Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I missed Thrir Ventri Foetr rehearsal last night because my body rebelled at how little sleep I'd gotten the previous night. Slept the middle of the day today, still not enough, feel pretty wrecked, but still hope to make it to Homespun Ceilidh Band rehearsal tonight. Getting further behind on my to-do list again.

I feel like I should do something -- or write something special -- for the fourth annual Transgender Day of Rememberance, (also here) which I hadn't even started thinking about until folks started talking about it on genderqueer (and the relevant LiveJournal Friends list) several days ago. I remember seeing a lot of those names a few years ago when I was searching the web for names of famous transgendered people to name computers after on my LAN, and being angry and sad at how many of the names were best known for being murdered. This list is a whole lot longer than what I came up with then.

And I'm a little ashamed to admit that I'm actually hesitant to post a link to the list of T* dead here where my more-conventionally-gendered friends will see it, because I don't want more people to be worried on my behalf than already are, and I'm sure somebody's going to react that way. I know that some of my friends already worry that someday I'm going to be the victim of anti-TG violence because I'm so public, so conspicuous, and I try to help them worry less by explaining that I've only ever felt I was in immediate danger because of the way I dress once, and that situation was easily defused. (On the other hand, I do practice a certain amount of caution when going into environments/situations that I percieve to be more likely to be hostile than most places. I've been nervous about potential threat several times; I've only felt the threat become "active" once, on a sidewalk in Adams Morgan in Washington, DC.)

So one part of me says, "Don't post that -- it undermines my 'don't worry about me, it's not that bad' message," while another part says, "Dammit, other people need to be as angry about this phenomenon as I am, and if it takes showing them scary sad stuff to make that happen, then that's what it takes. And these people with whom I feel a kinship even though I never met them, they deserve to be remembered" Violence against T* people is real, and is a symptom of a problem in our society that Needs To Be Fixed, despite my perception (and reassurances to my friends) that I personally haven't been in too much danger so far.

Whether you agree that "hate crimes" should be punished differently from other crimes or not, hate crimes are still especially sickening and hateful. And today we talk about hate crimes against one particular group of which I'm a member.

And now I digress and talk about myself, so let's set this part of the post apart from the part where I'm talking about the Transgender Day of Rememberance and society in general.

I suspect that a large part of the reason that I feel less threatened personally is the same thing that makes me such a conspicuous target in the first place. I'm not just obviously, conspicuously, blatantly transgendered; I'm conspicuously and confusingly "gender outlaw". I'd say "bi-gendered", but I don't think most of the people looking at me have that concept. I'm also tall. I'm not a great fighter (terrible with my fists, but a bit better than a novice with a broadsword) and I'm not oustandingly strong or anything, but as far as I've been able to tell, I'm just big enough to come across as vaguely imposing sometimes. (I don't see myself that way at all, but others have told me so.) I get homophobic crap yelled at me from across the street or from passing cars, and I've been on the recieving end of homophobic or transphobic vandalism before, but not much happens within arm's reach ... or within seven paces or so, really. If I come out of a building and there are 'phobes near the door, they wait until I'm some distance away before they say anything.

I'm not just ambiguously gendered in my presentation; I present as confusingly gendered. It's not, "Hey, that woman is really a man," it's a man in a dress with a big ol' bushy beard and what someone referred to as the "too much testosterone look". (I figure "too much" testosterone was enough to make my body masculine at all. What they were referring to was the big beard but balding on top look. When I thought about it and looked in the mirror, I guess it does make my head look a little more imposing if someone's already looking for a reason to see me that way.) I'm six feet tall, but I'm usually wearing 3"-4" heels when I leave the house, so I'm probably perceived as taller. And in the Winter or in bad weather generally, I wear a long, full cape, which probably makes me look generally larger than I am. Plus the simple fact that I'm out in public dressed so conspicuously and not acting timid about it, which is probably a big part of it right there.

I was pretty surprised when I found out that some of my neighbours had been scared of me (which changed the first time they worked up the nerve to speak to me and discovered that I'm friendly). When I moved here my father had just died, so for the first year I wore all black except for my cape. The neighbours usually saw me around sunset, walking downhill toward them with the setting sun at my back, wearing black clothing and this billowing cape... And I was completely oblivious to the effect.

So I guess if somebody out there who's not easy to accidentally intimidate decides they're offended by who I am, or if somebody goes cruising specifically looking for a transgendered person to attack, I'll be in as much trouble as my sisters and brothers, but unless that happens I'm mostly at risk of getting my feeling hurt ... or having a girlfriend decide she's not as good at ignoring the rude comments from other people and become uncomfortable going out with me, one of the factors that led to our breakup ... or having someone decide that her new job is too politically sensitive for her to acknowledge that we were ever friends.

Or maybe the threat to me will be more like what happened to Tyra Hunter, who was felled by a traffic accident which she would have survived if the emergency medical personnel had continued treating her instead of stopping to make fun of her. <<shudder>>

It's kind of funny ... I get people telling me pretty often how brave I must be to dress and look the way I do. When I was more in touch with the gender community online, sisters who passed or who had completely transitioned would tell me how brave I was to present ambiguously. (At the time, there weren't very many of us doing so -- there were only, uh, four of us living this way that the online genderfolks knew of -- but coming back to look at the community now, it seems that there are a great many more people taking various approaches to "genderfuck" as a daily look, and there are even concepts like "gender outlaw" (Thank you, Kate Bornstein) to describe us.) But apart from simply working up the nerve to walk out the door at all, and the work of learning how to "not hear" the snide comments and giggles, it hasn't felt brave...

You see, this is less scary for me than trying to pass, for several reasons. First, if I'm not trying to pass, then I don't have to worry about whether I do pass. No fear of being "read". Second, I don't have to risk the ego-hit of "not doing it well". And third, it doesn't require making drastic changes to the appearance I've gotten used to seeing in the mirror. Folks who were doing what I was (am) scared to do were calling me brave for what I do instead.

In fact, I frequently think about shaving my beard (and chest and arms) and getting a wig and trying to put together a conventionally-female gender presentation. I fantasize about walking out in public not being so conspicuous and unusual, without having to hide behide some male disguise either. (When I go out in boyclothes, unless they're historical costume or my performing duds, I feel MORE conspicuous even though I'm not -- I know that I'm "in disguise", so I feel as though everyone's looking at me and wondering why I'm dressed wrong.) It'd be great to go out and interact with the world as a woman, instead of as an in-between. But taking that step is scary.

And now that I'm thinking about it, it could very well be the case that my less-scary-to-me in-betweenness is a big factor in my personal physical safety as a trans-person. Funny how that works, isn't it? As a more conspicuous target than most of my sisters, I'm more likely to get verbal abuse and less likely to get a knife or a cudgel coming my way. Unless, of course, I've completely misinterpreted the situation -- in which case I'm sure I'll get some comments explaining what I'm missing.

Wow. That got a lot longer than I thought it would. I guess I've written something special for the Transgender Day of Rememberance after all.

If I don't get around to it in the next couple of weeks, somebody remind me to organize my thoughts about wanting to be percieved as ordinary versus what I'd be giving up by stepping out of this curious middle ground.