I'm Not as Free as I Thought

of being a trans man. Morgan Gibbons was assigned female at birth. In his twenties, he underwent hormone therapy to bring his body into alignment with his male gender identity. Initially, he felt profound joy and liberation, but he said that feeling was short lived when he was confronted with the reality of being a black man in society. You know, there was this aspect of feeling completely boxed in and

caged by womanhood and my femininity. And I broke free of that, you know, I broke free of it for a little while. I had a few moments in the sun, you know, but the longer I've gone since that moment, the more I've realized how I have become caged once again. I'm not as free as I thought I was. I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans, a show that dives deep into the world of change and hopefully gets us to think differently about change in

our own lives. Morgan, I was wondering if you could take me back to the day when you started taking testosterone. Yeah. Yeah. So this doctor that I went to in that moment was like just a little piece of magic to me because he held the key to me helping unlock the rest of who I am, or like stepping into myself fully. And I could not wait for him to give it to him me. I was just like, hurry up and give it to me. Also, I could go home and be too scared to use it, you know. And so

I was excited but kind of scared. And one of my good friends she was like, why are you being such a baby. I'm like, I'm not being a baby, but like you know, that's a needle, man, that's a needle. I'm gonna have to do it myself. And she was like, Okay, cool and like she disappeared for like three minutes, and then she came, I can just jab me in the leg. And I was like, wait a minute, and she was like, there you go. I gave you your first tea shot. I was like, oh, I guess it's not that scary,

it's not that bad. And can you describe your reaction when you first started to notice the effects at the testosterone? Oh yeah, Oh I was geeked, you know. I was thought and I thought I was flying too, you know, because my voice started dropping. So I started answering the phone, like how y'all doing? Hey? How you doing? Hey? Girl? Hello? Hello? Yeah? And I was just my mom was like, who do you think you are? Why you got all these women

calling you? I didn't raise you like this, you think because your voice getting deep, you can, you know, And so I had to really kind of step back a bit. But I was just very very ecstatic about it because my voice started dropping quickly. You know, I got really strong. Anything that I could pick up if it wasn't nailed down, I was going to, especially if it was heavy and it looked like a challenge. I was lifting my mama.

I was lifting trash cans, and I was just doing random things, like I worked at Target at the time, I worked in retail, had just kind of come out of college. They're like, who's gonna take out the trash? And like, I got, y'all, I got. I had never ever volunteered to take out the trash before in my life. But yeah, every time I think about it, it it makes me smile. You know, it was I was in a

honeymoon phase very much. Though. Do you have any other specific memories of watching your voice and body change in those early months? You know, there was there was this weight that I hadn't realized that I had been carrying moving through the world, and the world seemed me as this young black woman because at the time I started taking testosterone and I began hormone replacement, and I just noticed that I was letting down my guard in ways

that I never would have done before. Like, you know, there's one time I was leaving work and I used to work this late shift at Target, and I would leave and it'd be pitch black by myself at like three or four am in the morning. And so I was always prior before I started taking testosterone, and these changes started happening. I was very cautious. I was incredibly

cautious about any time I was alone at night. But I realized that I didn't feel afraid, and I realized how light it felt to not carry that fear of gendered violence, and I had not really I guess it's

hard to recognize something you live with so constantly. But the freedom that came with this masculine presentation, I guess, I would say, And the way people assume I'm assist man, it's I haven't felt that type of tension in my shoulder since, you know, because it all just kind of released from my body, like I don't carry I didn't carry my keys in my hand as though I could use them as a weapon whenever I needed to. And I stopped doing that, And it was something I stopped

doing without realizing it. I'm wondering you can tell me about some of the first times you noticed that people were starting to treat you differently because of your gender. Oh yeah, you know, And so much of this was really happening in Target. You know, Target is a microcosm of society. You know, you see, you meet all kinds of people in there. You really do all kinds of employees, all kinds of people coming in there to say they're

gonna get one thing and leave with twenty, you know. Like, so my job at Target, you know, I put the things on the show. I was a program what they call us program designers. They try to give us fancy names, so we thought we I was like, I'm just putting stuff on the show. And so Anna, who was my boss, my team league, you know, she had the experience. I deferred to Anna, you know, because she respected me. I respected her and like, you got more experience, and I do.

