On Loving My Partner

December 14, 2025December 14, 2025 Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

It’s a really bizarre contrast to see conservatives repeatedly attacking trans people as my partner transitions. If you don’t know, my partner and I have been together for twenty years, and together, we have grown as people while growing closer. She was very accepting and encouraging when I came out as nonbinary, and when she started exploring her gender a year or two ago, I wondered if she might also be trans. Over the course of many months, she started wearing leggings and non-masculine clothing, and near the end of 2024, she came to the realization that she was a trans woman and her transition journey began in earnest.

I have always suspected my partner was queer. She gave off major queer-coded Disney villain energy, and while she agreed she was probably demisexual, that’s where the queerness ended in her mind. She gravitated toward queer and trans people and never embodied the typical cis dude attitude or aversion to color or feminine clothing. Selfishly, I had assumed this was my f gender attitude running off on her. The more we talked about gender stuff, the more I side-eyed things she said because they were very egg-like (an egg is a trans person who doesn’t yet realize they’re trans).

“I wish I had been born a girl.”

“I don’t think I actually liked [girl from middle school]. I think I just wanted to be here.”

“I make all my characters girls, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

If you know anything about eggs, you need to let them come out of the shell on their own or with very gentle help. I waited, I listened, I suggested things she might like, and when she came out as a trans woman, it felt more like a natural progression rather than some mind-blowing revelation.

My partner has started her transition against the background of the second Trump administration. Conservatives (and some dems) have thrown transgender people under the bus, and England has done its damnedest to make trans peoples’ lives miserable. Meanwhile, I’ve watched my partner become a happier person with every passing day, and I’m more convinced than ever that hormone replacement therapy is a miracle drug. Within a week of starting estrogen and a testosterone blocker, her skin started getting softer. Other changes came rapidly, and with each one, there was a new spark of joy.

She got bras, she got a purse, she got a new coat and boots, we used a laser to remove her facial hair (a work in progress), and slowly, she started presenting even more femme before she came out to my mom and family. She was understandably nervous to tell other people, but when she did, my mom immediately started using her new name and pronouns. My partner came out to the rest of my family right before Thanksgiving, and it went well. Ever since she came out, a weight has been lifted from her. The new hormones had already bolstered her mood and chipped away at the self-loathing, but coming out freed her.

Every day I watch someone I have known for the majority of my life change and grow in ways I never thought possible. She has somehow become more herself while becoming someone new, and I am honored that I’m able to be a part of it.

I often think of the spouses or parents who treated their trans loved ones as if they died or betrayed them, and I can’t imagine that. The sheer joy rolling off my partner as she tries new things and feels more herself makes it more than clear that this is the best decision she could have made. Doing something new is scary, and more than anything, I’m proud of her for making the leap and choosing to love herself and embrace the person she was always meant to be.

I used to joke that I’m a wife guy, and now, I truly am.

Personal Life

Vote, Vote, Vote!

October 26, 2025October 26, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

I was not planning on writing about politics today, but as I worked on a post about the Audra Winter mess (forthcoming), I couldn’t stop thinking about the gubernatorial election that is going on in my state as we speak. If you’re in New Jersey, make sure you go out and vote, preferably Democrat/Mikie Sherrill.

Sherrill was not the person I was backing in the democratic primary over the summer. She is, at best, a mid, moderate democrat. I flipflopped back and forth between Steve Fulop and Ras Baraka up until the day I filled out my ballot, and if nothing else, this primary taught me why we need ranked choice voting in New Jersey. I think, if we had it, we would have a more progressive candidate running for governor.

At the same time, it is not the time to not vote or to vote for everyone but Sherrill. Unfortunately, some elections are meh versus an absolute horror. The republican candidate has run (and lost) repeatedly, but with each campaign, he has aligned more closely with the current president’s agenda. He is anti-queer people, anti-trans people, anti-people of color (his ads are like 99% white people), anti-choice, and his ads try to paint Sherrill as an air-headed woman, which means he is misogynistic as well, big surprise.

As someone with a working uterus (unfortunately) and a partner on HRT, I am terrified that he will be elected. Sherrill has been ahead in the polls consistently but not by that much. This is certainly not a runaway, and as someone said, “Women will vote for misogynists, but misogynists will never vote for women.” New Jersey is a decently liberal state with protections for marginalized people, BUT a lot of them are only edicts from the governor, not anything codified in state law, which would make them harder to get rid of. A republican as governor could rip those protections away within days of getting into office, and I am so worried for trans people, women, anyone that ICE could target.

