Just found something I wrote in 2013 about masculinity, trans-ness, passing, and the shattering when you realize what being seen as a man means in this world.
It hurts to read how this wound has been there so long. I never felt like a woman. I thought I might be a man. Now I just want to be a comrade and lover to the world, whatever that gender is.
— — — –
A classic southern joke:
Why aren’t Mississippians afraid of Hell?
Because … at least in Hell, its a dry heat.
It was a sticky humid Mississippi day, another midmorning already hitting the 90s. In my stifling clothes, it felt like 1000 sweaty degrees. A stiff new binder constricted my breathing, covered by a white T-shirt and a too-large second-hand polo, down to khaki pants and closed-toed-shoes that confined even my feet. While my college friends moved freely in their shorts and cute tanks, I was compressed in my attempts at respectable masculinity. Everything I’d read online gave tips on how to be “read as male.” Polo shirts, not T-shirts. Short hair, but not too short or too much product for fear of being assumed a butch lesbian. If shorts, only cargo shorts. It was a careful balance of supposedly “casual” masculinity. Too far on the formal side and people would spot that something was off. And other ways of being could get you read as a butch lesbian, which so many of these websites made sound like a death knell. I studied and replicated these tips in a desperate misguided attempt to grant legitimacy to my gender.
My car didn’t have air conditioning. I parked and walked over to the clinic, sweat already beading at my forehead, my armpits damp. A quick wave and a round of greetings and I was already hanging up posters of support, learning about how to assist people as they arrived. I was spending my rare trip into Jackson at Mississippi’s only abortion clinic.
I had graduated college without a plan because, up till that point, my whole plan in life had consisted of 1) Go to school and 2) Do well at that. Up until college, I’d done remarkably well at making sure to meet this assumed life goal. Four years of college led to a diagnosis of epilepsy (to say nothing of those things undiagnosed), a fair amount of weight gain, and the destroying sense of depression that comes with being trans and young and alone. But I did manage the first point, I went to school. And finished. And promptly realized that no one gives you scholarships to life.
I moved back in with my parents. On the rare occasion that I didn’t feel like a worthless sponge I would go visit acquaintances in Jackson, crashing on sofas and trying to have some a modicum of young adult-hood. Those weekends were the only time I could start to be Duncan, the only time I could escape the smothering trapped fear of life unlived.
As other supporters went to get water, I continued hanging posters. One of the anti-abortion protestors suddenly beelined towards me. “So, what’s a nice young man like you doing here?”
A pause. Possibly imperceptible to him. As my brain reeled.
Don’t answer.
But he thinks I’m a young man!
But you’re busy. You aren’t supposed to engage!
But I want to be a young man!
You are! You are. Just don’t ….
Too late.
“Umm … I’m helping hang posters?” I ended with questioning upward inflection. Because everything was a question back then, every statement unsure. I turned around, shoulders too far back, my legs too far apart. It was the stance of a plastic action figure.
“I noticed the posters. But why are you here?”
*pause*
“I’m here to support people.”
“But is this really support? I mean, convincing these girls.”
“Well. …. umm, I think women uhhh uh people should have a choice.
“What about the fetuses choice?”
“Look … I I’m really I am just here to help. I want people to feel safe when they’re already making a tough choice.”
“But this seems like an easy way out, doesn’t it. Just giving up ”
I cut him off “No. … No I don’t think it seems easy and I don’t … I don’t really think it’s my place to tell someone what to do with their body.”
“Well then, I guess you should be glad you can’t ever get pregnant.”
I suddenly realized, with brute collision of understanding, that I never wanted to be invisible again, that I could never be quiet again. That to be an assumed cis man, to never speak out, was to be the person this guy thought was on his side.
I mumbled, backing away with feigned excuses – a headache, the heat, I needed water.
— — — –
Later, I began to walk towards a car pulling up and she stepped out, her back towards me. I saw microbraids shift as she turned. And as I began to say “I’m with the clinic,” her face shifted too, into an emotion I’d never seen that way before. I saw fear and panic. I saw it towards me.
She saw me, this conservatively dressed pasty-ass boy in his ill fitting polo and she thought I had come to torment her. Or worse. I choked on my sentence as she jumped back into the car, emphatically locking the doors. The double click was an ellipses where my words should have been. I tried again, clearing my throat. “I’m with the clinic.” Pointed an emphatic finger towards the building. She shook – her head, her hands – her eyes wide and hand picking up a cell phone.
I backed away, fumbling.
It took my friend Casey to convince her I was with the clinic, that it was safe to be in my presence. Afterwards she apologized and we laughed awkwardly together. I apologized back for scaring her and she insisted it was all fine. She didn’t spare another look for me after that and I was certainly too mortified to be any bother.
My words were not enough and never would be. Perhaps I was just another boy in a long line of hurtful liars. Perhaps she was another queer person, poisoned by the toxic masculinity that surrounds “male” in this culture, the same toxicity that was already infecting me. Perhaps, like every Mississippian, she knew people’s willingness to hurt others for political justification. Perhaps …. None of the perhaps really mattered.
I suddenly realized the weight of my decisions. I was not just a man, but The Man.
I still am, you know. The Man, with the capital M. It’s sweltering, stifling. There are days my hands claw at its compression. There are days I fight against it by wearing a kilt or something decidedly un-masculine – beads and bright colors and a sense of play. There are hours spent fighting against it by calling out problematic behavior, arguing why these things are hurtful, how misogyny is so intricately woven into the societal fabric that it goes unnoticed. There are minutes full of terror when I have to confront someone in public, the intense fear of attack.
And for all that, I know it’s worse for women.
eish zarah 