Creative Non-Fiction
Transgender In-Fighting for Cis Entertainment?
I have been surprised by two things, as a transgender person.
CW: Internalized transphobia
Since I came out as transgender, I have experienced two things that have really stunned me. The first thing has been incredibly ugly at times, while the second thing has been absolutely beautiful.
Surprising Experience #1: Transgender in-fighting for cis entertainment and absolution
I still see things all the time on social media that are very upsetting to me, as a transgender person. These soundbites attack people like me directly or indirectly. This is at its most painful when it comes from my own people.
- “Don’t you dare complain! You chose this life! You knew it would be hard to leave the closet.”
- “We have more important things to fight over than pronouns.”
- “Since you don’t see me as a real trans man, I’m going to lash out at random strangers with misogyny and miscellaneous sexual harassment, pretending I’m not hurting us all by reinforcing stereotypes of my people.”
- “This isn’t the Oppression Olympics!”
- “Don’t undermine my struggle by claiming that you’re transgender, if you haven’t medically, socially, legally, psychologically, and stereotypically transitioned already!”
- “Make sure you think really hard about it before you make big, dangerous, expensive medical decisions about your own body that can’t be undone! You owe it to us to make sure that you can still have biological babies! You owe it to us not to turn out ugly!”
- “I don’t want to date transgender people who are ____ (insert pre-op or post-op here) because…”
If you’re reading this and you’re one of many who may be thinking “this writing was clearly directed at me,” I have a message for you:
Please check both your guilt and your defensive anger at the door.
I’ve been where you’re sitting. I think we’ve all been there for something or other, if we’re being brutally honest. I’ll probably catch myself again someday having a moment of internalized transphobia.
Like cis people, transgender people have been brainwashed for a lifetime with the same transphobic rhetoric. Watching the documentary Disclosure left me reevaluating most of my favorite movies as a child. Like Laverne Cox, I was drawn to transphobic portrayals of my people in the absence of any affirming options to see my closeted self in media.
Your internalized transphobia is not your fault, but it is hurting all of us.
I’ve floated through a haze of pain and loss that felt so overwhelming, I thought it was an insult to me to complain about “little things” like pronouns. Then, as the crushed bone dust of that initial wave of pain finally started to settle for a break, I began to make the connection. Every time we are misgendered, our pain, our joy, our very existence is erased and pushed into the numbness of collective disassociation.
That is not the only insult or the only pain we experience, but misgendering is a layer of transphobia that deserves attention because it is the whisper that comes before and after the violence.
- We are human beings.
- We deserve respect.
- We deserve to be seen.
- We must fight until we have received respect and positive visibility.
- We must not accept less.
- We must never allow any of us to believe for a second that we are not all beautiful.
It’s very tempting to allow conscious or unconscious exploitation of our people in the name of being “one of the good ones”.
The rewards of accepting less or throwing a few of our own people under the bus are very real. Sometimes, we’re promised that we’re really helping our people in the long run by asking a few of our more “difficult” ones to be a little patient. Sometimes, it seems like we’re only seen when we’re fighting each other and tone policing each other like this.
Sometimes, it seems like we’re only seen when we’re fighting each other and tone policing each other like this.
Have you ever noticed that these fights between transgender people rarely happen behind closed doors, that they tend to happen more often when the wider cis community is watching and cheering us along?
Surprising Experience #2: Transgender, queer, and ally solidarity
I would be remiss if I left this essay on a negative note, because another thing that I have been astonished by is the incredible kindness of virtual strangers, who saw that I was transgender and assumed that I needed a little extra something heartwarming added to my day.
For every murderous glare my wife and I have received on a Southern American street for being a transgender married couple, we have received a warm smile from another stranger.
We’re virtually guaranteed a glowing reception from nearly every queer-coded stranger we meet. My wife regularly receives sincere compliments on their dress, their make-up, or their beauty from cashiers who had a second ago been submersed in the fog of a long, mind-numbing work shift of customer service. Visibly queer people almost always stop, backtrack, and say something sweet.
The year I came out at work, someone had hung a “Happy Birthday” sign with my real name in hand-drawn rainbows for my birthday. I never found out who it was, but it was hung too high for me to take down.
There are advantages to being a little guy without access to a ladder.
I got wished “Happy Birthday” in rainbows for the rest of my time in that position.
One day, in the middle of June, I wandered back to my cubicle, feeling a little lousy from all of the misgendering that had happened over a long work shift. There were two envelopes on my desk. Both had cards inside wishing me “Happy Pride Month”. One had a gift card to a queer friendly coffee shop. The other had a package full of rainbow pencils.
Both had cards inside wishing me “Happy Pride Month”. One had a gift card to a queer friendly coffee shop. The other had a package of rainbow pencils.
Though I’m likely to give you the side-eye for thinking I know someone in a nearby city just because we’re both transgender, the truth is that I probably do know them.
If I don’t know them yet, we’ll probably have a friendly encounter sooner or later, when we gravitate towards each other at a queer event or in a grocery store. Being visibly queer has certainly been a conversation starter in my experience. Being queer in a place that is not generally known for being queer-friendly creates a unique sense of solidarity that probably would seem strange in a place like San Francisco.
My parting message for any of my transgender siblings combating internalized transphobia who are lashing out right now is this:
You’re still one of my people. We’ll be here waiting when you’re ready to love yourself and love us.
Please remember that we all deserve support.
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