I think a lot of people assume New Jersey is a thoroughly blue state, but it isn’t. We have a lot of republicans, and my own town is grossly red despite how diverse it is. Because people assume New Jersey will lean democrat no matter what, the fear is that younger people won’t go out and vote. I actually gave my students off for Election Day, so they can go vote, even though we have early voting and mail-in ballots in our state. I want there to be zero excuse for them to do their civic duty. The other reason I give them off on election day is because in past years, the anxiety level has been so high that teaching them feels pointless. Between me and them, we are ten seconds from exploding, and giving them the space to vote and decompress is more important than one lesson on writing essays.

The takeaway from this is to vote with the rights of the most marginalized person you know in mind. Who will care for the sick best? Who will protect reproductive rights if someone needs an abortion? Who will protect the undocumented people in your communities the best? Who will pushback against those who want to take your rights away? And even if they aren’t the most liberal person, who won’t stand in the way if the legislature wants to be more liberal than they are? It is worth preserving what we have and striving for better than spitefully letting things go to shit because your ideal candidate isn’t running. It sucks, but when the choices are meh and horrible, meh is the ethical choice, especially if the meh candidate probably won’t stand in the way of other people’s right to have a good life.

If you’re eligible to vote in NJ, please go vote for the democratic candidates in your area, do research on your school board candidates, and encourage others to vote as well. And if you’re in NYC, vote Mamdani (because I wish he was my governor instead of your mayor).

Personal Life

On False Crabs and Real People

August 10, 2025August 10, 2025 Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

Right now, in the US and UK especially there is a ton of transphobia, and every time I hear cis people being weird about trans people, I think of king crabs. Yes, crabs. Now, bear with me because this will make sense.

So you know king crabs, right? Giant crab, long legs, lives in very cold water up north for the most part, you find them in seafood boil bags, very expensive and tasty, a star of Deadliest Catch. Well, did you know that king crabs aren’t technically crabs?

Now, the thing with crabs is that they are an optimal life form: the perfect shape, the right amount of agile and little guy, can fit into many ecological niches while being able to survive well. Over eons, you had crabs evolve, but you also had convergent evolution where other things also evolved into crabs. If you look at crabs closer, you will notice that there are different infraorders in regards to their classification. You have true crabs, which are infraorder brachyura and are the original crab lineage. Then, you have false crabs, which belong in the infraorder anomura and have evolved to look and be like crabs.

Can the general public tell a true crab from a false crab? No. If it has the right amount of legs, looks crab shaped, and acts like a crab, it is for all intents and purposes, a crab.

People don’t go to a seafood restaurant and get upset because king crab is listed in the selections of crabs or in the crab tank with the other crabs when it’s a false crab because it is identified as a crab. If you went into a seafood market and started checking to see if the crabs were true crabs or false crabs by flipping them over and checking their abdomens for any remnants of the tail false crabs have, people would think there was something wrong with you and kick you out. That’s basically how transphobes and terfs behave. They just heard about false crabs, so now, they need to disturb everyone by checking all the crabs in the tank under the guise of safety when all the crabs were fine mingling together. The panic over true and false is made up.

The only people who really care about the difference between true crabs and false crabs are scientists who are looking at very specific parameters in their studies, and this is how it should be with cis and trans people. Medical professionals or scientists who study differences in hormones or anatomy, probably need to know, but for the vast majority of people, there is no difference and it isn’t their business. And once hormones/hormone replacement therapy gets involved and levels are stable for a while, there is very little difference between binary trans people and cis people.

And even without hormones, if a person decides to change their clothes and name to socially transition, then respect them; it isn’t hard. If you would not pop the shell off a hermit crab and declare to everyone that isn’t a true crab and shouldn’t be called a hermit crab or allowed a shell, then don’t call out people for being trans in a negative way. Yes, hermit crabs, one of the most famous crabs, is a false crab. It has a tail inside its shell.

Horseshoe crabs do not pass very well as crabs. They are shaped like a toilet seat and have a long tail and look nothing like a crab apart from their legs, and yet we still call them crabs without any fuss. It truly isn’t hard to respect what something or someone is called.

The thing with crabs is that creatures evolve into them because it is beneficial to their survival and being trans is the same way. People transition because it is the thing that will keep them alive. It is beneficial to their soul and mental and physical health. Just because they didn’t start out that way doesn’t mean it isn’t better for them to change and become something new.

