#trans ish

so already we've got a bucketful of cis privilege: i never came out (genderwise), never had to ask people to address me with new pronouns (and never had people i care about refuse to use my preferred pronouns), gynecologists don't ask me weird questions, i have never had a confrontation in a public restroom, and there are many more cis privileges i have access to without even realizing.

because i strongly identify as a womyn and with other womyn, there are many experiences of anti-trans discrimination, silencing, and violence that i have not experienced and couldn't even begin to understand and i know that that is privilege. i have never had the kind of body dysmorphia that is central to the popular trajectory of trans lives (although i am so down to discuss less well-known but easily as common differing relationships that trans folks have to their bodies!). i have never wanted hormone replacement therapy or top or bottom surgeries of any sort. (i have not faced the social stigma, discrimination, financial obstacles and general fuckery that so many trans folks face when they want/don't want/try to get/have had those things.) that is privilege, too.

but embodied gender anxiety takes many forms, and for too many years of my life i would look in the mirror and i would see my broad shoulders and my slouch and i would trim the hairs on my chin and i would shave my armpits and i would try to laugh more feminine and i would make sure my hair looked nice so people would think 'what a pretty girl' instead of 'is that a girl??'. it's not a coincidence that i took up the term 'genderqueer' at about the same time i stopped doing all of those things and also started being really serious about learning to love myself.

and hold the phone right there if you have somehow misread my words enough to think i believe trans people hate themselves. or that i believe that people who shave or whatever don't love themselves. i'm not talking about anyone else's gender or anyone else's relationship to themselves or their bodies.

i'm talking about that sick and scared and humiliated feeling i would get, every so often, when i gazed into the mirror and couldn't see a girl. i would look and look, but i couldn't find her, and just remembering that feeling is making me cry so let's move on

for me, being a genderqueer womyn was/is about being a womyn on my own terms. i haven't stopped identifying as a womyn and with other womyn, but yo, i'm still gonna have to do me. and if doing me means that i am frequently not even legible as a womyn, then it is what it is.

i don't know how the majority of people read me. all of the cis people who i feel comfortable asking always say 'you're a womyn, of course!!' and play like they don't see any of my ambiguities or complexities. i think they are trying to comfort me when they do this. this is weird  and actually makes me feel like maybe they look just to the left of my gender, so they can feel comfortable around me.

i don't know how the majority of people read me, but i sometimes look like a black dude to them. these times are obvious because people start treating me like i'm going to steal their purse/shoot them/accuse them of being racist/whatever new scary thing non-black people are terrified of. i'm too tired to even get into this right now.

i don't know how the majority of people read me, but i know that they always have to double-take. many have to stare. some have to ask questions. some have to cause a scene and yell things and try to humiliate me and, on one memorable occasion, throw things.

i'm not downplaying my cis privilege. on some real, checkin privilege checklists like this(http://takesupspace.wordpress.com/cis-privilege-checklist/), i see MANY things i have never had to worry about. but i also see many things i do worry about, some of which are because i'm black (hello, race analysis is pretty important part of a privilege checklist), some of which are because i'm queer, and some of which are because, whether or not i identify as a womyn, i don't always pass. gender isn't just what you feel~~~ it also has elements of presentation, and of recognition.