rejecting the violence of the mirror and disarming the violence of the world

       A few days ago i left my apartment with a friend of mine. We were going downstairs to have a cigarette. They were rather shocked that i didn’t lock my apartment door and asked me why not. i told them that i try not to live in fear. i’ve thought about and talked about this idea a lot, but this instance was cause for further reflection.

        For years, between periods of queerness, the biggest source of violence in my life was myself vis-a-vis the mirror. Frequently i would gaze into eyes that i knew to be my own and fail to recognize who/what i saw. i would get lost a convoluted time warp, losing hours to the mirror. i’d often ignore the mirror altogether, knowing full well that i wouldn’t find myself there at all, knowing that the experience would be sapping. On rare occasions i was able to find myself in the mirror, but i would spend my time wondering why i didn’t have the courage to live the way i felt i needed to.

       In moments i really wanted to transition, i would look into the mirror and hate and cry and hate. These were among my hardest moments. But for a long time i didn’t transition because i was terrified of the violence i would experience. i was afraid. i was afraid for good reason.  My gender transgression had been met with very real violence on many occasions.

       My method of avoiding that violence meant trying to live in my assigned gender. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes the basic act of looking in the mirror became an infinite well of loathing. This became increasingly, unbearably true, so i did what i felt i had to do to reject the violence of the mirror. i got on hormones. i learned to sew dresses. i bought eyeliner.

To go out into the world feeling comfortable in my current gender i had to learn to disarm the other type of violence. i put away my fear. This doesn’t mean that the possibility of violence in my life has disappeared, it hasn’t. i catch shit on the regular. There are uncertain moments in almost every trip out of my house.

       But i can’t carry that. i won’t carry that.

       For a while i tried to skirt the line between openness and fear-filled watchfulness. This allowed me to leave my house, but i was always hyper-vigilant, ever-worried about possible attackers. Chemical serum constantly dumped into my veins leaving me in a perpetual state of fight or flight. My muscles were always tense and ready to run. i grew incredibly tired and couldn’t get enough sleep. Skirting this line was not healthy.

       i also don’t think that this made me safer in any discernible way. i don’t believe that i could successfully thwart off an attacker… besides, i’m a pacifist. The only thing this strategy did was to limit my choices and trouble my soul.

       So i learned to notice moments of fear. i’d feel them as deeply as possible and i’d take a breath. i would consciously refuse to alter my gate, my gaze, my actions. i learned to live with my fear, keeping it beside me. Soon enough, it started to dwindle. It’s not completely gone, and might never be, but i get so many moments that aren’t laced with fear.

       This doesn’t mean that bad shit stopped happening to me. People still have adverse reactions to my queerness all day long. But these moments of being comfortable in myself and living without fear are an incredible blessing that i’ve cultivated for myself.

       This brings me back to my apartment door. Sure, i lock it when i’m inside. People perceive my transness. This includes those who live in my building, only one of whom i know personally and trust. i’m especially vigilant about this when other folks are in my apartment because i couldn’t live with myself if someone i love paid the price for transphobia that was intended for me.

       Disarming my fear hasn’t led me to open myself or others up to more moments of potential violence, simply to accept those that i cannot change. i have to accept them so that i can live as freely as possible. So, when i run out for a moment, i actively resist my fear. i shun it to the back of my mind. i kindle new neuro-pathways of trust and of willful disregard. i build my capacity to tolerate risk.

       To be comfortable in the world, i have to live with the possibility of violence. In fact, i acknowledge that it’s inevitable. But i need to go out in the world; i need to be out in the world. So i smile at my fear as i put makeup on my face. i willfully put it out of my mind and i leave my house.

a perfectly genderless being?

       While i was meditating last week i had a vision of myself as a perfectly genderless being. The vision had no image attached; it was simply an overwhelming feeling of myself made whole with my body. The vision matched the warmth of the rising sun on my face.  A flood of calm and acceptance washed over my consciousness. i sat and knew myself purely.

       The vision vanished as visions do, dissipating into the nethers of my mind. But the overwhelming sense of calm remained. When i stood i felt my feet more firmly than i have in a few weeks. i recognized that a lot of processing and growth had happened very quickly and i had been left feeling tired as a result.

       i had been feeling guilty for a few days for letting my productivity come to a standstill. How could i let myself rest with so much work to do? i acknowledged that rest was an important part of growth and forgave myself.

