Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I started writing this last Sunday (the International Transgender Day of Visibility), though it's something that's been on my mind for a while. I didn't manage to wrap it up on what would have been a very apropriate day -- let's see whether I can finish this before I get on a plane. Not having written it yet has been making it that much harder to focus on getting ready for the trip.

As a transgender person, I'm generally pretty visible. I'm pretty much "out". You'd think that there wouldn't be any more question of whether I'm 'visible' or not, whether I need to come out any more. "Everybody knows", right? And one of the advantages about being as visible as I am is that to a large extent, I've effectively come out to someone by the time I get close enough to say hello (unless I'm with Mom or dressed male for a gig). "Everybody knows" means I don't have to worry what people will think when they find out. Friends often handle the "will these new people be freaked out by Glenn?" sounding-out before before invitations are made. There's a whole lot of detail like that that I don't have to face head-on, as a result of my decisions to face the world as a whole head-on. It doesn't all go away, but there's less of it.

But lately I've felt as though my gender is systematically being erased. All that work to learn how to be me without worrying myself sick. All that work getting people used to me being me. All that work carving out a Glenn-shaped space in the world. Everything I faced all that fear for, being undone along with my very identity. I don't think that's anybody conscious intent, but since it's mostly a side effect of one person's desire to deny knowing that I'm transgender and what that means ... I'm not sure how much it matters that "erasing me" isn't how she's thinking about it consciously. I've been staying at Mom's house, where a promise made decades ago means I'm bound to not dress as myself here. I hesitate to say I'm "living" here, or that this is my home, because if it were actually my home (permanent or temporary), I would not have to wear a disguise o costume to be here. More and more, I feel as though I don't really live anywhere -- the house in Baltimore is falling apart because I can't be there often enough to get anything done about it, and I feel like a guest in Bowie. It's not the same as being homeless in the sense that's usually meant, but it's a constant, nagging, background stress. I have a bed, a roof over my head, and food, but I dob't have a place.

Going out by myself, I can change clothes in the car in order to present as Glenn at my destination -- then change back before returning to doesn't-feel-like-"home". But since I'm Mom's main source of transportation these days, most times that I leave the house I go someplace with her ... dressed "boy" (for a what-I-can-get-away-with version of "boy"). I'm me less and less and less often. I'm visible less often.

Tomorrow, Mom and I are heading to Cyprus for a month. I've been looking forward to this -- it's a place I've long wanted to see, a chance to walk the land of half my ancestors, and a chance to see relatives I've spent far too little time with and meet other relatives I've never met in person before. But I don't know who knows what, and I'm a bit out of practice at that sort of outcoming. You see, Mom knows I'm trans -- at least she knows the word applies to me and has some vague understanding of what that means -- but she puts it out of her mind (that old promise about not "dressing like that" at her house means she's not getting a constant visual reminder; when something does remind her, she acts like it's a shocking -- startling! -- revelation (and her exaggerated reactions predate her dementia, so it's not just a matter of her actually forgetting)), and it's not something she's at all comfortable mentioning aloud. And though some of my cousins are on Facebook and I have email addresses for some, most of the folks I'm going to see in Cyprus are people I have no contact with. I know Mom hasn't told them about me, and I have no idea whether any of my relatives who do know about me have said anything to anybody else, and I really don't want to be a complete surprise -- especially to someone whose houseguest I'll be for a month. I hope they won't have any problem with my being trans, of course ... but it seems downright impolite to make it a complete surprise. And Mom won't tell them, and I have no way to reach them, and I don't know whether any dribs and drabs of info about me have reached them through the grapevine. (Heck, I don't even know whether anybody has even mentioned to our hosts that I'm a vegetarian.) Even if folks aren't entirely certain what to expect, knowing that there's something to be prepared for would be better than a complete "your cousin is a freak" surprise, wouldn't it?

And no, I don't plan on arriving in Cyprus wearing a skirt, but I don't think I could pull off pretending (convincingly) to be a regular cis guy for all that long even if the attempt wouldn't feel like a sort of slow-motion psychic suicide.