If someone says they are a woman or a man or nonbinary or anything in between, respect it and acknowledge it because if you can manage to call anything remotely crab-shaped a crab, then congrats, you can respect a trans person’s gender and identity no matter how well they perform their gender.

Personal Life

Kara’s Random Game Recs in 2025

June 22, 2025June 22, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

Not going to lie, I have not been coping all that well with *gestures to the dumpster fire that is the United States right now*, and to cope in a way that wasn’t doom scrolling for hours on end, I have been playing video games. I know a lot of my readers also play games, so I thought I would recommend a few I have enjoyed recently. By the way, all of these games are at least on PC since that is where I play games.

Love, Ghostie– This is a game where you play a match-making ghost who runs a boarding house. In this game, you partner up people in the boarding house by giving them gifts from the other person and setting them up on dates. The game is super cute, low stress, and every pairing is possible. There are lots of little Easter eggs and nods to other media that I really enjoyed.
Spilled!– THIS GAME IS VERY SHORT, but it’s also cheap. It’s a basic game where you pilot a boat and clean an oil spill. The game is one of those you can easily play when you’re anxious and just want to give your brain something to focus on that doesn’t require a lot of higher thinking. You also rescue animals and clean up a pretty pixel landscape.
Minami Lane– This game is also semi short, but it also has a no rules, play as long as you want mode. In Minami Lane, you build up a town and try to make the residents happy. It’s interesting because you have to balance the needs of older and younger people, which most games don’t care about. It’s like a much lower stress Rollercoaster Tycoon or games like it.
Botany Manor– It’s a first-person exploration puzzle game where you play a botanist who goes through pieces of her house to grow about a dozen fantastical plants. While you solve these puzzles, you learn more about the main character’s life and show where she’s going in the future. The scenery is gorgeous. If you are directionally challenged like me, you will spend a lot of time in the landscape, and it is worth the time loitering. If you like a subtle narrative with plenty of serene puzzles, definitely check this one out.
Lost But Found– This game is still in development but is playable, so it will be a little buggy. It’s more stressful than any of the games mentioned above while still being far lower stress than most games. You work at the lost and found at an airport, so you have to quickly give things back to the people who show up. It’s a lot of sorting while also being like a search and find game. If you only play on a laptop, it is difficult without a mouse as it sometimes lags.
Urban Jungle– Another plant-focused game that is similar to Unpacking but with a score/puzzle element involving plants. You can end up grinding a bit if you are trying to collect all of the plants (like I did), but the story is very sweet and well done. It makes me hope they make a second game involving the character’s brother. It’s about becoming the person you are and nurturing yourself (and your plants) in order to grow.
Coral Island– This is the longest game on the list as it is open-ended. Coral Island is a farming sim like Stardew Valley, but what sets it apart is the styling of the game and the emphasis on pollution/cleaning up the ocean. You can romance SO MANY characters, but there are also mines, a town score you need to raise in order to unlock many things, and an ocean world to explore and clean up while fighting off a mega corp. I am many, many hours deep into this game, and I cannot recommend it enough for staying sane during trying times.
Spirit City– This is less of a game and more of a working/learning tool, but Spirit City is worth the money. It is a game that helps you body double, do pomodoro timers, keep track of your goals and more, all while creating a cute avatar, playing with your creatures, and customizing your space. The customization in this game is chef kiss, and it helps a lot if you are struggling to stay focused. It also comes equipped with lofi beats and many helpful tools.

If there are any games you think I would like, please leave them in the comments!

Personal Life

To My Partner

June 15, 2025June 15, 2025 Kara Jorgensen3 Comments

This Friday will be my twentieth anniversary with my partner. Yes, you heard that right, 20 years. My partner and I have been together since we were fourteen. We went to high school and college together and have gone through our own respective gender journeys together. I finally figured out the words for my gender back around 2017 or so. I have always felt like being a woman didn’t fit me, and once I heard the term “nonbinary,” I realized that I had been feeling dysphoria for years and started to do things to make myself happier and more in line with my feelings regarding my gender. None of these were huge changes because I’m incredibly stubborn and refused to dress femme for years before that. Now, I am just more aware my dysphoria and less willing to please others while making it worse.

