Trans & out, unapologetically
The short version lives on my About page. This is the longer one: my story, the advocacy work I actually do, and a list of resources for anyone else figuring this out. A couple of specifics are left deliberately vague here for my own safety. That's not me being cagey, it's just sensible.
My story
I'm a trans woman. I spent a long time shaping myself to fit what other people expected. Then I got to a point where living honestly mattered more to me than staying comfortable for everyone else. Transition, for me, was never a single moment. It's been an ongoing process, it still is, and I don't think it ever really has a finish line. That's fine. I stopped waiting for one, and things got noticeably easier once I did.
Some of it has been the big, obvious stuff. A lot more of it has been small: being correctly gendered, feeling comfortable in my own clothes, catching my reflection and actually recognizing the person in it. I don't think people who haven't gone through it always realize how much weight those small moments carry. Any single one of them looks like nothing from the outside. Strung together, they're the difference between bracing for a day and just having one.
This page used to say I wasn't going to lay out any kind of timeline. Specific dates are exactly the sort of thing that makes it easier for the wrong person to cause problems for me. I've changed my mind, but only halfway, and the line I've drawn matters. You won't find medical dates or legal dates here. No start dates, no procedure dates, and no paperwork. Those are nobody's business, and handing them over is how people get hurt.
What's below is a different thing entirely. It's the public record I already made myself, one bio at a time, on an account I was posting from anyway. Instagram timestamps every single edit you make to your own profile. So without ever meaning to, I kept a diary. I only found it by exporting my own data out of curiosity. Reading it back in order was strange, and then it was quite lovely, and then I decided it was the most honest thing I could put on this page.
Nine months of rewriting my own bio
Nobody edits their bio this many times in nine months because they're relaxed about it. Every quoted line here's exactly what I had written about myself on that date.
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Oct 2025
"All the hot people are 🏳️⚧️. Volatile like my mother, I'm prolly nicer than you think. ❤️"
The flag was already there. So was the bracing for impact. "Volatile like my mother" is the kind of thing you write about yourself when you've decided to get the worst possible read of you in first, before anybody else can.
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Nov 2025
"All the hot people are 🏳️⚧️. Gender under construction, I'm prolly nicer than you think. ❤️"
Four words gone, three new ones in their place. That's the entire edit. I wouldn't have been able to tell you in November that anything had changed, and looking at it now it's the loudest line in the whole list.
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Nov 2025
"All the hot people are 🏳️⚧️. Tell me your favourite thing and I'll respond."
The self-deprecation drops out and it turns into an invitation. Two weeks after "under construction."
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Dec 2025
"All the hot people are 🏳️⚧️. I'm both dumber and smarter than you think; don't estimate me."
Still defensive, but the shape of it has changed. This one is daring you instead of apologising in advance.
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Mar 2026
"All the hot people are 🏳️⚧️ / ☆ trans girl ♡ / AuDHD operating system 🧠🌹 / 🐕 German Shepherd Assistant Manager *In Training*"
First time I ever wrote "trans girl" about myself in public, and I put a star and a heart around it. Five months after "gender under construction." Harley makes her first appearance in the same edit, which feels about right.
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Apr 2026
The name goes up, then the dog gets equal billing
Display name changes to Ashlyn Harper. The next day the username becomes
ashlynandherdog. I'd like it noted that within twenty-four hours of finally putting my own name on my profile, I gave the dog equal billing. -
Apr 2026
"All the hot people are 🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️ / ☆ 100% Homegrown AuDHD trans girl ♡ / German Shepherd Asst. Manager *In Training* 🐕"
Four edits inside four minutes, landing here. One flag became three. "Quality > Quantity" was tried and discarded twice on the way. This is what it looks like when you're no longer deciding whether to say it, and are now just fussing over the wording.
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May 2026
Ashlyn Harper becomes, simply, Harper
Same minute, both fields. Display name down to one word. Username to
harperisgay42069, because I'm not a solemn person. Of everything in that export, this is the clearest single marker of the name that stuck, and it's the one I was least aware of making at the time. Seven months earlier I was describing myself as volatile.
