Bogotá: On Touching Hearts
I arrived at El Dorado, the Bogotá Airport at four in the morning. Tired and stressed and wrung out from the flight and the past months. At 1pm it began with a panel talk to introduce the IV Shibari Week Bogotá. Directly after there was the Varieté, a shibari performance night. I was supposed to do the last performance with Liebre Azul, my tying partner from Colombia whom I had never met in person before.
Before our performance we had only half an hour to find out whether we could understand each other. Not in words, but in movement, in rope, in whatever happens between two bodies during a rope performance.
At the end of the fourth Bogotá Shibari Week I was left feeling more affirmed in my rope practice than I have ever felt before. It took me some days and reflections to understand why.
I Arrived With Doubts
After being invited by Shibari Night, I was doubting if I belonged at the front of such a festival. They had invited me as the international special guest, and a quiet voice in my mind kept asking what I could possibly share with these people that they didn’t already know. What I could bring that’s uniquely mine.
The festival’s theme was silent conversations. And the classes I had planned around it were the hardest thing I could imagine teaching. The fine nuances and the invisible layers of tying. The parts you cannot quite grasp technically, the parts steered by feeling more than by form. I had put together classes I had never taught before, on exactly the thing that resists being taught at all. I did not yet know whether any of it would hold up in front of a room — in a cultural context not my own, about a practice that comes from Japan, not from either of us.
Technique and Feeling
The friction I want to describe is not Colombian, and not European either. It runs through every rope scene I have spent time in. Shibari is an intimate practice that happens (mostly) between two people, and there is a point in many people’s journey where the ego pushes its way into the practice. Where someone wants to prove they are valid, wants to show how good they are, and reaches for technical excellence to do it. Clean lines, correct forms, the purest style, the right vocabulary. And in that reaching, the path of intimacy and often trust gets left behind.
I went to Colombia and recognized my experiences from Europe in some private conversations there. The same two pulls inside the practice. And inside most of us who tie. Almost everyone wants both: the competence and the connection. But people weight them differently, and some lean so far toward technique that rope becomes something to be ranked and earned, while the exchange, the trust, the silent conversation between two bodies slips into the background.
Certificates Don’t Touch Hearts
I do not think the border is drawn out of malice. People pay a lot of money and spend a lot of time to learn this practice, and they want something solid to hold onto. Certification can offer exactly that.
What it quietly assumes is that shibari is a craft whose value lives in correctly executed forms, and that mastery can be ranked, examined, stamped. Learn the patterns, pass the levels, and you are doing it right. Prioritize feeling over form and you are doing something lesser.
I understand the appeal. Technique is teachable and measurable in a way a feeling never is. A solid technique also matters in a practice where so much can go wrong. But I have watched a tool for keeping people physically safe slowly turn into something else: a way of deciding who belongs, the checklist drifting from serving the practice toward policing it.
So my quarrel is not with skill, or with the people who spent years earning it. It is with the moment skill stops being something you learn for the safety of your partner and becomes a badge you have to show at the door.
What gets lost is the part that cannot be certified: presence, the capacity to listen with your hands, the flexibility to get messy, the willingness to not know what comes next.
A Silent Conversation
Azul and I had half an hour. We agreed on a rough outline and had only tied a little, to feel whether we could move together. It was enough to feel confident with each other.
We wanted to open with a statement. Rope performances so often begin the same way. One person seated, the other standing beside them or walking in, the rope present from the first moment. We refused that. Before the curtain opened, we were already on the floor, holding each other in a hug, close like lovers. Calming each other down to get rid of the nervousness.
When the curtain opened, we did not move. We held that position, completely still, for almost three minutes – the length of the short introduction song. As the song ended, we began to move almost in slow motion. It was an intimate moment of exploring each other via movement and touch. Six, maybe seven minutes had passed before we introduced the first rope.
By then the room was already captivated.
And the performance ended as it had begun: Inverted. Me alone, upside down, hanging from a single futomomo, pulled slowly upward with a pulley system to an instrumental of Space Oddity.
People asked us afterwards how we had managed to rehearse the whole performance in such a short time. We mostly hadn’t. The beginning and the end were planned: the still embrace, the inversion to close. Everything in between had been improvised. No choreography to memorize, no forms to reach for. We simply listened to each other and went with the flow.
A Confirmation From Outside
Through the week I taught four workshops, participated in a photoshoot event, and created a collaborative photo work with the community. People told me that it is rare in Colombia to find rope teachings about the emotional and interpersonal aspects of tying.
