My Trans Journey: A History in 6 Passports
ImageCredit...Photograph courtesy of Jennifer Finney Boylan Issued June 15, 1976 When my mother saw the photo on my first passport, issued exactly one week before my 18th birthday, she said, “You look like you have a secret.” I did have a secret: I was trans.
I didn’t think I was all that adept at hiding it, but somehow no one seemed to know. Even my mother seemed oblivious to the journey I longed to embark upon.
This winter, I came upon a stack of passports, all but the most recent marked “Canceled.” Those travel documents, bearing the stamps of customs agents around the world, provide evidence of the places I have been.
They also paint a picture of the journeys trans people like me go on, passages as harrowing, in their own way, as movement across borders can sometimes be.
