Mel Woods is a trans nonbinary journalist (they/them) who grew up outside Red Deer, Alberta, next door to a semi-truck driver named Todd. Five years ago they started testosterone, and they think about that choice every week. Mel shares what reality TV taught a generation of queer kids, what testosterone does that nobody warns you about, and why some cis women take it too. They also get into reporting on anti-trans politics from inside the story, and why going to play Magic: The Gathering after a brutal news day counts as resistance.
Mel Woods is a trans nonbinary journalist (they/them) who grew up outside Red Deer, Alberta, next door to a semi-truck driver named Todd. Five years ago they started testosterone, and they think about that choice every week. Mel shares what reality TV taught a generation of queer kids, what testosterone does that nobody warns you about, and why some cis women take it too. They also get into reporting on anti-trans politics from inside the story, and why going to play Magic: The Gathering after a brutal news day counts as resistance.
About Mel Woods
Mel Woods is an award-winning journalist, writer and editor originally from the prairies and now based in Vancouver. Now investigating anti-trans hate in Canada with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, they were previously a senior editor at Xtra Magazine where they covered LGBTQ2S+ news and culture. Their freelance work has appeared in The Walrus, HuffPost Canada, CBC, Vice, Slate, The Tyee, and the Globe and Mail.
Key Topics & Timestamps
00:00 Finding joy in your body
00:33 Meet Mel Woods
03:37 Recognizing yourself
04:33 Self-determination
06:19 Reporting on trans rights
10:41 Reality TV and queer identity
16:13 Gender-neutral clothing
19:39 Charlie Kirk coverage and anti-trans misinformation
26:27 Reporting when you are part of the story
28:38 Closing the laptop and living your life
29:41 What testosterone gave Mel
31:17 Living in a changing body
35:06 Community and access to care
37:52 Advice for starting transition
40:21 Five years on testosterone
40:57 Where to find Mel
41:51 Credits
Find Mel Woods
Website: melwoods.me
Bluesky: @melwoods.me
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Get Queer podcast
Mentioned in This Episode
Produced by Katie Jensen at Vocal Fry Studios.
[00:00] Mel Woods
I love being strong and I love the way that my body is shaped differently. I love the way that I get to carry my body mass in different ways. I love being hairy. That's very fun. I just enjoy existing in my body in ways that I didn't even realize I didn't enjoy before.
[00:33] Michelle Fischler
I'm Michelle Fischler, certified sex therapist, and this is GETSOME. This season, I want to talk about men, what they're told they should be and what happens in bed when they can't be it. Journalist Mel Woods grew up just outside Red Deer, Alberta.
[00:55] Mel Woods
And Red Deer is a very interesting place because I think it's where a lot of folks who work in the oil sands live for the rest of the year. We live right next door to a semi-truck driver.
[01:07] Michelle Fischler
So what does it look like to grow up around that and then choose to express masculinity on purpose?
[01:13] Mel Woods
There's this phrase that often comes around in transmasculine communities about self-made man. You've made yourself, you've chosen this for yourself and you've taken all these really intentional steps, both material when it comes to physical transition, but social and emotional, to make the life that you want to have and I think that's really threatening to a lot of people in power because if you can change your gender, why can't you change your social class?
[01:36] Mel Woods
Why can't you change other parts of your circumstances?
[01:39] Michelle Fischler
Mel uses they-them pronouns and started testosterone five years ago.
[01:44] Mel Woods
I know cis women who take testosterone because it makes them feel good in that sexy horny way. I know cis women who have had top surgery who has made them feel good in a sexy horny way. And I just think that more people should have access to these kind of medications in whatever way is affirming to them, even if it's not explicitly, I want to transition to another gender because that's not really how it works.
[02:06] Michelle Fischler
Mel remembers what it was like to start shopping in men's clothing sections.
[02:11] Mel Woods
I remember buying some of my first men's shirts from Value Village, a much easier place to do that than maybe walking into H&M and braving the actual men's section of H&M. It's a lot easier to go and navigate that through Value Village and find the secondhand shirt that just happens to be the men's one. That's the one I just like better.
[02:28] Michelle Fischler
When I asked Mel what's uncomplicatedly great about being trans, they said, self-determination. For many, that looks like a weekly shot of testosterone.
[02:38] Mel Woods
I could not. And I think about this every time I do my shot. I'm choosing this. I'm choosing to live this life and I'm choosing to make my life better. And I think that's a really important way of framing it because it's hard sometimes. Access to medical care might be expensive and all these different factors play into it but at the end of the day it's your choice you know that was something so powerful and something so beautiful in being able to choose to build the life and the body and a sense of self that you want to have and deserve to have.
