Erasing the T out of LGBT

Erasing the T out of LGBT

This topic is going to be a sticky one so, cats and kittens buckle up.

With June sneaking up on us, I am pretty much aware that Pride coming up fast. Already the Stonewall Union has ads, banners are hung up in Columbus’ Short North, and people are buying their tickets and marching. It’s this time of the year I earn my ‘queer’ points, and march with TransOhio and volunteer at their booth. It’s also when I pal around with my trans* friends and catch up with them talking about all sorts of shit and it is the only group of people at Pride I can feel myself around.

I am usually thrown aside by everyone else at Pride.

The thing is, Pride these days isn’t for queers but for hetros that walk into Goodale Park, like the way we go to the zoo. Many of them are ‘allies’ in the loosest sense, but most of them just go to Pride to ‘have fun’. I personally hate it but my opinions are mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. My biggest problem is the goddamn intersectionality that gets eaten up like first graders on chocolate cake. First off, being trans* doesn’t make you queer. You can be straight and trans*, you can have hetro privilege and trans I am aware of this. On the other hand that only happens when you start passing as a hetro couple. For me it is the other way around. I have straight privilege now, but when I turn fuzzy and fat I am well prepared for the volley of “faggot” I am going to get if I cuddle the SO in public. The SO, probably isn’t ready as he think he is for it. Which brings me up to another point, you can be gay, lesbian, asexual, wtfsexual and trans* and yet no one actually fucking realizes this. If I out myself as trans they are going assume my girlfriend is around here somewhere and they will invalidate my gayness if out myself as gay first same quandary only my gender is removed. Rinse and repeat. This happens a lot because people forget that trans* is a gender status and one that fits with every flavor of ‘rainbow’. So that is one way I am ‘erased’. 

It gets weirder as I feel uncomfortable in gay bars, gay men will immediately assume that I am a woman ergo this isn’t my ‘place’. In womyn’s and trans* groups, I find often that my silicon junk is being ripped off and throw into the trash. I am assumed to be the ‘right’ kind of man because I don’t benefit from the patriarchy right now and my passing status is iffy. But what about my brothers that are passing well? Gods know that if my friend B walked into this group he would be turned away because he would be assumed to be cis. Which is incredibly problematic and honestly gross, but not surprising. I would be treated with the same sort of exclusion if I started passing well. Trans women get a similar treatment, only it’s inverted. More interesting enough , every time the issue of birth control gets throw up in an argument, I am the only one that reminds the cis ladies that trans*men need BC access too. Because hey, much to everyone shock, trans*men can get pregnant. T doesn’t always shut down the hen-house. 

Let me bring something else up, Gay marriage. Is a trans* issue. Too all the baby queers out there with your rainbow rubber bracelets and legalize gay shirts. You can thank a trans woman for that. The whole gay rights thing you know, Stonewall was started by drag queens and trans women. The whole ‘gay marriage’ was trans issue long before it became a queer issue. Yet, we’re being written out of our own history. Gay rights has been getting paler, and more cis-flavored every year and it’s a damn shame. I see more people wearing ‘equal sign’ merchandise without realize that HRC does to poor, black or trans* people. 

Yet I still march at Pride. Mostly for the rights I probably never get because the gay lobbyists are still trying to shove the T out of the acronym. I will still get more transphobia from gay men and lesbian women than I do from cis people as I go clubbing or drinking or hanging out with my gay or trans* friends. I will feel erased from history every step I take at Goodale. But I march so my trans* friends have support of another brother, so they can kiss their lover proudly and unbashly, I pass out flyers so trans* people have another resource. I go to Pride to not wave my rainbow flag, but to wave my pink, blue and white flag. Let’s just remember here, we don’t have a ‘trans* pride’ day. We have day in the year called “Trans* day of Remembrance” it’s not happy day. Its sobering reminder of the countless of lives that died because they dared to be themselves, that week in November is the day we educate the public and try to turn back the tide of trans* people that are dying every day. Going to Pride to me is knowing that despite the storm around me, there is a rainbow at the end.

Looking at Monsters

The narrative I hear from trans* people the most is that they are often aware of their dysphoria at an early age. That they always knew that they were in the wrong body from the very start, sometimes I hear different narratives how they recognize their dysphoria later and then started transitioning. Or they always were aware but didn’t transition until much later. There are different reasons and different stories. Each unique as the person.

Mine doesn’t seem to follow the script though. I never been aware of my dysphoria, or saw it until a few years ago. It was muddled, mixed in with the feelings of alienation, isolation and othering I got as an autist. The feeling of being in the wrong body never was present, because my body was always a foreign thing to me. It was hard to understand the nature of it and recognize much of it. I guess this doesn’t make sense to some readers so let me try to clarify. 

