Dear Cis Friends

Dear cisgender friends and acquaintances,

Is it too much to ask, when I tell you that I am using a different name and pronouns now from the ones that you are used to, is it too much to ask that you just say "ok"? Must I every. single. time. hear how difficult it is going to be for you, how confusing it is to suddenly start using different words? Must I be told how supportive you are of my decision, and how brave you think I am?

Must you tell me every. single. time. that I must make allowances for you, and forgive you when you make mistakes, because it will be really. really. hard. for you?

Do you think you are special and different? Do you think you are the only one to say that to me today - this week - this month? Do you think you will show me how tolerant you are, by telling me that you will try your hardest but you will undoubtedly slip up sometimes, and I shouldn't be hurt because you're trying so very hard?

Listen, my lovelies, I know it's hard. I know I'm asking you to check yourself every time you instinctively reach for the words that you think identify me, and I know that it's a challenge and that you will fuck up. I even know that you know that, and that you mean so, so well when you tell me that it will be difficult for you. But how difficult do you think it is for me to hear that? Every time I tell somebody, I get the same response (when I'm lucky, and it's a positive response!). How difficult do you think it is to hear, over and over again, that my life is hard for you to rub along with? How much better do you think I would feel if you just said "ok Ollie" and then tried your best, rather than making sure that I know just how hard you're going to try? There's so much pressure there - so much weight. You know what I hear when you say that? "Ok, I'll tolerate this, if I must, but never forget that I'm doing you a huge favour, and make sure you make it easy for me by forgiving my errors in advance."

Now, I know that that's not what you mean. I know you are genuinely supportive, and genuinely conscientious, and genuinely worried that you will mess up and I will be upset. But can't you see the weight that puts me under? Can't you see how much you're adding to my load? I know you're going to mess it up sometimes. I'm not going to hate you for that, and I'm going to trust you when you say that you mean well and that you didn't do it to hurt me or deny my identity. I believe in your support, and your effort, and your love. Please stop asking me for constant preemptive reassurances that my identity can slip your mind with impunity.

Yours in hope,

Ollie

Clothes

Inspired by this as well as by some recent internet commentary, particularly at No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz?, I think it's time to hash out some of my feelings about clothing. Here we go.

1. Clothes are nice for thin people

2. Clothes are nice for (relatively) rich people

3. Clothes are nice for people who fit neatly into the gender binary

I am none of those things. And yet I love clothes! I went through most of my life thinking I hated clothes and didn't care about fashion. As it turns out, I love clothes and am pretty invested in fashion - up to a point, anyway. This revelation is linked to my adventures in gender. It's not that I fit into boy clothes any better than I fit into girl clothes - often the fit is worse, actually, due to the fact that I am short, have small feet and abundant hips and breasts. It's also much more challenging to go into shop changing rooms with armfuls of men's clothes when I am clearly be-breasted and be-hipped, than it was to go in with armfuls of women's clothes. It's possible that the odd looks I get are a product of my feverish brain rather than actual looks people are giving me, but the effect is the same. It's hard work.

The love, I think, comes from attempting to achieve a look that I actively like, rather than one that I think I ought to like (or at least aspire to). I may not be any more successful at achieving that look, but I feel better about myself - less conflicted - in this failure than I ever did in the previous failures.

So while I may weep in changing rooms when I totally fail to fit into a shirt of any combination of sizes (regular, tailored or slim fit, formal, semi-formal, work, fashion - what an endless list!) the very act of trying on shirts makes me feel a bit stronger in myself than the trying on of, I don't know, scoop-necked t-shirts or diamante-encrusted jeans.*

Having said that, I do like wearing women's clothes sometimes. One of my most enjoyable post-Ollie moments was going to a friend's barbecue party last summer wearing my favourite battered Converse, a fairly short handkerchief dress, and dangly earrings. But then, not everyone at that event knew me as Ollie at the time, meaning that I felt I had more freedom to present as femme than I did in environments where I always had been 'Ollie, the girl who wants to be a boy'. I came closer to a breakdown in that environment than I ever had before, when I was trying to decide on an outfit for a big event and felt that the whole world of femme was closed to me if I wanted to be taken seriously as a trans boy. I still feel that pressure more often than I'd like. But it's getting easier, as I expand my wardrobe incrementally when the sales are on, and start building a collection of clothes, men's and women's, that I can mix and match until I find a combination that's perfect (or at least appropriate) for the occasion.


