07/17/2024
Content warning: f-slur, always used affectionately.
Now before you judge me, before you tell me this is a bad decision – I do not care. The point of all this is to not care, and care too much. I truly care too much, and that has led me to not care at all. And when it comes to art, and my life, I am often more interested in the questions than the answers. I’ve been thinking about fully transitioning to being a man as a long-term form of performance art. It has been the product of a hard summer that keeps getting harder, but I really am curious. To preface, I am not a man. I do not want to become a man. But, hypothetically, I will. I will be only called Stanley and respond only to the pronouns of he/him. This is against my will. Once again, I must make it very clear I am not a man. There are no words for what I am.
When I first discovered I wasn’t a girl anymore, the natural step was to Boy. I picked a new name for myself online, became engrossed in transgender politics, and did a lot of learning with the queer friends around me. I wasn’t comfortable, though, I saw the identity of “demiboy” on tumblr, and became attached to that for a while (and an attachment that I was so confident in, I stated that I had “just figured out the whole demiboy thing” in a letter I wrote to my future self once, as if I would feel that way ten years down the line). Then, the identity of “non-binary” was introduced to me, and I believe I started using that label in freshman/sophomore year of high school. I used a name different from my birth name, and used they/them. It was fine, for once. I wasn’t Girl or Boy or Kinda Boy. I was something different. I felt like I had room to breathe a little.
Things are different now, in my post I Saw The TV Glow era (granted, I’ve been on the verge of a gender crisis for about a year now, but this movie got me confronting it again). In freshman and sophomore year of college, I met so many fabulous queers. Knowing glances with other faggy theythems, midnight conversations with the she/he/they/whatevers. I talked to so many other non binary people who Got It, who Get It. There was a time I felt so isolatedly alone, in a queer, but cis friend group, and now I had found people who understand. And they do, but they understand it for themselves. I am now starting to doubt if anyone really understands what I mean for myself.
I really mean it when there are no words for what I am. For the past year, I have fucking hated being called they and them. Certain gays can call me she and him, but beyond a joke, it never comes out of people’s mouths right. My name, too – in May I told a friend that no one says my name right. He asked “How do people say it?” and I had trouble giving him an answer. And when he asked, “How should people say it?” I left him answerless as well. Non binary, bisexual, theythem, queer – none of those are right. I love the trans people who play with gender, don’t get me wrong, that brings me absolute joy, but when I do it, it’s not right. I “put on” woman when I wear my shitty eyeshadow and kick my feet. I “put on” man when I let my beard grow out and laugh a little too loud. I take them on and off for show, saying “I told you – I can be whatever I want.” But, at the end of the day, I go home and I take woman/man off, like clothes. And what is underneath? That is where I think people get mixed up. I am not non binary in the sense that I am outside gender (I believe that is impossible, but you’ll have to wait another year before I finish my thesis paper on that), or that when man/woman come off, it’s non binary as the underlayer. No. There is no underlayer. If there is, it’s just Stan. There’s no gender attached to it. “Ah, agender that makes sense –” No. That is a gender. Paradoxical, inside and out. There are no words, that I know of, that make people understand what I am.
This leads me to my proposal: What happens when I stop caring? This sounds dark, but I mean stop caring that modern language and attitudes will be dominated by the cisgender idea, for my lifetime. I am no pessimist, nor nihilist, but there’s no doubt in my mind that I will expire with a label next to my name: Transgender. In an ideal world, I don’t need the signifier to be remembered. So, should I stop caring? If I stop caring so much about how the world perceives me, will I have the time and energy to care about more important things, like my art, my job, my friends? If I accept that there are 8 billion people on Earth, and billions more to come, and it is rare that even one of them will fully understand me to my core, will I be okay?
I get that I’ll never be cisgender. I will never be a cisgender man, or a cisgender woman. That’s okay. I have spent enough of my life wishing for that, knowing it doesn’t like to come when it’s called. So what is the point in trying to “fit in,” if I become a man? I don’t think that is the point, though. I will always be a square peg in the round hole, there’s no denying that (and if I detransitioned to perform as a cis woman? No way, where’s the defiance in that?). The point is my anger, my frustration, my futility at trying to be understood. If I dedicate myself to performing as a man, something I know I am not, then of course I will be misunderstood – but in a way that makes me in control. I will be open about my captivity in the role, that this is truly not who I am, but what the world wants me to be.
There are problems with this, most of all being that I have been in a delicate, fragile state of mind these past few weeks, as I go fully insane every single summer, and we have started the approach towards the rotting fruit that calls itself the month of August. As well as the open, confident contempt of how society perceives me, it goes hand in hand with the unhealthy practice of shielding myself from the world, giving me a chance to become bitter and adopt hermit-like behavior. As well as “living a lie,” there is risk in forgetting my cause, and who I am. There are also the problems of what this means to do as an act of “defiance,” what kind of signal is this giving to other trans people, binary or non-binary? When I cave and give the world what it wants, is that dangerous for other trans people to see? And what gender roles and stereotypes am I fulfilling when I “act like a man”?
The comfort of calling this “performance art” is that performances end. They have a conclusion, then they are criticized appropriately. I can theorize what kind of place the world will be in 2103 (I will live to be a youthful 100 years old), but there’s no point guessing the kind of person I will be when I die. I’ve already lived a thousand lifetimes, and I didn’t predict any of them correctly. So what is hard to pin down about this experiment is how it will end – but, how does any art end? I’ve made many pieces that look nothing like I thought they would. You workshop along the way, adjust your materials, and your expectations. What’s frightening about that, is the pieces that look nothing like I imagined, always turn out to be my favorites. What does that mean about this experiment?
Writing this with an audience in mind (my loyal Instagram Close Friends Story viewers) is making me already believe that all of this will also be misunderstood. Please do not take this as a chance to explain to me why you understand me. And do not tell me that refusing to be myself in a world that hates me isn’t a revolutionary concept. You have missed the point completely. I’m still deciding on whether this will become a reality for myself or not – one of the things holding me back is the thought of having to get all of my co-workers to call me by a new name, ugh. But if I do, you don’t have to wrap your head around why I am holding myself hostage. Just that I’m doing it.
What would it take to get others to understand you, really? Would you have to make up new words? New sounds? Create a whole new language, spend your life teaching it to thousands? Or are all the words spelled out neatly, in order, and spoken with a strong and confident voice? I think all of my words already exist, in an order that makes sense. I just think it’s time to change who’s voice it’s coming from.