Gender Hacks: the Cookbook Method
Why stop at the JOY of transitioning? Let’s taste EUPHORIA.
I love food more than I’m comfortable admitting. That’s probably why I’ve struggled with disordered eating for so long. A lot of food is just terrible, but GOOD food fills me with a visceral pleasure.
You’ve felt it too. Maybe it isn’t food that does it for you, but it’s a universal feeling romance writers tapped into with one simple phrase: “It feels like home.”
It doesn’t even have to be gourmet. As long as eating it feels good.
My favorite food at thirteen years old was a slice of American cheese melted on a plain bagel. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. They tasted the best when I made them for myself.
I have, believe it or not, since then learned how to make more than bread and cheese.
And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to appreciate how…unpredictable making your own food can be. Even when you follow the instructions, cooking is a kind of art. You know, in that art almost always ends up being an act of creation that spins out of control just as soon as you think you’ve got it.
ONE PERSONALIZED GENDER, COMING RIGHT UP
It’s like that when we transition, too. Whether you identify as cisgender, transgender, non-binary, or a-gender, those moments when we begin to answer who we are beyond who people TELL us we are — it’s like throwing out the family recipe book to finally make a meal of your own.
Does it really matter if it works so well for the the rest of your family if it doesn’t work at all for you?
They’ve got this stuff more standardized than Starbucks. And if you weren’t born with an intolerance to their essential ingredients, you’d gladly order the same legally addictive stimulants as the person in line ahead of you.
But that’s just not the ABC’s of your ingredient list.
Whether it’s your family or the Cheesecake Factory, they might be able to give you the same standardized slice every time, but unless you conform to their standards, their instructions, their identity, you’ll never find the gluten-free cheesecake that speaks FOR YOU and THROUGH YOU.
(uh…how fast is this going through me, you say?)
I fought for every bit of joy in my life today — and yet I have encountered as much glory as heartache. I can make myself as ready as I can for each possible chance to cook a great meal — to manifest a life worth living — but I can’t MAKE those opportunities appear.
I don’t have that kind of control. I never did. I never will.
I can’t FORCE the world to bend to my will.
“[I]f people feel pride in thinking that [Jar Jar] is the first gay character in ‘Star Wars,’ then that’s fine.” -Ahmed Best, actor for Jar Jar Binks
I can’t PUSH every person and tiny element of a situation to fit my feelings and limits.
As Ali Muhammed said in that indelible special episode of Euphoria (I still haven’t seen season 2, and at this point, I’m afraid I never will): “You’ve got to believe in the poetry.”
“You have to create a new God. Or gods. Or whatever you can. But it is imperative that you believe in SOMETHING. Something greater than yourself, all right.
And it can’t be the ocean. It can’t be the movement, or the people, or the words.
You’ve got to believe in the poetry.
Because everything else will fail you.”
-Ali Muhammed, Euphoria S1.5 special episode “Trouble Don’t Always Last”
(make sure to catch the video at the end of this article)
We don’t get to choose the terms available to us. The terms of our existence that we are born into and will be with us beyond our last breath.
When we conform to other people’s standards as though they are our own, it’s like trying to make food according to their specialized menu of recipes. That menu was made for THEM.
They already went through the trouble of figuring out which ingredients make them feel like death, which make them feel like life but will quickly kill them anyway (lol uh-oh). Just because those ingredients, those recipes, that menu works so well for them was never any proof that it would work so well for you.
At least at this point, isn’t it time to admit that it doesn’t?
You’d never know that until now. Until you’ve come far enough to taste something new.
FACING THE CISHET HORDE
Many people eat from the same menu as each other and thrive. And I don’t just mean the cishet horde (hi friends). Queer people can share just as many similarities as those you wish you shared but can never quite make work for yourself.
If you want to do more than eat and wait for the next meal you’re going to skip anyway, you gotta set down their food. Their menu. Their recipes. Their ingredients.
You gotta get quiet long enough to hear what’s been waiting to be heard all along.
Some of what you discover will suck. Some of it will deliver unexpected delights.
Again, some of it will suck. Probably most of it. I told you to let the food mix, not to let the peas roll into the ice cream. WTF?
The benefit though — besides learning to suppress your gag reflex, I guess — is cultivating a sense of vulnerability and openness. You need to play with the options available to you. Make a mess. Let the food of your life and identity suck from time to time. Discover what works for you and what doesn’t by virtue of you taking chances to finally LIVE.
You may even discover that if you mix and match according to someone else’s menu, those ingredients make for exceptionally tasty treats.
But what you’ll most likely find is that using someone else’s menu as your ingredients was never going to work. It’s time to let go of their menu. It’s time to find your own recipes. It’s time to bake your own cookies.
WHERE WE’RE GOING, WE DON’T NEED “MENUS”
Take an honest assessment of the ingredients of your life. What’s readily available? What is the low-hanging fruit? What needs to be cultivated like a long-form Minecraft? What needs to be nurtured like a multi-generational Animal Crossing garden?
You won’t like all of the ingredients, but ingredients aren’t really to be liked or disliked. Ingredients are what you make of them. Some cultures know how to make actual poop taste like candy! They use what they have. We only cringe because what works for them doesn’t work for us. They feel the same about us when we microwave two-day-old macaroni and cheese.
But who cares what they think if mac and cheese tastes like cake to us?
ACTUALLY, I PREFER JAMBA JUICE
At some point, you’ll find stability.
Your menu will take solid form.
You’ll discover what works for you and what you’d like to eat on a regular basis.
These are your favorite meals, and you love discovering how to make them better. Why shouldn’t you? When you eat them, you have never felt more at home.
Those meals and the ingredients don’t need to work perfectly for anyone else. The fact that they work so perfectly for you is worthy of sharing with others just to let them taste how good the food tastes for YOU.
And when you taste from their menu, isn’t it a pleasure to taste what makes them whole without needing to fight whether it needs to make you feel whole, too? Their perspective and identity is as precious as yours. There’s no need to force them to be any more similar than they already are.
That’s the gift of friendship, family, and intimacy. We don’t need to be extensions of each other to step into the other person’s shoes and appreciate what makes each one of us feel whole for reasons unique from one person to the next.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Cultivate your garden. Harvest your ingredients. Explore your own recipes. Delight in what you have made. Find community and belonging in sharing what has made the fruit of you precious, unique, and always worth the flavor it brings.
PS. WATCH THE VIDEO!! It’s only 3 minutes.
THE END (DAMN GIRL, THAT’S DARK)
Hi, it’s Stephenie!
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