Because of my eating disorder, my hair is falling out. I think about the horror of going bald—a permanent loss of vitality. I think about how it would destroy the feeble androgyny that is my only comfort in this body. I think about my grandmother, bald from cancer, and what that did to her. And I hear my proudly misandrist-identifying cisfemale friends making fun of bald men as if it were a shortcoming or decision of the men themselves. Bald men make them think of television pedophiles. Bald men remind them of self-indulgent authors and desperate improvisers. I see men on the train losing their hair, their youth, their options, and I feel for them. It’s not funny. It’s a dysmorphic nightmare for anyone. I don’t bother mentioning that I find the jokes unnecessary and insensitive. I know what the girls will say.
trans ppl shouldn’t have to out ourselves to not be on the receiving end of “all men are evil and dangerous and i have a right to lash out at them bc they’re my oppressors uwu.” and if ur wondering “then how am i supposed to know who’s my oppressor” consider this: individual human beings u randomly encounter on the street or in the grocery store aren’t ur oppressor. also if ur constantly analyzing the identity of everyone u come into contact with to decide whether or not u can treat them like shit bc u consider them an oppressor, u were probably gonna treat them like shit anyway.
But I know I am not straight, or cis, or a boy. I am nothing so simple as that. I am a girl who has been through a lot of shit and who has grown into symbiosis with her boy suit. But what else I know is that my point is my fucking point. Do I even want to convince someone who will only listen to me when they’re told by the rules that they have to see me as a girl?
Do I have to out myself to be treated like a person worth listening to? To stop my cis classmates laughing at someone who’s reckoned with the boundaries and the dimensions of masculinity and femininity in ways they never had to? With the life I’ve been living for all the years I’ve been living it—do I need their permission to speak?
https://medium.com/@jencoates/i-am-a-transwoman-i-am-in-the-closet-i-am-not-coming-out-4c2dd1907e42
everyone, please, please read the whole essay (if/when you have time, energy, focus, etc)
it covers so much. has the perfect mix of story and argument. connects things so well
every person, and especially every progressive, should read it. and read it again a week later.
it says things that i’ve spent years wanting to yell at people. it says things that have changed me.
and it’s a really fucking good piece of writing
[cw for the essay: sexual assault (description, brief); transphobia (lots); liberal feminism (lots)]
