Beyond Transition
It’s society that needs to transform, not my nonbinary body
This Is Us
It’s society that needs to transform, not my nonbinary body
I stopped taking testosterone recently. I think it was a little over a month ago, but I’m not sure. I don’t keep track of that kind of thing. Unlike many trans people, I don’t recognize a “T date” that marks when I began using hormones. I’ve never posted videos tracking how my voice has changed or photos cataloging how wide my shoulders have gotten. For many trans people, such record-keeping is celebratory and affirming. That’s great! It just hasn’t ever suited me.
I’m nonbinary, and I have always used hormones very inconsistently. I put Androgel on my body sometimes, other times I don’t. I’ve had months-long stints where I applied it every single day, and I’ve gone half a year without applying it before, too. Sometimes I alternate days. Sometimes I use hormones to make my period lighter. Sometimes I skip them to clear up my skin. The decision has never felt consequential or symbolic.
The prefix “trans” comes from the Latin word for “to cross”, but for me, moving into a new category has never been the goal. The categories, and the need to fulfill them, were always the problem. I will never “pass” as anything in particular; I want only to be comfortable as myself. Clothing, hormones, haircuts, and even pronouns are tools I can use to be recognized as the person I am, but I sometimes hate that they’re necessary. It’s hard to untangle whether I’m using them for myself or if I’m just trying to become easily comprehensible to cisgender people.
The truth is, I was just as nonbinary when I had a long curtain of blonde hair as I am now with a short, messy shock of dark brown. I was nonbinary when I used to shove my triple D’s into a Victoria’s Secret push-up bra. I am nonbinary now with a too-tight sports bra squishing my chest. I was nonbinary long before anybody recognized that fact, but was trying desperately to convey it. And I will remain nonbinary even if I stop trying to capitulate to cisgender stereotypes of what being trans “looks like.”
But what if I stopped capitulating to expectations? What if I grow my hair out, or put a dress on?
I wish transness wasn’t viewed as this linear thing, this passing across lines from one easily recognized land into another. I wish transness wasn’t a responsibility placed on me in the first place. Transness was a thing that was done to me by a world obsessed with binaries. I’m not the person who has changed or that needed to change. Society did. And it has. A tiny bit. That is why I’m more comfortable now. Not because I grew a little extra body hair, and my eyebrows got a little thicker.
Cis people tend to coo over my current appearance and say I seem so much more at ease now, so free, so much more me, but in reality, my current gender euphoria has very little to do with any medication I’ve taken or any button-up shirt I put on. People are less ignorant about trans identities now than they used to be. The world is marginally less shitty than it was. That’s all.
I didn’t physically transition into a person who looks more authentically “me.” I was always me. I always knew that breasts could be gender-neutral, that long hair could be androgynous, that my face was perfectly neutral and entirely its own. People just didn’t see it. It’s society that has transitioned away from bigotry and binary-obsessed thinking. In some social circles. If you really work to explain it to people. For a few years.
The social acceptance and ease I now feel are, sadly, conditional. I have made myself very palatable to cisgender allies. I’m easy to call “they” because my haircut, my outfits, my voice, and my body all scream androgyny in an obvious and stereotypical way. When somebody incorrectly identifies me, I act more patiently than I feel inside. I give people time to get used to what I am.
But what if I stopped capitulating to expectations? What if I grow my hair out or put a dress on? What will happen when estrogen makes my chest full and round again? My eyes are already getting brighter and bigger again, one of the first changes that happens when you shift into an estrogen-dominant system. People will think I’m backsliding. Or that I was faking being trans. They won’t celebrate my transformation anymore. They won’t say I’ve finally come into myself. They’ll think I’ve become more cowardly, even if I’ve actually become more self-accepting.
People tend to assume I hate my old name. They say my current name is so much more fitting, and that they don’t associate me with “Erika” anymore at all. I’ve heard this from cis and trans people alike. To be clear, there is nothing wrong or offensive with them saying it. It just betrays a certain way of thinking about transness that does not resonate with me. I liked my old name, and it’s still my middle name. It means “leader.” It’s spiky and frenetic. It’s a part of me just as Devon is, just as my old last name is.
I feel the same ambivalence when people ask me if I have any intention to get surgery. I’m intimidating enough that people don’t ask me the truly invasive, predatory questions that some other trans people get — nobody asks me what my genitals look like, for example. But well-intentioned cis friends will sometimes inquire about top surgery, usually in a way that suggests they view it as inevitable. They want to know when I will get it. If I seem disinterested, they get disappointed. They assume having a large chest is a torment to me, and a problem I will need to eventually rectify if I want to be truly nonbinary.
