On a sunny morning in September, Skylar Kergil turns on his computer. He fills up his 'BONK!' coffee mug while peering at the camera with a grin on his face. As he sips his drink, he begins to tell his YouTube audience about his weird dreams the night before, his cat, and his upcoming Kickstarter project-all with that playful smile he's become known for. 'So if you want to be in my Kickstarter video for my music that's coming out,' he says, 'then please read below for the description, or go to my Facebook page.' After another heartfelt plea, Kergil breaks out his guitar and sings a quick cover of 'Two Lips' by Hoodie Allen before the camera fades to black.
Kergil is a musician (he released his first full length album in 2013 through another Kickstarter campaign), a visual artist, photographer and recent graduate of Skidmore College. Kergil is also a transgender man (female-to-male) who has been documenting his transition-and his budding creative life-for the past five years under the YouTube name skylarkeleven. His audience of about ten thousand has been tuning in for almost as long as his laptop camera has been rolling, watching his change as it happens. These YouTube videos, started on January 21 st 2009, have become Kergil's ever-evolving autobiography.
' From the beginning, making videos was about recording a video diary of my body as it went through changes that I could hardly articulate-but I could see and hear them through my various mumbled thoughts, voice changing, and smile growing,' Kergil told me. 'The process was one of both self preservation and creation. I have been preserving this timeline so that I can remember where I have come from while simultaneously encouraging self-reflection, creation and the exploration of my identity as I grow. These two elements put together have been a very cathartic experience for me during my transition while also juggling the basic throes of life.'
Kergil is one of many in the transgender community to use the serial nature of a YouTube vlog to document his transition-a trend that, because of the nature of vlogging, turns the standard transgender narrative on its head. Rather than focusing on the end goal of surgery, these videos put the focus on the process of transition, and put the power in the hands of vloggers to define how their story evolves.
The autobiography has become a standard part of the transgender narrative over the past sixty years. You only have to look so far as Chaz Bono's 2008 Transitions to see this genre in action. These books often evoke the same trope ('trapped in the wrong body') and end with the final revelatory surgery. They're why we're tempted to ask a transgender person if they've had 'the' surgery yet. We see it as the inevitable conclusion to their story, and like a good audience member, we want to know how far away we are from applause.
The problem with these tropes and older transgender narratives is that they are, by definition, tied up in the medical institution that created them. In order for transgender people to get surgery, they are required to explain themselves repeatedly to doctors and therapists. When telling their story, they must be as convincing as possible or else surgery will be denied. The transgender narrative we've come to know is not always the one that transgender people want to tell, but instead what the doctors, counsellors, and now us as a culture want to hear .
' When I was in high school, I took an elective class called 'Media & Society'' Kergil said in his email to me. 'Basically, I learned that every type of media has power and importance, but is not always true. Prior to that, I used to believe almost everything I heard on the news/TV/radio-not so much that I am gullible but I know that I am a very trusting human being who takes words as they are, believing everyone to be genuine.'
The feelings that lead someone to gender transition are very real no matter how they end up expressing it. But coming out as transgender often leads to conflicting ideas about what it really means to be transgender. Within the medically dictated and standardized storyline, the rest of us often miss the nuances of gender identity, the small moments of realization, and the many years that transition often takes.
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