I'm okay cool. But this young white manager came in and he could not handle her telling him no. You know, and if I said the same thing. I mean, we could be standing in a circle and Anna could say something and he would act like he didn't hear her. He would speak over her and I would repeat it, and he'd be like, oh, well, you know, Morgan, that's quite a good idea, and I would have to go

Anna said it. You know, this was Anna's idea. And you know, and when I saw that so clearly, because it just made me mad, because it made me realize how often it had been done to me before, and so that was one of the first moments where I was like, okay, and now it's in my face, you know, And it was just disheartening in a way, um irritating and also exhausting for selfish reasons because it's like I have to say something. It's like, now you're interrupting my

day because I have to talk to you. Had your manager known you before your transition or so that's so tell me more about that, right did you? Did you really see him change through your transition more respect and deference. Yes.

That's the wildest part is that people at that job who knew me before, who knew me as Morgan, assuming that I was assisted woman, they were like, oh, yes, But as soon as my voice started dropping, as soon as my shoulders started getting a little broad, all of a sudden, they acted like the base in my voice meant what I had to say was more important, or they started suggesting that I get extra shifts, or they started being like, why don't you apply to be a manager.

I didn't hear them asking any other women, and I asked some of my women, did they ask you to apply to be a manager. Some people who were just as good as I was at the job and better, and they were like, nuh, I didn't even know we was going to be looking for managers. So those were the types of things that would happened. Well, it also seems like they didn't ask you to be a manager a year prior. No, No, like just it was gradual.

I noticed it in increments, but because it was so outside the realm of what I had experienced before, it always stood out. Those little moments just always it out. So it's just those little things, you know, and those things accumulate over a person's lifetime. Were there parts of you that you know, kind of privately enjoyed the benefits that came along with this new perception. Yes, and that's the hardest part, you know, because it does make your

life easier. That the hard part is seeing those benefits and saying no to them. They're right there. You know, you've talked about how people treated you differently in response to your being a man, and that it came along with benefits. I want to know what it was like to be perceived as a black man. Do you remember the first time you faced this new reality? Yeah? The first time was when I had to deal with a

cop outside of my grandmother's house, you know. You know, I had been I was coming home from work and one of those late nights, fully out of my androgyna's phase of the second testosterone, and I pulled up in front of my grandmother's house. She had this really nice home in this beautiful neighborhood, you know, one of those neighborhoods where we were kind of the only pepper and the salt shaker, at least that's how we kind of

put it. So, you know, I pull up in the driveway, mind you, backed up into the driveway, and the sheriff's deputy, you know, I saw him when he drove past me to the right, and I saw him see me as I was backing into the driveway, and then he flips around, you know, it's a little cul de sac at the end. He comes creeping slowly back up, you know, kind of rolls to a stop, you know, hops out of the car. I'm already out of the car, you know, because I'm going in the house. This is where I live, this

is my home. And he looks at me, he goes, uh, do you live here? What are you doing here? And I'm looking at him like, what do you mean? When am I doing here? I lift it. What are you doing here? Because at this point you're standing on our property and I can call you? And I was like, well,

I live here and I can see. You can always tell an anti person, You can tell a scared person, you know, and scare people do ridiculous things, scare people think, do racist things, you know, And in that moment it's so irritating. I have to pacify him so I can stay safe. I'm like, I'm literally having to treat you like a child so that I'm okay. I can't call my grandmother because I know what she's gonna do. She's gonna come out of the house and she's gonna raise hell.

Last thing I want is for something to happen to her. Last thing I want us for some harm to come to her, because what she will not stand for is seeing me threatened in any way. He goes, well, we've had some car breakings over here, and that come on. Now I knew the man was lying because this was one of those rich neighborhoods. If somebody knocked over a mailbox, they would have put out a newsletter. They would have

been like, y'all, we got people breaking mailboxes. So I was like, this man is lying, you know, And so he tells me put your hands on the hood of the car, and I know there's no reason for me to be putting my hands on the hood of the car, because he has no legitimate reason to be fearful. I've told him I live here, and if he had any sense, he could have run the tag and seeing that he

was attached to the home where I'm at. And I think what made me so angry was the fact that I could not fight back in the way that I wanted to because that right there, you know, I it was the punctuation mark. It was like a period. It was a pause on all that joy I had been feeling, because for him to roll up on my house, treat me the way he did speak to me, the way he did lie to me, make me put my hands on the hood of the car, like I was somehow

involved in criminal activity. It's the humanizing, you know, And it's also painful. And that's the thing they try to take from us, is all of our emotions. You know, don't feel the pain, get angry, you know, don't feel the pain. Harden yourself to it. But that's painful, and yes, my reaction in those moments is anger, but my anger is masking that pain, is masking that dehumanization. And you know, there was this aspect of feeling completely boxed in and

caged by womanhood and my femininity. And I broke free of that, you know, I broke free of it for a little while. I had a few moments in the sun, you know. But the longer I've gone since that moment, the more I've realized how I have become caged once again. I'm not as free as I thought I was. We'll be right back with the slight change of plans. About a year after Morgan Gibbons was confronted by that police officer, he decided to move to Washington, d C. To start afresh.

