Author Rowan Jetté Knox comes out as a trans man: ‘I’ve never felt more at peace’
LGBTQ+ advocate and author Rowan Jetté Knox. (Rowan Jetté Knox)
Author and LGBTQ+ advocate Rowan Jetté Knox said he feels “finally free” after coming out publicly as a trans man.
The Canadian author is known for his memoir Love Lives Here, billed as a story of “acceptance” and “leading with love” which details his experience of having his child and his spouse come out as trans within a year of each other.
The book also covers Knox’s experiences of bullying and alcohol addiction in his teenage years.
He is currently gearing up for the release of his second memoir, One Sunny Afternoon: A Memoir of Trauma and Healing, which explores his healing from “childhood trauma” and the social media abuse he was subjected to after his first book was published, which left him with a severe mental-health crisis.
Rowan said that he had planned to come out as a trans man following the book’s publication, but that going by his former name in public had become “too painful”.
Going forward, he announced, he will be using the name Rowan, he/him pronouns, and will be medically transitioning.
“I’ve known this is who I am for a long time, but I had to work up the courage to say it out loud,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
“It took months of introspection, therapy, long chats with loved ones, plenty of tears and pushing through a lot of fear and denial to get here but am glad I’m here.”
The author added that while he has been out and living as Rowan to his family “for a good while”.
“Not living authentically is a heavy load to carry,” he said. “Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I get to live as Rowan for ever now.
“I don’t exactly know how that’s going to feel, but I can only imagine it will be a whole lot better than how I’ve been feeling up until now.”
One Sunny Afternoon was originally scheduled to be published later this month, but, in what Knox described as “allyship in action”, his publishers moved the date to 12 September to allow him “time and space to breathe between coming out and touring a book about my trauma”.
Knox paid tribute to actor and trans trailblazer Elliot Page for “leading by example” and inspiring him to come out.
The post has received a wave of love on social media.
In June, Knox spoke exclusively to PinkNews about how the gender-critical movement has infiltrated Canada, detailing how he recently had to walk through a protest and was recognised by some in the crowd.
“They started to try to get me on camera. I just kept on walking. Then, they took [a] picture, posted it on Twitter to make sure that was me, get me identified, and went on to tear apart my looks, my weight, everything you can think of – just tore me apart.”
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