[03:05] Michelle Fischler
If you've ever felt like the masculinity you were fitted for at birth needed some tailoring this episode's for you. Here's my conversation with Mel Woods. You wrote an article where you were, I think, sitting on a bus, and you saw your reflection in the glass. And it was, like, the first time that you looked at yourself and you were like, oh, that's me.
[03:37] Mel Woods
Yeah, it's an interesting experience, and I think every trans person goes through this in their own kind of unique ways, and I'm a big proponent of the idea that you don't have to medically or physically transition to be trans and that yourself and your identity is really what you make of it and when you make of it and what that says. And so that moment looks very different for very different people.
[03:56] Mel Woods
What I write about in that article that's about a Lorde song is, yeah, about that idea of kind of seeing that reflection back and saying like, oh, okay, we're actually kind of, it sneaks up on you. That's the thing about physical transition. I think that you don't know until you're going through it, but kind of like aging in any capacity, you don't become aware of the way that time has passed, until you kind of have those moments of contrast.
[04:19] Mel Woods
Very few of us are hyper fixated on watching our bodies age, our bodies change, our faces change and age over time, and I think trans people are a little bit more aware of it than the rest of the world, but everybody goes through that sort of thing. It's an interesting experience to be conscious of.
[04:33] Michelle Fischler
Yeah. What's something about being trans that is just genuinely uncomplicatedly great?
[04:45] Mel Woods
It's self-determination. I often say that I think one of the reasons why a lot of these conservative politicians and bad actors, largely on the far right, are so kind of scared of trans people and seek to legislate us out of existence in some cases and introduce these kinds of laws and policies that are about restricting trans rights, is because trans people kind of represent a sense of freedom and choice that is really threatening to authoritarians and fascists and the like, because we are like a physical manifestation of choosing a better life for yourself.
[05:17] Mel Woods
There's this phrase that often comes around in like transmasculine communities about like self-made man. You've made yourself, you've chosen this for yourself, and you've taken all these really intentional steps, both like material when it comes to physical transition, but social and emotional to make the life that you want to have. And I think that's really threatening to a lot of, again, people in power.
[05:37] Mel Woods
Because if you can change your gender, why can't you change your social class? Why can't you change other parts of your circumstances? And I think that the idea of being able to do that is really scary to certain politicians these days. And so that's why they go and, you know, ban books that teach kids about gender diversity, because if you have that sort of freedom of thought and the freedom to choose the life for yourself that can be better and can feel better, how are you going to do that in other aspects of your life too?
[06:09] Mel Woods
So that's definitely the best part about transness, in my mind, is that kind of possibility model of choosing your own destiny in some ways.
[06:19] Michelle Fischler
Yeah. You've done a lot of reporting on masculinity. You've covered anti-trans policy across Canada for The Walrus and Xtra. What's it like reporting on legislation that's about you?
[06:38] Mel Woods
It's hard. And it's something I actually, I have a big story that's coming out in the first part of 2027 as a collaboration between Xtra and The Walrus that's about that dissonance that I feel because I spend a lot of time reporting on people who are having a really hard time and experiences and these policies and people who live in places like my home province of Alberta that are really suffering under these policies and finding repression but in my own day-to-day life I've had a really easy go of it and it's something that I've had to really kind of grapple with it's like I'm very fortunate I live in Vancouver I often say that I think Vancouver is one of the best cities in the world to be trans, maybe, just by the confluence of social acceptance, our healthcare system, provincially covered healthcare, that sort of thing.
[07:27] Mel Woods
Like, when I started medically transitioning, I didn't encounter really any barriers. It was very easy, it was very smooth, I've had nothing but kind of accepting and affirming community around me. And so to kind of grapple with that dissonance of what it is like to live that life of trans joy that has come very easy, while also spending a lot of my career and my life trying to fight for and elevate up the people who do not have the access to that sort of privilege that kind of just by circumstance.
[07:54] Mel Woods
I just happen to live in the right place at the right time. And it's really interesting because I think that it's important to talk about that too, because I think if we only cover stories of trans suffering, particularly for cisgender audiences and folks who maybe are not as intimately aware of trans communities, if we only cover stories of trans suffering then they're only going to see transness as an experience of suffering.
[08:16] Mel Woods
So this big story that I have coming out is very much talking to other trans adults across Canada who've had an easy time and who talk about the systems and the structures that support us and make our lives easier because it's a solutions journalism thing. It's this idea that like, well, maybe those can be replicated in other places instead of us always fixating on the people trying to take away our rights and the bad things.
[08:37] Mel Woods
Because we have to cover those things. We have to talk about what Danielle Smith is doing in Alberta and what Trump is doing in the States. And we have to talk about all that. But I think it's also really important to center, I think joy is too twee of a term, but like center thriving and center success and center the possibility that things don't have to be hard.
