-It was in an idyllic Canadian mountain town, surrounded by jagged, imposing peaks, that the conflicting facets of Trevor MacDonald's identity came crashing together.
MacDonald, soft-spoken and sporting a wispy goatee, was breastfeeding his first child at the time. He and his partner had splashed on a lavish dinner, baby in tow. When his son began fussing, MacDonald eyed the waitstaff and patrons wandering about in formal attire and thought it best to head to the restroom.
It was there, holding his fussing son, that he was struck by the incongruity of nursing a child in a men's bathroom. "It was this weird scenario," says MacDonald, who was born female and began transitioning some eight years ago. "I've felt pressured to nurse in bathrooms because of the supposed lewdness of feeding a baby from my body. I'm also told that my body and gender don't fit into the neatly divided men's and women's restrooms of western society. People like me are told to keep out."
MacDonald points to the often trotted out narrative of a transgender person as someone who was born in the wrong body. "Our stories are so much more diverse than that one phrase," the 31-year-old says over coffee during a recent trip to Toronto for book readings. "When someone who has only seen that narrative hears about a trans person becoming pregnant, they think, well that doesn't make any sense. If it's the wrong body, why are you doing this with your body? But it's so much more nuanced than that."
MacDonald, who lives in rural Manitoba, began transitioning in his early 20s, legally changing his name and taking testosterone. About a year later, he had chest surgery...
https://www.theguardian.com/society/...evor-macdonald