Greetings, one and all – and happy pride month. This is not a current picture. My hair was cut short back in 2024 and I feel like it’ll never grow back out. I feel like I look like a boy, and part of me doesn’t care. I have felt and increasing amount of dysphoria over the past two years and now I’m not even sure if I’m a trans woman anymore. I have no idea what I am, or who I am to people. It wasn’t always this way, and I started my transition strong. I knew what I wanted and I was determined to get it. But like a dog chasing a car I wasn’t sure what to do with it when I caught it. People accepted me easily early on. Even now I feel like it’s possible to navigate social situations that I find myself in easier than before. But what’s missing is the feeling of certainty that I am a woman.
This pride month I want to reclaim a sense of who I am that was lost when I cut my hair and had a traumatic beauty school tenure. I don’t know exactly what that means yet. I do know that the queer community at large feels out of step with where I’m at. Right now, I’m not prideful because I don’t know what I am or where I belong. Talking to other trans people is great but it only gets you so far. A large part of this gender journey is internal, and part of me still feels like a problematic femboy who wants to say things to shock people. The need to self censor is real, especially in my line of work. I feel constrained by my surroundings and my community. I know that I am not the only trans person who feels this way, since a lot of us have become alienated from the larger “queer community”. What happens when all of the gender affirming organizations are run by cis people? I am sick of relying on cis folks I don’t respect or care for to do the right thing. When is it our turn to take control of our own lives and destiny? I believe this is what they call trans liberation.
To me, trans liberation would mean that I don’t need to pass – don’t need to think about my pronouns, my hair, how I’m dressing (do I look femme enough today?), whether my interests are too masculine coded, or whether I will be called “sir” or “ma’am” when I answer the phone (both are shitty feeling). It would mean that I am treated the same as anyone else, without anyone calling attention to my gender identity at all (I am sick of giving out my pronouns at all). It would also mean that I would feel comfortable standing up for myself without being seen as a problem. I have stood up for myself numerous times since coming out. Every single time I am made to feel like I either overstepped, am being irrational and/or the person becomes so afraid to mess up again that they avoid me forever.
None of this is new, but it is what I am thinking about this pride month. I am not proud of where we are or what is happening to this country. I am not proud of my own transition progress, and it’s been six years of this. I am not proud to be a part of the queer community because it is filled with people that nauseate me.
What I am proud of are my failures. My scars. My battle wounds and dented ego. I have faced down layers of degradation that most cisgender people have never had to consider, and come out the other side. I’m proud of falling flat on my face and refusing to stay down. Being tripped by others who are part of this community and still finding a way forward. It’s not like transition and coming out of the closet will save us. The closet opens directly onto a staircase that winds ever downward in a spiral. Taking that first step blindly, you fall down down down until you’re flat on your face surrounded by some kind of Lynchian shadow people. You look in the mirror and see a cackling witch who has taken possession of your body, because you had no more use for it. Being transgender is acknowledging that the most basic thing about you was a lie, and now you have to piece together a life using the raw materials provided by genetics and the wonders of modern science. You will never stop falling and being pushed over by people who had everything handed to them right from birth.
I’m soft. Physically weak. Muscles shrunk from the estrogen. I have failed at so many things. Fallen.
That’s what I’m proud of…because I’m still not dead – and by all rights I should be.
I’m a trans girl who is exploring blogging through the fediverse.
This is a mirror of my blog at: joelle.snowebell.cc
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