[08:56] Michelle Fischler
And I wonder if, because your experience was smoother than others, that that has also given you the space to really step up and be able to see both sides, right? And also being that voice for people where it hasn't been that smooth, but also giving that hopeful message of, hey, look, this is where we can go with this. This is where you could go with this, if it is where you want to get when it feels good in your body and in your mind.
[09:39] Mel Woods
And having the capacity to compartmentalize those things. You're right. And I've talked about this in various pieces before that I'm a big proponent of possibility models about this idea of like, you see the person who is doing, and it's like, even before I came out as trans, like I would watch like these trans YouTubers And I'd be like, oh, well, maybe that's what my life could be like in five years.
[09:57] Mel Woods
And now here I am five, six years later. And it's been interesting now in my life, both as a journalist and as a trans person entering my mid career, I'm in my thirties now. And I think I find this in both the context of being a journalist and trans person interacting with younger folks or folks beginning that journey in that career or in that identity and that experience and being like, oh no, now I'm the possibility model.
[10:20] Mel Woods
And it's a weird pivot to kind of turn your brain around and say like, oh, I'm the old hag now, like, I'm the one who's been around the bend. I'm glad that I'm able to be here and have the capacity and haven't burnt myself out yet and haven't crashed out and gone somewhere else because it's, I know how important that can be for fostering and growing those people who are going to come after me in this industry and hopefully make it even better.
[10:41] Michelle Fischler
Which reminds me of just your experience of watching reality TV yourself. You spoke about this on Get Queer, which is a podcast that you hosted that focused on looking at what reality TV, how it shaped your queer identity. What does reality TV give queer people that scripted TV can't?
[11:12] Mel Woods
Yeah, you know, a central thesis of Get Queer, which is available on all your podcast platforms, go check it out. I think that when you talk about scripted TV and the scripted TV that I saw growing up, I always think about like Ryan Murphy's Glee, Grey's Anatomy, or all these kind of like network TV shows that are very heightened and when a queer trans person is written into those shows, especially in that era, I'm talking like the mid 2000s to the early 2010s, there's a reason that they're there, they're there to be the gay character, they're there to do this.
[11:40] Mel Woods
And what's different with reality TV is that you have actual real people. Like you actually have this like human people with their human identities. And sometimes they're cast for a specific archetype or they're cast for a specific role depending on the show, but they're actually a real human person. And I think for, especially during that era, when I was growing up, for a lot of like middle America and middle Canada, that's people's, or at least their first conscious exposure to a queer or trans person might be on a show like American Idol, seeing Clay Aiken on there or Adam Lambert And so I think that that kind of representation is really organic, and it's still heightened, and it's still edited, and it's still constructed, and this is the stuff we talk about on the podcast.
[12:21] Mel Woods
But for me, like, there's a whole episode where we talk about Zeke Smith from Survivor, who was this trans man on Survivor. He was on two seasons of Survivor, and the first season of Survivor that he was on, he wasn't out at all to the audience or to his fellow castmates. Like, he just was a fun guy in a floral shirt, having a great time.
[12:38] Mel Woods
And they brought him back for the next season afterwards. And about halfway through that, it was kind of an All-Stars-y style of a season. And about halfway through that season, another contestant outed him on camera at one of the tribal councils where, and used it as this kind of like, gameplay move arguing that he was deceiving everybody in the game, because he was deceiving them about being trans.
[13:01] Mel Woods
And it was this really kind of watershed moment for the show. A lot has been said about how kind of the host Jeff Probst handled that, how the contestant handled that. The whole tribal council basically agreed that this guy who had forcibly outed Zeke just needed to go. Like they didn't even vote. They just booted him out right there. And Zeke has written about his own experiences with the production of the show and how that's happened.
[13:22] Mel Woods
And he's now gone on and he does a lot of work with GLAAD and does a lot of kind of much more, he's turned that experience into kind of his career of advocacy in the entertainment space for trans people, which was really cool. So it was really interesting to be able to talk to him for the podcast because I wasn't out as trans at all when I saw that happening.
[13:40] Mel Woods
But he would have been my favorite on the season before. And it was like, wow, look at that fun guy with the shirt and he had the personality I really connected to. And so it was really interesting when I learned that he was trans and then a few years later kind of started to go through my own journey, being able to say like, oh, well, that makes sense.
[13:55] Mel Woods
And I think a lot of people have experiences like that, no matter your identity, about having that kind of moment of clarity. And I think reality TV is kind of uniquely positioned for that because you're not seeing Kurt Hummel on Glee, the most archetypal capital G gay character ever, you're seeing just like a human being living their life filtered through the lens of something like Survivor or something like, you know, we do a later episode about the Real Housewives with Racquel Chevremont, who's a lesbian Real Housewife.
[14:22] Mel Woods
And that's been an interesting experience for people to get to see on TV in that way.