       But i’m left with a quandary, now that i’ve accepted this vision into my conscious mind. How do i reconcile my sense of being genderless with my knowledge of myself as trans*, as femme? How do i carry this genderless in a world that inscribes gender onto any and everything? Do i switch my pronouns again? (i’ve been thinking about this last one a lot and it warrants an independent post)

       Most acutely, i’m faced with the reality that things that are characterized as neutral in our society are actually perceived (semi-)covertly as masculinity. It is still incredibly important to me to not get read back into masculinity. Given the context of culture, anything that i do in regards to my presentation will inevitably be viewed through a gendered lens. And prior to this experience i had already learned to embrace a non-normative gender.

       Despite this increasing non-normativity i still see myself as femme. For a long time i’ve thought of femme in two distinct ways. The easiest to describe is femme presentation. This is easy for me to reconcile because i’ve already done the hard emotional work of breaking down my sense of femininity and recasting it as something that feels comfortable and good.

       The other place i locate femme is actually more of a social role than a form of gendered presentation. This social role, for me, relies on compassion, fierceness, community. These are things that i value both in relation to and independently of gender. Perhaps femme for me will weigh more heavily on this social definition, although at least for now the presentation fits too.

       i think that perhaps the best i can do, given that context, is to be more emboldened a gender-fucking, radically visible queerness. Maybe recognizing the impossibility of genderlessness in my life should lead me to interpret this meditation as a symbol of comfort in my non-normativity. A queerness that forces others to interpret me not necessarily as gender neutral, because true neutrality has been rendered implausible by culture, but as atypically gendered.

       So i’m coming back around to non-normativity with renewed strength and new perspective. i can be a site of resistance, of questioning, of pushing boundaries, of growth. My non-binary gender expression has started feeling affirming beyond its challenge to normative femininity. This moment was representative of yet another increasingly holistic and solid position in what feels like a progressive journey of deconstructing gendered categories and living more fluidly and comfortably.

dissecting body essentialism; my trans* body and my hope

       In the past month or so i’ve dealt with a lot of moments of body essentialism. By this i don’t mean the kind where people are totally disrespectful of my gender or my trans* identity; saying i’m a boy because i was assigned so at birth. It’s something that’s ever so slightly more nuanced.

       i was at a Trans* conference a few weeks ago. One of the keynote speakers kept describing people as “male bodied,” and “female bodied.” Although several people visibly reacted to this, most people in the room seemed not to. When i called this out my opinions were mostly blown off, cast as hyper-radical and/or irrelevant. i’ve heard these essentialist terms used a few times since then and feel the need to respond.

       To call a MAAB trans* person’s body a “male body” or a FAAB trans* person’s body a “female body” explicitly disallows them the capacity to define their own experience and their own body. It’s obviously problematic in that it essentializes what male and female are.

       By casting bodies born with penises as “male bodies” and bodies born with vaginas as “female bodies,” this viewpoint takes mainstream biological perspectives as given truths and erases the lived experiences of folks who don’t identify in that way. This is a perspective that i have, sadly, come to expect from most of society, but to hear it from a keynote at a trans* conference was truly disheartening.

       Further, it naturalizes the idea that bodies fall into these two distinct categories. This thinking posits that a body is either a male body or a female body. There are no other options allowed and bodies are characterized as always being somehow the same as they were.

       i find this difficult, and not just because i don’t characterize my body as a male body. i find it difficult because i no longer characterize my body as a female body either. i have a trans* body. i don’t want my body to be read as a male body or as a female body. i explicitly want my body to be read as a non-male body and as a non-female body. i have altered my body by taking hormones. i’ve got tiny tits to match my broad shoulders and an ass on skinny hips. i have body hair that has become blonde, but is absolutely still present. i’ve got smooth, delicate skin wrapped around long bones.

       Taking steps to physically alter my body is one way in which my body is a trans* body. However, it is not the only way. My body is a trans* body because of how i carry it, because i swish when i walk and how i own my voice(s). Mostly though, my body is a trans* body because i claim it as a trans* body. This is how i relate to my body, and i do not want it to be seen as a cis body in any way.

       One of my friends recently referred to cis women as “bio-women.” This statement operates similarly. This statement characterizes some bodies as essentially women’s bodies, deeply ingrained and true. Rather than respecting the fact that anyone who identifies as a woman, who claims her body as a woman, as having a woman’s body, this phrase draws a line between types of bodies.

       In this instance, some bodies are “more biological” than others. All bodies are biological. All bodies are made up of living cells; all bodies require food, water, etc. In equating biology to cisness, my friend unintentionally naturalized cis bodies. This process of naturalization further casts trans* bodies as abnormal; it strips trans* folk of legitimacy in defining our bodies and our relationships to our bodies.