He considered a few different jobs, but ultimately decided to follow in his grandma's footsteps. She had been a police officer, and Morgan decided to become one too, a decision he did not take lightly. So I spent a lot of time kind of standing over who the police are in reality and what I wanted them to be, which is not what they're not that you know, But because I grew up with my grandmother, who was a cop for

thirty years. I've always had this complex relationship with police and authority because I know my grandma, right, she baked cookies and then she went to put her unifor I remember laying on the couch and she would go put her uniform on and walk out the door. And I'd be like, buy grandma, and like, there's cookies on account, you know, stuff like that. Did you grow up with cops or coming in out of the house. Yeah, they were in the house all the time. We had cookouts.

These were people who I found to be kind and warm and funny, you know. And these were people when my grandmother's friends came in the house. I can't remember ever seeing my grandmother's cop friends in their uniforms. What I saw were the people outside of their jobs as a child, you know, and so I saw them through the eyes of a child. And my father at that

time was physically abusive. And I remember one time my brother and I ran up the stairs to tell the neighbors something was happening in the house, and that was one of the last straws, I think, and my grandmother called her friends and those cops came and they packed up all of our stuff right then and drove all of it to our grandma's house. And so I have this emotional remembrance of safety in those moments that does

not coincide with reality. And so I think part of what I had to do was grow out of the safety I felt around particular cops as a child in order to see policing in its fullness. What were your goals and entering the force when I joined the police department, you know, I was not I was not running in there band like. You know, these people are fantastic, They're angels, they got wings. Like I knew the history of policing.

I knew where it started. I knew its origins and slave catching patrols and how it kind of blossomed from there. You know, I understood how it worked in communities and how it didn't work in white communities the same way it works in black and brown ones. And I had I would read about how people were treated who were trans and queer, And at that point in my life, I joined because I said, if police say they are here to protect the public, then that's what we should

be doing. But we need to expand the idea of what that protection means and what we're actually saying when we talk about protecting people. And so I was like, Okay, I can go in there, and you know, I guess I can work my way up in the ranks and maybe when I'm at a certain position, you know, I can I can help, you know, I can do something. I can I can tweak some things. But at the end of it, it's that's what it's like, a tweak.

Even at that time I was saying to myself, I can tweak some things, not realizing I was saying tweak, not fit. So it's like, at the end of the day, part of me seems to have recognized the impossibility of the task. The Audrey Lord quote that we hear all the time. Boy, you're gonna take them tools and try to dismantles whose house you know? And so, but part of me wanted to to make policing be what it says it is but is not. So you were the

first openly trans policeman in the DC workforce. How did you approach those conversations and how were you received by the force? Had you always plan to be open about about that. I went into the academy with the intention of being open about it, because I do recognize the psychology of how people's hearts soften when they know someone,

even if they don't like that person. I was like, all right, if I'm open in the academy, you know, and they get to know me, it will influence an impact how they interact with trans people they meet on the streets, because their understanding of who we are is not based in the lies told about us. I was hoping that they would remember a little piece of me

when they interacted with people. And I had this guy who trained us, you know, I remember he met me and we went through the entire week, and after I graduated, you know, he came up to me and he was like, you were like one of the best recruits we've had, and you know, I just wanted to let you know that, like you really changed me. You change how I view

things and how I go through the world. And I was just really kind of blown away because this was like this gruff, middle aged white guy who'd been doing this for quite some time. He was just very rough around the edges. But I was very very meticulous about how I came out in the academy and who knew what when so by the time I came out three months into the academy to my classmates, they knew me. And so it wasn't oh, there's a trans guy in our class. They're like, oh, Morgans here in his trans

You know. I imagine certain police forces can foster a kind of macho broye culture. I mean, yeah, So first, what it was that the case? And were you included in that bro culture? And importantly did you want to be oh man? So, yes, it was the case. There there was this It was It was very much machismo. It was very much you know, all the worst traits of quote unquote masculinity that you could kind of put into a blender and hand a powerful badge, dude, and

a weapon. Um. And it was when I when I, and I want to be specific, because the masculinity parth, this this this tough guy thing, was this idea of power and containment that you do not back down no matter what because you're the cop. And I did not. I didn't want to be part of that because my whole goal was that's not how we should be doing it. I would, honestly, you know, actually get clowned a little bit because I did not arrest as many people, or