In conversations I had the sense of a community that wants exactly this, and that does not always find it easy to claim space for it. I cannot make any claims here, because I only heard it in personal conversations — but the shape felt unmistakable to me. It is the same shape I know from running Karada House.
You build something around the relational side of the practice, and somewhere there is always pressure suggesting that this is not quite the real thing, not quite rigorous enough.
Without intending to, I could offer something that felt to some like a confirmation from outside: the human, relational side is legitimate. You do not have to justify it to anyone. Your heart matters.
The Morning Messages
The best way I can describe the warmth of that week is to tell you what happened every morning. I woke up to messages from the organizers. They were mostly not about logistics. These were messages about how the days were going, how their hearts felt. They shared positive feedback from the workshop participants with me. They constantly checked in with me to see how I was doing, asking about my needs. Inquired about my needs. And one message ended simply: “Thank you for giving us part of you.”
That kind of care was far from what I had expected.
I watched the community the same way. The constant checking-in, the way people looked after each other. It was easeful in a way that surprised me, leaving my queer Karada House bubble. Seeing this filled me with some hope.
And on the last day, a fellow queer person came to me in tears, to tell me what those days had given them. By the end, a whole group sat together crying, touched by each other. Very beautiful.
The Open Heart
People are reached when you open your heart, not when you win the argument about what real shibari is. When you share your own way, from passion, instead of reaching for a standard to enforce. Sharing what is yours, giving others space to make it their own, and to disregard what doesn’t make sense to them.
I came to Bogotá with doubts. I left with answers to questions I had not asked. It showed me that you find a place in people’s hearts when you show up with what moves you, and when you leave your ego behind. Open to listen, instead of pretending to have the answers for everything. When I left, I felt that a part of my heart stayed there.
Muchas gracias, Bogotá, sumercé.
Photo Credits: Charles Ilcoatl & Shibari Night
In Between: A Body in Process
In January 2026, I posted my transition timeline on Reddit. Before and after pictures. On the left: me six months before starting hormone replacement therapy (HRT). On the right: me twenty-one months in. Red dress in both photos. Growing into myself. Visible joy and confidence.
The post was removed within hours. Not for hate speech. Not for breaking community rules. But because some trans people reported it as “fake” or “trolling.”
The reason? I have a beard. My timeline — my body, my journey — was flagged as not trans enough.
I reposted with a longer explanation. This time the post stayed up, and the comments section became something I didn’t expect: a battleground, a celebration, a therapy session, and a mirror all at once.
Some people wrote:
“This is the most relatable progress pic I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh hell yeah, that’s gender as fuck.”
“Your visibility is helping me feel better about myself.”
Others said:
“Why beard?! Honestly, you should shave.”
“Nothing against you.
It just gives other trans women a bad look.”“People like you are why transphobia exists.”
Both reactions came from trans people. From within the peer group I thought I belonged to. That second set of comments — the ones that framed my existence as a liability — is where this journal starts. Because the question they were really asking wasn’t Is she trans? It was Is she acceptable? And that’s a much older question than Reddit.
The Beard as Fact, Not Statement
Let me be clear, because it matters for everything that follows: I don’t have a beard because I want one. I’m not making an aesthetic choice or staging a gender-fuck gesture. I have a beard because I’m not yet at the point in my process where I’m ready to let it go. That’s the uncomfortable truth. And it’s more complicated than either “just shave” or “beards are valid” allows for.
My dysphoria is not linear. Removing the beard right now — whether through daily shaving, laser, or electrolysis — would trigger other dysphoria I’m not equipped to handle yet. My face is changing on HRT. My relationship to my body is shifting. And at this stage, the beard is what allows me to keep moving forward. This has nothing to do with ideology. Everything to do with survival.
It also has to do with money. Laser hair removal costs €3,000–5,000. Electrolysis costs more and takes years. Right now, that’s not where I am.
But here’s where the beard stops being the real story: Even as I say “I’m not ready yet”, I also need to ask — what if I never am? What if, even when I could afford it, even when my dysphoria shifts, I still don’t remove it? What if some trans women just … have beards?
Cis women with PCOS grow facial hair. Cis women going through menopause do too. Womanhood has never been a monolith, even if Western beauty standards pretend it is. So why do trans women have to meet a standard that isn’t even valid for cis women to begin with?
Because patriarchy polices all women’s bodies — and trans women are punished twice: once for femininity, once for transition.