The reason I decided to publish this after saying I wouldn't: none of it is a date anyone can hurt me with, and all of it is evidence for something worth saying out loud. It didn't happen in a moment. There was no single announcement. It was a series of small edits over nine months. Most of them I didn't notice myself making. Each one was slightly braver than the one before it. If you're somewhere in the middle of your own version of this list and it feels like nothing is happening, that's what it looked like from the inside for me too.
What I'll still say plainly, in place of the timeline I'm not giving you: it's been a real process, it's ongoing, and I'm considerably happier on this side of starting it than I was before.
Something I didn't expect
The further into this I get, the less anxious I'm in public. The mechanism isn't the one I assumed.
I thought passing would feel like relief from being clocked. What it turns out to be is quieter than that. When strangers read me correctly without having to work it out, they respond to me the way people respond to each other. My body stops running the low background calculation about how this interaction is going to go. As that calculation gets quieter I get more relaxed, and being relaxed makes me read as more ordinary, which makes the next interaction easier again.
It's a loop, and I'm slightly uncomfortable with what it implies. Social ease isn't a reward for being authentic. A lot of it's just conformity being recognised, and I benefit from that now in a way I didn't before, through no change in who I am. I'm not going to pretend I don't enjoy the quiet. But I'd rather say it plainly: the quiet was granted to me, and I didn't earn it.
Advocacy & the Queer Ambassador role
I currently serve as a Queer Ambassador. In practice that means education and advocacy work around trans inclusion. Mostly it's helping people understand the small, everyday things that make a real difference for queer and trans folks. They cost a cisgender person nothing and they mean a great deal to the person on the other end of them.
A lot of that work is unglamorous. I answer questions people are too nervous to ask anyone else. I explain why a particular word or assumption lands badly, and that's usually more useful than telling someone not to use it. I help people rehearse how to correct themselves gracefully after a slip-up instead of spiraling about it, because the spiral tends to make the other person do the comforting. None of it is complicated. Most of it is just consistency, repeated until it stops feeling like effort.
"Respect isn't a lot to ask for. Use the name someone gives you. Don't out people. Don't assume you know someone's story. None of that costs anything; it just takes a little consideration. That's most of what advocacy actually looks like day to day: small, consistent choices that add up to someone feeling safe being themselves."
If you're cisgender and reading this wondering what you can do, here it is. Use the name and pronouns someone gives you. Don't make someone's transition your business to discuss with other people. If you mess up, correct yourself and move on instead of making a whole production of it. That's most of it. The bar is lower than people fear it is, and clearing it consistently matters far more than clearing it perfectly.
Being trans isn't the only way my brain works differently, either. I'm autistic and ADHD too, and figuring out both happened on a pretty similar timeline.
If you're trans, questioning, or supporting someone who is
I'm not a therapist or a doctor, and nothing here's medical advice. This is just a starting list of places I trust, for whoever needs it. I'm Canadian myself, but this site gets readers from all over, so I've split it out by country instead of assuming everyone is reaching for the same phone number.
🇺🇸 United States
Note on the 988 crisis line: LGBTQ-specific routing through 988 has been in flux due to funding changes. As of writing, Trans Lifeline is the more reliably trans-focused option if you need to talk to someone right now.
🇨🇦 Canada
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
General
Ask me anything (within reason)
Genuine, respectful questions are always welcome, including the awkward ones. I'd much rather field a clumsy question asked in good faith than have someone tiptoe around me for a year. Here are a few I get a lot:
One more thing
If you found this page because you're figuring out your own stuff, know that you don't owe anyone a polished narrative or a particular timeline. You don't have to be certain before you're allowed to explore something. Go at your own pace. Let it be messy while it needs to be. Mine still is, some days, and I'd rather say that plainly than pretend I arrived somewhere tidy.