There’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from other trans folks when it comes to your own transition, be it an admiration for their clothing, hairstyle, overall aesthetic, or more. But one particular turn of phrase rubs some trans folks the wrong way, and one TikToker sounded off on it in a recent video.
The creator in question, TikToker and leatherworker Owyn (@owynspace), started his video by saying “a lot of you need to hear this.”
“I think it’s weird when you say somebody is your ‘transition goals,’” he went on. “I think it’s weird when somebody tells me that I’m on their Pinterest board for their personal top surgery results. You cannot go up to a surgeon and say, ‘I’ll have this, please.’ This is not a Build-A-Bear. Your results are entirely dependent on your anatomy and your surgeon.”
“It makes me feel uncomfortable when people conflate my medical results with my personal style. I think it’s so much more valid to just say, ‘You look good,’” Owyn continued. “My top surgery scars and the things that testosterone is doing to my body is very different from my hair, my clothes, my piercings, my tattoos, my self-expression.”
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“It makes me feel weird when you say that you would like the same medical results as me, because it is just very centric around my body, which is not something you can aim to have,” he added, pointing out that beyond the comment making him uncomfortable, it primes anyone giving the so-called compliment for personal disappointment, too. “I think it sets you up at a disadvantage when you’re going into something like a transition with one specific cookie-cutter image of how you would like that to look like at the end. I think it’s great to have style aspiration. I think it’s less great to think that there is a correct scar that you would like to have after top surgery. I think that’s pretty actively harmful to you.”
Owyn also explained that as a leather artist who makes goods including harnesses, which are meant to be worn shirtless, he gets annoyed when posts he makes about his products are overtaken by comments on his body.
“When I’m posting a photo of a harness that I’ve made and I’m shirtless in it, I promise you the post is never about my top surgery scars,” he said. “I promise you the point of the post is never about the marks from where I got my tits cut off. It’s always about the piece, it’s always about the art, it’s always about the work that I’m doing. And frankly, it’s a little frustrating when the conversation always turns to be about the scars from when I got my tits chopped off!”
Owyn’s video has since garnered more than 51,000 views and 11 thousand like. In his comments section, several folks related to Owyn’s perspective. “You wouldn’t BELIEVE the amount of DMs I’ve had of people asking me what transition pathway I took and how can they look like me,” lamented one commenter. “bro I’ve been on T for ten years, it’s genetics.”
“Thank you for sharing this. You are a human being not an OBJECT,” commented another. “I totally understand your frustration.”
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Others shared that though they used to think in terms of “transition goals,” they’ve since discovered more helpful mindsets. “Since shifting my ‘goal’ from some fantasy to ‘achieve the results of testosterone & feel comfortable in my body’ I’ve become a lot happier w/ my body and self,” one commenter wrote. “I will never be someone else’s results.”
“I am entirely guilty of being that person before I grew into my own transition,” echoed another. “We need to prioritize self development over envy. It’s arrogant and harmful.”
Some commenters, though, said they thought of “transition goals” in a different way. “Maybe this is me being naive but I never understood ‘transition goals’ as ‘this is the body I want’ and more ‘this is the [energy] I want to emulate when I can finally feel like myself,’” explained one user.
“I guess I had never realized it was so literal for most people,” admitted another. “I thought we were all talking about the person’s aura 😣.”
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