Coming out as trans in high school ...

When I first met Henry Aceves in 2014, he was known as Sonia.  Perhaps it is worth noting from the outset that Sonia Aceves was a slightly different person than Henry Aceves.  Not just because she identified as female -- it was more than that.  Through September and October of my AP Language class, Sonia worked hard, but she did so in a kind of removed and detached manner.  She listened and occasionally contributed, but she always seemed self-conscious, her eyes shifting feverishly about the room, like she was worried someone was going to laugh at her or worse.  Now, in retrospect, it all makes sense.  If you are uncertain about something as central as your gender identity, how can you possibly make idle chit-chat and talk with confidence and ease about literature like your classmates?  If you are a girl who feels like a boy inside, how can you be expected to deal with the world in a straightforward, honest, candid manner?  Sonia’s solution was to remain on the fringes, to listen and learn, but stay quiet behind the wall she had erected between herself and the world.

In this post Henry tells you all about the destruction of that wall, but I can fill you in on the aftermath and how it played out in the school community.  I always found it interesting that Henry was not the least bit touchy about his transition.  After stepping in front of the class in November and reading a prepared statement, he simply let things evolve in a natural way.  When someone would slip and call him “Sonia,” or refer to him with a female pronoun, he would just smile, and usually wait for a chorus of voices around him to correct the offending person.   Eventually, Henry assumed the role of thoughtful and patient teacher, always willing to step up and educate anyone interested in issues germane to the LGBTQ community.  

From my perspective as Henry’s teacher, I watched it all unfold -- and learned a great deal. About Henry.  About what it means to be transgender.  About how accepting who you are can lead to positive changes and wonderful things in all aspects of your life. Through his bravery and idealistic determination to be the person he wanted to be, Henry Aceves made our school community a better place.

Since high school Henry has been attending Emerson College in Boston, MA, working towards his BFA in Theatre with concentrations in playwriting and dramaturgy. He participates in two student theatre groups, Emerson Shakespeare Society and Mercutio Troupe, and has performed and done dramaturgy for numerous student theatre productions. 

Here, Henry writes about his decision to come out as transgender as a transcendent experience.  “My post is about one main thing,” he said.  “The importance of not being afraid to live your truth.”

- C.H.

I came out as a transgender man the fall of my junior year of high school. Up until the moment before I told my parents I was trans, I debated whether or not I could just wait until college to come out. I told myself that it would be easier if I did.  It wouldn’t be like my high school, where I’d been going since junior kindergarten and where everyone knew me as a girl. At college, no one would know who I was before I was Henry. It would be a fresh start.

But I knew I wouldn’t be able to wait that long. Now that I knew I was trans, I was certain that I wanted to to be my real self as soon as possible. I couldn’t keep pretending for an entire school year that I was a girl-- even pretending day by day was taxing. I felt like I was lying to my friends, to my family, and to my teachers. Every one of those people,  who knew me and cared about me, was hurting me without realizing it. Every time they called me by my birth name was like being pricked with a needle: it doesn’t seem like a big deal at first but being pricked with needles nearly every second of the day quickly becomes excruciating. Just as powerful as the pain, however, was the excitement of finally figuring out who I was and needing to share it with the world. There was a word for everything I’d been feeling since I’d been eight years old! I had to shout it from the mountaintops, or in the words of Walt Whitman, “sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

So I did. I sent my parents an email during my free block, because I knew that if I sat them down face-to-face, the words wouldn’t come out the way I wanted them to. In hindsight, I wish I’d tried anyway. I met with the head of the Upper School and discussed the best way to tell my teachers and classmates. I emailed my teachers and met with them to talk about it and the Monday after Thanksgiving Break, I stood up at the beginning of each of my classes and came out. It was incredibly nerve-wracking. It was wildly, deliriously freeing.

When capstone time rolled around senior year, I decided to write a one-act play about a trans man in a mental hospital in the 1960s. I drew inspiration from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest to tell a story that, barely fifty years ago, could have been my own. I named the main character Sebastian, after the character from one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, Twelfth Night. It was difficult to write but this wasn’t a story I’d heard before and I felt passionately about telling it. My freshman year of college, I submitted it to the Performing Arts department’s New Works Festival and it was one of three short plays performed. Later that year, I was cast as Sebastian in Emerson Shakespeare Society’s production of Twelfth Night.

I’m now in the fall of my junior year of college. I’ve been taking testosterone for three and a half years now and am two years post-top for top surgery, meaning that my chest now looks like a cisgender man’s chest. I’m so lucky to have parents, teachers, and friends who supported me every step of the way even when things were difficult. My love of performing Shakespeare has only increased and I’m taking a class in playwriting this semester.

My barbaric yawp will never be silenced, as its echoes still reverberate through the man I’m becoming. I will shout my story and encourage others to tell theirs for as long as I can, because everyone deserves to hear the glory that comes from their own, untamed, utterly barbaric YAWP!