I Don’t Know How to Accept Myself as a Lady Yet
By: Riley Black
Tags: Gender, LGBTQ, Nonbinary, Queer, Transgender

Trans people know better than anyone that gender is a construct and sex isn’t determined solely by chromosomes. We know these things, but logic can only do little to mitigate the emotional reaction of dysphoria sparked by all the lies and distortions we’ve been burdened with.

There’s no shortage of reminders. Right now, there’s a proposed Housing and Urban Development Rule that encourages homeless shelters to ignore people’s self-identified gender and instead group those in need by height, facial hair, and other features long held by transphobes to be “tells.” If I were in a situation where I needed help from such a shelter, I might be grouped in with the men if the operator felt I wasn’t woman enough.

When we’re confronted by these efforts, every day reminded that the cultures we’re in see us as confused at best, how can we not be affected? How can we avoid the pressure to conform to the binary in the hopes that this or that change might finally be enough?

We want to break the gender binary and stand strong in the knowledge of who we are, but lifetimes of toxic messages still nip at us. I can look at most any feature of myself that might be considered masculine and know that there are other women — cis and trans and genderqueer alike — who share those traits, but that does little to stave off the pernicious thoughts of “You’re not fooling anyone.”

On good days, I wholly feel like myself. I’m not a used to be, or a will be, but I’m me, today. But then there are the bad days, when I speak and think “Is that my voice?” When I look down at my body and something slithers out of all that gunk stored in the recesses of my brain and says “You look like a man with breasts.” The kind of thoughts that can flip my identity as a trans person on its head, not as a point of pride but almost as an excuse for being unfinished, for sticking out like a sore thumb.

The people I held closest to me were the ones who taught me to hide and deny my identity. It’d be unfair to call them transphobes. I know that’s not how they’d consider themselves, either. But it’s possible for a partner, a friend, a self-styled ally to still say or do transphobic things.

I was with someone for a very long time who did not see — or did not want to see — my shifting gender, even as I talked about it outright. It was a joke that I coded queer to their eyes, but wasn’t really, even as I time and again said I didn’t like being confined to the “man box” of who they thought I was. Another partner supported my desire to play with gender, but cautioned me against medically transitioning for fear of how it might affect our intimate relationship. Couldn’t I just be happy in the body I was in? And that’s to say nothing of friends who asked if I was transitioning to get an old partner back, or that I was making myself a professional victim.

Over and over, what I wanted for myself was questioned and required justification. It wasn’t just doctors or therapists asking. Suddenly friends and acquaintances felt like they had a right to critique and edit my identity, my body, the life I wanted to live. I didn’t feel strong enough at the start to correct them. At the very start, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to transition, or that it wouldn’t make me feel better, and I’d end up feeling adrift in the wrong body. And every time I fielded those questions and comments, my mind stored away those doubts to trot out again at its leisure.

Working as a writer didn’t help. I came out as trans just months before my last book — my deadname emblazoned on the cover. Using my old name until I felt settled in my new self felt untenable, but I also exposed myself to misunderstanding and misapprehension. Every public talk I gave, I had to reintroduce myself as transgender, and it always felt like an apology. A moment to say “Just bear with me” instead of something to be excited about. Just before my first public talk about my new book, and my first as Riley, someone who was expecting Brian to speak told me they liked my costume — makeup and a dress I felt more confident in than my old attire of jeans and button-downs. When I met new people at social events and shared my pronouns, I got more than a few responses of “Oh, I can never keep that straight with you people.” I was only just becoming myself and already I was a social burden.

I couldn’t just be. I felt like I always had to be ready to justify and explain myself, as if someone was asking me why my ID photo didn’t match my appearance.