plague anchorite challenge - 4 may: gender boogaloo

[0dense]

Actually, the world's most depressing paper wasn't itself so bad at all; it's just the basic information I had to work with was pretty grim. But the act of writing it was actually enjoyable. Last semester I wrote a term paper on transphobic epistemic injustice, and in a similar way, I somehow had a really good time processing it all. I think it's actually really empowering to be able to articulate the things that I've had to deal with, and even when the stats are bad, they're very validating in an odd way as well - I'm not inventing these difficulties, they're objectively present. Processing it all into bomb papers is all very 'before you can kill the monster, you have to say its name.' 

There's also absolutely something to be said for the professors I've written these particular papers for. Sometimes if I have to bring up my transness, it can be in an 'actually, this is what being trans is like, fuck you' way, if I even care for some people to know these things. But the fact that I'm writing these papers to inform my professors too, in a way - they're the paper audience for assignment reasons ofc, but I also do want them to understand my experience - I think speaks to my own developed comfort with being trans. I know that I have worthwhile things to say about my own experience, and that I have the skills to turn my sources into something that is worth attention and can be absorbed appropriately. And also, I care enough about them to want to share this. I have historically been so allergic to sharing personal matters. This is a real breakthrough.

One of my favorite things to bring up in that paper was actually getting more gender-y than the bio prompt specifically asked for, but it's trans o'clock here, you gotta have gender in play: Unfortunately, there's a potential impulse in trans guys to entirely wreck ourselves adhering to traditional masculinity, because it's the socially acceptable way to be a man, and we have so much to prove. Like if you be as masc as possible, it'll make up for being trans, you feel me? It's so toxic, but it's a real thought. I only spent a moment on it in there, on high-risk behaviors, but it's my blog and I pick the station here.

The truth is, we do not owe anyone our own pain in order to gain access to masculinity. Gender is not something that is conferred by the world. Society is never going to send us a letter agreeing that we've been miserable enough to join the man-club. And even if it did, it wouldn't deserve us. The aspects of society that demand pain in exchange for social gender validation are exactly the parts of the world that I don't want any part of. Toxic masculinity is a trap that will never actually deliver. 

Instead, there's a passage that I love. It's actually about femme-ness, and I didn't get to work it into the paper at all, but:

Let me tell you what femme has meant for me and what it could mean for everyone. Let me stretch the word.
 

Let's say that femme is dispossessed femininity. It's the femininity of those who aren't allowed to be real women and who have to roll their own feminine gender. 

Rolling their own is what cis-femme lesbians did in the fifties. By class and sexual preference, they were disposessed of real womanhood. For what woman is complete without money or a man? So they learned how to improvise, how to sew; how to turn a thrift-store sow's ear into a vintage silk purse. 

Rolling their own is what contemporary femme dykes do. Invisible in straight spaces and frequently trivialized in queer ones, they must voice their femininity in a way that does not get shouted down or ignored. No easy task. 

Rolling their own is what drag queens and trannies do and have always done. For what woman is complete without hairless skin and a cunt? We too learned how to improvise, and when we were mocked as caricatures of real women, we often became skilled caricaturists, owning the insult, engulfing it. 

And this is what femme gay men do, too. Dangerously visible in straight space and often ridiculed in gay male space, femme gay men take shit from all sides. The straights dish it to them because they're visible. Second-wave feminists dish it to them because they're both feminine and male, and have thus sinned twice. Other gay men dish it to them for acting like, well, chicks. 

What these groups share, aside from a fondness for eyeliner, is the illegitimacy of their femininity. That's how I understand femme: badass, rogue, illegitimate femininity. It's the femininity of those who aren't supposed to be feminine, who aren't allowed to be, but are anyway. 

(from elizabeth marston, persistence: all ways butch and femme, reblog it here)

We as trans men have to roll our own at gender, and honestly? So much the better. 'Legitimate' masculinity isn't an option. We're not cis, we will never be cis, and I don't want to be cis. I don't have access to cis masculinity, but I do get to work with trans masculinity. My masculinity doesn't need to include hyperagression, or self-endangerment, or misogyny, or any of it. Trans masculinity is an opportunity to build something better than what we would've been taught. Sure, cis guys have it easier. We have to put actual work into our relationship with gender roles, and theirs comes premade. But we've all seen what it does!

To be trans is to be dealt a hard hand to play in society. But it's also something so special in itself, and for what it brings to our lives, I wouldn't have me any other way.