even by people who I’ve told I’m trans just because it’s instinctive they don’t see me as a woman.