Closet

(This is not a guide for the cis. For that, please use Google, DuckDuckGo or whichever tickles your fancy)

"Closet" actually works, but it doesn't work the way gay people tend to think it does. I was closeted when I pretended to be a guy. I'm out now - no longer pretending to be something I'm not.

There's something else, too. I've actively dismantled the closet as much as I've been able to. I'd burn it down to complete oblivion if I could, but as it is, other people won't let me. They refuse to completely destroy the documentation identifying me as a male, or to completely rewrite it, for example (data integrity, identifying, blah-de-blah). Every time someone wants to interrogate me about my past (it doesn't happen very often, thankfully), that someone basically wants to re-erect a closet for me and, if not push me back there entirely, still remind me about the closet other people forced me to. The one I've done my damnedest to demolish.

What I think this all boils down to is that the majority doesn't want to admit to its mistake in sexing/gendering babies. The fact is, such errors happen, and there's plenty of us living proofs. The majority just needs to get over it, and start correcting its errors. Sans hand-wringing, please.

It might get better, but it might not.

Dear trans girl,

It's possible it gets better. That's about as positive as I can get. Sorry about it - it is very depressing, but life sometimes is. I hope you get a bit less harassment, a little less violence, a little less un- and degendering. I really do, from the bottom of my heart. But I can't promise that. No-one can. Don't believe just anything you're said - evaluate the statements yourself. That applies to this piece, too.

I sincerely hope you will find peace. Peace with myself wasn't actually that hard to get. Peace with others... shall we say that's a war in progress? And, unfortunately, it's not yet us who are winning. People do think their way of seeing and thinking and living sex and gender trumps our experience.

Stick by the people who really are loyal to you. And to hell with the others. Really. If someone gets onto your tits, don't spend too much time with them - there's so many idiots and so little time. It's just not worth it, educating the unwilling. They just sap your energy, will to live and generally suck the joy out of your life. Sod them. But the ones who do love you - love them to bits. Never, ever let them down.

Don't be too disappointed when people close to you let you down. It's not unusual. It's incredibly sad, but I've seen it happen so many times I find it hard to be surprised at anything any more. There's no bottom to the depths of stupidity, meanness and plain ol' cis privilege.

Love your own. Help other trans girls and women. Even when they're being arses. I try to do that, too. 

Above all else: Love yourself. Get help. Be brave. Be smart. Be the girl you are.

On the difficulty of trusting other people

During all of my years, it's became abundantly clear to me that I have a problem with trusting other people not to do me in at the earliest opportunity. It's pretty clear to me why: when you've been taught by the whole society, by everyone you know and love, that you are something, and you then, on your own, find out and realise that they all were wrong, it's pretty hard to trust anyone much afterwards.

It goes deeper than that. I had this trust problem already as a child. I don't think it's completely outlandish to think that this was due to a persistent cognitive dissonance between what other people expected me to be, and what I actually was. I couldn't fulfill the expectations made of me, and it wasn't a question of being somewhat imperfect. I just failed at sex and gender. I recall clearly wondering what was wrong with me, why couldn't I figure out the way boys are supposed to behave (it wasn't for the lack of models, or for a missing father, or any that creepy ex-gay -shit - I've had an unbroken home from the day I was born, with both mom and dad and all that stuff), and infinitely sad because I couldn't fit in, no matter what I did. I knew I was different, I just couldn't put my finger on the exact reasons why.

But when I did figure it out: after the first rush of relief came almost uncontrollable anger, and fear. These guys had conned me all my life! And not only that, but some of them were crazy enough to police my behaviour with violence (cheers and beers, my classmates from comprehensive - hope we'll never meet) - as if not conforming to the sex assigned to you at birth was such a huge crime against them.

I also started wondering at a few things. I was pretty damn visibly non-conforming during my teen years. Why wasn't I referred to anyone? Was it because I was otherwise a well-behaved girl, who did not cause much trouble? Or was it because they knew there was nothing they could do - or because they didn't dare to, or because they thought I was beyond their "help" anyway - help in this last case meaning forcing sex and gender conformance (it was rather obvious I wasn't going to conform that way).

