Every lesson I learned from society taught that gender non-conformity is a failure. This message gets reinforced through the relentless drone of harassment, the complete strangers who pick apart my body. “It would be easier if you tone it down.” Gender non-conforming people are framed as the problem. Not: gender norms. The onus is on us to modify what we look like to make other people more comfortable. Never them to stop attacking us.
This year I haven’t been going outside. Usually, I’m on high alert. People point and stare, take photos of me, laugh, scream expletives, throw trash. They do everything in their power to disappear me (so they don’t have to confront themselves).
I’ve been thinking: why continue when it takes such a toll? I live with chronic pain. Which, in some narrations of the body is hardly a life at all.
It’s not a rational thing – this - living in a form where, foreseeably for the rest of my life I will be misunderstood and maligned. But this is about something more honest than comprehension. I’ll never be able to describe it to you, all I can do is show you. When I laugh, I feel it. Not the simulated laugh of a TV show audience, my laugh. When I cry, I feel it. Like every tear is its own private baptism.
The other day @lavernecox said that being visibly trans in public is beautiful. I felt so moved because she was speaking to another kind of beauty. One that they thought was impossible, but here we are, doing it. Living. Here. In their impossible.
Beauty is less about what we look like, more about what we feel. When I go outside as my truest self I feel, transcendent. Rooted on the earth. When I don’t, I feel like I’m wearing a costume. Someone else’s idea of who I should be.
I’m fighting for beauty. I’m fighting for the joy that comes from encountering beauty in myself and in the world. I’m fighting for everyone to be able to exist in their divine, self-authored form. Gender diversity is necessary. Not just for humanity, but for ecology. The only constant in the world is change and oh my god, how beautiful that is. Watch the seasons, watch the rivers, watch the trees, watch me.