My partner, on the other hand, ignored the fact that she was dealing with dysphoria for years. She tried to double down on dressing masculine while in college, but it didn’t make her feel better. Last year, she thought she might be nonbinary because our discussions of gender made her more comfortable to explore her feminine side. And this year, she realized she was actually a trans woman, and we figured out how to get her gender affirming care. She is close to the three month mark on hormone-replacement therapy, and she is the happiest she has ever been. More than anything this year, I am so glad to have my partner feel more like herself and be on her way to being the person she truly is. Twenty years and two gender discoveries later, we’re still together.

I love my partner more than anything or anyone. She is my best friend, my biggest supporter, the best pet co-parent, the one I turn to when times are tough, and the one I want to see flourish more than anything. If you’ve never seen someone you love transition, it is a beautiful thing. Every day I see my partner become more herself. She is so much happier, even after a few months. She has new pronouns and a new name, but she’s still the person I have loved for twenty years. I look around at everything that’s going on with trans rights being under attack in the US and UK, and I cannot understand how people can see others transition and not think it is something beautiful. It is a righting of a biological wrong, and the mental health results speak for themselves. My partner has battled depression for as long as I have known her. She still has depression, but it is night and day since she started on estrogen and t-blockers. Her mood is better, she’s more emotionally even, and when she is sad, it isn’t the same level as past depressive sadness.

As if to spite the transphobes (and because I love her deeply), I have thrown myself into being as supportive as possible. What’s funny is so much of what I’m doing to affirm her has been dysphoria-inducing to me. I have sat here racking my brain about what she could need or what people tried to give me that I hated when I was hitting puberty. My partner has been collecting more feminine clothes for a while now, many of which came from my wardrobe because they were too feminine for me, but I have added to the pile. She now has a purse or two, bras, and my favorite surprise for her was a Kaboodle with some starter make-up. My partner will probably never come out to her family because she doesn’t think they’ll accept her, and I want her to feel as loved and accepted as possible.

When I first realized I was nonbinary, I was afraid my partner would be upset or confused that I wasn’t a woman. She was fine with it, unconcerned, and she has supported me in my weird little guy-ness ever since. That sort of acceptance paved the way for her own journey of self-discovery, and I am honored that I get to be on that journey with her to smooth the way and support her in every way I can. Being a t4t couple has only made us closer and stronger, and I will do anything to make sure my partner has the best life she can possibly have no matter the political climate and no matter what people who don’t know her say.

To my partner, may you have the best life and the life you have always wanted. Here’s to twenty years, and many, many more!

Personal Life

Weighing My Options

May 25, 2025May 25, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

I have started to apply for jobs outside of academia. It’s a decision I haven’t come to lightly, but after over eight years of being an adjunct professor, I don’t think I can afford to stay in this position for much longer. The sad thing is that this isn’t due to my spending habits or being bad at my job, it’s because academia is being run like a business rather than a school.

If you aren’t in academia, let me give you a primer on the job market: it’s shit. In most areas, there are very few jobs and lots of people graduating from grad school who loved their experience and want to be that professor for future students, so they all take up adjunct positions, which are contract-based, part-time teaching positions. Usually, you don’t get any benefits, you are paid very poorly, and you can’t have more than two classes per semester per school. Often, adjuncts work at two or three schools and have other part-time jobs on the side in hopes that it’ll make up the difference. The adjuncts who aren’t doing all of that have family money or a spouse with a really good job. When a position in your field opens, thousands of people apply all at once, so your chances of even getting an interview are incredibly low just based on numbers. If a position at your current employer opens, there’s an even lower chance since most schools won’t hire one of their adjuncts for full-time work. Don’t ask me why. I don’t get it either.

What ends up happening is that professors of color, queer professors, working class professors, and those with other marginalized identities have to work their asses off extra hard to get noticed on top of working extra jobs. You can be a stand out or be supported and appreciated by your department, like I am, and still have no chance of becoming a full-time professor with a stable paycheck because the university isn’t hiring. Professors retire, and their jobs aren’t filled. Other professors in the department pick up the slack and the lower level classes go to adjuncts. Partly this is due to the devaluation of the humanities in my case, but it’s also due to the political climate as students don’t see college as a safe bet, just a mountain of debt.

For the past eight years, I have loved teaching. I love teaching writing, I love my students, I love my school (which is also my alma mater), and I love my department. The problem is that I’m being exploited by the system, not the people around me, which makes it very hard to pull away. Higher ed relies on adjuncts to stay afloat. They exploit that so many of us want to teach our subject and will ignore our needs to do it. They bank on the fact that we’ll have outside monetary support and if we don’t that we’ll rely on Medicaid, SNAP, or other supports that they don’t need to provide. The problem is that at some point, this becomes unsustainable.