*There's that femmephobia creeping in again! Obviously I detest diamante-encrusted jeans, because that's a totally rational reaction to such brazen femininity :-/

Decolonising One's Mind

I've been thinking about a phrase I've often seen at one of my favourite blogs, Womanist Musings. The phrase is "decolonizing [one's] mind". I want to think about it today as it could relate to my own mind, as I'm not sure that it's appropriate. I have most often seen it used in relation to the minds of people of colour (POC), and this would make sense etymologically, since 'colonisation' almost always refers to the lands of POC being appropriated by people of a more dominant race, most often white. When the phrase is used in social justice spaces, it is used to describe the difficult process of training one's mind not to fall prey to the dominant narratives present in (for instance) white Western culture. So, to give a rather simplified example, expelling (or not internalising in the first place) the notion that a brown-skinned person is less important than a white-skinned person. That notion is evidently incorrect, and yet dominant culture teaches and reinforces this lesson every day, to white people and people of colour both. It is damaging to both white people and POC to believe this lesson, but of course it is much more damaging for any person to believe negative propaganda about themselves than it is to believe negative propaganda about someone else (or about a group of people to which you don't belong). Referring to this as a colonisation of a POC's mind makes etymological and emotional sense, then.

As such, I'm not sure it’s appropriate for me, a white person, to use the phrase to think about my own mind. I can see plenty of parallels with other social justice issues – internalised homophobia in the gay community, transphobia in the trans community, to name but two – but perhaps to use the term 'decolonisation' to describe the process of erasing internalised self-hatred based on one's sexuality, gender, size, disability, or other non race-based area of oppression is problematic in itself. Perhaps to say (however implicitly) that my mind has been colonised by transphobic narratives is as inappropriate as a white person comparing some experience of theirs to slavery, or saying that if black people can say n****r, white people should be able to too. Or how about this example, from someone who genuinely thinks that they are on the side of right and will be vindicated in the end and held up as a champion for justice, just like Martin Luther King.

We all need to have language to negotiate and articulate our particular sites of oppression, particularly if we are negotiating more than one. "Unpacking the invisible knapsack" is another relevant phrase.I find both these phrases useful when engaging with social justice criticism, but despite the latter's roots in anti-racist thought, the phrase "unpacking the invisible knapsack" seems more open to use in non race-specific social justice work than "decolonising one's mind", purely because by using the word "decolonising" in relation to my own mind, I have an uncomfortable sense that I’d be appropriating even more than I already am. Working on my own privilege is challenging enough without encoding yet more signs of privilege into the very language that I use to describe the process.

--

* I was interested to learn that this essay is considered a "classic" by anti-racist educators: "It has been used in workshops and classes throughout the United States and Canada for many years. While people of color have described for years how whites benefit from unearned privileges, this is one of the first articles written by a white person on the topics". (source) Funny how, although peope of colour have described this systemic problem for years, one of the first articles about it by a white person has become a "classic".

How facebook shapes my trans identity

I have an event coming up where I will see people that I haven't seen for a long time, few of whom know that I am transgender. I want these people to know who I am, and to call me by my preferred name and pronouns. How do I go about it? "I'm changing my names and pronouns" is how I've done it before, but ever since the first time I did that, I've been aware that it sets up a whole heap of expectations - expectations that I don't want to fill, and wouldn't know how to even if I did.

Here's what I've done in the past. "I'm changing my names and pronouns", a polite request for people to try their hardest to respect it, an acknowledgement that it is hard work, a mention of my new facebook profile and the fact that I'll be inviting them to join it, and a "looking forward to seeing you soon" sign off.

