Write your way free
For many of us, especially the transgender members of our community, we’re in a constant state of flux about our identities. Our sense of self is heavily impacted by the media that we consume, and by those that we surround ourselves with. Our sense of what it means to be in the LGBTQIA+ community also changes along with us. We absorb stereotypes from media, we absorb the identities of our friends, we find that there is no one set expression of our community, but a multi facetted, ever changing riot of colours as vivid as our flag.
- K
Name: Jesse
Age: 28
Occupation: Copywriter
Area of Study: Bachelor of Arts, Partway through a Masters of Writing
Location: Petersham
Gender: Transgender Male
I am Transgender, which took a bit of coming to terms with after having identified as a lesbian for so much of my life. Initially I knew that I was attracted to women, and I struggled a bit with realising that that was different to everyone else. When I was little I thought that everyone felt the same way, but it was a secret that no one spoke about.
One of the things that I struggled with a little bit in my mid twenties to now was the idea that I was no longer Gay, and I was actually straight, due to the transgender thing, because being gay had been a part of my identity for so long. The loss of community that I’ve felt since then has been more and more present in my life because I know that I fit into a very basic idea of gender presentation, so once I do get to a point where I start passing, I feel like I’ll be intruding upon the queer community, because I’m just some straight guy.
Which is one of the reasons I’ve been feeling better about moving towards more open communities, such as Unicorns, rather than stuff that’s just targeted towards gay women, I feel less comfortable in those spaces now.
I always remember identifying more with guys, and feeling that I had been put together wrong, even before I had heard about concepts of being transgender. It got hammered out of me through childhood, and I learnt to put those feelings away for a long time, until sometime in my mid twenties, when I became more aware about transgender people, and had a serious think about where all of these feelings were rooted inside me.
The difficult thing was that when I became aware of my dysphoria, it made me more aware of the limitations of what I could wear that would look good with my body. I’d always dressed quite masculine, but I was now dealing with the fact that if I wanted to wear mens clothes, clothes that I actually liked and enjoyed, they just wouldn’t fit with my body and the way that my body is built.
Binding was never something that I loved because if anything it just felt like a more intense bra and I couldn’t breathe as well, which would give me anxiety because… well I couldn’t breathe… even while binding, it didn’t feel good enough to make clothes fit naturally, so getting top surgery really helped with that, and even just being able to put on a shirt and have it sit properly feels right.
Queerness and partying are all so tied up so heavily in sexual liberation that there’s a sense, when being at an lgbtqia+ party to just… wear less clothing. Not a promiscuity thing, but a nod to the fact that queer rights are inherently tied up in sexual liberation – persecution of the community has always been because of an individual’s sexual preference. You can’t escape that link to sexuality, which is why when we’re in party mode, which the CisHet community would see at pride parades and stuff, there’s that idea that we’re all promiscuous and sexually charged, when it’s more about recognising that freedom to express our sexuality.
The need to dress that way of course doesn’t reflect what we would feel comfortable wearing day to day, for me especially. it’s a costume that we put on to recognise that sort of cultural heritage.
A lot of inter LGBT fashion stereotypes, I feel, have been perpetuated as a sort of uniform that we can adhere to. Especially for younger lgbt people who arent properly a part of the community yet. I remember being younger and looking up all of the things that were stereotypically gay, like Shane in the L word always wearing converse. So I bought converse, and all of the stereotypical gay stuff, so that I could flag to other people what my identity was, without straight people being as aware of, but queer people might click onto and recognise me.
As I’ve gotten older, I feel that I’ve moved away from those stereotypes. I feel that It happens with everybody who’s been in the community for a while. Your only ideas of queerness dont come from the media, they come from the people around you, making it easier to find yourself and be yourself, rather than following the two dimensional characters that they give us.
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