Against Me! - Transgender Dysphoria Blues

Lyaiera

I absolutely love this album. I connect with the lyrics unlike any other piece of art in my life, in fact I never would have thought a piece of music (or anything else) could make me feel as much as this album does.

Laura Jane Grace announced she's trans around the very same time I accepted my trans'ness (around May 2012.) One of my closest friends is a punk and I told him via text message, "You know how Tom Gabel of Against Me is trans? Well I am too." Of course he had no idea about LJG but he was cool about me. Then Transgender Dysphoria Blues came out on the same day I started taking oestrogen, two very significant moments in my life parallel with Against Me.

I don't think the music is anything amazingly innovative. I don't think Against Me are a stand out band in terms of the music they have written. Reinventing Axl Rose is a favourite of mine but there's nothing musically to astound, rather it's the effect of the entire album and the passion in LJG's voice. Pints of Guinness Makes You Strong is amazing lyrically and again impacts the drunken Irish part of me and that I have/had a lot of problems with alcohol and drugs. And to listen to a song about the death of a man and experiencing it as a woman is a double attack on my life.

Transgender Dysphoria Blues' lyrics are just so relatable that I'm stunned. The opening track is like an anthem for trans desire, the anger in the ways you'll never be seen as what you want most to be seen as is palpable. "You've got no cnut in your strut, you've got no hips to shake!" Are the reminders of who you are, where you're coming from and who you want to be. It's brought up elsewhere on the album about how LJG "used to be a manly man", punk as fcuk, drinking, smoking, etc. And I feel a connection with that, I was hard drinking, smoking and all that and the attitudes I was expected to display towards other people just didn't align with how I wanted to treat or be treated by people. And the entire album (and what I've seen of LJG) is showing that you can be a hard drinking, hard smoking woman and still care and love and even still be strong and passionate and someone who does have cnut in her strut with hips to shake.

I started listening to this just as I took oestrogen for the first time and I can honestly say it's been the sound track to the most emotional week of my life (I'm hoping things calm down from today.) I've been feeling hope and relief at finally having oestrogen and still been crying myself to sleep because of what I've missed out on and what I am unlikely to attain in my life. And everything about this album speaks directly to that experience. It's sad along with me, sharing in my despair, and it's punk and angry in demanding a genuine life for me, a trans woman.

It makes me feel like there's someone out there who actually understands what I'm going through. And I've never had that feeling with anything or anyone ever before.

Hamhide

Pretty cool Lyaiera, music has an effect on me too. Just before I started to transition I was seriously depressed and metallica really got me through that. I was surprised how the lyrics of there songs fit my life so well. Some video games helped too, Skyrim,the Last of us, even Dark Souls to an extent, you can be a badass bitch killing dragons and sh1t and still cry when you hit an emotional wall.

Shakti

seminal

ah that's better