Perrin Dowse is a transgender lesbian and spoke about exploring – and accepting her gender identity and expression.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Perrin Dowse: At the beginning, it was more like I was feeling a disconnect from masculinity. I had always considered myself, like, “Oh, I'm an effeminate guy.” I'm comfortable in being a non-masculine dude and turns out that was cope.
And I, just generally, over time, leaned more into my femininity and less into masculine ideas, and eventually that turned into – this is a direct quote from me from probably the summer of 2021 – “I'm about one crisis away from he/they pronouns,” and then what do you know a month later? He/they pronouns, and then it kind of just snowballed from there.
It was a sort of thing where, like, “Oh, I didn't feel any strong connection to it at the time,” but it was because I didn't feel that strong connection to he/him, that I was like, okay, he/they. Just, like, broadening it. “I really don't care,” and then I broadened it again because “I really don't care.”
And at some point, while I accepted all pronouns, which was a solid few months because this whole like progression happened over the course of one academic year.
At the end of that academic year, I, like, started, HRT, so like beginning to end, like about one academic year.
So, I just sort of, like, had that apathy towards pronouns and my gender for a while.
While I was at any pronouns, I did, like, start experimenting with more feminine ways of dress because I didn't, like, I started removing the shackles, in a way, where I didn't feel like I had to dress in a masculine way.
Then it was like a desire to pass – not just for like external validation, but also for my internal validation, right?
Over time, like, it did not take long after I started – because unlike some people who have to start with a T blocker and then later introduce the estrogen, I was able to start, like, both the T blocker and estrogen right away.
And I very quickly noticed how, like, my mind itself changed because what I was expecting was, like physical changes that would, like, positively impact my health. What I wasn't expecting was for it to change my patterns of thought themselves.
And it's a really hard thing to explain that I think can really only honestly be truly understood by someone who's done it.
And it feels like home, in a way, and so, that's sort of like how it changed from where it started to like where it is now. It is my home, and no one will take me away from it ever.
![Carol Snively, a queer woman and former President of The Center Project who came out in her 30s, stands on the building’s steps on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024, in front of The Center Project in Columbia. “Because she was so likeable, everyone loved Ellen [DeGeneres]. She was so funny, and so I think it did help family members, although it took me a while to tell every one of my family members. I was very nervous about [coming out] for very silly reasons that didn’t end up being a need to be fearful. They’re all very accepting. It just took me a long time. But yes, having people in the public eye that were out—because after she came out lots of other people started saying what their identities were,” Snively said. “And so the fact that there were celebrities who were starting to talk about things and normalize identities, I think that really helped for me. It didn’t change who I was, but it made it easier for me to verbalize who I was.”](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f184ad4/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1728x1143+22+0/resize/260x172!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F2b%2Fbd%2F94ba4fa54eb5a2335f025df8de94%2F20241219-bas-queer-joy-carol-snively-0054.jpg)
