Electra Star ☆

Electra Confesses:

As a kid, I was obsessed with the word “person”.

Not boy or girl. Person. I’d decided I could identify with that more. It was simple.

Easy.

Unfortunately, being transgender is anything but simple.

My mother found out I’d been going by a different name and using they/them pronouns in the summer of 6th grade. She’d gone through my phone and found a message to my friend about using different pronouns months before, but only recently received an email from my school using a different name for me.

She’d brought me to her therapist. It was odd. Her therapist explained that my mom found out about that and I was horrified. I wondered how long she knew that I changed my name. I never noticed anything was off. She didn’t either.

Her therapist didn’t seem to know anything about trans people. Called them transsexuals. Called us transsexuals.

I never experienced severe gender dysphoria. Not in the way that would genuinely make me want to modify my body severely. I experienced it, and still do, in the little ways. My hair being a bit too long bothers me. My eyes being a bit too soft, a bit too feminine bothers me. A lot of small things bother me but I’ve never really been bothered to change them.

Part of it really is my parents. If I got the haircut I really want I would be embarrassed, honestly. My parents would immediately recognize that I’m trying to look like my idol. Everyone would know, because I talk about him all the fucking time.

Speaking of my idol, he’s part of my transgender experience. Every time I look at him I wish I looked like him. He’s so comfortably cool and androgynous and addicting. Sometimes I go to sleep pretending I am him. I imagine myself in his body. It’s really not too bad, though I still like my own. But maybe I’d trade my face for his. And, of course, I’d want his hair, too.

Trying to explain that some guy is “kinda how you feel about gender” is extremely difficult. And weird. But it’s true. The way he presents himself is exactly how I want to. I want to be feminine and masculine at the same time. I want to look cool while doing it. But I have other things to worry about, so I haven’t concerned myself with fully expressing myself just yet.

Back to my mom. She was so upset. I held my breath the entire hour we were at her therapist’s office. And I let it go. My identity. I told her I would go back to my given name and stop using they/them pronouns when school started back up again. And so I did. My friends know I’m trans, but I would never outwardly announce it at school. My mom doesn’t need another heart attack and I just can’t explain it to her.

I’ve gotten around to liking my given name again. It’s androgynous anyways, and honestly I don’t fully understand why I changed it. I guess it was to feel even more masculine, because I was born a girl so I associated my name with femininity. But it’s alright now, I don’t really want to go through the process of changing my name, and I really love my name. I think my mom was upset because I took away the first thing she ever gave me. It’s understandable.

It’s kind of funny looking back, because I actually tried to tell her I was trans earlier that year. I was talking about my friend, and she was confused who I was talking about. I then explained that the guy I was talking about used to go by [deadname] but he transitioned and now go by something else. But she could tell something was bothering me. It was so difficult to tell her about this because it was so close to my heart. I broke down and sobbed into her shoulder, “I’m nonbinary!”

She thought I said bisexual. She said it was okay. Even though I’d told her two years before that I was a lesbian and she said I was too young to know. She probably felt better about me being bisexual because then I could end up with a man. I actually am bisexual, so I guess it worked out. Until she found out that I was also nonbinary.

She still doesn’t trust me to this day. Even though she’d obviously kinda traumatized me when I was in 4th grade, brushing my feelings aside about being a lesbian. Sometimes, when she would pick me up early from school, in 7th and 8th grade, the staff would use they/them pronouns for me. Using gender neutral language was simply becoming more common and not all of the staff members knew if I was a girl. (Also, as stated before, my name is androgynous. They didn’t want to assume.) And then my mom would pick me up and ask, “You’re not going by ‘they’ anymore right?”, and I would roll my eyes and say no. I was kind of lying, though.

I’m openly trans online. It’s on all my social media profiles: any pronouns, transgender. It’s nice because people don’t know what I look like behind the screen. They don’t know that in real life, I’m obviously female and present as such. I can be more androgynous. It’s nice. Also, surprisingly, I haven’t run into many hateful people. No DMs calling me the T-slur. No one commenting on my posts that being nonbinary isn’t real. There have been a few insensitive comments, sure, but nothing crazy towards me specifically. I’m pretty grateful I haven’t been hit with the massive wave of transphobia online. Though I do see people talk about it. All the time.

I follow a lot of trans creators. It hurts seeing that my community is struggling so much right now. I also feel a bit guilty. Like, I’m doing fine not transitioning, not being openly trans in my real life. It kinda sucks but I can live with it. I have it so much easier than so many other transgender people. I don’t have severe dysphoria. Should I even be able to call myself transgender? Lump myself into this group of people who have to fight to use the bathroom while I can waltz into the bathroom associated with my assigned gender at birth, no questions asked? I’ve barely even faced transphobia, if it all.

I know it’s silly. I know for a fact I don’t feel entirely like a woman. I feel connected to the nonbinary label and to being a man, in some way. I do think that experience with my mom has made me stop thinking about the idea of me actually being transgender. This essay is the most I’ve thought about it in a long time. Despite the countless trans content I consume, I don’t really engage with the transness of myself. “Electra is transgender” just isn’t right, though I know it’s true. But truth and comfortability don’t always coincide.