I recently picked up a copy of Gendertrash From Hell, a new release from Little Puss. Gendertrash From Hell was a zine published in the early-to-mid-1990s "Mirha Soleil-Ross and Xanthra Phillippa MacKay, fed up with a gay scene that rejected trans people and a trans scene that saw no alternative to going 'stealth'," that was collected and remastered for publication.
Aside from the collection being so very resonant today, when browsing through its pages[^1], I was very much transported back to the mid-90s, when my own trans consciousness was growing.
Trying to imagine how I would react, had I come across such a zine as a teen, has been an interesting thing to contemplate[^2]. While I'd like to say that it might have changed things for me, I know that I would likely have dropped it like a hot potato and been afraid of the world it was presenting. At that point, I couldn't even say the words to myself.
Still, at the risk of indulging a little retcon, it's already feeding into my own need to find ways to go back and find little Charlotte, buried deep in the closet, and draw her a line to a future where she is out and proud.
I am reminded of a trip to Toronto in - I think - 1997.[^3] It was before Christmas and Toronto's weather Toronto'd well: it was rainy and gloomy. I was wearing my standard least-uncomfortable clothes of baggy jeans, a band t-shirt (probably Nine Inch Nails), and my blue check bush jacket. I was carrying a canvas crossbody bag, which to me internally was a purse, but to keep up appearances (or at least keep people on their toes), it was an "like an ammo bag" if it ever came up.
In other words, it was a perfect uniform to wear for a 1990s egg[^4] to long for the things she'd prefer to wear. She probably fogged a window or two outside Le Chateau.
At one point after returning to the hotel we were staying at on Carlton, I decided to go out for a little walk on by myself to listen to my new CDs. I turned up Church and walked through the Village. I didn't stop anywhere (or even dare to linger[^5]), but I remember being both amazed and scared at what I saw. Like, people could just kinda be there in their own way. Maybe ...someday ...I coul -.
No. That was too close to touching the element. Plus, I wasn't like them. I don't even like men! I quickly turned left back toward Yonge and looped back to the hotel. Yes! Good walk. Could use the exercise. Love these albums. Glad I could get them.
As a life event, it was a complete nothing, but is one of those things that remained positively burned into my memory and helped keep a flicker of "what if?" in the back of my head that kept me coming back to the closet door.
Of course, I only opened the door in 2019 and came out fully in 2022, it took decades.
November 22, 2025
[^1] Since I am working on Emily Zhou's Girlfriends, it was just a little browse. I will be reading it in earnest once I'm finished :)
[^2] In this imagined alternative universe, there was a book store in South Porcupine or Timmins that carried it (lolno) and/or, I would have (a) known about Glad Day Books; and (b) visited somehow on a family vacation, and/or (c) found out about Gendertrash and had the confidence to order it through the mail without my parents knowing. Instead, I ended up with the comphet and tradwife world of transsexual-dot-org and the trans fiction of varying quality available at places like the Trans section at nifty.org, Crystal's StorySite or Sapphire's Place, or eventually Fictionmania.
[^3] It must have been 1997, because I was excited to visit the Sam's and HMV on Yonge and I walked out with Sneaker Pimps' Becoming X and Radiohead's OK Computer.
[^4] While I am not entirely wild about the egg metaphor, it has undergone a frame extension since being coined to encompass those who do not realize they are trans and those who have not come out, making it well-enough understood. Although I didn't always have the language or frame, I am one of those who "always" knew.
[^5] I will never not feel bad in the end about (probably) making other trans women feel awkward in public before I was out. My penance, I suppose, is being that trans woman who sometimes feels awkward when she catches the same eyes from someone who may not be out.