Visibly Trans: Bravery, Walking Fast and Being a Safe Harbour for Others.
Slurs, Safety and Inspiring Others
“Alright homo! Slow down a little!”
His lanky straight-boy frame, all elbows and knees, put me at a disadvantage as we strode though the morning cold. We were in search of coffee and I was struggling to keep up. He stopped suddenly in the street, clearly wrestling with something.
“You see, here’s the thing…” he says.
I was just being an obnoxious shit. Honestly.
I didn’t mean anything by it. I spend so much of my time arm in arm with other queers I’m constantly having to remind them to “slow the hell down!”, that “we don’t need to rush!”. Yes, queer folk walk fast. So much so that those in my cohort frequently disregard the ‘time to walk there’ results on map apps as laughably long. “What are these straight folks doing? Crawling?!?”
We all know the truth of it.
The cocktail of neurodiversity, and historically being unsafe in public, results in the time worn trope of the fast-walking-queer. I’m an advocate of ‘queer slow walking’ as an everyday protest. Four abreast at a snails pace to make the straights have to go around us for a change. We should occupy more space in public, and yes, sometimes in order to remind my fellow queers I’ll casually call them the occasional reclaimed slur… but sometimes I slip up and accidentally hate-crime a cis straight on occasion.
Whoops.
So, there he was, stopped in the street. After a few paces I did the same. “Ah, crap!” I’m thinking, “I just did it again, didn’t I? I just hurt a straight person’s feelings.” All the other pedestrians diverted around us, rocks in the riverbed. He ran is fingers though his curly hair and drew a few steadying breaths, stammering out the words, “Here’s the thing… I’ve never told anyone this before but… my whole life I’ve never felt like I was straight, you know? I like… I like men too.”
Turns out I wasn’t slurring a straight boy… I was slurring FAMILY.
I rushed at him and threw my arms around his lanky frame. I squeezed that boy so hard and kissed him. I told him that I love him, that I’ve admired him since I was a teenager, and now I admire him even more.
I’m not sure what the inconvenienced pedestrians around us thought was going on. There’s no way they could’ve understood what was playing out. Two people who’ve known each other for decades suddenly finding new depths of discovery? To them it was just two people in the street hugging to their inconvenience. So, at the very least they were experiencing ‘queer slow walking’ having escalated into the finest of queer street protests of ‘queer getting in the way’, of ‘queers existing and not caring what others thought.’
Just a simple trans woman showering a bisexual man with public love and affection. I couldn’t have felt more blessed from the gift of his vulnerability.
I co-wrote a play in 2023 where a trans character laments how sick they are of being called “brave”. Originally I was slated only to write, but it became clear in the process that I was the best candidate to embody the role on stage, the best to openly rail against the notion “public bravery”:
I wish it wasn’t something I had to be brave about. Nice that this person who thinks they know you see this as an act of courage. But it’s not. It’s an act of survival. And being called “brave”? That feels like being reminded of how dangerous this is… a reminder that I’m standing in the face of people who would be delighted if I dropped dead.
For months afterwards friends and colleagues would catch themselves, remembering the words I spoke on stage, apologising for framing my life as an act of courage. I had to remind more than one that it was a character I was playing, that it wasn’t me up there who spoke those words.
“Bitch, you absolutely can and should call me brave! Fuckers come at me in the street!”
Just because I wrote the words and performed them doesn’t mean they need to be explicitly true for me. Just so long as they are true for SOMEONE and illustrate that essential thesis of the work. The notion that “the suffering of trans people shouldn’t be an inspiration.” I’m comfortable saying these words in that context, in service of that drama for that character for that audience, but for the record, walking around looking like this? Clearly not passing? But still not “looking like a man”.
It’s fucking brave.
Not because it’s dangerous to me personally, but because there’s power in being “visibly trans”, and exerting that power takes courage.
Yes, there are some who cannot bear the thought of anything other than conforming to the binary, and I’ll do everything I can to support them too, but it’s not for me. These too-broad shoulders and burly affect will forever mark me and that's okay because it means that queer folk confide in me. Like… a lot. This body, this voice, this unabashed celebration of non-conformity is safe harbor for those who don’t even know where to begin in explaining how they feel.
A new work college, whom I’d only ever briefly seen via video call, was in town. Meet and greet. Pub. Drinks. Chats. Within minutes of us finding a moment for a quiet word they tell me that they want to be a woman but it’s all so fucking hard. Their size, their shape, they are just so fucking MANLY, and they don’t know what to do.
I can see the fear in them. The fear of being an ugly woman. It held me back for years. Too afraid to do anything about the yearning I felt lest I try to change and look ridiculous. Turns out my prediction became true. I DO look ridiculous. But I also look powerful, I look dangerous. Hell, the other day someone asked me if I do stunt work for movies, cause I walk around like I’m ready for action. “What? No, whaddya mean?” They explained that I look like if I got knocked down I’d pop right back up again. “Oh! Yeah, that’d be all the roller derby. Yeah, I’d be up again fast.”
And there I was in a pub full of straight folks, sitting close with a non-binary queer, while they tell how they’ve resigned themselves to never fulfill the yearning they feel in their chest.
“But honey,” I tell them, “You have such gorgeous eyes. You’d be so pretty!”
Both of us with our footballer shoulders, both wearing tank-tops to show off our impressive personal bests at bench press. They can see how similar we are. I could see the understanding in those lovely eyes mixed in with all the hurt. They’d only ever spent time with the delicate dolls, those stunningly pretty and thin trans woman and now they were holding hands in a beer garden with something different. A trans woman who looked like she would kick the shit out of anyone who dared to say a harmful word to one of their own, a trans woman who looks like she can take the hit.
Suddenly it didn’t seem so ridiculous.
I love that people see my strange uniqueness, especially the young.
It fills my heart to see the perplexed faces of small children staring up at this tattooed mountain. It’s one of the things I find so disturbing about all the “think of the children” hand-waving going on. Children need to see people who don’t conform. Be it in the gender binary or the straight up physical stereotypes of man/woman. Young people should be shown that they can grow into men who don’t need to be the strongest or toughest in the room, that they can grow into women who don’t need the external validation of their form to ave value.
The world needs to see trans people, to remind them that we’ve always been here, and to remind them that they can be different too. You see, I am visible not so you can see the suffering of trans people and be inspired. I am visible so I can inspire you to be more than you’ve ever thought possible.
–S
I love this. Such beautiful, vulnerable, precious, strong writing.
You have such a gigantic heart. Definitely agree that you walk around like you’re ready for action ☺️