[14:26] Michelle Fischler
Yeah, it was lovely listening to you interview Zeke, because it almost felt like Zeke to you was like Sue Johanson to me, where you don't even, you're not consciously aware of, oh, I want to talk about sex for the rest of my life. Or there was something about it that like really quieted the shame. And for you, I think you were saying that it wasn't necessarily something that you were totally conscious of before, and it was just something brewing in you.
[15:04] Michelle Fischler
It was a real, like, identifying with what was happening and learning more about yourself, which was really neat to listen to.
[15:11] Mel Woods
Yeah, and I appreciate that you use that example, because I think we talked about the phrase in like queer and trans communities is your roots, your like, person that made you gay. It's like we saw whoever, Velma from Scooby-Doo, and that's how I knew I was a lesbian or whatever it may be. But I think that cis people, straight people have those experiences too because all of our identities and all aspects of identities are kind of just amalgamations of the experiences that came before.
[15:33] Mel Woods
And like, the reason that I cheer for the Philadelphia Eagles football team is because my mom had a friend from Philadelphia when I was a kid. Like that's the only reason but that's a huge part of my identity. And I think in transness, it's the same way. It's like you build your sense of gender, your sense of masculinity, your sense of experience, based off of the people that you interact with both in your real life and in the media that you consume.
[15:55] Mel Woods
So I think it's really important to always say that's not just a thing that trans people experience or queer people experience, it's like we all are kind of building ourselves constantly based off of the experiences and people that we interact with.
[16:13] Michelle Fischler
You've written pieces about gender neutral clothing, including the dysphoria hoodie. You noted that often brands will slap a gender neutral label on somewhat shapeless clothing designs to hide the body and call that progress. What's the difference between hiding your body and choosing how it gets shown?
[16:45] Mel Woods
Yeah. And it's funny too, because it's like, I wrote that article kind of a while ago And I think that the fashion, even in the last like five years or whatever it's been since I wrote that article, has changed. And now oversized is very trendy and very in. It's like, I'm now embracing big pants in my life for the first time. And I've accepted that big pants is the life I should be living, which is just very funny because it's like, I think, you know, when I was a teenager, it was like, oh, we gotta wear the tightest pants ever and the tightest shirts ever.
[17:12] Mel Woods
And now even again, in the last five years, we're now in baggy world. So the big baggy dysphoria hoodie, all the teens, all the cool kids are wearing it these days. So it's less of a shapeless sack. But yeah, I think that there's a, it's like corporate— And this is again, something that I think has changed a lot in the last five years too, about the way that kind of corporations or brands interact with gender diversity.
[17:33] Mel Woods
And sometimes I kind of long for the days of the gender neutral dysphoria hoodie again, in this kind of current moment where we've seen so much mainstream support for queer and trans people rolled back at like a corporate level. I joke about the dysphoria hoodie and it's something, but that's also something that's really affirming for a lot of people to be able to just like, cozy up and be a little worm.
[17:54] Mel Woods
And at the end of the day, the most important thing in any situation is us having autonomy to set the stage for ourselves. And when it comes to clothing and things like that, I think size inclusivity becomes such an important conversation because sometimes the big dysphoria hoodie is the only option for you if you are a person of a larger size. You know, I think often about my like trans feminine friends who have a hard time finding shoes that fit because they don't make Slay boots, diva heels in a size 12.
[18:22] Mel Woods
My wife is cis, but she's quite tall and so something she connects with our trans friends about like trying to find tall girl clothes is really hard out there. And similarly for me it's like I had to have my suit for my wedding custom-made because I've got wide hips. But again, that's one of those issues that is a problem for cis people too.
[18:38] Mel Woods
It is not a unique to trans people problem. Their bodies come in all shapes and sizes. Progress for one kind of group within there is progress for everybody. And if we expand our clothing size ranges and we expand the possibilities of what is kind of normal for a person to wear, what is accessible for a person to wear, everybody benefits from it.
[18:56] Mel Woods
And everybody benefits from being able to kind of challenge gender. It's like I know cis men who paint their nails and wear a skirt every now and then. And they have no interest in being trans, but that's what feels good to them in their idea. And if we make the way that we lay out clothing stores, the way that we do sizing out in the world more accessible so that, you know, those guys can do that when they want to, it also helps the trans girlies who want that and it helps all these different sorts of people.
[19:22] Mel Woods
So when I think about my own personal stance on these things, it's very much like, free the clothing. We all deserve to feel sexy and free.
[19:39] Michelle Fischler
After Charlie Kirk was killed, the conversation about trans people got worse, not better. What do you wish people understood about those weeks and months afterwards and how it felt from a trans perspective?
[19:57] Mel Woods
It's an interesting thing because I think that doing the work that I do, I have, unfortunately, a kind of deep understanding of the path that got us here And the way I always kind of talk about it is, it's like, it's this like snowball rolling down a hill, like, there's, none of this happens in isolation. It is all part of this kind of discourse narrative that's coming before, and not to say that, like, trans people had it great before 10 years ago, but the reason that there were bathroom bills and things like that are, you know, what I was talking about before, about this idea that there's certain political classes that feel very threatened by the freedom that trans people represent.