I used to dress more interestingly than I do now, but most of my old clothes wore out, or I gained too much weight, or the things they went with wore out, and I've had no money for clothes shopping for a long time. Mom buys me new tee shirts once in a while ... so I've spent years in tee shirts and falling-apart skirts or pants. With the trip coming up, Mom has sprung for more new clothes ... it took forever to find pants that fit my shape, but we got those, and more tee shirts, and two pairs of guy-shoes (a walking-everywhere-as-a-tourist pair and a go-to-church pair), and now a new unfeminine bathrobe and way-too-masculine pyjamas. A lot of stuff I can only see myself ever wearing for this one short month, and other things that I'll have to make do with as tops after we get back even though I've wanted to get away from always wearing safe, boring tees. (Well, they're better than even more masculine shirts, at least ...) The only thing I've gotten recently that doesn't feel like it's either for somebody who doesn't exist or a means of erasing me a little more, is new underwear (I got to buy that myself, thank goodness), and that doesn't exactly help the invisibility problem, since I'm not in the habit of flashing my panties at people. (I did spend Christmas money from a friend on a few new tops a couple months ago, and knowing I've got those helps some.)

For the past month or so, between bits of my wardrobe being replaced with more guy-mode stuff and Mom's treating my gender as a big secret, I've felt like I'm having invisibility forced upon me. Like a closet is being constructed around me without my consent. And it's no more comfortable than the closet I escaped from decades ago.

It's no more healthy than the closet I starte out in, either. Closet = death.

I'm going to be visible on some level. I may wear trousers the whole month (*grumble*) but I'm not going to hide every single sign, every clue. First off, I'm pretty sure I can't; secondly, the times I have creeped people out the most have been those times I was trying very hard to appear completely like their notion of 'normal' because somebody else was worried the real me would freak them out; and third, I already resent the "have to pretend to be someone/something I'm not" aspect of being around Mom without having to go "deep cover" about it. Hmm ... fourth, there are certain recent dvelopments that may or may not be noticed, but that I can't really be sure to hide without doing medically inadvisable things. But as things stand right now, it's going to be the "suspicious glimpses" sort of visibility that makes what-I-am seem shameful, not the "here I am" unashamed visibility that demands a Glenn-space in the world. I'd love to be met with complete acceptance, I'll be okay with a "we have to try to get used to this" response, and I could find a way to cope with a "we're really really uncomfortable" reaction if it came to that. But making who-I-am a complete surprise (and acting in a way that makes it seem like a secret that slipped out, even if my words say I'm not trying to hide) makes the first less likely, and makes the other two rather more awkward when they've already offered to take me into their home. And I have no way to say anything ahead of time (or find out what they already know), and even after having this problem pointed out, Mom sure as hell won't say anything that could defuse the potential landmine.

Hey, maybe it won't be a problem -- maybe they really won't care, or maybe another relative has already said something. Or maybe they've been reading my blog as lurkers all this time. Maybe it'll be a brief startlemnt and no problem after that. I don't like the fact that I don't know, and don't get to do anything to tip the odds more in my favour. "Maybe it'll be okay" doesn't seem like much of a plan. "I'd hoped you wouldn't notice, or that somebody else had warned you" doesn't sound like the most polite way to start off a stay in someone's house. And Mom, who is usually so correct about how things ought to be done, is so ashamed of what I am that she can't bring herself to do anything other than try to pretend it's all not real. And she's taken it upon herself to render secret everything that I years ago deliberately made not-secret for my own sanity. It's not hers to make secret^[2]. It's me, who I am, my selfhood. Mine.

And it's going to look as though I'm the one that's hiding, rather than Mom trying to hide me. I'm not comfortable with that aspect, either.

I really shouldn't have to hide from kin. And it can't be healthy to feel my sense of self fading in the face of an onlaught of denial-that-I-exist. This is costing me too much.

I know that Mom is going to upset that I posted this, but it's public. Share or quote as needed. The fact that I am transgender is not a secret, and has not been a secret for decades now.

[1] Atheists can substitute "got my answer from my subconscious" or "made the intuitive leap" there. I'm convinced that God answered me that way, but I cheerfully concede that objectively my interpretation can't be distinguished from the other two options I've presented, so feel free to interpret it that way if it makes the pararaph sound more sensible to you.

[2] I know there's some "how will this reflect on her" in there. I get -- at least intellectually -- that she's embarassed by me. (It hurts that she's embarassed by the very fact of what I am.) She may be worried that others will think less of her because her eldest offspring is "weird". But the self that is being denied -- erased -- here is still not her self. She should not accept blame or disparagement for what I am or do. She is not me.