Saturday was a day filled with adventure, new friends, and community support.
There was transgender beauty pageant on Saturday night that I really wanted to go to. An acquaintance of mine also expressed interest about going to the pageant, so we decided to make it a day trip! I met up with her around 1:00 pm and started our adventure with a 2 hour drive. Having never really talked before, the conversation in the beginning was a bit forced but we became comfortable with each other pretty quickly. We stopped along the way to explore a bit, and had a few little adventures. Once we got to town, we parked and ate lunch at this cute mexican place. Then, we walked around the town for a while before meeting up with one of her good friends, and her friend’s boyfriend.
I had no real expectations going into the pageant, and it ended up being a really nice event. There were 8 women competing for the crown. The woman Lorelei who won did a phenomenal job and truly deserved the win! The event was great for the trans community. It truly celebrated these women for being talented beautiful women who are also proud of their transgender status. I can only imagine the amount of confidence it took for these women to get up in front of an audience, and I am proud to have been there to witness it.
I wish we could be at a point where we as a society didn’t need to have a beauty pageant exclusively for transgender women. The event was very much focused on the transgender issues, and the transgender status of all of the contestants. This could be looked at as a negative, because so many transgender men and women just want to be seen as men and women- without the trans precursor. With that said, it was very empowering to see these women celebrating their transgender status. As long as we live in a society that is oppressive to the transgender community, events like this need to happen in order to raise awareness and keep the community strong and together.
Throughout the day I had some difficulties with my own gender identity. The woman I went on the trip with was just an acquaintance, but I met her in a space where I introduced myself using male pronouns. I didn’t really think about how my identity was going to be read and it wasn’t even something I was worried about until after we started the drive. She used female pronouns multiple times in passing, and I felt stuck. I felt stuck in my presentation, stuck in my authenticity, and stuck in my own more complicated identity.
I was presenting male on Saturday, but I realize that although I was wearing mens clothing I still look pretty feminine. It distresses me a bit that she read me as being female since I met her in a trans activist group. I guess it hurts because if she can’t see me as being male, I certainly can’t expect the average cisgender person to. From there, I became anxious about saying anything because I didn’t feel authentic enough I suppose. I do identify as being transgender. Not a day goes by when I don’t question gender to the core of my being, but for someone who doesn’t know my history it may come off as inauthentic?
There was this moment when the four of us headed to the bathroom. I was faced with the ever so important decision, which bathroom do I use? I find that since I don’t pass as male it is much safer and more comfortable to suck it up and use the women’s bathroom in a multi stall facility. When there are single stalls however, I almost always use the Men’s. Anyway, so here I was trying to figure out what to do. Logically it made way more sense to follow my two new female friends into the women’s rest room while my friends boyfriend uses the men’s room. I also thought about going into the men’s room too and really shaking things up since they saw me as being female. I didn’t really know what to do and my anxiety kicked in. I decided not to use the bathroom at all. And as I painfully learned when I had to pee during the pageant, I made a stupid decision. I realize it really doesn’t matter what bathroom I use at any given time as long as it is a safe option for me. If I pass 80% of the time as a woman, I should use the woman’s and if I pass %80 of the time as a man I should use the men’s. Problem solved (haha I wish it was that easy!).
On the drive back my new friend and I started to talk about gender identity. I did quite a lot of listening and heard a fair amount of her gendered history. I mentioned a few things, but didn’t feel like getting into it. It will be interesting when I see her at the next meeting and I introduce myself with male pronouns.
As a side note, I’m going to be working more closely with the transgender rights organization over the school year and will have my own project to plan and implement. I’m excited to jump more deeply into the cause, but it will be interesting to see what it feels like to be using male pronouns with all of the contacts I meet through that internship. I’m still struggling to figure out if it is even appropriate to use male pronouns. I started using them because I don’t identify with female pronouns, and gender neutral ones are unfortunately not very practical. Using male pronouns was really the only way to avoid female pronouns. I don’t think that I have to identify as being 100% male to use male pronouns.
-Goddess Lacey
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