I never noticed I had gait problems until someone actually pointed out, I never felt the dysphoria of my period because barely noticed it. I never notice that I was hungry or that I was suffering exhaustion until I was older and even now I still have trouble feeling hungry. Or thirsty, the only thing that I am pretty aware of was the need to pee and only that because it was drilled into me through toilet training. So I was made to recognize that feeling. The others come and go and sometimes I am aware of it, sometimes I am not. It’s hit and miss.

Because that, my dysphoria was incredibly hard to pin point. It was like an angry ghost that haunts me only when my back is turn. I never saw its face. As a child, I grew up being presented as female and I identified it as such growing up. It was a combination of lack of body awareness and being socially blindsided. I did stereotypical female things not because I wanted too, but because I was conditioned too. It was expected of me to wear dresses, to wear make-up and to be interested in boys. Most of those were genuine interests but they were also mixed into the idea that I had to follow through with them because of social obligations. One of the reasons I had a hard time understanding my feelings towards girls I had a crush on, is because I was conditioned to reject these feelings. My therapists didn’t help with that either and it took me years to see that I was in love with one of my best friends. It took me years to unlearn idea that I was obligated to act ‘female’ and present as one. It took me longer to re-understand gender and what gender meant. I think as a small child, I saw myself not as boy or a girl, but rather agender. I was adaptive to whatever social function was there. I played with trucks and dolls and blocks and tea cups. Everything was the same and I was not interested in people as so much the things. I didn’t care about looking ‘pretty’ or looking ‘tomboyish’ I wasn’t aware of looks at all until I was actually in my late teens. So even though I bonded with girls and identified with them, I did the same with the Sander boys and my friends in Kindergarten. I was a girl, I was a boy, I was both and I was neither. Gender, was a nothing word. Still though, despite being agender (sort of) I found myself more drawn to being a boy and that desire. I wanted to be a boy, I should have been a boy and so the first heartbeat of dysphoria emerged. It was squashed however through my parents and through the idea, that because of my sex I have to be of that gender. 

So as puberty emerged I found myself looking at gender. I went with what I was told to go with. I was a girl I was female. But for some reason at fifteen, that wasn’t fitting right. I ignored it as that feeling of ‘other’ was probably something else and at that age I found the Otherkin community and I latched on to it. It was there I probably reattached my frustration of something is wrong onto the idea that I was a therian or and animal trapped in a person’s body. It sounded delusional, but for some reason it made sense. I think it was first attempt to ignore my dysphoria or rationalize it. It got worse and worse as I got older and fell in love with women and men, to start loathing my breasts and hating my period every month. I was told this was typical, but in my heart this wasn’t normal. At that time, I was dealing with not just my body, but the fact I was neuroatypical and battled with that more than my body. My neurodivergence was a more present thing for me, I barely registered my body most of the time and I never saw the problems I had with it. The monster of gender dysphoria lurked behind my back, and glowered in the closet of my mind. I never opened the door.

 Not until I was 19.When I reached adulthood and gained enough research I actually started to realize that feelings of alienation weren’t just because I was autistic, but gender dysphoria. When I found the term ‘bigender’ I went with it. I started identifying as queer too, because I started to realize I liked girls and boys. But I was using bigender as mask, it wasn’t right label. But I hated the idea that I was trans*. It was a combo of internalize transphobia and the feeling of being alienated again. I was autistic and I suffered enough bullshit because of it. I didn’t want round too. So I ignored the monster in the closet, I paid no attention to the heavy breathing or the growling. At that time I tried to force myself to be more ‘female’. Because I didn’t want to admit that the bigender label wasn’t working. My marriage was failing I wanted to be loved and more and more, the monster roared and screamed. It wasn’t until I wasn’t until recently that the monster threw itself out and dragged me into the dark. In tears and anger at my ex-boyfriend I admitted I was transgender. It hurt like a son of a bitch. 

Now in transition, I recognize the dysphoria and I am starting to fix it. Looking back I noticed the symptoms much like my autism. I saw it in the shadows of my childhood. But years of not knowing my body, or recognizing it, had made my dysphoria a ghost and intangibility. It was hard to deal with it and hard to see it and now that I have, I now feel the anger and pain with my body that I’ve had but ignored. My periods are dysphoric, my breasts are dysphoric and lately vaginal sex is slowly being dysphoric.  Body awareness is a hard thing for an autist, but for me it was vital for me to see my gender problems and I feel it was the root of why it took me a long time to start transitioning and recognize I was trans* 

Maybe other transgender autists might have the same story.