       This cartoon, has been bouncing all over the internet as of late. It states that “women are women, regardless of sex.” Although i appreciate the sentiment that “women are women” insofar as it places a primacy on identification over assignation, it still delineates between sex and gender.

       This bifurcation of sex and gender is all too common in both feminist and queer discourse. “Sex” is characterized as being located in some sort of biological truth of a body, while “gender” is cast as being about presentation and identification. This definition is simply… too simple.

       Again, this process naturalizes some bodies and reifies cisnormativity by allowing trans* bodies to be viewed as “incongruent” with genders. Although this way of perceiving oneself may be useful for some trans* folk, it is not for me and a lot of people that i know.

       But beyond its lack of universal use value, which is enough grounds for challenge, i find it most problematic in the way it operates culturally. Not only does this language normalize cis bodies, and in so doing implies that trans* bodies are somehow fake, it also normalizes a certain mode of trans* experience. This language is constructed in such a way that the only option for trans* folks is a crossing from one “natural”/binary body conception to (in this case) the other.

       Because of this type of logic, for example, i have been referred to as a “male bodied woman.” Even in periods of my life when i was more binary identified than i currently am this was unacceptable. It cast me as a woman, but didn’t allow me to claim my body. This capacity was reserved for a rigid medical model that does not respect self-determination.

       In all of this though, i am not without hope. Another friend of mine recently said something similar about someone with a “male body.” i gently asked him how he felt about the terminology. He said that he hadn’t really thought about it, and then listened to what i had to say. He understood, and throughout the rest of our conversation was more careful with his language. i see his language use being intrinsically linked to his consciousness, and i saw both shift. Growth seems possible when discourse is opened. This is my hope.

recognizing covert systems and disarming a racially charged haircut

       My hair clippers whirred in the hours between days. It was far too late to be up with my work schedule, but this hair cutting absolutely had to happen. The back of my neck and head began to feel free, to feel air passing over them, as thick chunks of brown hair intermittently fell into my sink.

       It was time. i was disarming my racially charged haircut. i’d reflected and decided to cut off my dread hawk. This process was long in coming and felt utterly cleansing. As my hair stopped pulling on my scalp i felt lighter. i was doing more than giving lip service to systems of racism, i had acknowledged that my actions had ramifications and was consciously moving into a more proactive position.

       Eight months ago i decided that normative femininity didn’t fit me, it still doesn’t. i stood in front of my mirror looking at my awkwardly shaggy, growing-out-phase hair. i thought out loud. “Why am i trying so hard to conform to beauty standards that feel like poison to me?”

       Having no answer to that question, i picked up a razor. i had other identities beside my trans* identity. My sense of coming up with a punk outlook seemed to be the perfect method to cultivate a new, non-poisonous femininity. i shaved the sides of my heads.

       At this point i didn’t even acknowledge the question of cultural appropriation. i’d dealt with it long ago, as a boy punk, and decided that cultures had always exchanged things. This line of thinking obviously ignores the fact that cultural exchange is, and has been, linked to systems of power, privilege, and oppression. Being good on issues of race is not something that punk culture is generally known for, and i’m definitely not proud of myself for having held this belief.

       But in the moment i felt good. i was rejecting a beauty standard; and a beauty standard exacerbated by the extremely high expectations of trans feminine folk to conform, no less. i felt free and beautiful and unique and like myself.

       i don’t know how i expected the world to respond. At that point i was less acutely aware of how even the smallest changes in presentation could shift moments of interaction. So, i was slightly dismayed when my floppy mohawk seemed to cause more people to read me as a boy than before.

       This was a problem. i was glad to have left behind a femininity that didn’t feel good to me, but wanted to be read as femme. i wanted to find a way to keep my mohawk, but to make it look good with straight bangs. My solution was anything but simple.

       i got a friend to help me dread the back half of my mohawk. So then i had a culturally appropriated haircut on top of a culturally appropriated haircut. Again, i was happy. i felt cute, and it had the desired effect of an increase in being read as femme while not conforming to beauty standards.

       This time i was not completely uncritical. i wondered about whether or not it was inappropriate, even racist to have this haircut. i became more conscious of my hair’s presence around people of color, especially those with dreadlocks. i wondered what they were thinking.

       This should have been enough for me to cut my hair, but it wasn’t. i felt like i was in a bind. As a trans femme there’s an exaggerated expectation to have long hair. Comments like “if you don’t want to get referred to as ‘he,’ then maybe you shouldn’t shave parts of your head,” are all too common. The reality of getting read more as a boy after cutting my hair was all too recent. Although i recognize this social logic as placing an undue burden on trans* people to present in specific ways to render their gender “clear” to others, often in ways that are not expected of cis folk (from what my cis friends have told me, they are rarely, if ever, questioned for their short hair), i still felt trapped.