[20:38] Mel Woods
and also are kind of quite opportunistic about it and that there's this narrative that has become very convenient for a lot of kind of political forces. We see it in Alberta, we see it in the federal conservatives, we see it in the states, we see it in the UK, that trans people are a threat to kids and specifically to our daughters. Either your daughters are going to be trans themselves or that they are going to be assaulted by somebody coming into a washroom.
[21:02] Mel Woods
Every time I talk about this I have to say there is no evidence about any of these claims. There is nothing out there tangible, but it's a political opportunism. And so this started in earnest, like a decade ago at this point, and it kind of has spread its little tendrils out throughout society. We see this so much in the conversation around sports as such a good example, because trans women have never been a problem in sports.
[21:24] Mel Woods
There is no tangible evidence anywhere. There has been one trans woman at the Olympics and she came in last place. Like there's just, I can stress out, I can pull out all the statistics I need to say that this never happens, but it's become this massive electoral issue because it preys on this kind of idea about fairness and our kids. And so I bring all this up because these tendrils have kind of come throughout society.
[21:45] Mel Woods
That's how we get these kind of book bans, that's how we get this and this. And one particularly nasty thread that has come off of this is this idea that trans people are predisposed to violence. And that is something that connects to the history of the institutionalization and medicalization of transness, and this idea that there's something inherently dangerous about trans people. Well again, and this one even more so.
[22:13] Mel Woods
Literally no proof, no evidence, no science, no research, nothing about this. This is just this kind of idea that has been percolating. And then it's been really pushed forward by far right media in moments of crisis. And so you can go back through, and there's been some really good violence prevention projects that have good stats on this. Every time there is some sort of mass shooting or horrific event, you will see these voices come up online and immediately try and start poking at it to say, oh, maybe it was a trans person.
[22:39] Mel Woods
Oh, here's this photo of this person who was seen wearing a dress. Here's this, this, oh, this person had a trans roommate. And it comes from a similar place that I think the racist approaches in these events also come up about people saying like, Oh, the shooter shouted Allahu Akbar at the time. And then suddenly we get this kind of deep, deep anti-Muslim racism that was coming through in these events of crisis.
[23:02] Mel Woods
So flash forward to the Charlie Kirk shooting that you just mentioned. This was an event that I saw play out in real time. It was the middle of the workday. It was something I think a lot of people online saw playing out in real time that I was kind of breaking news event of conservative commentator and activist Charlie Kirk at an event in Utah at a university that there were shots fired, that he was down and all this sort of thing, and as news rolls out, he is dead, the gunman was at large, and there's this kind of manhunt for the shooter.
[23:30] Mel Woods
In this instance, of course, all these far right voices online started spurting up and being like, oh, maybe the shooter was trans. Oh, Charlie Kirk was answering a question about transness and violence right before he was shot. Oh, this, this and this. And then two kind of threads came off of this. One is that there was the Wall Street Journal reported that bullet casings were found at the site that had, quote, transgender ideology on them.
[23:56] Mel Woods
Now, that is its own problematic term for a lot of reasons, because what is transgender ideology? It is not anything tangible. But this Wall Street Journal headline of trans bullets found at the site was picked up and reported, even though it wasn't confirmed by authorities. It was a very just bad piece of journalism, to be frank. That was picked up and reported somewhere like 93 other outlets, I think the Trans Journalists Association eventually found.
[24:22] Mel Woods
And that spread around online. And of course, now we have even more fuel to the fire of all these right wing media outlets saying like, oh, it was a trans person. And then the second thread that comes off of is once a suspect was identified with the shooter, we find out that the suspect's roommate was trans. And that is not suspect himself, but roommate.
[24:39] Mel Woods
And that is enough that has fueled them all up. So to go all the way back to your original question with all that context in mind, it sucked because it's one of those things where, even though the Wall Street Journal retracted their story after the fact, quite quickly actually, the damage was already done. It had spread around and you cannot guarantee that your uncle in Edmonton or whatever, who read that story, is going to go back and be like, did the Wall Street Journal follow up on that?
[25:06] Mel Woods
No, it's like he's already read that story and he's like, oh, the transes are coming out and shooting the conservative commentators. And it's like, that's not happening. And so it was very frustrating in those times. It's frustrating to see that kind of failure of journalism and this narrative that has been building for, again, like over a decade at that point, kind of get a win in that sense.
[25:24] Mel Woods
And even though it was retracted, even though it was commented on, it spread enough and it was associated enough to the point that I wrote about this in that piece I wrote the day after the shooting, after kind of all of this was happening, that I was really worried that it would inspire counter violence, right? And I think a lot of trans people were saying like, well, now this gives the worst people in the world permission and gives them a reason.
