Why I Smile…
I smile because it's part of my social jujitsu toolkit for dealing with situations where I'm misgendered, or I can tell they're trying to figure out my gender, or they realize I'm a *trans* woman and trying out to figure out how they feel about it. When I see a woman giving me "the look" — the glance held too long, where I can see the gears turning inside their head, I give her the social smile that woman are trained to do automatically. It may look friendly, but as is often the case with other forms of woman-to-woman communication, there's subtext: It's the "I know you're looking at me, and now you know that I know you're looking at me" smile.
I smile at small children because now I can. No longer does smiling at strangers' children make people presume I'm a potential pedo-creeper.
I smile because there is a casual camaraderie among women. By no means do I want to romanticize that — women can be just as aggressive and nasty as men, and far more micro-aggressive in ways that most men don't even perceive. But I can't count the number of casual conversations — in line at the store, in the woman restroom, etc. — that I never had as a man interacting with other men.
I smile because women are trained to smile automatically, practically instinctively. To be nice, to be pleasant. Of course I, like other women, learned the nuances of when and where to smile. Smile at a man you don't know and he'll likely think you're sexually interested in him. Smiling in the street invites sexual harassment. (And even if you don't smile, catcalls of "hey baby, looking good," all too rapidly turn into, "why won't you smile, bitch.")
I smile because now society allows me a vastly widely range of emotions. In Norah Vincent's flawed, but still worth reading book, "Self Made Man" (about the 18 months see spend posing as a man to try to better understand masculinity), at the end of the experience she had a nervous breakdown, which in part she attributes to the stress of trying to living within the emotional straightjacket of masculinity.
I smile because why the fuck not. Emotions are contagious, and with all the shitty stuff going on the in world, if I'm feeling like it, why not randomly smile and brighten someone else's day. Of course, there's a huge difference between feeling that one *can* smile and and feeling obligated to do so, regardless of how one is feeling. So I someone doesn't smile back, I don't take it personally. Maybe they're having a bad day, maybe they're from a culture where it's not acceptable (it's notable that the thing that reliably identifies Americans overseas is how frequently we smile at strangers), maybe they just don't feel like smiling back.
I smile because I'm happy. Despite all the trials and tribulations of being a woman, being a trans woman, in our patriarchal society, I'm much happier than I when I was trying to live life as a man.
May 13, 2017 / Confessionals, Essays, Post-Transition by Jolie Laide
Getting "Sir"ed Yet Again
So I got "sir"ed again tonight… It's happening several times a week, and although it always appears to be unconscious and unintentional, it's still a bee sting to the heart every time it happens — and enough bee stings can kill you.
It's usually people who I've never met before — store clerks, restaurant workers, etc. — so clearly it's reflecting their first impressions. Whenever it happens, my reaction is: FFS, I'm wearing women's clothing and shoes, women's jewelry, make-up, painted fingernails, and sporting a pair of D-cups — what the fuck else do I have to do to get people to realize I should be gendered as a woman?
As you might imagine, it's fucking disheartening. I've spent an enormous amount of money, time and pain over the past year reshaping my body, and still it happens. Don't get me wrong, the vast majority of people treat me like the woman I am, and yes logically I know that I shouldn't let a small number of people get under my skin. But the heart and the gut don't think rationally.
There's practical concerns being a trans woman who — like most of my trans sisters — who wasn't blessed by the androgyny fairy, and who probably will never look like the "typical" woman assigned female at birth, and who won't always blend in as one. Probably the biggest concern is safety, particularly since I like to travel, and the vast majority of the nation, let alone the world, isn't nearly as trans-friendly as the Bay Area. (Right now, even the U.S. there's a number of states that have become no-go zones for me.)
But more than that, the incidents have been kicking my body dysphoria into high gear lately. It's just a constant low-level reminder of the gap between the body I have, and the body I wish I had, but never will. Just I'm reminded whenever I try to look for size 13 shoes, extra large sizes in rings, necklaces and clothing, dresses that always 2-3 inches shorter than intended. Or when I'm in photos with other women and look hulking and towering by comparison.
I agree with Laverne Cox that I should be able to love my large hands and feet, my height, my lower than average voice because they're beautiful, because trans is beautiful. But — and I mean no disrespect toward her own long struggle towards self-acceptance — it's much easier to love these things when you have a body that's otherwise considered extremely attractive according to hetero cisgender standards.
As Sam Dylan Finch says in his excellent essay, "I'm Transgender and I Need Body Positivity Too" my body
"tricks others into seeing me as something that I'm not. And no amount of self-love and validation can change the fact that, when I step out into the world, my body precedes me and erases a very important aspect of my identity."
I've been working with my therapist to shrug off this sort of misgendering, to maybe not love my body as it is but at least reach a detente with it. But it's a hard place to get to right now.
(And before anyone chimes in with comments like "you're perfect just the way you are," or "love your body, no matter the shape or size, exactly as it is," fucking read Sam's essay about why those sort of comments are more than a bit… off-putting… to many trans people.)
May 10, 2017 / Body Image, Confessionals, Post-Transition by Jolie Laide
The Long Coming Out
So today I ended up needing to work with some co-workers who I'd worked with three years ago — and didn't know about my transition.* After the meeting, they came up to me and said they thought we'd worked together previously. I said yes, and that I did look a bit different back then. Which addressed the question that was hanging implicitly in the air.
Unless one "goes stealth" — cutting all ties to one's past — social transitioning is rarely a one and done. Instead it's been an ongoing series of coming outs, as I run into people with whom I have only casual connections.
* There's several hundred people in my office, and back in December I only came out to my immediate team and other people that I worked with directly.
May 3, 2017 / Post-Transition by Jolie Laide