       So i selfishly kept my haircut, despite my feelings of uncertainty. No one ever said anything, so i have no idea if i ever crossed paths with someone who was offended by it. i probably did.

       Then i went to a trans* conference where contours of privilege and power were incredibly stark. One particular moment stands out as relevant. A speaker who wasn’t from the states said the phrase “colored people” as opposed to “people of color.”

       It seemed clear to me that this was an honest issue either of translation or of a lack of cultural context. Obviously it was problematic, but it didn’t strike me as particularly vitriolic. But i don’t get hurt in a personal way by that phrase in the same way that i do by other epithets, so my opinion here doesn’t really matter. Someone did get really hurt and offended in that moment and said so.

       A pang. A realization. An obvious moment but a one that helped spark growth. i knew that people couldn’t always see one another’s intentions, and have made arguments for cautionary behavior on these grounds. And, although i’d been hurt in those types of moments, i don’t think that i’d fully internalized the incredible capacity for harm that those moments can carry for others as well.

       i resolved to interrogate my hair further when i returned home. i recognized it as a potential site of unintentional violence. Deep down i already knew the outcome. During my introspection and reading i came across the phrase, “Beingan anti-racist white person is counter-culture. Trying to present acounter-cultural image by appropriating other cultures is not.” It resonated strongly in my heart. It was the phrase i needed.

       i was still left in a quandary, i would have to shave. At that point, i was sure that’s what i would do, but was still terrified of being a trans femme with short hair. How much more shit would i have to put up with? Because i recognized that attitude, although based in a very real sense of oppression, as selfish in that it legitimated my cultural violence by positioning it as a response to my own oppression, i was able to come to embrace what i might experience as a necessary part of my cleansing process. This is not to say that i am or desired to be a martyr; just that i had to come to terms with the possibility that disarming my image may result in acute moments of gender oppression. But it was something i had to do.

       My remaining concern was that in shaving my head and leaving my bangs and side bits i’d be left with a Chelsea cut. This is a hairstyle that, in my experience, is often tied with skinhead culture. It would obviously not be productive to go from having a culturally appropriated haircut to having one that may call up images of racist violence. Again, i was concerned about how people would read this haircut, especially not knowing that it was the only option when cutting off my dreads.

       So, i made it a little longer on top than in back, essentially a flat-top with bangs. What i ended up with turned out to be a very cute, gender fucking haircut that may have had some reflexive impact on my gendered sense of self, but more on that in a future post. i felt free and beautiful and unique and like myself in a way that was much deeper than before. i had disarmed. The process itself felt cleansing, adding to a sense of beauty, this time an internal sense committed to justice and disarmament.

       Obviously people noticed that my hair changed. In all this introspection i’d been doing i hadn’t thought about how i’d handle the inevitable question of “why.” The first time it happened i made a snap decision, that to be true to my process i’d use it as a moment to discuss systems of oppression and my role in those systems. It would leave me vulnerable and open, but i hoped that my process would help those who asked to see that they too, were necessarily situated within larger structures of power and privilege that need to be interrogated and interrupted.

       Perhaps this snap decision was too lofty a goal, as people seemed to only be able to conceive of my hair as an individual decision that had no impact outside of my own happiness. Although it is true that it was an individual decision, it had a broader effect. Sartorial choices are political, no matter what they are. They exist within systems of power that are in many ways based in representations and narratives. Individual sartorial choices can work to either recast norms and expectations or interrupt them.

       People didn’t seem to understand that this could have an impact on others despite my best intentions. People didn’t seem to understand the significance of my disarmament. i had a haircut that normalized colonialism, that implied that i could pick and choose elements from any culture i desired. When i told folks that i didn’t want to do that, that i wanted to disarm it, they often had looks of confusion and said things like, “well, it’s your hair, do what you like.”

       This makes it apparent just how tacitly systems of representation operate. They operate without folks recognizing and, in this covert way, serve to reinforce and recast power and privilege. i want to continue to interrogate these systems throughout my life. i want to live as congruently as i can to my conception of a just society. This is a process that necessitates self-reflection and action. i want my existence itself to be work toward that society.

the violence that didn’t happen and the violence that did

Content disclaimer: This is about transphobic violence

       This story takes place in St. Louis several years ago. This story takes place in a sequence of lightning moments clouded by confusion and disbelief. This story dissipated into a protective mist inside a barrier in my heart immediately after it transpired. This story takes place every day of my life. This is a story i relive, one that’s been inscribed on my body and on my life. This story takes place in tears, in pain, but also in renewal and redefinition; it takes place in the space between confusion and clarity. This is a story i’ve told a thousand times and i’m sure i’ll tell it again.

       i wanted to die that weekend. i tried to die that weekend. Piss drunk with a belly full of tequila and sleeping under a waterfall. Dragged to safety by a friend. Dragged back into the dangerous world i was daring to escape. A glorious, epic escape, that i thought far superior to the death i’d seen flash before my eyes the day before. i’d escaped death and my immediate response was one of self-destruction.