[25:48] Mel Woods
And because again, there has been no reason, there has been no proof, there's no evidence, but for these people who are constantly hunting for it, looking for a reason to hurt trans people, maybe this is the reason that they will take. And like, I'm glad, and I wrote about this recently for the one year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death that I was proven wrong, that we have not seen some sort of large scale political violence against trans people in a physical sense.
[26:10] Mel Woods
There's still legislative violence happening all the time. But it was still a really scary moment to see how quickly the narrative can really be galvanized. And that snowball that I was talking about just, like, pick up so much speed that we can't really stop it. It's like, I spent my life trying to stop that snowball, but it's very hard.
[26:27] Michelle Fischler
Yeah, I was just, as you were speaking, I was trying to imagine what happened for you in that moment, where the coverage started to come up and you were reading about it. How does it impact you? Like, does it get in the way of you being able to fall asleep when something like that comes up? How do you process it enough to then be able to put it out into an article the following day?
[26:54] Mel Woods
Even before I worked at Xtra, I worked at HuffPost, which was a very, like, fast-paced, kind of breaking news environment. And so not to be like, I'm girded, I am jaded, I am hardened, but I think I did learn some really important skills around that kind of compartmentalization about, like, I have a job to do when I'm here online. And in the context of the work I was doing at Xtra, this story in particular, it was like, well, nobody else is going to say this, for a lot of reasons within mainstream media has a lot of institutional transphobia.
[27:22] Mel Woods
Like the New York Times isn't going to write this story. The CBC is probably not going to write this story here in Canada. And so like, I'm well positioned to have a platform to be able to actually say this and point this thing out. And that's what's really important about having queer trans press like Xtra that has the kind of editorial support to let you do that sort of thing.
[27:38] Mel Woods
And I often talk about the work I was doing at Xtra as saying like we exist within a few universal truths that I do not have to prove in the way I do at other publications that like trans kids should have rights. Like some of these things that the burden of proof and other publications is like so high that you start kind of ouroboros and convoluted conversations.
[27:59] Mel Woods
Whereas I was very fortunate working with Xtra to be able to say like, well, it's the truth universally that this is bad. Like we can, we can actually say that. And as a journalist, I'm allowed to say that. I often joke to my wife that unfortunately when the news is worst is when I am like best at my job and it is that kind of you click in and you just do the thing that has to get done because it's like really clear.
[28:19] Mel Woods
In a situation like this, it is actually pretty clear. I knew exactly what we needed to say because it's this narrative that had been going on for this whole time. Like the evidence is all there. The proof is all there. And that's, I think, when I've done my best work is when I'm responding in a moment and being able to pull on that kind of career of work that I've built to that point.
[28:38] Mel Woods
And then to the personal side of it, there's a really important part of that day where you close the laptop and then you go and do something else. And I am a big proponent of not working overtime. It's like sometimes I work unconventional hours, but I also logged off early that day and went for a walk in my neighborhood And went and played Magic: The Gathering with my friends and like had a dinner and I think I've written about this before, but I think if you let yourself be miserable, or you let yourself get trapped in that kind of misery cycle, then you're just letting them win.
[29:08] Mel Woods
Like, that's what all these kind of bad guys out there want is for you to be miserable and you to not live your fullest, most successful life. So, yes, it is my job sometimes to be knee-deep in the misery, but getting out of that and going and living your life of trans joy or queer joy or Black joy or whatever your joy is for you, that is doing politics.
[29:29] Mel Woods
That is doing the thing. And that is a really important thing that I try to embody every day.
[29:41] Michelle Fischler
What's the best thing testosterone gave you that nobody warned you about?
[29:48] Mel Woods
I think it was an interesting thing. Testosterone's really the talk of the town these days with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying that all the soldiers are going to be tested for their T levels and everything and something that I think other transmasc folks in my life and I have gotten giggle out of because it's very interesting. And it's one of those things that I didn't necessarily know for sure I wanted for me.
[30:08] Mel Woods
And I think that that's something I like to really stress to people is that it is like any medication, like any treatment, you can try it. And then as soon as it doesn't feel good, you can stop it. But if it keeps feeling good, then you'll regret not starting it sooner. And that's something I wish our medical system was a little bit more supportive of, that you don't have to jump through these kind of hoops to access these kinds of medications and things like that.
[30:33] Mel Woods
I think there's a lot of people across the gender binary. I know cis women who take testosterone because it makes them feel good in a sexy, horny way. I know cis women who've had top surgery who has made them feel good in a sexy, horny way. And I just think that more people should have access to this kind of freedom of accessing these kind of medications in whatever way is affirming to them, even if it's not explicitly, I want to transition to another gender.