By the end of this semester, I could feel my brain and body fraying. It feels impossible to keep up, and with the current administration threatening to rip these support systems out from us, I’m extra stressed and frayed. All I’ve wanted was to be a writer, teach writing, and have a modest life with my partner, and that middle class dream feels impossible. In a moment of fleeting panic, I applied to one writing job, and then, I saw another online that looked right up my alley. I’m not quitting teaching or applying to every job I come across. I don’t want to trade one mess for another, but I’m tired of being ground down by a system that pays teachers nothing and administrators six figures. Apparently, it would cost too much to pay me fairly for my time, so I am looking for someone who thinks my skills are worth the expense.

What irks me is that I am a good professor. I’m good at my job. I give my students so much of myself and my time. I accommodate my students without paperwork. I do my best to anticipate their needs and make sure my marginalized students are supported while giving my international students the confidence to write well and have the space to learn and become more comfortable writing in English. As far as I know, I’m one of the only out trans professors on campus (if not the only), and if I leave, I will leave a gap behind. I know I’m easily replaceable to the administrators, but I would like to think that with the students and my department, I would be missed. I managed to cling on for over eight years because I’m white and live at home. Those less privileged than me have come and gone far quicker, and it shouldn’t be like this. Higher education pushes about those most motivated to help marginalized students because they aren’t willing to pay for our talent. In this age of people yelling about DEI, I have to ask where? Is the DEI in the room with us? Because most of the adjuncts and professors who are able to stick it out long enough to get hired are either very privileged or have worked themselves into the ground to get there.

While I’m not leaving teaching yet and won’t until I have a position lined up, I am eyeing the exits and hating that I am.

Personal Life

What the 1890s Can Teach Us

January 26, 2025January 26, 2025 Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

I never wanted the time period I write in to become relevant to our current day, yet here we are in the US, rapidly backsliding to the 1890s. I have seen a lot of comparisons to Germany in the late 1930s/1940s, which is certainly apt, but I actually think the 1890s is much closer to our current political climate. While there aren’t Nazis in the 1890s, there was certainly plenty of white supremacy and prejudice to go around, but there’s also a glimmer of hope in regards to what might be to come if we can get our act together.

If you know nothing about the 1890s, the biggest takeaway is that the US was becoming a global superpower while actively working against its people. It was the decade where we had the rise of the Gilded Age. Rockefeller, Carnegie, J. P. Morgan had to bail the country out of an economic downturn, and in return, they thought they should be essentially a silent partner in the US while still calling in favors. Populists gained traction by pointing out that the country was truly divided into the rich and the poor or the robbers vs. the robbed while progressives tried to point out and address the growing inequities in the US. At the same time, the government was raising highly unpopular tariffs, trying to colonize places it had no business being in (in this case Hawaii and the Philippines), and enacting the laws that created what came to be codified racial segregation.

Most of these things we’re seeing with a modern flare. Instead of Morgan and Rockefeller who at least tried to appear philanthropic, we have tech bro oligarchs like Musk and Zuckerberg, and where there were steel mills and factory strikes, we have Amazon and AI to contend with. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that, regardless of race, we are held down by the 1% who need us as cheap, exploited labor, and that the government is needs to step up in order to combat that. Much like in the early 1890s, our current (and past) administration is in bed with them, hoping to profit. On the ground, progressives are trying to make a difference. Rights are being pushed for, unions are created, incremental changes are codified.

What I’m hoping is that right now will be a wake up call. In the latter half of the 1890s, after the unpopular tariffs and the assassination of the president who created them, there was a turning point in America where progressives came into power and tried to create change. It was the path that eventually paved the way for FDR’s New Deal decades later, but at the time, progressives fought against that economic inequity by breaking up monopolies, fighting corruption, and campaigning for things that helped the average person have a better life.

As we watch the policies we have taken for granted that helped so many of us get ripped away by a white supremacist agenda, now is the time to push back. Progressives started from the ground up, local to federal, and that’s what we need most right now. We need people to not comply with policies that spit in the face of democracy, human rights, and decency because if we don’t comply, we slow down the machine and mitigate damage. People in the 1890s threw dynamite at Pinkertons sent to break up a strike, so we must do what we can to slow down the people who seek to destroy all we have gained as country. We cannot go back. We will not go back to Plessy v. Fergusin, to separate but “equal.” We cannot cede the hard earned rights of queer and trans people in the name of compromise.

