01. Laura Becker
“My name is Laura, but my artist and musician name is ‘Funk God’. In 2021, I helped Sarah Vaci initiate this portrait series, and a year later at age 25, I’m sharing updates on my experiences healing from complex trauma, being a mental health advocate, and working as an artist, writer, and teacher.
Although I am a public figure within the de-transition movement, I consider my purpose in the wider community to be one of truth-seeking, storytelling, creativity, and psycho education vs. lingering solely on gender related issues.
It is challenging to take the spotlight off my disfigured body and psyche, to view myself holistically, or take a positive self-analysis after experiencing over a decade of shame from complex childhood trauma, abuse, and particularly, endless existential rumination over whether or not I am acceptable as I am, but this is my task.
I believe my preoccupations with gender identity and the surgical alteration of my body (mastectomy) stemmed from being a highly sensitive child whose fate, for better, and worse, was to swim deeply in the reef, alone, while struggling to break through the surface and relate to others in a ‘shallower’ way. As a young person, I took ‘shallow’ things for granted as merely obsolete social norms, ridiculous traditional expectations, and other people, as frustratingly inauthentic, including the basic categories of sex, and gender roles. While there was truth in some thought, it created a nihilistic attitude which prevented me from ever being grounded, or having some order to the chaos of my existence.
This nihilism of prideful and naïve youth, combined with severe depression and emotional dysregulation from a hormonal condition, PCOS, along with attachment trauma from familial abuse, and a bizarre diagnosis of Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified, (now swept under the Autism Spectrum) created a worldview of hopelessness, helplessness, and desperate confusion. I later, at 22, would learn these environmental and biological conditions created developmental trauma, and I was diagnosed with PTSD, but before then, I had only a severely anxious and depressed need to fix myself of why I felt incredibly shameful, lonely, and unlovable.
While I turned to the usual coping mechanisms of a girl like me-drugs, alcohol, abusive relationships, art, music, poetry, food, sleep, and avoidance of responsibility, I also used gender identity and a label of being ‘agender’ and ‘transsexual’ to try and escape myself. I believed that the world had no place, or love, for a girl like me, and felt as if being a gay man might make it easier to navigate the overwhelming realities of the world. Evidently, undiagnosed trauma is not solved by cutting your breasts off, or taking testosterone at age 20. As soon as I was diagnosed with PTSD, I had the missing piece (a huge one) of why I was suffering, and it had nothing to do with being born in the wrong body. The reality was that I, fully connected within my body, was really born into the wrong developmental environment, and it took until after years of harm were done for me to see myself as more than broken, or unacceptable, but for the sensitive, eccentric artist type that I was/am.
These days, I channel my obsessive curiosity and questioning into consuming healing materials and practicing a diverse range of self-care and self-acceptance techniques, while simultaneously keeping abreast (or no-breast) of how a nihilistic culture lacking in meaning is funneling youth through the false hope of gender transformation in order to reach a spiritual enlightenment that our contemporary society has become confused with in the post-modern age. It’s quite the little hobby to tinker with. I also do less intense things like abstract photography, drawing funky shapes and coloring, and balancing on the edge of radical acceptance, and the oblivion of the void. It gets a little tiring but I’ve found some amazing and loving people to play with down in the murky depths.
I struggle to feel fulfilled or at peace, but one thing I can say about the rigorous healing process is that I now feel like myself again. While the fear and despair, grief, and longing to undo the past, remain regular occurrences, I finally feel grounded in body, mind, and spirit, and have embraced my funky personality as I learn to trust myself, and the world again. I’m grateful to everyone in this psychosocial, political, and healing movement who have helped young people like me become courageous enough to question our poor choices, and gain the humility which comes from self-respect, and appreciation of the timeless existential queries humans have always faced, long before this current manifestation within gender identity.
I am featured (along with some of my music, art, and writing :)) in the Affirmation Generation documentary about the harms of gender medicine. Find the videos here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr3JUNLNIv3wEUiTekfXENw
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/funkgodartist
Art on Instagram: @funkgodartist
Read on Substack: https://funkypsyche.substack.com/
Youtube Video Essays: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCykvjF1bAGJjgJMr_Xx9aaA
My Website: http://funkgod.com