I really don’t know how I’m gonna deal with being out, it’s all very overwhelming to me. This all sort of came to me as I was remembering a moment. I used to be friends with a group in university that was a sort of typical boy group for the UK, a few grew up with COD so they still had that edgy streak in them from when they used to say slurs, a few grew up similar to me amongst PC games, strategy and whatnot, but a path later in life lead them into right wing beliefs. They weren’t all bad, there’s a guy I really miss speaking to now. We would talk about music and he’d always be such a treat to talk to where we’d sort of a infodump about things we both found interesting. I’m sure by hanging out with him he was left leaning, but didn’t really care all too much since nobody in his life was really gay or trans or anything in between.
It was lunch and we had all decided to go to the uni pub, it was my first time being there and by this point I knew that I was trans. We were waiting a very long time for food to arrive and on that ceiling mounted TV the news began playing, during that silent lull during bites of food a report began about Brianna Ghey, I can’t remember specifically what it was about but it mentioned trans woman and murder. The table just sort of sat and I can’t remember if there was a discussion that was sympathetic to her being a dead teenager or just silence. But one person just piped up and said “anyway I don’t really care for her death because she’s trans” and being me I just sort of sank into my seat and fell silent for the rest of the day, I left early during the class after that.
I didn’t really know what to feel. I wasn’t hurt by it because in my mind I’m gender fluid with plans of transitioning into a woman, but I’ve heard this song and dance before from myself. My friend died at age 11 and I remember getting the letter from the school about there being memorial, I had tried to text him a few times during the summer holiday with nothing appearing and I just put the pieces together. But in my mind it was just rationalised away. I specifically remember thinking “we’re going to different schools so it doesn’t matter”. I realise now this is just how I react to news like that. Years later I would remember the incident and that emotion finally caught up to me.
I realise as I’m writing this now that having someone tell you point blank that a teenager should have died because of a choice she made about her own life isn’t something that just happens, but as I hear more things come out and rulings are made about the legal status of people like me, this is probably a reality that me and a whole load of people who never wanted any conflict in their lives will have to live and deal with.
Which also ties in with how I want to deal with things now, there are moments where I want to be a woman and paint my nails and learn makeup. But they’ll have to wait. not in a repressed way, I know who I am, I mean I’ll just have to hide who I am. I realise I have that privilege, the marginalised before me can’t hide in a suit of normalcy, other trans people aren’t able to suppress their own identities to the extent that I’m able to.
Chalk it up to perfectionism, being emotionally checked out for the last 4 years or the desire to not be judged during that awkward transitional phase, but I’m able to just nod along and be quiet like I always have. I don’t think there’ll be a day where I’m able to speak up when there’s a transphobe saying awful things, in my head people have already made up their minds and it’s impossible to change what they believe. I hope that someday I gain that confidence though.
Just wanted to add at the end that you can make your own decisions but J.K. Rowling has ruined this country’s perception of trans people, every penny that goes to her directly hurts the possibility I lead a regular normal life in the future. If you won’t stop watching or buying harry potter shit for a nebulous group of people that you have no connection to, then do it for someone you know will have to struggle directly because of her influence. This isn’t some theoretical link that was traced by some looney, this is Real.
Thanks for sticking to the end. -T