This is how the story goes: trans girl knows from birth she is trans. One day, she comes out to herself. She changes up her hair, gets on HRT, trains her voice to sound different, and within weeks to months she starts getting gendered correctly by strangers. New people in her life might not even know she’s trans at all. She has bottom surgery and she barely gets misgendered.
This is not my story. I’ve been on HRT for years and have had bottom surgery, and I cannot remember the last time I was gendered correctly by a stranger. At one point I used to be harassed for being androgynous, but now everyone just assumes I’m a dude including trans people. I recognize that shuffle queer women and transmascs do when I’m nearby, that walk that’s one step faster, the thing we do when we feel a touch threatened by cisgender men being around. I recognize those eyes trans women give when they are interacting with me at their work place and how they aren’t those eyes that you save for when you recognize one of us. I recognize that talk of oh this must be for your girlfriend.
Trans people are so sure that I’m a man that they’ll use he/him pronouns without even thinking to ask. They’ll do it even when I spend a lot of time femming up and wearing my best dress. Trans men are so sure that people like me don’t belong that they pull shit like this on Twitter:
I am invisible.
Fighting for that visibility hurts. It’s at the point that I’ve stopped correcting cis people who misgender me, because dealing with their response hurts more than staying silent. And for what? They almost never change and I won’t ever cross paths with them again. Only when I have to – like when the insurance person questioned me because I had an “F” on my documents – do I bother. And then there’s my name. Miles? Midas? They always go for male names.
What hurts me more though are trans people around me respond to all of this. Like the trans woman beside me who asked me if I liked being misgendered after the waitress gendered her correctly, but not me, and I hadn’t stood up for myself. Of course not; it’s a reminder that I don’t have a place here.
Or the trans women when I was recovering from surgery who upon hearing my lament deconstructed my appearance and all the ways I don’t fit into stereotypes of femininity. That made me feel worse, thank you.
Or all the imagery from queer events, especially those run by queer women and transmascs, where bodies like mine aren’t ever seen on their Instagram posts. Or heck, even queer businesses – it’s almost always queer women and transmasculine folk working the cash and socializing together. The messaging is that bodies like mine don’t belong.
Here’s the thing: I’m not going to change. I am not your svelte twenty-something trans chick. I am read as a man and I am a woman. One does not invalidate the other, any more than it would for a cis woman. What needs to change isn’t me, but the assumptions that others make. I don’t expect better from cis people, but I sure as shit do from trans and non-binary folk – especially you transmasc people.
I try to give a positive spin on posts that deal with hardship. But this isn’t your feel good porn. Sometimes, shit sucks, it’s really isolating, and it’s just as important to acknowledge.