       A group of friends, activists i did a lot of work with, were taking a vacation together in the Ozarks. We needed to decompress and to bond over something besides banner-painting and polemics. We needed to get out of Chicago. Several folks had left a day or two earlier than the group i was in. We’d stayed behind to wait for one of us to finish her work week.

       We drove down late at night, constellations flicking between bits of clouds. We smiled and laughed and told stories. We listened to a Moldy Peaches album on repeat until we were sick with happiness. i saw a sign pointing toward Cahokia.

       “Hey y’all,” i mused, “would you be interested in stopping there and waiting for sunrise at the mounds?”

       Nothing seemed like a better way to begin our adventure. So we pulled off the highway. We stopped to pick up some booze at a gas station. One of my friends was wearing a kefiyah, which lead to us befriending the Palestinian clerk. He was here working to send money back home, and was smitten by the idea that these four random travelers were in solidarity.

       After chatting for a while we left to search for a cheap hotel to spend the night in. We ended up at this dingy place that had thick glass walls between the lobby and service desk. We paid by the hour, it was that kind of place. We went into our room and were shocked to see a black light; i was more sheltered then than now.

       As we carried our jugs of alcohol inside the hotel phone began to ring. Everyone jumped. i answered. The person on the other end told me that i couldn’t bring three women into the room with me. Apparently that was against policy. We got our money back and left.

       We had nowhere else to go, but were too drunk to continue on to Arkansas. Besides, we wanted to see the sun rise at Cahokia. Being a group of activists, we weren’t easily deterred from our goals. We went back to the gas station and asked the clerk if we could hang out there. He was delighted and said yes.

       By this point it was maybe 130 in the morning. As we chatted further, a large man in a flannel shirt came in. His eyes were glassy from years of alcohol abuse. His body hulked forward toward the counter and he looked me up and down, befuddled at my presentation. The combination of a pink shock of hair and nail polish on my body clearly did not sit right with him.

       He growled from his belly. His eyes met mine as he said “We like steers here, not queers.”  I couldn’t help but laugh my ass off at his implication that bestiality was more socially acceptable in this locale than queerness. i didn’t recognize how terrifying the moment was at first. i didn’t link this moment to the violence i’d experienced in high school. i didn’t link it to all the people who’d thrown things at me from cars. i didn’t link it to a system of oppression and ignorance.

       A few hours later i was outside alone smoking a cigarette. i smiled brightly and felt refreshed in the cold air. i wasn’t on alert. i hadn’t learned to do that yet. A big truck rumbled into the station. There were two men inside. One was sleeping; the other was the same man who’d mocked me an hour earlier.

       The car stopped and the door flew open. The tendons in his arms bulged through his shirt in fury. He barreled around the front of the truck, his eyes always on mine. His expression was one of death. My death. Time slowed to a near halt. Each second dragged out into eons.

       i stood, unable to respond. My only thought was that this man was going to murder me because i was queer. i distinctly remember thinking that i’d be like Matt Shepard—at that point i didn’t have stories of other gender non-conforming or trans* folk dying to think of. i thought about how odd it was that this man decided, probably after several more drinks that he needed to return to the gas station with the purpose of murdering me. i thought about how much he must have brooded over that time. i wondered what his sleeping friend had said and if he’d waited for him to fall asleep.

       i stood. i brought my cigarette to my lips for the last time. Breathing deeply i readied myself. i’d like to say that my non-response was one of resistance but that would be a lie. It was a lack of capacity to respond, a lack of knowing how to respond. Even if i wanted to defend myself i couldn’t have, he was enormous and determined.

       His arms began to lift, tree trunks ready to descend on me. i couldn’t perceive what happened next because i was too struck, too much waiting to die. These moments came to me slowly over the next few minutes, drifting into my memory without fully integrating into my reality. i was still waiting to die.

       The clerk had come out and fought this man back into his truck. He’d screamed and yelled. He refused to let this man hurt me, perhaps out of pure goodness and perhaps out of the solidarity we’d built earlier. He told the man to drive away or he would call the police.

       The clerk came up to me and told me that the man had wanted to kill me because i was gay. Then he said, “You’re not even gay, are you?”

