Street Harassment, Threats of Violence and Having All Those Reassurances Undone.

It was an unpleasant 24 hours.

In the space of 24 hours I was threatened with violence, casually misgendered, and… what’s the opposite of casually misgendered? Formally misgendered? Sounds like it’s wearing tails and cravat. No, that doesn’t sound right. Actively misgendered? That still doesn’t… 

Fuck it. Some gormless deadshits harassed me in the street. 

One shithead turns to his other shitheads and hollers, “Hey, that’s a fucking guy!”

God, I don’t want to give any more of myself to this series of shitty events than I already have. There’s a certain amount of “investing your energy” thinking that I still can’t shake from my healing-crystals and herbal-remedy upbringing. That idea that I’m somehow doing more psychic damage to myself by thinking/talking/writing about it than these asinine losers ever did in the first place.

Anyways.

There are a variety of questions one needs to ask themselves when faced with a gaggle of shit-stains. You’d be surprised at what doesn’t meet the threshold of being categorised as transgender vilification in this state. It’s a little tr icky in the moment, true, but it’s an important task to check if you’re being publicly vilified.

Could this incite hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule?

Did I feel that the words were inciting hatred? Or was it just their tone that made me feel publicly shamed? Surely if some other passer-by on the street heard this worm’s exclamation and that passer-by then directed hatred towards me it would be an inciting act? It wasn’t as though they said, “Hey, that’s a fucking guy; let’s get him!”. I’m quite vocal about not passing. And define serious? I felt ridiculed sure, but was it “severe”? Was I merely embarrassed? Was I only just a little humiliated?

Was it serious enough to have an impact on other people?

In other words, would another person (not me) with the same “minority status” as me feel impacted if they overheard it? I mean, I have no doubt that if another trans person heard it they would feel sympathy for me, likely would speak up and tell the little turd floating by to go fuck himself, but that’s a product of solidarity not necessarily because it has an impact on them. Each of us is an individual, with wildly differentiating paths through transition. So, another trans person themselves wouldn’t have necessarily felt attacked.

Was the act fairly minor, or a light-hearted joke?

I have no doubt this would be the defence used. Backed up by their bros of course which is typical of…

And they’re gone… Disappeared into the rainy night. Vanished into the hubbub sea of other young men who are out, trawling the night for ways to exert their masculinity onto the world. Just another cluster of not-yet-adults-no-longer-children whose eyes are sharpened to examine women’s bodies, honed to the importance of their own view of what is desirable.

Not me, obviously (thankfully). 

Strangely I’m less upset about an entirely different group of witless shits sprawling on the pavement the night prior who quite earnestly promised to “bash me”. Go figure.

Regardless of my position in the metric of severity of that being threatened/ridicule/humiliated scale I still come away wishing that they couldn’t tell I was trans. Generall I try not to think about the concept of “passing”. For those of you new to the concept it’s the ill-defined threshold when people don’t realise that you are a transperson. So “complete” is your transition that the average onlooker wouldn’t clock you. Some people find it easier to pass than others. The shapes of bodies, the bone structures, the simple mechanics of how a body moves. For some you’d never realise that they’re anything other than a cisgendered person. While others revel in the gender-confusion they leave in their wake. I have been blessed to know many non-binary folk, with my work, my art, in the roller derby community. Goddamn, some of them I don’t know if they are coming or going and it’s fucking glorious to behold.

And some, a very small group of trans people are of the opinion that the only thing that matters is passing. This small subset of the community believes that if you are not trying to pass, if you are non-binary, if you don’t have crushing dysphoria, if you don’t want SRS (sexual reassignment surgery) then you’re not a real trans person. For them “passing” is a concept that’s used to gatekeep, to limit access, to exclude those who don’t conform. I have a hard time counting these “tru” trans folk as trans-siblings… but I still do. Just ‘cause they have garbage opinions, and are probably garbage people because of it, doesn’t mean they don’t get to be counted.

This long-winded screed is my way of saying I don’t pass and I likely never will.

Yes, there are things about this body that are feminine. But decades of testosterone, of lifting heavy things, of shaping its masculinity to try and fill the gap I felt in my heart (lol, jokes, it wasn’t masculinity I should have been trying) have rendered it, in some regards, unchangeable. I am doing all that I can. Making sure I do my hair, practice my makeup, change my voice and my clothes. I had liposuction to give the impression of a waist. Sadly, these hips are too narrow for me to have an hourglass figure. After many false starts I finally found the surgeon I’m comfortable with slicing into my face and rearranging some elements. And yet, I know that that anyone looking at me will likely never mistake me for a cisgendered woman. I like to talk a big game about being visibly trans. How my existence is an act of defiance, a visual protest, a grand fuck you to the heteronormativity of the world. But how much of an act of defiance, of protest, of fuck you to the world is this if I don’t have a choice? It’s moments like these that my mind turns to my non-binary brothers and sisters (and those both and those neither). It’s moments like these that I think about their glorious non-conformity and the hope they give me.

You see, I carry around a dark secret.

I know with surety that if I was presented with a Faustian Bargain, a Mephistophelian Pact, I would immediately be yeeting my payment of souls into the pits of hell in order to be magically transformed. I would sell every possession, subject myself to unimaginable pain, to outrageous violation to be allowed to step into the science-fiction Tube That Magically Changes Your Gender. I’d do it in a heartbeat. I. Would. Not. Hesitate.

Lucky for y’all that these devil pacts are made up fantasies or else I would be all like, “yes, do come over and visit, just stand there on the big X while I pull this lever”.

Jokes aside it’s a shameful and uncomfortable truth. Knowing I would likely compromise my values, sacrifice my core identity, give up my decency to just not feel like this anymore. And even if I did joke about flushing those shitheads who harassed me down to the fiery pits to earn my devil-wrought transformation I know it’s wrong of me to think it. They were just some kids, little more than teenagers. How could I damn someone to an eternity of torment for my benefit? Especially when I have some concept of what it’s like to be tormented. 

“But you look great, sweetie!” I hear you think. Sure, I’ll keep telling myself that… But the real, lasting harm of street harassment like this is that every positive word is undermined. When some random shit walking past can in a fraction of a second clock me, threaten me, even attack me (all things that have happened this year) it sets the mind to wondering… Am I just being humoured by my friends and family?

The seed of doubt gets planted. The fear that I’ll forever be this “thing” and the kindness I’m shown by the blessed folk in my community is actually just pity.

Dammit… maybe I shouldn’t have thought too hard about it and just pretended like it never happened?

–S