I often used to dance in between genders, tip-toe around the lines of male and female. There used to be some solidarity in my visible trans-ness, in my genderqueer identity.
That has all been lost.
It didn’t disappear completely when I rubbed that first dose of testosterone on my hairless stomach, eager to transition. I stayed in between, genderless, fluid. I got stares in the women’s bathroom and I’d hear whispers in the men’s.
“What is she doing in here?”
Later, it became more direct, more aggressive. “You are in the wrong bathroom.”
I was the poster boy for the trans* community, the queer community, the fat community. I went to events and marched with dykes. I slept with queer women. I wrote about being a LGBT youth, an activist, a boy. I lived and breathed my identity as a genderqueer boy.
My connection to the trans* and queer communities disappeared when I started “passing”. After I started on testosterone injections, it seemed like new changes came every two weeks. Soon, I had hair everywhere! Before I knew it, my voice was changing. It never bothered me that I was being read as male more and more and trans*, female, or something in-between less and less.
Not until now, that is.
Now, I am read in society as a heterosexual male. I talk, walk, and interact with society in a surprisingly masculine manner. Men find it okay to demean or sexualize women around me. Sometimes, I stop them. Other times, I am too afraid to even open my mouth. I am privy to conversations that would make even the most sex-positive people cringe. And I am not happy.
I miss the days of getting called “sir” one minute and “ma’am” the next. At the time, I laughed at it but secretly couldn’t stand it. I’d give everything to go back to those days.
I can’t say that I had pressure to transition. No one was forcing me to take hormones or get top surgery. Despite all my confusion now, I feel as though I will never regret top surgery. Mostly, it is because my chest was something that made me feel wrong. I may not feel totally right, but I feel less wrong because of my surgery.
So where does that leave me?
L.L. Wolf
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