Now is the time to be bold. The Progressives of the 1890s had Teddy Roosevelt. We have people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren. We have people in this fight who want to do right and keep us from falling into the black hole of fascism and plutocracy, but we have to do our part. On a personal level, we need to push back against the white supremacist rhetoric we hear on a daily basis. DEI is just diversity. Being anti-DEI should be called what it is: segregation and white supremacy. We need to learn history and read books from people who are outside our groups to better understand how to be a good ally and unpack our conscious and unconscious biases.

We also need to be vocal with our elected officials about what we want and what we will accept. The presidential vote is not the only one, so during midterms and local elections, we need to show up and choose our leaders with care because they hold our future in their hands. I have called and emailed my elected officials more this week than I think I have in the past four years. Democracy.io has been very helpful in doing that, and every call and email counts, even if your elected official is a conservative. Friction is friction, and if they receive enough of it, they will slow down.

What helped progressives in the past was holding the feet of those in power to the fire until they had to act. Monopolies must be broken, power must be taken back, and laws that protect marginalized people must be made and/or re-instated. I’m sure during the depression of the early 1890s when corruption was at a high, people thought that it was hopeless too, but it wasn’t. Companies and the rich can be tamed, elected officials can be removed, and there has been no movement in history, whether it’s Nazis or the Confederacy, that lasted.

Hate is not sustainable as long as those who choose love and compassion are willing to gum up the works and protect the vulnerable. Mitigate harm, look to your local community for ways to help and support others, and let’s work our way back up. Progressives have done it once, and we can do it again.

I promise I will get back to more writing posts, but at the same time, I refuse to let this become the new normal.

Personal Life

Trans People Need You to Step Up

January 19, 2025January 19, 2025 Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

We start the 47th president’s term with a ban on transgender student athletes passing the House of Representatives and heading for the senate, so I am imploring you today to step up for the trans people in your life and push back against anti-trans bills now, for the next four years, and beyond.

You might think, “Oh, well, it’s just about student athletes.” Yes, but children are our most vulnerable demographic, and if they can make the world so hostile that the next generation of trans kids goes back into the closet, they are truly aiming for ALL trans people. It starts with “protect the girls, protect the children,” and I have to ask myself, from what? Trans kids are not a danger to cis kids. Trans girls playing softball or soccer are not taking a spot from a cis girl or going to molest anyone. Their cis male coaches are much more likely to do that statistically, and trust me when I say, absolutely no one is pretending to be trans to get close to cis kids to do them harm. The risk of harm to the trans person far outweighs anything else. Trans people are four times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than cis people.

This leads to the very high suicide rate among trans people. Some in the anti-trans movement will ascribe that to trans people being mentally ill, but much like autistic people, it isn’t the marginalization itself that makes them suicidal, it’s the societal conditions in which we live. Trans people have a harder time finding and keeping work, they are more likely to be cast out by their families than cis people, and the conservative side of our nation does everything in its power to make our lives harder, whether that’s through taking away gender affirming care, making name and gender marker changes near impossible, or by creating a social climate that is openly hostile to trans people.

A lot of push back comes from the fear of children being “mutilated,” but who knows your heart better than you? You can be the most seemingly loving parent, but your child still knows themselves better than you do, and I think that scares a lot of people. I grew up not having a word for how I felt, but I’m still nonbinary, I’m still trans. I grew up, found words for it, and had to live with the regret that I may never be the person I could have been if gender-affirming care had been available to me as a teenager. Most prepubescent kids just want you to call them by the correct name and wear the clothes they want. They’re not getting surgery or hormones. They just want autonomy and to be accepted for who they are. When they hit puberty, they sometimes get hormone blockers to stave off those permanent changes until they are old enough to decide they are sure in their decision to transition. I hit puberty at 11, hard and fast, and it completely screwed with my mental health and my perception of who I was. Not every trans person gets dysphoria (the gender version of dysmorphia), but I can tell you that it is hell on earth to feel like your body never fits right. You eventually stop looking in the mirror because the you in your head is never there, and the outside world perceives you in a way that goes against your inner identity.

