Why don't I get a say in how people view my life?
I don't have a rambling title this time. I am sorry.
I wish that this time of year did not inspire as much self-reflection as it did, sometimes.
While it can be nice to look back at the year to learn about what you accomplished, fell short on, and want to accomplish next year, for many years I would find myself spending this time trying to fill a void that I had no idea how to fill. This was obviously because I wasn’t ready to admit to myself that my ideal New Year’s resolution was always: transition, but when you don’t have a vocabulary to fit your desires they tend to feel like a corrosive tumor gnawing away at your insides exposing the hole for the whole world to see.
At least, that was how I felt, despite this hole being largely invisible to the world at large.
Once of the biggest pieces of advice my trans sisters have told me is that cisgender folks really do not notice subtle changes that trans folks embrace to start slowly affirming their gender. I am still not out at work, but have found ways to cope with this in a variety of ways through small pieces of clothing, and even wearing literal rainbow laces on my sneakers. I wore said sneakers out to karaoke one night and despite being in a literal black-lit room no one said anything. So yeah, I guess that hole was invisible and still is.
With all that has gone on this year, it would be worth looking back on it, no?
I got my first byline under my name.
I came out to my parents, and plenty of my friends.
I came out in life!
I survived.
All of this is worthy of celebration and reflection, yet rarely does it feel this way.
Transition is a wonderful thing, but it is exactly what its name says: a transition. When you’re in the thick of it you’re still going, there is a next step to take, something else to learn about yourself, and a journey to keep to taking because we owe it to our brothers and sisters to survive and thrive.
Always moving to the next step rarely means you have time to stop for yourself to celebrate your accomplishments. That’s why it feels so important to lift each other up in our community because no one else lives life in the same journey we do. We have a special, unique perspective that no one else can have on life and its valuable and I am so grateful I get to live it.
I recently saw the movie Midsommar this week, after waiting way too long to finally see it. One of the best readings of the movie this year came from my friends Samantha Allen and Emily VanDerWerff who noticed the trans undertones of the movie. The movie centers on a woman Dani who is stuck in a group of toxic cis-men, and after surviving a pagan cult’s once in 90 year death hunt, is embraced by the women of a commune instantly and is reborn as a member of the community.
Like others, the movie really resonated with me on a deep level. Cutting the old toxic parts of my life is going to be painful and there will be some things I have to burn down, but it has been cathartic finally living my life as myself and getting small chances to thrive in it unexpectedly.
Yet, no matter how hard we get to relish in our success there is one thing holding us back, and they love to hold us back: cisgender folks who think they understand our experience and want to dictate it.
Today, a weird convergence of my lives came across my timeline today. I covered the Olympic Games (and still do to an extend) for the last eight years and know this issue well.
Since 2003 athletes who’ve medically transitioned and got gender reassignment surgery could compete in the Olympic Games as their designed gender. Since 2015 this has been broadened to athletes who fit a strict medical criteria, but not necessarily have undergone GRS.
These rules have been made by cisgender sports administrators who are seeking the interest of fairness, that allows for as many people around the world to compete in sports at a high level. For other cisgender folks this is an affront to the gender binary that protects them and has decried these regulations in the issue of fairness. Cisgender writers and editors and commentators who drive the narrative of these realities have then warped this into a debate where there are two sides seeking a perfect answer and one is right and one is wrong.
This leaves transgender athletes who just want to be able to live a life like their cisgender counterparts at risk of being on the wrong side of how people should live. It is no longer about seeking an objective truth it is about having one side be correct because for those creating the game have no stakes in it.
Meanwhile, there are currently seven bills in state houses across the United States seeking to curtail the rights of transgender individuals in a variety of aspects of daily life. When our participation in life is boiled down to a debate it opens the door for people to write us out of existence to claim victory for their side. This decade has opened the door for transgender people to have the life we have always dreamed of, but it has brought a stern backlash that many anticipated, yet could hurt us in ways we did not foresee, nonetheless.
When our existence is defined by those who do not have our experience, we are always at risk for being declared invalid.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last month as we reach the end of this decade. Every time we make strides in our transitions through life, it seems more and more high profile people come out against our own very existence after we believed in the causes they once trumpeted.
The latest example is J.K. Rowling, whose books have inspired a generation to the point that a close friend and I joke that we are very close to seeing the first legislator swear themselves into Congress using a Harry Potter book. For many in my generation this is the seminal cultural work where we began to define our morality.
Now, Rowling has decided to ally herself with Maya Forstater, a woman who believes in the absolute immutable fact that sex at birth defines our gender, and it is a dangerous precedent that she was not offered an extension on her employment contract despite creating a hostile work environment espousing these views online in such vitriol that even a British judge could not side with her.
Signs of Rowling’s views had been around for well over a year, but it is still disheartening to see someone with such wealth and power to change the world come out on this side of a debate that ultimately could decide my humanity one day.
My friend Katelyn Burns wrote a great piece this morning about the Forstater situation, but the really important part came right at the end. Burns writes:
That’s why it’s frustrating to watch these developments as a trans person. This woman is not trans, the judge is not trans, the media now disseminating information about the case is largely not trans, JK Rowling is not trans. But now it’s trans people taking the blow online and in the media.
Commonly held beliefs don’t develop in a vacuum. Trans people have never had control over their own narrative, in science or in media. That has started to change recently, but by and large cis people still hold the power to frame trans lives for the masses. Maintaining that power to define trans lives is what ultimately drives anti-trans activists, not only in their online presence but in the courts and more broadly.
As the case leads us into a new decade, it’s an example of trans people finally finding a tiny foothold in the story of our own lives and bodies. Tayler’s judgment recognizes that hard-earned, long-fought achievement. So does the backlash.
As we move forward into a new decade maybe the 2020’s will finally allow trans voices into the discussion allowing us to re-frame our point of views so that we stop discussing trans issues as a debate where there are multiple sides, but come at these issues with our humanity in tact.
Looking back on this year I realize that I still have a ways to go to come out to all the people that matter to me, even my bosses. What’s holding me back is that they’ll see my life is something they can pour over and make decisions about what care I can receive and where I can exist on their terms.
I am a woman, but to many cisgender individuals that is apparently up for debate. It can be hard to look back and celebrate everything you’ve done this year, when in the end that fact looms over your head at all times.