What it boiled down to was that no-one helped. I was left to my own devices, and that's the way I've been going on ever since. Going back to trusting people comes very very slowly, and so far I've managed to trust just a dozen or so people (you know who you are and I love you to bits). And it's the hardest thing for me to do, it's harder than transitioning and all that.

New, shiny hobbies bring out the past anew

Namely, sports. I'm not going to go into specifics here, 'cos I'm not sure it'd be safe for me to. I enjoy my new hobby hugely, it's very physical, very intense, very technical and demanding, it's what I wanted as a kid and it definitely is what I want now.

I'm reclaiming my past. I'm doing the stuff I wanted to do when I was a kid. It feels very, very good. It's also painful as hell.

Pursuing your dreams late is very complicated. On one hand, you get this immense kick from doing stuff you dreamed of doing. On the other, the kick makes you realise just how much stuff you've missed out on. It's at times so painful you find it hard to breathe, yet you know this is the way forward. It brings out the little girl you were, the things that were denied to her, what you could have been had you not been forcibly masculinised. What I could have been.

On some imaginative level it's like watering a live plant that's been dry for decades. It's all very well and good, but imagine how it's for the plant - it gets new water for its cells, they expand and start growing, but the stress on the supporting cell structures is probably rather hard. Yet should the plant stop drinking?

Hell no. I'll rather take the pain and the growth than die a slow death by drought. If my joy comes with pain, I'll take the pain unflinchingly with a laugh. It's not like us Christians aren't used to laughing at death and horror (1 Cor 15:54-55).

And, gasp, it's the C of E that delivers, plus some thoughts on why I'm so angry

Really. I'm a bit envious, TBH - the Church of England folks actually invite trans people in their steering groups (or some such thing). I'd never had believed it but yeah, it really seems to be true.

The less-perplexed-by-teh-trans people at the conference have asked me a few really good questions, too - they're not that hard to answer, but asking them does bring home, to me, a few points.

Firstly, we're a wee bit doomy and gloomy, us trans women. And angry as hornets. Why is that, they wonder? It's kind of obvious to me, but for the record, here it goes: I'm angry as hell 'cos I've been forcibly masculinised throughout my childhood. I've a very hard time trusting anyone, let alone trusting their good intentions. Every time I've trusted in the past, I've been let down - because I've trusted other people understand I'm a girl even though I did look a bit like a boy on the outside. I admit that my trust was misplaced, but the problem is that when those things happened, I was a minor. There was no way on this earth I could've understood my problem, or rather, the problem other people were having with me. I couldn't grasp the idea that a) I was not a boy, but a girl, contrary to everything everyone said to me, and b) I'd really better communicate this to other people ASAP and get them round to treating me like the girl I was.

The upshot was this: I was forced to be a boy, on pain of physical violence. I sucked at it big time, but as I was unable to see an alternative, try I did. It left scars. I couldn't trust anyone. I couldn't trust anyone do right by me for decades. Please think about that for a minute. I'm all new (well, less than a quarter of my life) to this trusting business, and with a huge emotional baggage to boot. Is it such a wonder if I'm a bit leery of trusting other people; if I'm a bit apprehensive of others? Or that I'm a bit angry at what's been done to me?

Chattering red bushes and birch thickets

Reddish bushes, a bit closer now.


A thicket of birches. These birches were but wee saplings when I lived near them, and I was but a chit of a girl. I've grown into a woman, and these trees have grown, too. I wonder how long they're let grow there - how long before someone cuts them down. I hope they can put up a fight. I know I will, if someone tries to cut me down to size. For several decades, I didn't. I know better now.

It's not all doom and gloom

Yup - I'm happy, opening up to others as regards my inner life, more in touch with my anxieties (it's not a bad thing)'n'everything. Sex keeps getting better and better, too, probably due to me being more in touch with myself.

I'm not exactly the girl I thought I was.

Or I am. It depends. It depends on which period of my life one takes as a reference. If one takes my early-to-mid twenties as a reference point, I'm not really the girl I thought I was. For starters, I didn't want to think of myself as a girl. The thought was way too scary. Yeah, it intruded every now and then, but I pushed it back.