       My teeth chattered. My soul gasped. i didn’t know how to answer that question. i wasn’t gay. But i was queer. That man wanted to kill me because i didn’t conform to his idea of what a body assigned male at birth should look like. That man wanted to take me off the earth because i was queer.

       i said “No.” i lied to him. i didn’t want him to realize that he’d saved me under false pretenses and face more violence. i denied my truth to the person who saved me and immediately began to weep. i’d done violence to myself and the world by my silence.

       i lay down in the back seat of the car and cried desperately for what felt like hours. My friends had come out and sat with me. They kept asking what had happened, but i couldn’t find any words. i just wept.

       Eventually i told them a version of this story that started with the phrase “i lied.” i’m still not sure whether or not they fully understood what happened. Fuck, i’m not fully sure i understood what happened.

       i slept. i woke up convulsing in the back seat, my head on my friend’s lap. i was still crying, as if seamlessly throughout my slumber. Everything felt grey. Everything was covered in a mist. Nothing felt real. Nothing felt real for a long time after. We made it to Cahokia and saw the sun rise. It was the most beautiful sunrise of my life, if only because it almost didn’t happen. But i wasn’t in my body and didn’t really get to see it.

       We went to the Ozarks later that day and met the rest of our group. i don’t remember a lot of trip. i was so actively blocking out pain and experience that i wasn’t engaged in the moment. i know what happened, i have memories that i can see through thick glass, but i wasn’t present for them. i put up a front and pretended to be my normal happy self. My self-destructiveness wasn’t really noticed by my friends because i was already in a fairly destructive place after an incident of partner rape.

       i drank too much tequila and tried to sleep under a waterfall. Only retrospectively do i recognize this as self-destruction. A friend pulled me out so that i could breathe. Sputtering and reluctant, i lived.

       In the years since i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the violence that didn’t happen and about the violence that did. i lived. But i did violence to myself by lying about my identity. Sure, maybe it was self-preservation that felt necessary in the moment. But it also felt, and still feels, like violence.

       This was one of several moments that made me decide not to continue my transition at that point. i decided that i couldn’t handle the violence i would experience. This, along with some other moments that happened around the same time caused me to choose the violence of hiding over the violence of being out.

       i grew a beard and shaved my head. i bought men’s jeans. Even as i grew to embrace this identity i recognized it as deliberately hiding. i knew that eventually i would have to deal with my gender again. Even as i created a gentle masculinity for myself, i was doing violence to my queerness.

       i remember the moment frequently. Transphobic statements often put me back in St. Louis, reliving those moments over and over. Other moments of violence (verbal or otherwise) are, for me, tied to this moment of violence. As i feel the violence again i wonder what impact it would have had on my life to tell the clerk the truth. i wonder if the violence of the sadness i feel about this lie could have been avoided.

       Now that i’m again living as queer i remember to be alert. Admittedly, i’ve gotten to a point where i work to consciously disarm this because i need to in order to exist in the world. But i remember that moment and other moments. The fear that these moments of violence have placed in my heart is violence itself.

       But through all this violence i have survived. i have been saved by others. i have struggled to persevere in moments when i was alone. i was saved and i initially felt guilty about this survival. Not everyone gets second chances. But i recognize my guilt as self-serving. I’ve learned to accept the risk of being myself. i’ve come through flames to get to where i am today and am thankful for my place on the Earth. i’ve chosen to put this second life to use; to cherish it, to use it to love and to resist, and to work to hopefully help others do the same.

shifting nouns, shifting ground

       Nouns are as complicated for me as pronouns. My relationship to identity monikers is both a site of confusion and a site of growth. When i decided to transition this time around, i thought of myself as a woman.

       My identity fell upon binary lines. i didn’t even really feel all that connected to the idea of being a trans woman. i was simply a woman, and began taking steps to align my body and presentation with that reality. This was a process that was simultaneously liberating and hindering.

       i grew my hair out, awkwardly at first. i started taking estrogen. i learned to sew fabulous dresses and wore them everywhere. i shaved my body hair. i wanted to be perceived as a woman, period. This never really happened.

       Some folks in my life saw me this way, but these folks were particularly gender conscious and were committed to allowing me to define myself. For them i am incredibly grateful. i was given some space for becoming. i was empowered by knowing that there were folks who took my word about who and what i was.

       But, most of society was not that gracious to me. Most of the time when i was out in the world i was not read as a woman. My partner at the time used language that divided me from other women, language that rings in my ears to this day. Gendered spaces were scary and sometimes prohibitive. i tried to hide other vectors of my identity that may interrupt other people’s ability to see me as a woman. When i looked in the mirror i did not see a face or a body that matched the socially constructed category of woman, and was filled with sadness and self-loathing. i was kept away from the category of womanhood.

