I’ve been medically transitioning into a woman for eight months. In the grand scheme of a person’s life, that is not very long; by most standards, I would be considered a “babytrans,” a person who is still early in their transition. 

Despite my lack of experience, I am always eager to learn more about how other transsexuals understand themselves and their identity as people. I am always shocked about how little information there is.

What academic writing exists is often horribly outdated or fetishistic (see Ray Blanchard or Janice Raymond). The very few prominent trans women whose record did survive (see Venus Xtravaganza or Marsha P. Johnson) have little written on their personal lives. They exist as reminders that we’ve been around, but their lives are regaled to us by the cisgender people that knew them before they passed, commonly from either the AIDS crisis or murder. 

Even after I initially came out to myself and a few close friends, I still felt lost. How was I supposed to learn how to be a woman? I had already spent 20 years staring in the mirror thinking too hard about myself. That era was over. 

I wanted to connect with other trans people. I wanted to talk to people who knew the struggles of dysphoria, people who knew the feeling of something being perpetually ‘off’ from childhood, people who just… got it. 

So I turned to Grindr. 

Was this stupid? Yes. I got way too much chaser dick in my messages. But I was desperate and didn’t know where else to turn. Wouldn’t you take any possible chance to meet your peers after years of no one understanding who you really are?

After figuring out how to use filters, I found my people, all waiting in neat little boxes that lined my screen. After clicking on a profile of a trans guy who I found cute, I scrolled down his page and to look at his tags – this is where I first heard of the term T4T.

 ‘T4T,’ or ‘trans for trans,’ originated on Craigslist personal ads in the early 2000s. A simple way to find one another when transsexuality was more taboo has become a show of solidarity in the trans community both in terms of relationship styles and mutual aid. 

Juniper-Wren Harris, a trans woman studying at Berklee College of Music, has been in a long-distance relationship with another trans woman for the past year and a half. She had little exposure to any kind of queer culture outside of the internet before coming out. 

“I was homeschooled in Florida, so there was not a lot of education for me on that subject,” Harris said. “I met a friend online who was a trans woman, and I was like ‘what the hell is that?’”

Over the course of the next couple of years, Harris came out to herself through friendships and relationships she fostered online with other queer people. While she doesn’t rule out dating a cis person, Harris admits that dating someone who is trans, or at the very least queer, is just easier. 

“Being T4T isn’t as much about the specifics of your gender identity as it is about understanding the experience of coming to terms with who you are in regards to your gender and sharing that with someone else,” Harris said. “It’s an experience that can’t really be replicated outside of it.”

I’ve certainly found this to be true. As slightly embarrassing as it may be to admit, I’ve found some of my closest trans friends and partners through online spaces like Grindr or Discord. Those online relationships become physical quickly in a place like Chicago, where there are a minimum of thirty thousand of us. The seemingly cursory identifier of being trans, regardless of how we may identify on specific gender lines, belies many shared experiences that often link us to one another on a deeper level. 

Vincent Zabierowski, a trans man studying at Columbia College of Chicago, and Izzy, who identifies as gender-fluid and studies at DePaul, have been together for over three years. Their mutual disregard of their birth-assigned genders caused them both to become more comfortable with their identities over time. 

“I was a trans guy but I only started taking (testosterone) during our relationship,” Zabierowski said. “The relationship kind of started a little closed off and sad, and then the longer we dated and the more I transitioned, the happier and more open and louder I got.”

Izzy started the relationship with a more normative gender identity, yet was able to express their queerness alongside their partner in a different way. 

“I started off as just she/her, cis. Then slowly I got exposed to more stuff in college,” Izzy said. “I was like ‘gender is so fluid, I just want to give it a shot.’ I felt more comfortable just not being cis. The gender fluid identity was less restricting.”

Zabierowski and Izzy’s relationship has thrived off of who they are as people rather than how well they fit into their chosen genders. 

“Both of us are never really pressured to fall into gender roles,” Zabierowksi said. “When I talk to my friends who are cis and they tell me about the situations they get themselves into in terms of romance, they’re like ‘oh, this is natural. I need to do this. I need to do that to perform.’ And I’m like… no. Communication is key. That’s all that matters.”

T4T represents more than just a preference – it’s also become a way for trans people to stand together against tyranny. Last week when this article was set up, we made plans to get photographs for the piece from a T4T Valentine’s Market hosted by Trans Chicago on Sat. Feb 8. 

Within the week, federal funds for Trans Chicago were cut, and dozens of its members were laid off. While the organization plans to fulfill all existing commitments to events and appointments for medical/legal aid, their future is on shaky ground. The event depicted at the head of this article may be one of the last Trans Chicago ever hosts. 

Tichike Tumalan, the former Health Educator at Trans Chicago, intends to keep the center running via volunteer work, though it’s currently uncertain what will happen to their current space at the Puerto Rico Cultural Center as they no longer have funding. 

“As Black and Brown Trans and Queer folk we are actively being erased by the administration. We understand that these are not just our jobs, but our ability to just exist,” Tumalan said. “We need everybody to be hands on deck to loudly advocate for their Trans siblings, and check in with one another, creating these connections are important!”

This isn’t an isolated incident. Billionaire political pundit Elon Musk has made quick work of erasing our history through his inanely named Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Under his order, the CDC has halted any medical research into LGBTQ+ topics and scrubbed any existing research from their databases. 

Convicted sex criminal and president Donald Trump recently signed a variety of executive orders that, if passed, would criminalize gender-affirming care for those under 19, prohibit any trans person from having their correct gender marker on their ID and prosecute any trans woman that plays womens’ sports. 

On the first day of his presidency, Trump stated that the US government would recognize someone’s sex at birth as the sole identifier of their gender, regardless of how they present themselves. 

The new administration’s position is clear: trans people should not exist. It is a deliberate attempt to erase us through burning our records and denying us life-saving medical care. If we as trans people are to survive the next four years (or longer) under Trump’s administration, we must band together and be proactive in our efforts to protect one another. 

Yet, we must also be careful of the ways in which we care for one another. Amy Marvin, a Louise M. Olmstead Fellow in Ethics at Lafayette College, details some of the pitfalls that can arise in T4T spaces when communities are formed haphazardly. 

“People will see the problem of trans oppression or isolation, and be like ‘T4T is the answer, right?’ When I think that it actually opens up a lot of questions, it’s the start to thinking about it,” Marvin said. 

Marvin uses “The People’s Joker,” which she cites as the most popular film about T4T relationships in the mainstream, as an example of when T4T relationships can fail. Based on director Vera Drew’s real experiences of transition, the main character, a trans woman, finds her identity in a relationship with a trans man, but ultimately realizes the toxic expectations of being trans “correctly” being put upon both of them are too much to bear. The relationship falls apart. 

“There’s a way you can get a little bit too wrapped up in the ideals of T4T and what it should be when you need to acknowledge that it’s not really giving you what you need,” Marvin said. “I’m a real big fan of the trans critic, who I think often gets pushed out in a way that’s unfair and also bad for communities.”

Despite some misgivings, Marvin stresses the importance of organizing especially at a time when the trans community is under great stress. 

“It feels very much right now like the non-Trans world wants to eliminate and get rid of us,” Marvin said. “Being able to, despite the tensions, persist and help people when they need help is going to be the important thing. A critical T4T which doesn’t give up at the same time.”

Zabierowski stresses that same kind of attitude. 

“Many people have tried to get rid of trans people, many people have tried to get rid of gay people, but we’ve always been here. We’ve always existed,” Zabierowski said. “Try as the government might, I don’t need their permission to exist. We fought to be who we are, and I have no confusion about that.”

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