Testimony

Testimony by VIVIAN TAYLOR, Boston, MA

A month or two after I started living full time out as woman, one of my friends suggested I talk to an acquaintance of his, an older trans woman who had been out for years.

My friend thought his acquaintance might be able to give me some tips on surviving as a trans woman. I was thrilled. Here, I though, was someone who had the answers. Surely she would be able to point me in the right direction. We had arranged to meet in a coffee shop. In my excitement I arrived an hour early. It was going to be awesome.

What actually happened was that she showed up and asked why I wasn’t dressed like a woman. I was wearing skinny jeans, a studded belt, and an ironic t-shirt. I liked how I looked. I looked, in my opinion, like a queer woman in her mid-twenties on her day off, which, shockingly, I was.

But no, I was informed, I wasn’t being a woman right.

She was neither the first nor the last person to inform me that I’m doing it wrong. There was I woman I met soon after moving back up to Boston in 2011. She had transitioned in her teens and most folks wouldn’t know she was trans unless she wanted to tell them. She had a real heart for women who were just starting transition, but she had expectations for those people. She couldn’t stand ‘bricks.’ She explained that bricks were women who looked “like a man in a dress.” A cinderblock was even worse. A trans guy who was too femme was feathery.

I’ve been told that if I’d only start pitching my voice up, or stop wearing pants, or start wearing make up, I could totally pass, that no one would have to know the shameful secret that I’m a trans person.

There’s another side too. In college I asked the instructor of a Women’s Studies course I took if she could recommend any reading on trans issues. She suggested Sheila Jeffreys’ 2005 book ‘Beauty and Misogyny,’ which contains a delightful chapter in which Jeffreys uses pornography depicting young trans women of color to explain why there’s no such thing as trans and how trans women(no mention of trans men or non-binary folks for some reason) are actually evil, essentially pornographic simulacra reinforcing harmful gender tropes.

It’s a great double bind. If you present in a traditionally feminine way, you’re just being a misogynistic parody of a woman, and if you fail to present in a traditionally feminine way, well ha! There’s the proof that you’re not really a woman right there.

And even if you are “really a woman,” that might not be enough. At a Christmas party last December a Smith alumna defended Smith’s decision not to accept trans feminine students by explaining that even if trans women were women, they had still been socialized as boys and men, and that Smith, as a safe space for women and trans men, had a right to defend their students from such people, from the inexorcisable specter of their privilege.

I know women who identify as “heterosexual with a transgender history.” They’re trying so hard to get away.

But you know what’s worse than being somebody’s idea of a bad tranny? Being somebody’s idea of a good tranny, an acceptable tranny.

Last fall I was at an event in a room full of professional acquaintances. A musician who I’ve done some good work with came over to talk to me. This guy is a kind, thoughtful man who I trust. I’ve known him for about two years.

“Vivian,” he said, “it’s so nice to have you here. You always seem to happy and relaxed, and you’re always so open about being trans.”

At this point I’m smiling, enjoying a nice compliment. Then the horror began.

“All the other trans people I’ve known are always so stressed out and unhappy, and are just so difficult. You do an amazing job of making people comfortable.”

And by then I was ready to leap on him to get him to be quiet. The only other trans person he knew, as far as I was aware, was standing a few yards away. I don’t know if she heard that or not, but I really hope not.

That’s not a unique example. I’ve had a lesbian in her 60s tell me that I was the first trans woman who ever got along with, that I’m cool and queer instead of “uncomfortably trying too hard to be a straight woman.”

Here’s the thing: People fucking despise trans women. Often the nicest thing they can thing of to say to trans woman is “gosh, you are so little like a trans woman!” Being trans is something to avoid, to exclude, to escape, at worst to nobly bare up under.

But I’m done with it. You can be trans or cis. You can be super femme, you can be ultra butch. You can be straight or queer. You can have people saying you’re a transcendent beauty who just stepped off a Renaissance canvas, you can have people saying you’re a stomach turning monster. You can be a light in the world who every person you meet loves and devotes themselves to, you can be an awkward storm cloud who drives everyone away.

I don’t care. Sun shines and rain falls on the just and unjust alike. I don’t want to know who the Real Good Ones and the Real Bad Ones are. We’re all people. We all deserve to be treated as valued members of humanity. That’s all.