       It was painful. i wanted my identity to be accepted without question. But it wasn’t. Questions from the outside transformed into poison in my heart. i became jealous of cis people that were comfortable in their genders.

       Somehow, and for this i consider myself truly blessed, i was able to recognize that this jealousy was only doing a disservice to me and that normative femininity felt like poison. i stood alone and looked in the mirror for hours. i’d started to transition in hopes of being able to recognize myself in the mirror. i still couldn’t.

       Tears streamed from my eyes, screams welled in my throat, my teeth grit. i reached for the nearest pair of scissors. i cut the sides of my hair short. i wanted to reclaim my identity as a punk, i wanted to feel comfortable. i thought this would make it even less likely for folks to see me as a woman, and it did.

       But in that moment, womanhood started to matter less to me. i was able to embrace myself as a trans woman. i didn’t need perfect makeup and tiny shoulders. My exclusion from the category of woman allowed me to truly be a trans woman. For me this moment was crucial.

       i was different than other folks and that was ok. Scratch that, it became beautiful. This difference was a point of resistance, a locus of self-creation in the face of culture’s attempts to normalize and assimilate. i began to redefine femininity on my own terms; i unearthed a femininity that did not feel to me like poison.

       Eventually, and because of this, i stopped describing myself as a trans woman altogether. The word felt odd to me, heavy, awkward, inhibiting. i began to use the term trans feminine to speak to a sense of directionality instead of a location. Again, i was blessed by my recognition that my gender was a shifting and flowing thing.

       Acknowledging this directionality as a sign that my gender did not exist in a void, essential independently of social forces, i looked at my gendered relationship to the world. i reflected on my values and my ideas for a role.

       i found the word femme. Femme for me means compassion, care, resilience, sureness of self, and a deep capacity to love in the face of all obstacles. Femme took the place that woman used to occupy. Only this word felt, and still feels, whole to me. Femme is comfortable. Femme is home.

       But this was not the end of my journey. Although i was a femme, i was still trans. But the recognition that for me femme and woman were separate allowed me to embrace a non-binary gender. i learned to embrace trans*, as a category that rendered my shift from my birth assigned gender visible without locking me into a normative conception of what transness should mean.

       This process of growth and change cultivated a capacity for growth and change. i learned to see myself as both a “she” and an “it.” i began to love the term creature, and still sparkle every time someone refers to me as such.

       i embraced the fact that i was a faggot. i felt it deep in my bones. This epithet that was hurled at me so often was true. i similarly came to embrace myself as a tranny. These points of reclamation were a breaking point at which i was able to perceive myself as beautiful and valuable in the face of normative claims that i am not.

       The term genderqueer was already something i’d been using to describe my non-binary identity, but it just recently began to feel like home too. This has been partly due to the blessing of knowing several other beautiful folks who claim that word, and seeing parallels to my own identity. They have helped me to grow and to become, yet again.

       i recently shaved off my dreadlocks out of a desire to disarm a problematic and racialized hairstyle (more on this later, i promise). i was initially incredibly concerned that people would perceive me more as male when i had short hair. But i had to disarm anyway, that was more important to me than holding onto a gender presentation.

       As the hair fell from the back of my head and the ever present tug on my scalp gave way, i began to feel air on my neck. i was immediately reminded of how comfortable short hair felt in boyhood, how much i liked rubbing a freshly shaved head and feeling clean and fresh. i was left with bangs and long bits on the side that make my hair look femme in front and boyishly cute in back.

       i looked in the mirror and not only recognized myself, i recognized my constant flux, the beauty in that flux, and the beginning of yet another catalyzation of gendered shift taking place. It took me a few hours to place exactly why this was, and then another word sprang to the fore of my brain: genderfuck. Again, this is a word that is rooted in resistance and challenge to normativity and strength in self-definition.

       i still want my identity to be accepted without question because, although it’s complex and fluid, it’s still valid. i am still the final say of who and what i am, even though i recognize that my gender is reflexive and interacts with the world around me. In this ongoing gender journey i will still question myself, and allow myself to change. i will collect and reject and redefine nouns, because that process allows me to grow and become.

a new tool in my tool box

       (Note: i discuss strategies for intervening in problematic social moments. i do not talk here about people and communities that are consciously open to growth. Those spaces do exist in my life and certainly need to be reflected upon, but that is not the purpose of this piece. Here i talk about folks i know casually or who are not open to acknowledging their place larger systems of power).

       i used to be a spy. i wore a beard and lived as a man. But, for most of my conscious life i was unabashedly a feminist (a word that i am not totally sure of at this moment, but was then). Because i was read in the way that i was, people assumed they could say whatever they wanted without being challenged. There was a “just one of the guys” logic applied to me, leading people (cis men) to think that i would buy into their sexism/homophobia/whatever. Needless to say, i was given ample opportunity to call bullshit on people, and did.