Passing as Currency
I understand why passing matters. For many trans people, it’s not about aesthetics or validation — it’s about survival. About moving through the world without being clocked. About jobs, housing, staying alive. I have the privilege of living in Berlin, where visible queerness is less likely to get me killed than in many other places. I work in art and community spaces where my transness is sometimes even celebrated. I know this.
But for some, passing has become more than a survival strategy. It has become a currency. A way to measure who’s “doing it right.” A way to decide who belongs. Passing is also an administrative ideal. Medical systems want linear narratives — HRT, hair removal, surgery, name change, done. Legal systems want bodies that are legible and sortable. The state benefits when transness can be managed and made invisible.
Someone wrote: “If we don’t conform to the way THEY want us to look, then there is a problem.”
Embedded in that sentence is the assumption that transition has one acceptable outcome: to become indistinguishable from cis people. To disappear into the binary. I started HRT because I wanted to feel aligned with my own body — softer skin, shifting contours, a picture of myself that might feel more like home. Because I do not identify as a man. That was never about erasing myself. It was about becoming myself.
And yet, that still reads as doing it wrong.
Respectability Politics
“People like you are why transphobia exists.”
This is the comment that stays with me. Not because it’s cruel — but because it’s honest. The logic is clear: If we don’t conform, if we don’t pass, if we keep visible markers of our assigned sex, then we are responsible for the backlash. This is respectability politics. And it doesn’t save us.
Respectability politics promises that if we behave well enough, look right enough, pass convincingly enough, we might earn acceptance. History says otherwise. Black Americans were told respectability would protect them. It didn’t. Queer people were told being ‘well-behaved’ would earn acceptance. It didn’t. Again and again, marginalized groups have learned the same lesson: compliance does not stop violence, dignity does not guarantee safety, and silence does not buy protection. Even when we do everything asked of us, we are still punished for existing.
Trans people are being offered the same bargain now: be quiet, be grateful, don’t make us uncomfortable. Underneath it all, the same rule: make yourself small enough to be ignored.
Delegated Violence
Respectability politics isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about access. “Just get laser” assumes generational wealth. “Just shave every day” assumes time, skin resilience, manageable dysphoria. “You should have done this already” assumes one universal timeline. These assumptions erase the material cost of transition — financial, physical, emotional.
But there’s another layer. The enforcement doesn’t only come from fear. Structurally, it often comes from those who already pass. Who already have access — to money, care, relative safety. Whose own story only holds if the path they took was the correct one. When passing becomes the entry ticket, deviation becomes a threat — not to safety, but to legitimacy.
This is delegated violence. The work the state and medical systems would otherwise do — you don’t belong — is outsourced to the community itself. Reframed as concern. As protection.
Authenticity vs. Survival
I want people to exist authentically. To keep beards, deep voices, broad shoulders — if that’s what feels right. I also know visibility can be dangerous. That passing is sometimes the only shield between someone and violence, homelessness, loss. So when someone says, “You’re making it harder for the rest of us”, I hear the fear underneath. And I don’t know how to resolve that tension cleanly. What I do know is this: the fear doesn’t come from me. It comes from a transphobic world. And we can’t solve that by making ourselves smaller.
If you need to pass to survive — do it. If you need to go stealth — do it. But don’t ask me to disappear so you can feel safer. My visibility isn’t the problem. The system is.
My Body, my Timeline
After the Reddit drama settled, I put on make-up, a black dress and made self-portraits. I documented myself — again — present in my body as it is now.
“Why beard!?” The question isn’t rhetorical.
Because I’m not ready to let it go. Because “just do it” isn’t always an option.
And also: Because not every woman looks the same.
Because the binary was never the destination.
Because “woman” is not a checklist.
Even if I could afford laser tomorrow, even if I were ready — the question of whether I should have to would still be political. My timeline is mine. Yours is yours. Neither of us owes justification. There is no right way to be trans. There is only the way that keeps you alive and as whole as possible. For me, right now, that includes a beard.
Some comments were cruel. Some were affirming. Some were quietly grateful. Not everyone can afford to be visible. Not everyone can afford to be in process publicly. And no one owes visibility to be valid. The responses that mattered most were simple:
“I didn’t know I could start
without having everything figured out.”“Thank you for showing there are different ways.”
This isn’t about a beard. It’s about who gets to be visible — and who gets to decide the rules. Trans liberation isn’t uniformity. It’s coexistence. It refuses not just the man/woman binary, but the pass/fail one. Someone needed to see this. To know that transition doesn’t have to be finished to be valid.
That’s who this is for.
