In 2021, Jordan Bryon took major steps to physically realize his identity as a transgender man, opposed by a society that often looked upon him with hostility and a government that neither understood nor respected him. As he started hormone injections in preparation for gender-affirming surgery, he soon found himself embroiled in a political firestorm over his basic right to exist. His precarious position has grown all too familiar as barbaric anti-trans laws spring up around the United States like invasive weeds, but Bryon isn’t American. He hails from a small town in Australia, and he undertook the sensitive, undeniable work of transitioning while working as a journalist in Afghanistan just as the Taliban – a group not known for their policies of tolerance – seized control of the country.
“[I was] making this transition without any idea of where it was going, or how to plan for it,” Bryon tells the Guardian over Zoom. “And yeah, it was just too hard, doing it myself. I couldn’t continue living and doing all the shooting at the same time, and then, the Taliban took over. I gave up and stopped, then these guys convinced me to keep going.”