[30:57] Mel Woods
Because that's not really how it works. I love being strong and I love the way that my body is shaped differently. I love the way that I get to carry my body mass in different ways. I love being hairy. That's very fun. I just enjoy existing in my body in ways that I didn't even realize I didn't enjoy before.
[31:17] Michelle Fischler
Sex educators talk about being in your body. What does that phrase mean when your relationship with your body is still evolving?
[31:28] Mel Woods
That's not something that's unique to trans people and I think aging is such a good analog for this because I'm at the point in my physical transition. I've been on testosterone for over five years now at this point and all of the things that are new or different because of the testosterone have happened. And anything that is changing and evolving with my body now is because I'm just aging.
[31:51] Mel Woods
I'm aging in a different kind of, down a different road than I maybe had been aging down before. But the things that are changing and evolving in my body, the way that something sags or I've got a new line on my eye or my hairline goes back a little bit, those are not unique to the testosterone or me being a trans person.
[32:09] Mel Woods
Those are just existing and living in a body that's changing and growing. The way you put on weight, you lose weight, our bodies are constantly changing, you know. My younger sister, you know, just lost a lot of weight on GLP-1 and, like, that has completely changed her relationship to sex in ways that I've also had my own relationship to sex change by taking this kind of medication.
[32:29] Mel Woods
And so it's an interesting one, but I think that being aware of that changing and evolving and celebrating the joy of the new things that come along with it is really, really great and important. There's a movie that came out this summer called Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which is directed by Jane Schoenbrun, who is this very, very cool, non-binary trans visionary director who did the I Saw the TV Glow a couple of years ago.
[32:52] Mel Woods
And it's explicitly about the experience of sex after transition. Like it is this movie that Schoenbrun in interviews has talked about the play that kind of comes with the idea of sex after transition, because once you're finally, things start to feel right, then you kind of open up your mind and your capacity to go further down that and not be afraid of embracing the things that might be camp or corny or silly or weird because you kind of understand that it feels right and good.
[33:23] Mel Woods
And I really connected to that film a lot and I know a lot of my other trans friends did as well because it's like actually seeing that verbalized and talked about in a way that I never had before.
[33:32] Michelle Fischler
I love how you keep bringing the human element back to it that it's not just a trans thing. It's a human experience. Because I think as a sex therapist, often, regardless of how they identify, there can be a real struggle in just paying attention to what's happening in their body. It doesn't feel safe. And that it's so different for everybody. It's a unique experience across the spectrum.
[34:05] Mel Woods
Yeah, and for me when I was coming into my sexuality before I was out as trans and whatnot, like there was discomfort that I didn't have a word for or a name for, but there were certain aspects or things that were kind of uncomfortable or felt off or weird. And again, for some people, the word or name for that is transness, and then you transition and you realize and you fix some of those things.
[34:25] Mel Woods
But for other people, there's other things holding you back or there's other things that are impacting your ability to kind of feel lived in, in your body. And I think that's, again, in the case of a lot of trans people, if anything, we have an easy fix because you can medically transition and it makes a lot of those things better. For some other people, you have to work through different things and sort it through.
[34:43] Mel Woods
But I think being able to retroactively look back and place that, I think, if anything, makes that discomfort retroactively feel justified or verified when you're like, there was a reason for this. And now that I've kind of explored that, I can actually live this kind of free, open life that I have been wanting to, and just didn't have the words to describe.
[35:06] Mel Woods
I'm really lucky that I came into my queerness and my transness at the age that I did, because I think that I talked to a lot of late in life folks who come out much later in life because they exist in circumstances and situations where maybe they felt that wrongness or that discomfort, and it's not until they're in their 60s that they're finally in some sort of situation that they can actually live in.
[35:28] Mel Woods
And, you know, talking to those kinds of folks, I love talking to older trans people because I think there's a lot to learn from those experiences, but they always would have given anything to be able to kind of do that earlier on and live the life that they're living earlier on. And so that's why I often talk about my fortunate-ness of both location and time period, that I was exposed to those possibility models, I was exposed to the idea that life could be better, and the barriers to me accessing it were very minimal.
[35:58] Mel Woods
If it had been harder for me to start a testosterone or get top surgery, for example, then maybe I wouldn't have done it. But the fact that the Trans Care BC system is so well structured and there was just an email I could email and immediately that just set up a bunch of nurse appointments and conversations and things, that made it really easier for me to do that.
[36:16] Mel Woods
But I think people I knew in Red Deer maybe would have a harder time. I always think about these statistics that come out where everybody, especially these kind of bad actors on the right, are like, it's a social contagion. There's more trans people than ever before. And it's like, no, we're just in a society where more people feel comfortable coming into themselves and accessing things for themselves.
