The Dissonance of Trans Existence
It's a weird time to be trans in the United States, particularly in the South.
On the legislative front, I'm not sure there's been a more worrying time. Our rights are being stripped from us at a pace I hadn't considered possible. Most of these bills are targeting trans kids, but increasingly trans adults are in the crosshair as well. Somehow conservatives have extended the definition of 'children' as old as 26 years old. I was already married and well into transition by this point, I most certainly was not a child.
At the same time as all of this, my life goes on as normal. I experience very little judgment or harassment for being trans in the relatively small city I live in. I go shopping for women's clothes and makeup without stress, go out to restaurants and bars with my wife and our friends, and don't often think about my gender. Hell, my wife went to a gun range with her girlfriend, and they were both gendered appropriately in a place with a Trump flag and a "stop the steal" pistol for sale.
I've had a hard time managing my relationship with social media, because constant awareness of all the awful things happening to trans people throughout the country makes it harder for me to exist in my life, despite knowing things are fine.
Most of the misgendering I experience is on the phone, because my voice reads as a flamboyant man. I want to do voice training, but multiple attempts at doing it myself haven't gone anywhere because I have a hard time understanding it. I need to look into hiring a coach but that is more work that my depressed brain doesn't have the energy for.
More than once I've seen people say that the average person doesn't really give a shit about trans folks and I'm inclined to agree. They may not understand us, and may have some internalized transphobia, but at least where I live they generally know well enough to keep that to themselves. I can work with that.
postscript:
I'm using "trans" here for a reason. I've started to use the label transsexual to describe myself lately, as I feel like the idea of sex and gender being separate can have some harmful outcomes for people like me. I know it's at times a controversial term, and most people use the more common transgender at this point, so i'll just use the shortened form.
- before this i wrote: On Getting Better
- after this i wrote: A New Path