       After presenting more queerly, i started hearing a different kind of shit. This new kind of shit was either blatantly hateful, or unwittingly ignorant and hurtful. It was often directed at me. i cannot claim to have a perfect strategy for dealing with either of these.

       In the first instance i am often confrontational. i don’t pretend that i’m going to change any of these folks minds through confrontation. If someone is being purposefully transphobic, there’s little chance that they’re going to be open to anything that i have to say. My logic here is that, at the very least, i can make them wary of saying fucked up things to queers in the future because one yelled at them once.

       This strategy also helps me to survive in my soul. By this i mean that i don’t have to internalize what was said, if i can find a way to turn it back on someone. i’d often rather acknowledge the bullshit, openly and fiercely, so that it doesn’t weigh on my soul. i don’t like being left wondering if it would have felt better if i would have said something.

       Although, i will admit that sometimes i choose to not say anything. i will occasionally, willfully let moments pass. This comes either from a place of being too tired for a confrontation and just wanting the moment to be over or from fears of physical safety. i respond more to the former, as physical safety is something that i willfully give up to walk out my front door looking the way that i do, but both are very real parameters in my life.

       As for the other type of shit, the more subtle kind, my responses are trickier. It used to be easy to just call something out for what it was. “That was transphobic because ____” somehow seemed to carry more weight before i was being read as trans. At this point in my life i am often dismissed when i call things out as being oversensitive. i literally cannot count the number of times that i’ve been told to grow thicker skin (or some variant of “toughen up” logic).

       This type of response totally discounts how resilient i actually am in being able to put up with the shit that society throws at me and still be true to myself. i’m going to place that aside for now because the folks who tell me to “toughen up” are not typically open to this fact.

       i’ve been struggling to come up with a new method of intervention in moments so that i can still have an impact and not be immediately discounted. This has been difficult, as i really am most comfortable and articulate when i can face things directly.

       i’ve been trying a strategy of humorous interventions. i was hesitant to try this, because i worry about minimizing moments and disallowing for the discussion that i feel needs to happen. That said, because folks have started completely discounting my opinions, those conversations were not happening anyway.

       To illustrate my meaning, here are a few examples:

       i was talking to someone about the weather, as it’s been inordinately hot in Chicago. He said “I don’t like the sun, I’m such a pussy.” Obviously this is sexist and gross. In the past i would have said that, and then hopefully had a conversation about how discursively using “pussy” in that way reified x, y, and z power dynamics.

       But, i chose to forgo that and simply smiled and said, “i don’t know what you’re talking about right now; my pussy loves the sun.” i didn’t get to talk about systems of oppression, i left that invisible and am still unsure how i feel about my part in that. But, this person laughed, and sighed at the same time. There was a look of recognition on his face. Maybe he saw how “pussy-ness” had nothing to do with his self-claimed inability to cope with heat. He said “I’ve got nothing to say to that,” and walked away.

       So, i think that i got to put something out there where i would have otherwise been completely incapable of intervention due to my specific marginalization as a radical trans person. Further, i got to laugh and throw this person’s ignorance back at them in a very queer way. Something here felt empowering.

       A few days later i asked someone their name. They asked “What do I look like?” Again, my instinct was to explain why that question was problematic: that it assumed that names (which are often gendered, racialized, etc.) are a thing that can be assumed about a person (and thus that gender, race, etc. can also be assumed). i wanted to tell them how often people don't believe me when i tell them my name is ellie. In light of the success of the previous instance, i got cute and fierce.

       i tossed my head back to the right, femme and cocky, and said “Honey, i’m a tranny, i am not going to assume shit about you.” Again, this person seemed to get a bit of my point. Maybe they didn’t get the whole discussion of power and assumption in our culture, but they really did get something.

       i don’t know what to make of all of this just yet. i certainly don’t want to undercut the fact that real conversations need to be happening around these issues. But maybe this strategy is a way to get folks to begin to open up to the possibility of having those conversations. Maybe these gentle, humorous reminders are disarming in a unique way. Maybe they have a place. How to know when that is the right strategy and when to actually call something out is still up in the air for me, but i have a new tool in my toolbox and i’m excited about that.