louder than a lion

Years later, in another life, before giving a reading, the organizer asked me for my preferred pronouns. I never knew I had a choice. “He/him” I said, after a pause, suddenly unsure. But I felt a door had opened—if only slightly—and through it I had glimpsed a path I had not known existed. There was a way out.

But what if I don’t want to leave this room yet, but just make it bigger? Pronouns like they/them are, to my trans friends and family, a refuge—a destination secured through flight and self-agency. They/them pronouns allow an interface where one can quickly code oneself as nonnormative, in the hopes of bypassing the pain and awkwardness of explanation or the labor of legibility when simply existing can be exhausting. Would I, by changing pronouns, appropriate myself into a space others need in order to survive?

As a war refugee, I know how vital a foothold as small as a word can be. And since as a cis-presenting male, I don’t need to flee he-ness in order to be seen as myself, I will stay here. Can the walls of masculinity, set up so long ago through decrees of death and conquest, be breached, broken, recast—even healed? I am, in other words, invested in troubling he-ness. I want to complicate, expand, and change it by being inside it. And I am here for the very reasons why I feel, on bad days, I should leave it altogether: that I don’t recognize myself within its dominant ranks—but I believe it can grow to hold me better. Perhaps one day, masculinity might become so myriad, so malleable, it no longer needs a fixed border to recognize itself. It might not need to be itself at all. I wonder if that, too, is the queering of a space? I wonder if boys can ever bandage each other’s feet, in friendship, without a password...

it’s about persuading the audience.

if I call out my teacher on being homophobic I’m not trying to change his opinion. I’m trying to convince any closeted kids in the room that they’re not the monsters he’s made them out to be.

if I argue with my aunt about how racist she’s being it’s not because I expect to change her mind. it’s because I’m hoping to god my cousin’s kids hear and learn that maybe skin color doesn’t mean what she says it means.

Years ago I supported a transition plan for a brave kid who was coming out at his school. The school had no idea what to do— he was their first (out) trans kid. So I spoke with the kid, we made a plan as to how he wanted things to go down and we completed that plan through education and administrative changes. The school was really on board and it went really well.

The next year they called me again and said “you’ll never believe it… we’ve had 6 kids come out and want to transition at school”. And duh of course I believed it. Why? Because that kid had built that bridge for the school and now people who had been there the whole time were using it. It’s amazing that first kid came out and forged a path… but he shouldn’t have had to have been amazing to be himself.