Seethe

An acquaintance of mine is putting together a photography show, originally planned to be a display of queer female-bodied people in relationships. She started out with the expressed goal of showing couples of all kinds, combinations and identities.

I had thought LT and I would be a fun addition to the show. Not only would we be supporting a young photographer in her first show, but we are probably a fairly rare (at least rare in Pittsburgh) example of a couple comprised of two female-bodied people both with alternate gender identities. Unfortunately, by the time we learned about the show LT was gone from Pittsburgh, so half of the couple was missing.

After a little while, though, the photographer had some difficulty getting quite enough couples, and began including some individuals. So, I volunteered to be photographed, because I figured I could provide a unique subject that is a bit scarce in these parts, thereby allowing her to represent a wider range of identities in the show. She was grateful--she told me that the vast majority of people agreeing to be in the show were femmy, obviously female-identified people. She did have one other person who often performed in drag, but that was about it in terms of alternate expressions of identity.

Today, she called and said that she had decided not to include either me or the drag performer. Her reasoning was that all the other pictures were going to be of happy, smiling, romantic women, and these just wouldn't fit.

Really, just typing those words makes me fucking MAD!

I tried explaining to her that presenting with a trans identity wasn't all drum glum seriousness, that actually discovering this and being free to be who you are is a happy thing. I had actually very much been looking forward to being able to have representation of happy trans people--I would've been downright ecstatic if LT had been here and we could have had pictures of two alternately-gendered people happily being together.

It wouldn't sink in. She used the cop out that with just a few pictures of trans identities in the show, she wouldn't be doing them justice, it would be an insufficient representation of "the subject".

OK, so not representing trans people at all IS sufficient? It IS doing us justice? F that S. Seriously, if you want to do a photo shoot that is just women-identified people, that's fine--you're the artist, you have the right to put in your show whatever you want, and leave out whatever you want. But don't tout that it's an inclusive show to represent all varieties of identity, then leave out the ones that you're not comfortable with and don't understand. And then make it sound like you're doing us a fucking favor by leaving us out.

NOT.

COOL.

Xylophone

Later than I intended, I finally find time to reply to the supportive and loving comments from my earlier post. This is long, so grab a drink, be comfy, doze off, whatever.

I am a xylophone.

Confused? OK...let me start from the beginning.

I consider myself to be part of the transgender community. I hesitate to call myself simply transgendered, because a lot of people automatically translate that to "I feel like a man trapped in a woman's body," which is not at all an accurate statement. I've known for a long time that I'm not comfortable in the category of "woman" but at the same time I never felt like I was or ought to be a man. Over the past year, I've encountered the incredibly liberating concept that gender does not have to be an either/or proposition; it does not have to be binary. Many amazing and beautiful people are both, many are neither, many are some mix or nonmix that defies description within the language that we have today. I am queer. I am a xylophone.

MG mentioned that she didn't realize I was going through a crisis. Actually, it's not a crisis at all. If anything, it's a welcome liberation from a long time of being unsure how or if I fit into the world. I spent a lot of time growing up feeling embarrassment and discomfort without knowing why or being able to explain it. Take, for example, clothing. Wearing a dress was humiliating and embarrassing for me. It wasn't just that I was wearing clothes I hated, it was something much more profound and visceral that I couldn't put words to. Because I could not give voice to my frustration and embarrassment, in the eyes of people who loved me it was nothing more than a typical tomboy-having-to-dress-up situation, which (as it should in any good group of sarcastic, fun people) led to lighthearted schadenfreude and merriment. Unfortunately, this magnified the shame, embarrassment and humiliation that I felt.

That was just the completely unintentional hurt that unfortunately came from those who actually love me and didn't wish me harm. Extend the situation to everyday life in an American childhood, where other people, especially other kids, are not nearly so caring. It's not just the occasional special event, but every day that assails you with messages reminding you that you're not what you're supposed to be. You can't give voice to it, you just spend every day knowing that you are somehow wrong inside. And, kids quickly pick up on such a fundamental difference, and make you pay for it. It was difficult, and not being able to figure out what was different about me made it worse. I had a female body, so I must be a girl. But very little about being a "girl" connected with me. I had heard about transgendered people, but I didn't feel like a boy, so that must not be me. I must still be a girl...just a fundamentally incorrect one.