Teenagers (16 and up, most over 18) who take hormone replacement therapy to have their bodies align with their inner identity have far better mental health and well-being outcomes than those who don’t get that sort of care. A trans kid allowed to transition is a happier, more well-adjusted child and a future adult with a better outlook. Hormone replacement therapy is safe and well-studied. This isn’t new technology, and there’s no reason to force a child to go through a puberty they didn’t want just to have them go through surgeries later when they are out of their parents’ control. Because that is what happens. That child/adult has always been trans. They just have to work far harder and go through far more pain to become the person they have always been.

Ultimately, that is the purpose of these sorts of laws: to cause pain. Conservatives and fascists seek to exert hierarchy and control. A trans person changing their identity disrupts that hierarchy. A woman becoming a man means having a usurper in their midst, and a man becoming a woman disrupts the belief that women are lesser. And a nonbinary person choosing to step out of the gender hierarchy all together is akin to anarchy.

One of the first places the Nazis went after when they came into power was Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or the Institute for Sexual Science, was because it supported gay and trans people. It was a place where trans people could get hormones and gender affirming surgeries. The Nazis had to clamp down on this because it disrupted the social order, and those who did were labeled as degenerates. They burned Hirshfeld’s research, set transgender research back for decades, and put many queer and trans people in concentration camps. Even if you don’t understand why someone would want to change genders, I have to ask if you really want to support something the Nazis thought was a great idea.

What I am asking you to do is to be vocal in your support of trans people. Call those out who want to harass trans people and anyone who doesn’t fit the gender mold because ultimately cis Black girls and tomboys are the ones who will face the most backlash and scrutiny under these anti-trans laws because they aren’t really about trans people, they’re about control and enforcing ever shifting gender norms.

Please reach out to your senators and reps (federal and state) and tell them to support transgender people. If you’re able, call your senators and tell them not to support SB9. You can see all the anti-trans bills that are filtering through congress here. If you aren’t comfortable calling your reps, you can send an email to all of your senators and your house rep through democracy.io

Your support is needed now more than ever, so I hope you will stand up for people like me and my partner, and make the world a better place for everyone, regardless of gender.

Personal Life · Writing

My End of 2024 Reflection

December 29, 2024December 29, 2024 Kara Jorgensen3 Comments

Let me tell you, this year was SO MUCH better than last year. 2023 was horrendous, and while 2024 has not been great on a national scale, on a personal level it has been a breath of fresh air.

The word I had chosen for my word of the year for 2024 was “navigate” because I felt like I had been tossed into turbulent waters due to the fact that I was being harassed and besmirched by Freydis Moon/Taylor Barton, and I couldn’t tell anyone. They were a dark cloud looming over anything good that happened to me, and I was constantly afraid that any time I got attention, they would pounce on me. This meant every book release or awards announcement was riddled with anxiety since they did this to other authors they didn’t like in the past. In late April when they were finally exposed by Elle Porter, it felt like a massive weight had been lifted off my shoulders. The thing that had been too afraid to discuss publicly was finally out in the open, and FM/TB could no longer hurt me. I spent the rest of April and half of May vibrating with equal parts relief and anxiety, waiting for the other shoe to drop. My writing slowed to a crawl at the fear of retaliation and while processing all that had happened, but it was worth it. The only good thing to come out of FM’s assholery is that I have picked up a few new friends who experienced the same thing, and I’ve grown closer to another author I have a lot in common because of it.

On the writing front, it was actually a rather good year. Even with the wasted month, I wrote, edited, and published, “An Unexpected Question” (TRM #2.5), The Reanimator’s Remains (TRM #3), and started writing “An Unexpected Evening” (TRM #3.5). There’s always part of me that wished I wrote more, especially since that month off set me back and gave me a lot of stress in October when it was close to release day, but overall, I’m very happy with everything I published this year. The Reanimator’s Heart (TRM #1) and The Reanimator’s Soul (TRM #2) were both in the 2023 Indie Ink Awards, and TRS won for mental health representation, and book 3 is nominated in a bunch of categories for the 2024 Indie Ink Awards.

This year, I was invited to be on a few queer podcasts, I blurbed a friend’s book, and I got to work with some great people, like Jack R. R. Evans, who narrates my audiobooks, and Crowglass Design, who creates the covers for my books. I can’t thank enough my author friends for all the support they provided during all of this (and before and after). I also can’t forget my readers, who made the launch of The Reanimator’s Remains so wonderful. Without you all, there would be no books, or at least no audience for my books, and your support means so much to me. Seriously though, the reviews, shout outs about my book on social media, and the little things daily mean the world to me.

