Memoirs — Jack Saddleback

All Because of Some Tighty Whities

Jack Saddleback is a Cree Two-Spirited Trans Man from the Samson Cree Nation in Hobbema, Alberta. He is an award winning artist interested in topics of gender, race and sexuality. At the University of Saskatchewan he served as the USSU Pride Centre coordinator and USSU Vice President of Student Affairs. In 2014 he was elected the University of Saskatchewan Students' Union President in which position he helped to amend the University's discrimination and harassment policy to explicitly include gender identity, gender expression and two-spirit identities. See the Audio/ Visual page for links to some of Saddleback's video work

1) All Because of Some Tighty Whities

---

All Because of Some Tighty Whities
by Jack Saddleback

When we’re all young, none of us are truly aware that we’re e different, until someone tells us we are. For me, it wasn’t necessarily a person but a pair of underwear.

I was over at my Nohkum’s, my grandmother’s, place one day and just like any three year or four year old would do, I soiled myself. So my Nohkum takes me to her laundry room, and my Nohkum’s laundry was like the value village of the reserve, because there were huge mountains of clothes on tables of every size, oh and umm, I’ve been told by my Nohkum that every time I tell this story, to stress that they were all clean clothes.

But yes, there I am, a little scrawny brown kid standing stark naked in my Nohkum’s laundry room as she searches through the mounds as if diggin for gold. Finally, she turns to me and says, “Here, this is the only thing I could find that would fit you.” And she hands me, a pair of little boy briefs. I took those and put one foot out then the other foot and I pulled em up and I felt like superman. Little did I know that, that day would bring the biggest revelation of my life; that I was wearing the wrong underwear all along. It felt so right.

Everything made sense that day, all because of some tighty whities.

The underwear told me who I was, but it was the world telling me who I was supposed to be. Little girls, wear dresses, little girls, wear pink and purple, little girls play with dolls.