I would do more talking on my scenes. And if I come at them with the way we've been taught gruffly, you know, screaming, don't back down, be a man, quote unquote, it's not going to make the situation better. It's not going to solve the issue. And so it was there, but it wasn't something that I sought to be a part of. But I was not excluded. Yeah, I'm wondering if you found yourself learning anything new about masculinity from being in the police force, if it changed a relationship

with it. It did because it made me treat it not as precious as I had before. Like, I think that was me beginning to step more away from the traditional ideal of masculinity, you know, being gruff and stoic and emotion what's that you know, and kind of do I want to act as though this doesn't affect me? Do I want to act as though I don't know what joy it is I do I want to behave in those ways? And so it pushed me further away

from the traditional idea of masculinity. That was me beginning to take the path to I think just being me because we have to communicate, because we have to know how to talk to one another. We have to label things. We have to label actions that are just human actions, things that we just do that are just inherently human. We label the masculine feminine. That started me on that journey of why does it matter? You know, who cares? Why did you end up deciding to leave the police force? Gosh?

I had been on the police department for almost almost three years, and I was just tired. Also just facing reality, you know, just facing the uphill battle, facing how insurmountable that was, realizing that policing would change me before I could change it. Because if you wear a costume long enough, you start to think it's your real clothes, you know, And so you wear this costume of masculinity on the job.

But if you're on the job twenty four seven and you spend so much time in uniform, you can definitely lose yourself in the mass that you have to put on to where And I did not like that, you know, I had to leave. There was just there was nothing left for me to do there except lose myself. I see. I love to zoom out and ask you a few questions about how you've been processing your transition over the years.

You know, your story leads me to question this idea that we can really change on our own terms, right. I mean, it's hard enough to make that initial change within ourselves, but then you realize that there's this huge second hurdle to navigate, which is that our society will

invariably respond differently to you now that you've made that change. Right, you know, based on going through this experience, do you think this notion of changing on our own terms is just a fiction we've created to help us feel a greater sense of, you know, personal agency in our lives. And have you felt yourself hitting the limits of that agent? See? I cannot you know, as you've said, I can't control how other people respond to me. I cannot control how

other people, how other people treat me, you know. But even in the midst of that destabilization, even in the midst of these variables that I cannot control, I can still maintain my grip on myself. Did you ever feel like you were losing parts of yourself that you valued because you had to? I almost did. I almost because I am actually quite sensitive and I don't know. I like the things that people might say are things that women enjoy. I tend to have mostly women friends, like

I don't mind having those deep emotional conversations. But there was a moment where I was like, oh, this is not what men do. So there was a full almost eight months to a year while I was like, I guess I need to find some cisk guy friends. You know, If this is how I'm going to be, I guess I have to release everything that was. I almost lost so many pieces of myself trying to fit into this, this idea of what I thought masculinity was before I

accepted it's whatever I say it is, you know. And it kind of forced me to think more deeply about who I am and how I build myself and who I want to be. Because if I can dismantle my gender and rebuild it, why can I not dismantle other parts and rebuild those two? And so it helped me unchain the parts of myself that I thought I had to hide to protect them. And it's like, well, you can come out now. Trust that I am at a place where I can keep you safe enough. I can

keep myself safe enough. I can sit with myself in safety and own all the parts of me. Hey, thanks for listening. If you're enjoying A Slight Change of Plans, please make sure to subscribe, rate and share the show with friends and join me next week. When I talked with Ramsey Kabaz, when he was a college student, he woke up to what sounded like a blaring fire alarm, and then it took me a few seconds to realize that the sound actually wasn't coming from anywhere it was,

it was coming from inside my own head. And you know, at that point, I knew that there was something super wrong. A Slight Change of Plans is created an executive produced by me Maya Shunker. Big thanks to everyone at Pushkin Industries, including our producer Mola Board, associate producers David Jaw and Julia Goodman, executive producers Mia Lavelle and Justine Lange, senior editor Jen Guera, and sound design and mixed engineers Ben

Holliday and Jason Gambrel. Thanks also to Louis Gara who wrote our theme song, and Ginger Smith who helped arrange the vocals, incidental music from Epidemic Sound, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a slight change of plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker. You know what, I'm a text him. I'm sorry, Mason, Bobby, I'm doing an interview. Man, I gotta call you back. Okay, okay, but