In my personal life, things have been going very well. My partner and I have both been on our own gender journeys, where we’ve been trying to figure out what brings us gender euphoria. During this process, we’ve become even closer. We both still struggle with our mental health and neurodivergence at time (are really ND if you don’t get in your own way regularly? lol), but I do feel like I’ve finally found a path toward better physical health. I have started lifting weights, and it’s been interesting to see how getting stronger has intertwined with my own version of nonbinary-ness.

I’m going to write more about my goals for 2025 in a future post, but with the way this year ended, I’m going into 2025 with far more hope than I did going into 2024. More than anything, I hope you all have a fantastic new year filled with good health, fulfilling projects, safe shores, and supportive people who love you.

Personal Life

Gender on my Terms

December 8, 2024December 6, 2024 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know I’m nonbinary. Gender makes little sense to me as a social construct because, to me, people are people, but the moment I’m perceived as a woman (along with all the assumptions that come with that), I understand how heavily others rely on gender and how much I don’t like it. I would feel like I was in drag against my will when I was forced to dress femininely growing up. Dysphoria hits me hard the moment I have to wear a dress or skirt or put my hair a certain way.

The problem is that my gender is like Goldilocks. Feminine things set off my dysphoria hard, but if I go too far into masculinity, my brain rebels as well. I don’t want facial or body hair beyond what I already have or a deeper masculine voice. I tend to just say I’m agender because I would like to put gender as a social construct in the trash like moldy leftovers. Still, I find myself on the masc side but lightly. Can fop be a gender? I want to wear saturated colors, wear my hair long but pulled back, and occasionally indulge in frothy lace. Wearing a frock coat and breeches like Anne Hathaway in Twelfth Night is gender goals, even now.

As someone who struggles with changes, I have sort of eased into being a little more masc. This has mostly been because gender is complicated, and as I mentioned earlier, I get dysphoria in either direction. I also don’t want to take hormones or have surgery at this point. Instead, I’ve been stepping back and started thinking, what do you already have or do that’s a little masc that you want to make more obvious?

I have always thought my very square, straight shoulders look masculine, so I decided that I would work out my arms and shoulders to make them a little more sturdy. I do not want to be swole as the kids say, but I would like to be stronger and have more defined arms. For the past few weeks, I’ve been working out my arms, back, and shoulders nearly every day, and I’ve been enjoying it. In the past, I’ve struggled to exercise due to my asthma reacting very poorly to cardio despite being on stronger meds, but weight lifting doesn’t bother my asthma or inflammatory issues at all. I’m already seeing a little progress, which has been gratifying. The workouts should also help to strengthen my muscles and help control the hypermobility in my shoulders. In the past, I’ve shied away from other exercise because it’s mostly about weight loss or looking more feminine, which I’m not interested in.

For a while, I had been toying with buying a compression bra or binder to squash down my chest a bit. I put it off because a “real” binder might compress my ribs too much, and sometimes, due to hypermobility, they slide out of place, which is very painful. I ended up buying a compression bra from a trans-affirming company, and it has been really nice. I’ve never really liked my chest because it’s oversized, and when people register its presence, they see it as feminine, which I don’t really want. Squashing them down but not completely removing them has been enough to make me happy. It also makes working out my arms, back, and shoulders much easier. While these changes might seem small, they have made me very happy.

When I think of what my gender means to me or what it feels like, it’s masculine softness. I tend to think of characters like Stede Bonnet from Our Flag Means Death or Lestat from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles or even Zorro’s brother from Zorro the Gay Blade. I often joke that my gender is “weird little guy” like Gomez Addams or basically any character Nathan Lane has ever played, which amounts to queer and slightly silly. My gender is tender and loving with an edge of morbidity and strangeness (and probably a few startled yelp-screams as they are the cry of the weird little guy).

My partner is also embarking on a gender journey that will probably look different from mine, and I’m very grateful to be along for the ride to support them along the way. As we get closer to the new administration taking over, I want everyone to remember that bodily autonomy extended to gender expression. We should all be allowed to be the people we want to be or feel we are without government interference, and that includes children. I had dysphoria as a tween, even if I didn’t have the words for it, and if I had been able, I would have loved to have gotten hormone blockers to avoid the dysphoria that came with early puberty. I guess I’ll just end this by saying trans rights are human rights, and children deserve the same right to live as themselves as I and my partner do. Please bug your reps and senators to not throw trans people under the bus.