If, however, one takes me as a child as the reference point, yeah, I think I can see the similarities. I'm the introspective, shy, sensitive girl I was back then. I cry easily. I like to play, probably in all senses of the word. I'm lighthearted at times - although one might prefer scatterbrained, too: while I'm very much together in one sense, I'm not quite the polished, untouchable package I tended to think I was - or at the very least, the package I projected myself to be for others.

I still project quite a lot: I probably seem a lot larger and a lot louder than I actually am - it's rather scary to allow myself to be the size I actually am, to allow my borders and limits much closer to my skin. On the other hand, me distancing myself from other people led to too limited a life, other people being too far even for my comfort. This doesn't mean, of course, that I'll be allowing every comer up close and personal, but this hopefully means I can let my nearest real close, and my spouse to my skin.

Because that's what I want. I want another person up close and personal. I want skin on skin. Come to think of it, I probably haven't had skin on skin -like intimacy ever, not knowingly, at least. The times I've approached it, I've had to distance myself from it for fear of disintegrating - disintegrating the projection, that is. I think I am ready now, and if I'm not, perhaps my fear won't make me run away any more. Perhaps I'm brave enough to face myself for real.

Just say it: Not in my name

Us trans women tend to disturb cis people when we start to speak out our experiences of forced masculinisation, and especially the anger and rage it produced. People don't like angry women.

Tell you what. I utterly don't care if you cis guys don't like it. It still happened. It's still real. I'm still angry at the injustices done to me and my sisters. I'm not gonna take it lying down.

It doesn't mean I'm gonna start a war, so to speak, with planet cis - while revenge would probably be sweet for a short while, I don't think acting out my anger would indeed help me, or make me happy in the long term. Which is what I want: I like being happy.

I cannot be happy if I have to carry injustices hidden inside me. I've got to bring them out into the open, and while I recognise that this is not fun for the planet cis, it can't be helped. It still has to come out into the open. That female anger and rage is shunned is a regrettable situation, but it doesn't change the necessity of speaking out against forced masculinisation of trans girls, and telling about the rage and anger it begets.

My case being myself, of course: I was forcibly masculinised throughout my childhood. It happened mostly through my peers. My parents were sort of indifferent to my apparent gender variance: I just wasn't the kind of girl to play with trucks or to admire excavators. My "peers" weren't indifferent, though. The boys I was to be socialised with were rather hard on me being different (i.e. being rather a girly girl): I was shunned at first, then ridiculed, then beaten. My feelings today towards those people are of quite an unpublishable sort - on a bad day, given omnipotence, I'd make them suffer eternally. It wouldn't do good to me in the long run, but, boy, is the urge potent.

So, dear cises (not that there are many of you reading this blog, but whatever: I'm still writing this mostly just to myself): tormenting your peers as kids makes the tormented angry kinda permanently. Do not do it. Every time you do, you make permanent enemies.

And if you're of the sort who didn't do it but just looked away: don't look away. I know it's difficult to step in and stop it, but if you don't even say anything, you really are complicit in the torment. A simple "not in my name" is a start. Silence in the face of an injustice kills. It corrupts your heart.

You might want to notice that the above doesn't have any references to trans women's bodies. That's because they're not the problem. Injustice and violence perpetrated by cis people on trans girls and women is.

(yeah, this is about me me me and not about all the other problems regarding cis, trans and violence: it may be applicable to an extent, but I can't pretend to speak for others, and I'm not a good enough theoretician. Not yet, anyway).

Forced masculinisation

Or, what happens to many, if not all, trans girls.

Basically, it's the experience of being treated as a boy instead of the girl you are. Repeatedly. Over and over. From birth. You're given the wrong clothes, the wrong haircut, a wrong name. And when you can't be a boy, when you behave in non-boyish ways, you're punished for it. You're ostracised (if you're lucky, it ends here), bullied, beaten. You get bruises for not behaving like a boy. No-one wants to be your friend because you're considered too weird, too odd, too fucked-up.

You can't be the girl you are, either. Crossing over is not allowed, and if you're brave (or foolish, take your pick) enough to try, you will be told in plain terms that you're a weirdo, a freak, and not able to anyway so just go back to trying to be a boy, m'kay?

That's the reality of forced masculinisation. That's the reality of good many trans girlhoods, including mine.