Content warning: This post contains a lot of self-loathing regarding being transgender.
There are a lot of different feelings and situations portrayed in fiction, in films, in tele, in music. Sometimes, they can help you learn about how people outside your “group” feel. For example, I heard from some of my white friends that they had a new appreciation for what Black folks go through after watching Watchmen‘s handling of the Tulsa race massacre of 1921.
It is through this lens, through a desire to gain some sort of understanding or at least perspective, that I am approaching this blog post. This is really painful for me to talk about, but I feel like it really needs to be said. I think there’s a lot of “holes” in the general public’s knowledge about what it really feels like to be misgendered.
Let me stress: This is not fiction. These are actual, raw, unedited text message logs between me and two friends, right after I was misgendered by someone who had outwardly appeared to have had no issue with me. It’s always a bit more shocking when it happens like that. I’m used to the bigots and the “haters”, but when someone treats me kindly and then misgenders me on purpose, it really hits me different.
Anna: I wonder if they’d still do it if I had better boobs
Anna: I wonder if they’d still do it if I was pretty
Anna: I wonder if they’d still do it if I had a better voice
Anna: I wonder if they’d still do it if I had my Adam’s Apple surgically removed
Anna: I wonder if they’d still do it if I had a uterus transplant, which is actually being done in experimental trials
Anna: I wonder if they’d still do it even if I had a crispr edit to remove the Y.
Anna: I’ll never be good enough. It’ll never be enough. No one cares about what I am, they only care about a birth defect
Anna: That’s all I am to anyone
Anna: A defect. An aberration.
Anna: I’m going to go to bed, I guess.
Anna: What a thought to go to sleep to.
Anna: It’s easier to convince people I’m a dog than it is to convince people I’m a female.
Horst: I … For what it’s worth, they’d still find a way. They’d still find a reason. Some people don’t have any marketable skills other than to feel superior
Anna: It’s not like anyone can change facts
Anna: It’s the truth. I’m an aberration
Anna: I’m the freak that proves freaks exist. The people who decide to be around me by choice are just intrigued by the freak show. Dazzled by the bizarre.
Anna: They don’t actually like me or enjoy my company or presence, it’s a joke, it’s a peculiarity, it’s a story for later.
Elly: hug yeah, that’s really shitty.
Elly: one transphobic incident in Oklahoma does not mean you’re a freak
Anna: What about in California
Elly: Cali you’d be protected
Anna: What about in New York
Anna: People from those places have abused me [online] lately 🙃
Anna: As in, this year
Anna: What am I gonna do
Anna: File a police report they won’t care about
Anna: Laws only matter when enforced.
I know that most of what I felt there is demonstrably not true. I have very good friends. I have people that love me. I have an amazing support network, really, especially compared to some of the other folks that I know. I’m genuinely pretty self-confident most days!
And yet, in that moment, those were my actual feelings.
This is what I actually felt.
And in a way, I suppose it is easier for people to understand my being a dog, because that’s a thing. Spirit animals, lycanthropy, furry fandom; there are so many ways people express affinity with animals. This is relatively normal – at least comparatively – and has been part of society for centuries. (Then again, transgenderism has been, too.)
I hate that even now, even after all I’ve been through, even through all of the ways I know I am better than that – that transphobes still have that sort of power over me, even momentarily. But I can’t deny it. It feels like being hit in the face with a switch. It feels like having so much emotion you have to cry but being entirely unable to, and having that emotion fester inside you making you physically ill. It feels like having someone steal your identity from you.
Because… it kind of is.
But only if you let it.
I know it’s hard. Believe me. You can read above that I’m not even perfect at this. But you don’t have to let them in. You don’t have to let them win.
I see you. You are valid. If you are trans, you are valid. If you are cis, you are valid. If you are neither, you are valid. If you are non-binary, you are valid. If you are agender, you are valid. If you’re a word that I have not even heard of yet, you are valid!
Please try to be strong. I am going to try and be strong, even though it is very difficult at times. You can be, too. The emotions I felt in those text messages were felt, but they are not felt any longer. You can feel your own emotions and then let them go as well.