TikTok Internal Family Therapy
An unexpected creation
Being a woman who looks like a man after 18 years of testosterone use requires a lot of self-integration of different aspects of self. There is never full integration. Our multiple dimensions of self, at best, coexist like an internal family system. My inner kids have been frightened and silent. My teen self has been a shit-disturber, whose historical role has been to protect my younger selves. She required an honorary discharge of soldier duties some years ago, when my adult self recognized that an angry teen can’t run my life. The adult became a stable, nurturing and decisive head of the household, trusted by all other parts. Eventually, the kids learned to feel secure and play. The teen became a softer rebel.
This is metaphorical, of course. But I had a unique, rather surreal experience of seeing their faces recently.
I’ve been using TikTok to create anti-queer content. The app has many interesting video features, including AI filters which convincingly change the user’s appearance. There’s one, called Bold Glamour, which reverses the effects of testosterone on my face so well that I’ve had an unexpected, unnerving reintroduction to the young woman I was before my transition. Another filter, called Time Machine, rolls back age to about age 10. It’s an uncanny resemblance of my former child self, though I haven’t found much use for it.
These TikTok projects have become a family affair, especially with my 20-something lesbian self. This is a throwback to my art school days. Her name was Aaron then. I’d changed it when I was about 20, but she was well established in a lesbian identity and the lesbian community, focussed on masculine lesbian art history and embodiments. She was a creative, clever, ambitious albeit insecure youth, befriended by a well-known gay Canadian art curator and writer who helped launch my early career. She’d been primarily a painter, but once queer theory infected her mind, she switched to photography and video - using her own body as the canvas for new expressions of lesbian identity. It was that work that circulated through art galleries and magazines. It ended when I transitioned. I became, for that young artist, the ultimate creation - the perfect, symbolic expression of a lesbian who’d faced horrific homophobic abuse - leveraging legal and medical systems to achieve her greatest ambitions. She felt she won. Permanent drag.
When I first saw her face again through the TikTok app, I was looking straight into my creator’s eyes. My emotions were complex. Surprisingly, I love her. I don’t feel angry. I don’t feel sadness or a wreckage of regret. I understand her, and respect the risks she took, however misguided, to stick it to The Man. A big lesbian boot on the neck of oppression.
My new creative interests are a collaborative effort with HER. It’s become a powerful inner dialogue through which she’s alive and present. Through this working relationship, I’ve been able to achieve deep access to her drives, fears, angst, pain, strength and vulnerability. And, especially, her femalness.
TikTik, a stupid app, completed my integration.
Photo - 2005. One month prior to starting testosterone.
TikTok Video using Bold Glamour filter:
Screen shot - Time Machine filter
TikTok video - FEMALE
TikTik Video - XX
TikTok Video: Butch
Recent photo - a masculinized lesbian:
