Medical transition has taught me that binary gender presentation doesn’t exist. Let me explain.
I started testosterone and had my first of two top surgeries in 2020. At that time, 99.9% of people I encountered assumed I was a woman, and I understood why: I had short hair and wore men’s clothes, but I looked more or less like most queer masculine-presenting women I knew. Very occasionally, I’d get called sir or mister by a stranger. I imagine those rare folks were wonderful allies who noticed my demiboy pin or otherwise wanted to make an effort to be respectful. I don’t think they saw me and immediately thought “that’s a man.”
I thought there would be a day when suddenly I’d changed enough that everyone saw me for who I was. That never happened. Instead, I went from the occasional ally gendering me correctly to about 10% of people assuming the right pronouns and honorifics in person and consistently getting misgendered over the phone. Then it was about 30% of people. When my beard started coming in, I started getting gendered correctly about half the time by strangers. Now, I’m gendered correctly most of the time in most spaces, but every so often I still get called “ma’am” or “she.”
I have no idea why my features add up to man for some people and woman for others. The more time I spend transitioning, the less clear I am on this. I know breasts are consistently woman-coded and beards are consistently man-coded out in public, but I’ve been gendered correctly with boobs and misgendered with a beard and I have no idea why. Amazingly, I’m misgendered more with a shaved head than a more grown-out men’s haircut, even though I think a shaved head makes me look way more masculine. One time a pharmacist said she misgendered me because she’d never seen a man with purple hair before, but I have no idea whether that’s unique to her or not.
No matter how much anyone rails about how mentally ill trans people are for thinking they can transition, no one really knows how to spot us or any gender of person, cis or trans, with any real reliability. Gender is a construct not just because societal expectations of people differ by gender, but because the parameters of gender change depending on where you are, what you’re doing, and who’s observing you.
It should come as a surprise to no one that U.S. Representatives Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace harassed a cis woman in the bathroom at the U.S. Capitol, mistaking her fellow lawmaker Sarah McBride, the highest-ranking trans elected official in the country. Transphobes love to think they can clock a trans woman, but they never can with any reliability. This is why anti-trans policies and rhetoric are dangerous to everyone.
If we live in a society that expects us to present ourselves to the world according to the genitals we have, we will all be forced to conform to standards of gender presentation that don’t fully match who we are. Not to mention all the people who are cis but gender-nonconforming through no fault of their own: think tall or muscular women, shorter men or men with softer features, men who can’t grow facial hair, women who can, or anyone who fails to conform to white beauty standards.
Trans rights are human rights and anyone who thinks otherwise may be in for a rude awakening.
Thank you,
A Trans Reader