Oh, did I mention? I disclose on facebook. That might seem weird, but really, I never considered any other way. I guess that says something about me! It does make sense, though. Obviously that's not how my close friends or family find out. But when it comes to wanting to be known by my preferred name and pronouns at a certain event or within a particular group of people (a temporary job, a reunion, a night out etc), there honestly is no better way to announce it to the people who are your friends, but not your friend friends. Not the ones who you call up and go for coffee with. The people you know from various corners of your life, but only see in that context. The people who you only wish 'Happy Birthday' to on facebook. Your facebook friends. A semi-formal 'note' to the least well-known ones. A little personality added to the slightly closer ones. And invitations for all to my new profile, where I am slowly growing a community of people who call me by my preferred name or, if they don't call me anything at all, get used to seeing me as that person.

I think that might be the most important part. Due to the way I work and live, I have numerous non-overlapping groups of friends and acquaintances. Some of them I see only once a year. I appreciate that getting used to calling someone by a new name is hard work, and it's proportionally harder for people who have known me for longer. So for someone who hasn't seen me for a year, but has known me for 10, getting used to interacting with Ollie, even digitally, might be quite helpful. Particularly after the occasion has passed and we might not see each other for another 12 months!

It's selfish, too, of course. I don't want to make 50, or even 10 phone calls every time I want to disclose to a new group of people. It's not just that I'm self-conscious, although I would be. I think the phone call, or even worse, the in-person disclosure, puts pressure on people to respond. Everyone has to find something to say in response, and sometimes, the only thing you might be able to come up with is "Oh. .... Good?' I wouldn't criticise that! But the facebook message doesn't put that pressure on someone. It gives them the space to read, take in, consider - in their own time. Most people reply with something casual, often including the words "no problem", and often using my preferred name. It may not sound like much, but it's surprisingly comforting!

Now, on to the problem with this approach. I don't identify as male. What I do identify as is not completely clear. Sometimes it is boy, occasionally boi, often queer, often trans, sometimes nothing at all. I'm not convinced about what pronouns I want to use, or whether I will ever have any surgery. I don't know if I'll legally change my name or my gender. But I don't know how to say that in a short, relatively formal email and, more to the point, I'm not sure I want to. It's stupid of me, because I am setting up those expectations that I mentioned earlier. My message indicates a narrative of trans identity that is at least recognisable by the mainstream: girl becomes boy. Surely if I added a few lines to explain that it's not as black and white as that for me, I could make my point. But I don't want to invite the questions. I already have to deal with plenty of ignorant, nosy, inappropriate enquiries about surgery, whether I'm 'out' to my family, what my partner thinks, etc, often from people who I barely know. I don't want to add gender-uncertainty into the mix.

Sometimes, I like to talk about my gender-identity - what it means to me, how I (want to) present, how I feel about gender roles, whether I would be a 'father' to my children. But I don't want those things to be open to all comers. I want to discuss them gently, respectfully, with my closest friends, and only when I am feeling safe and comfortable. I don't want "so, what does queer mean?" to blindside me when I'm tired or afraid or hating myself, and I can't trust my 'Facebook friends' to know when that might be. For me, it is safer to keep the border clear and defined, not to blur it with my uncertainty and doubt. It's easier to laugh/brush off questions about something I'm not (transsexual) than about something that I am ( ... ?).

Is this messed up? Yes, definitely.

Would it be easier to not disclose at all, and keep being known by a name and pronouns that I don't identify with? No, not at all.

I hope that it isn't always this way.

Valentine

Three years ago I was bought dinner, new headphones, chocolates and a bottle of Laphroaig on Valentine's Day. I tried so hard to like that person. I still feel bad for not liking them as much as they liked me.

This year I am not being bought anything at all, and I don't have to try to like hir - I just do.

I am thankful for that, if not for this silly holiday.