QUEERLY TRANS
Will Our Queerness Become Invisible?
Queerly Trans Writing Prompt: “My invisible queer flavors”
Gasp…Are my wife and I going to get mistaken for a couple of heterosexuals someday? What would the neighbors think?
We met each other in the closet almost 9 years ago.
I was attracted to their subtle femininity. They tolerated my understated masculinity. We were each trying to hide these parts of ourselves, but they didn’t go unnoticed.
My wife and I had each chosen to go to this event because we thought it would attract women our age. It would take several years before we learned who had actually succeeded in this endeavor. I think we both got lucky. I found a beautiful woman and they eventually found themself.
We were the only two people who stayed at that particular event, but I’d like to think that we would have gravitated towards each other even had the event been packed with people.
About 9 months later, my future wife would ask me to guess their secret.
About 9 months later, my future wife would ask me to guess their secret. I tried my best to put what I knew into words without having much knowledge of labels. I just described what I’d observed. I was close enough that they decided to keep me around.
They didn’t begin to fully bloom into their femininity until we’d been married for a couple of years. I finally started to understand that I was also trans about two years after that, roughly a month before the Pandemic started.
Just in time for the US Census, we had to decide what sort of queers we would be perceived as from a bureaucratic perspective.
Being as truthful as the limited multiple-choice questions allowed, I selected “male” and my wife selected “female” on the official government form. Then, our choices were “homosexual marriage” and “heterosexual marriage”. This produced a fierce debate between us.
I argued that, since I was more or less masculine and they were mostly feminine, our marriage was technically still heterosexual.
My wife argued that, since we were both non-binary, we were in a same-gender marriage. Therefore, our marriage counted as homosexual. We counted as bureaucratically gay.
My wife argued that, since we were both non-binary, we were in a same-gender marriage. Therefore, our marriage counted as homosexual. We counted as bureaucratically gay.
As always, my wife eventually won this argument.
They would say that they always win arguments because they’re always right. This is a debate for another time. As I look at us in the mirror, brushing our teeth side-by-side in the evening, I can understand why they deserved to win our little debate. When we’re not trying to prove anything to anyone, relaxing in the androgynous clothes we wear when we feel comfortable at home, it becomes a little difficult to tell that there is any difference in our genders.
Having had two people on social media already assume that I was a trans woman, it’s become clear that it’s not always possible to know what our not-so-psychic baby doctors were thinking when they checked “male” or “female” on our birth certificates. Either of us could easily be transitioning in either direction.
At this moment, we seem to have met somewhere in the middle.
We marked our marriage as “homosexual” and moved on.
US Census temporary employees would knock on our doors several times during the Pandemic, seeking clarification for the mysterious anomaly that is our marriage. We would get occasional written notices reminding us that completing the Census incorrectly was a crime. There could be a fine for providing the wrong information.
We were honest to the best of our knowledge, but our specific variety of queer doesn’t fit neatly into little bureaucratic boxes that we can checkmark (for now).
When we walk down the street together, we often provoke strong reactions in people, for better or for worse. Some people hate us for existing. Others give us extra positive attention. We rarely go unnoticed in the American South. We’ve been treated like old friends by queer strangers because we are undeniably part of this community. Our people find us quickly and easily, as we are.
It’s possible that all of this will change someday.
As things progress, we may both one day pass as cis people again, despite both being non-binary. I may even find that I have the option to go stealth, once my legal name has changed and Testosterone has sufficiently altered my body. Even though I don’t ever plan to go stealth, it’s unlikely that I’m going to stop everyone on the street and make sure that they know I’m a trans man, if Testosterone does its magic and changes the default assumption of strangers who read my body for gender clues.
We may one day find ourselves walking down the street peacefully, undisturbed by a crowd who assumes us to be just another heterosexual couple.
I think I’d be a little sad to lose that constant sense of connection to the queer trans community that can happen spontaneously while visibly queer and transgender, even when the flip side of that coin can get very ugly.
That said, we’d still be queer, of course!
Even if we were monogamous, we couldn’t change which genders we found potentially attractive on a sexual or romantic level; that’s up to the chemicals in our bodies to decide. We aren’t monogamous, though. We’re polyamorous. It’s very likely that we’ll both continue to have relationships with people of various other genders throughout the rest of our lives.
We may just have to be visibly queer with other people in other relationships. In the meantime, we may have to accept that our neighbors could someday be so confused that they mistake us for a heterosexual couple.
Bless their hearts, if they only knew.
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