[36:38] Mel Woods
There's always been trans people. There's been trans people back as long as we can say. And there's always going to be more people. But it's basically like you've just got a bunch of unlit matches and now we actually are able to kind of spark some of them. But those people are still there. And whether they figure things out when they're 19 or when they're 79, they're still a trans person.
[36:58] Mel Woods
And we're just very fortunate, I'm very fortunate, to live in this time and in this moment where I had the kind of community and space around me to be able to come into that earlier. Because if I hadn't, it wouldn't make me any less trans, it would just make me more miserable. And that's no fun for anybody. So that's kind of what I wish for everybody to be able to have that kind of level of experience.
[37:19] Mel Woods
both in their kind of identity and their gender in their sexuality, in all those things is being able to have the exposure to all these kinds of possibility models to be able to try all these different things, to see all these different things, to read books with different kinds of people and see movies with different kinds of people and have friends and community who are different kinds of people who talk openly about all this stuff, because then you know what's for you and what's not for you.
[37:43] Mel Woods
And that can really help you find that kind of joy and that kind of actualized experience sooner in your life.
[37:52] Michelle Fischler
If someone listening is just starting their transition, what do you want them to hear?
[38:01] Mel Woods
Do what is best for you. You know, we exist in a world where we're often told not to be selfish and et cetera, but like this is a circumstance where you are supposed to be selfish. And so do it on your own terms and when it comes to medical transitions specifically, you're not always going to encounter affirming networks or things like that.
[38:19] Mel Woods
But know that you can do these things on your own terms. You can find alternatives. You can find community. That is the most important thing, I think, is like know that you are not alone and maybe you live somewhere where that community is not physically present. but the online spaces are so wonderful. When I was interviewing people for this big article that I have coming out in January, a lot of people talked about like online spaces and forums.
[38:44] Mel Woods
Like there's a woman I talked to in Ottawa who talked about how being on video gaming forums is where she met other trans women from around the world who kind of helped her when she had questions about things. And she was able to talk to like, she was like, one of my best friends is like an older trans woman in Tennessee, who just like really helped me work through some stuff and so finding those spaces and whatever they look like to you is I think the most important thing because I think that you're not alone in this journey and also so many people have gone down these paths before you and helped kind of set up all the different kind of possibilities you have and the other thing I'll say is that like I think we often push back against this idea that being trans is a choice right Like, there's this very Lady Gaga, born this way argument that we use to say, like, we are inherently trans.
[39:33] Mel Woods
Like, I think it's a really useful argument when we're talking about, like, trans kids, for example. Like, they can't change who they are, and we should be able to support them and things like that. But at the same time, the act of transitioning is a choice that you make every single day. I think about this every time I do my shot, that it's like, I could not, but I'm choosing this.
[39:50] Mel Woods
I'm choosing to live this life, and I'm choosing to make my life better. And I think that that's a really important way of framing it, because it's all about self-determination and agency, like you are choosing to make things better. And it's hard sometimes, access to medical care might be expensive and all these different factors play into it, but at the end of the day, it's your choice, you know, that is something so powerful and something so beautiful in being able to choose to build the life and the body and a sense of self that you want to have and deserve to have, because I promise it feels great.
[40:21] Mel Woods
I've been feeling very retrospective about all of this right now, because It's like five years. It's an arbitrary timeline, but it was my five years on T in September. And it kind of just flew by and I almost forgot about it on the day of. And it's like, wow, if I told me five years ago that I would kind of just like miss this because I'm out living my life and I'm out doing things and thriving and doing all the things that I had hoped that this would open up the door for me to be able to do, I think that's really important to to highlight.
[40:49] Michelle Fischler
Mm. Thank you so much, Mel, for being here.
[40:55] Mel Woods
Oh, and thank you for having me.
[40:57] Michelle Fischler
Where can people find you and your work?
[41:00] Mel Woods
Yeah, so I just recently left my position at Xtra, and I'm now working with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network doing investigations into anti-trans hate in Canada, which is continuing some heavy work, but important work. And so you'll be able to find that work at antihate.ca, and online you can find me mostly on Bluesky at melwoods.me on Bluesky. That is my platform of choice, but if you search me up online, you'll be able to find my website and find connections to anywhere else and all the other things that I'm always doing.
[41:30] Mel Woods
So yeah, I really appreciate you having me on for this conversation. And I'm just one trans person. I speak just from my own experiences, but I think it's so important to talk about this stuff and have trans voices brought to audiences who maybe don't always get to hear from us, but we got a lot to say.
[41:47] Michelle Fischler
Thanks, Mel.
[41:48] Mel Woods
Thanks so much.
[41:51] Michelle Fischler
If you have a story that you want to tell on GETSOME, email me at michelle@getsome.ca. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at @getsome_podcast. You'll get insights on sex and sexuality, dating tips and behind the scenes content between episodes. This show is produced by Katie Jensen at Vocal Fry Studios. Thanks for listening. See you later!