But my point isn't to lay out a "woe is me" thing here...my point is that this realization for me has been wonderful. It has given a voice to my frustrations, and as a result has given me validation. Growing up, we learn about two genders--man and woman. If you don't feel like you are really either one, where does that leave you? There is no language for you, no place for you. It's so much easier knowing that you're just different, not wrong. I'm not anyone's sister or daughter, but I'm also not anyone's brother or son. And I know that that's OK.

OK, so what's this xylophone thing?

People say that words are only words, but words also shape the reality that people recognize on a daily basis. If something does not have a word, there is no way for people to know it and explain that it exists. It's been very liberating finding my place (or non-place, as the case may be) in the realm of gender, but it can still be very frustrating not having a word for myself, an answer when people ask, "So what are you, then?"

There are a lot of labels surrounding gender and folks who don't fit in the gender binary...queer, genderqeer, trans, boi, butch, androgyne, and on and on. Well, let me tell you...with something as intensely personal as gender identity, words are a hot topic. While some people think someone's particular label isn't as important, other people get very defensive and protective of words. Words can become very politically charged, and each label has its own particular connotations that come along with it. I'm still relatively new to all this territory, so I haven't had the chance to decide which, if any, of the existing notions I'm comfortable with. I just haven't met and talked to enough people out there yet.

In the meantime, xylophone is a fun little thing that LT and I came up with, in our many endless talks about gender and identity. There is a book by S. Bear Bergman called Butch Is a Noun, in which Bergman makes a joke about a hypothetical green-haired kid with safety pins sticking out of hyr face who says hyr gender is "xylophone". (I apologize I don't have the book with me for the exact quote.) LT and I chuckled about that, and at some point discovered that there is an Indonesian instrument called a gender, which is very much like a xylophone. So, in our usual don't-even-take-serious-stuff-seriously manner, we decided that one arbitrary label was as good as the next, and this one didn't happen to be accompanied by any existing sociopolitical baggage. It became our own personal code word. At least for the time being, it works for me!

Thanks, by the way, to LT, for joining me in my continued exploration and discovery, helping to calm my fears, and not just recognizing, but celebrating my xylophone self. And thank you to everyone who has expressed support and love for me so far as I've started walking this path.

Coincidentally, today is the birthday of the person who really opened me to the possibilities of gender and my place within those possibilities. I'm still figuring things out, but in three short weeks last year he opened my eyes enough to set the wheels of thought in motion, and in doing so started me down the road to finally feeling an identity that I am at peace with. It started with one comment: "You don't look like a Cheri, you look like a Chris or a Mark...I mean that as a compliment," and blew wide open from there. sj, you truly are a teacher. I can't thank you enough.

Thank You for a Small Consideration

Except for spam, it's not often that we are grateful that we didn't get an email; it's even less often that we are touched. But that's where I found myself yesterday.

There are a few people that I get forwarded emails from. Some, like friendship and joke ones, I scan through and scoot to the trash folder, or if it's particularly striking I might hang onto it. Others I tend to not even scan. I got an email from MT's mom, and happened to notice that MT's mom had gotten it from her. The original email from MT had all the usual suspects in the address list, but not me.

Now, MT is usually one of the email forwarders; I've gotten some pretty great stuff from her. MT is also one of the people I've talked to a bit about my growing exploration of my gender identity (or lack thereof). The thing is that this particular email was a "yay sisterhood" type deal, instructing the recipient to pass it along to "10 pretty ladies on your friends list and let them know they are pretty." So, her not including me on that was a subtle but pretty significant acknowledgment of what I've told her about my thoughts of gender so far.

As I'm going through this process of figuring myself out, it's little things like that which really help validate and support my developing thoughts. Small details that many people don't even realize exist can mean so much.

So, thanks.