About the Author:

Vivian Taylor is a writer, activist, avid Sung Compline promoter, and proud (if occasionally troubled) North Carolinian currently living in Boston, MA. She served in the War in Iraq from 2009-2010 and is currently process of Discernment for the Priesthood in the Episcopal Church. She writes about her experiences in war, being a peacenik veteran, and being a transgender Christian.

Published by Autostraddle, 5/15/13. All images copyrighted by IVY DALEY.

Testimony by RYAN O’CONNELL, New York

Here’s something everybody should know about gay men: We like to disappear. We like to numb the feelings. We like to be anywhere that’s not here. We like to, quite simply, get fucked up. And you know what? We’re damn good at it. We’re the best. It’s estimated that about 20 to 30 percent of the gay and transgender population abuse substances, compared with only 9 percent of the general population. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. A lot of the LGBT community may be out and proud, but most of us still got issues. Last night, as I was drinking a Skinnygirl margarita in bed, I started to think about all the boys I’ve been friends with and/or dated who clearly had drug and alcohol problems. It might not have seemed like it at the time because we were all having so much fun getting lost in the haze of gay mistakes, but it’s obvious to me now what was really going on there. Some boys, even with their cheerful dances to Beyoncé songs and their vodka sodas, were quietly coming undone, while the rest of us were simply trying to come together. **** I was a sophomore in college the first time I ever accompanied a gay friend to an NA meeting. My best friend at the time had just told me he had an addiction to cocaine, which was shocking because I didn’t even know he did coke. “Are you on it all the time?” I asked him in his San Francisco apartment. “Mostly.” “What about last Sunday afternoon when we were just at my house watching TV? Were you on it then?” He nodded. We sat there and cried a little bit. Then we hugged each other and set off to an NA meeting. It would be my first but certainly not my last. Fast-forward a few years later: I stage an intervention for a close gay friend who has a drinking problem, and it actually works. He gets clean. Never takes another drop again. I accompany him to AA meetings for moral support and feel completely overjoyed to have my friend back. Then something happens that I didn’t expect: we start to drift apart. The friend who I got back is not the same. We’re not the same. And despite the damage his substance abuse did to our friendship, a sick part of me misses getting fucked up with him. Sometimes we would take these white oval pills and lie in his studio apartment wearing kimonos, all blissed out and googly-eyed, while listening to Fleetwood Mac. I missed that. It’s embarrassing to admit such a thing—shameful even—but it also helps me realize something very important, which is this: Even the most present of the gay boys likes to disappear sometimes. No one is above it. *** It’s difficult, especially living in New York—a city that encourages you to burn the candle at both ends—to call out a person for drinking and doing drugs. After all, you like to do those things, too, right? Hell, I remember once greeting a date by feeding him three Vicodin and whisking him away to a midnight showing of The Shining. (Ah, the stuff of gay romance!) But it’s different; it’s always different when you’re dealing with someone who has an addiction. Maybe I’m sensitive to it because my mom was or is an alcoholic (she’s been sober for five years), so whenever I see someone ordering that extra unnecessary drink, my radar goes off, and I immediately put myself at a distance. In my experience, though, I’ve noticed that there’s a general lack of judgment among gay men regarding our drug and alcohol use. I think it’s because we understand that there’s an undercurrent of sadness running through every gay man’s life and, at the end of the day, we’re all just doing what we have to do to make it through. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because we’ve spent our whole lives being judged by other people, and now we feel like it’s our time to be left alone. A few years ago, one of my best gay friends and I stopped hanging out so much because we were both going through shit and whenever we saw each other, it felt like we were looking into a cracked mirror. He was unhappy, I was unhappy, and we were dealing with it in unhealthy ways. One day I finally just texted him: “We’re both doing a lot of drugs, aren’t we?” He more or less copped to it and eventually I got better and he got better. Still, I look around today and see plenty of gay men who are in some sort of pain and ready to disappear. Once you’ve been in that place yourself, you can see it in everyone. I have a lot of problems with gay culture, with how others treat us, and how we treat one another. It might come across as annoying and critical, but I promise I have the best of intentions. I guess all I’m trying to do here is understand why it can be so hard for someone to make it through. I’m trying to understand why this underlying depression is so present in gay life and if it’s possible for us to ever stop getting swept away. I’d like to think that it is, but then I remember being stoned in a kimono and holding my friend’s hand in a church basement full of gay addicts, and I realize that we have a long way to go. We might be here, we might be queer, but some of us just aren’t getting used to it.

Published by Vice, 4/23/13