What people don’t realize is that when they act like having a large chest is a problem for me, they are actively making it a problem for me. There is no reason for breasts to be viewed as less androgynous than a flat chest is. My body is nonbinary because I, the person with that body, am nonbinary. I shouldn’t have to change the shape of it or remove any of its features for this to be accepted as true.
Yet people keep gendering breasts as womanly and viewing mine as a barrier to my authenticity. The worst is when people describe my body as “femme presenting” when really what they mean is “female perceived” — by them.
It would help so many trans people if we could all simply uncouple appearance and gender in our minds. I think it will take a long time for society to get there. For now, I’m starting by working on that attitude within myself.
For a long time, I’ve let other people’s perceptions trap me in a gender dysphoria feedback loop. I try to appeal to cis expectations so they can easily understand who I am and refer to me correctly, because being gendered correctly feels good. But every time I conform in those ways, I reinforce stereotypes and worsen the pressure I feel to conform. If I flatten my chest to be seen as androgynous, I have to keep worrying about how my chest looks and how other people see it. And I feel worse about the reality of having a convex chest as a result.
Screw that. I’m sick of trying to hide my reality from people who can’t grok the complexity of it. I have a chest, and it’s nonbinary as hell. I like how it looks when its bound, and I like how it looks when it’s bare. I like how it feels when it’s touched. I don’t want surgery. I want people to stop gendering breasts.
I’m not detransitioning, because I never was transitioning in a linear way in the first place. But I am detaching from something. I’m tired of acting like I am responsible for a societal problem. I’m tired of transitioning my body to transition people’s minds. It’s the world that needs to shift. Not me.
Lately, I’ve taken to calling myself trans-effeminate. This is a label designed to make sense to nobody but other transgender people. Cis allies know words like “trans man” and “trans woman”; if they’re at a Trans 201 reading level, they might be aware of ideas like “transmasculine” and “transfeminine.” Even if they know what a nonbinary person is, they still think of us in binary terms like those. Because I was assigned female at birth and am nonbinary, people assume I am moving toward masculinity. That I’m trying to be a man, more or less, with a touch of nonbinary flair.
I’ve fed into that perception at times. My driver’s license has an M on it. I sometimes markdown “male” on surveys and medical intake forms. I call myself “boy” and “man,” and identify with male characters and archetypes. But really, these choices are an overcorrection, to make sure I slide into the “right” place in people’s minds. For me, female-ness will never feel neutral, because a female identity was forced on me for decades. A male one wasn’t, so it’s less confining to put on. To properly read as “not female,” I often have to overshoot where I really lie and depict myself as quasi-male.
I’m moving forward by staying in place.
But it’s not quite right. Using the term transmasculine feels particularly hollow and laughable. I am a limp-wristed, uncoordinated little nerd. Male spaces feel strange to inhabit at times. A lot of masculinity still seems deeply overrated to me. I don’t have much in common with most men, and I never will.
But the second I let that show, people (especially cis women) start treating me like I’m a woman again, inviting me to their lady’s nights and making shallow (transmisogynistic) jokes about how they need to get away from penises once in a while. It’s infuriating, this push and pull, this battle with what my friend Jess White calls bilateral dysphoria. It makes me so beholden to other people’s shallow, knee-jerk reactions and perceptions.
I’m sick of it. I’m not playing this game of tug of war anymore. I am dropping the rope. I don’t care if cis people get it. I’m transitioning into effeminacy. I’m moving forward by staying in place.
The prefix “trans” doesn’t just mean “to cross.” It also means to move beyond, or even to ascend. That is the meaning that resonates the most with me. Like many other trans people, especially nonbinary ones, I am not following a straight line. I am moving beyond appealing to cis people’s stereotypes. I will never find liberation or self-acceptance by trying to make sense to them.
Trying to fully understand something is a way of exerting control over it, of claiming ownership of it. There is freedom in slipping beyond the controlling grasp of comprehension, refusing to explain myself, and confusing the fuck out of people by describing my gender using video game characters and words I made up.
I don’t want to change myself. I just want to assert who I’ve been all along. For a long time, that meant telegraphing my identity to other people using hormones, clothing, pronoun pins, and hair, hoping they’d see what had always been inside. Now, it means holding that truth inside of me and letting it warm me, reassure me, and fill me with internal confidence that does not hinge on external recognition. Of course, I want to be gendered correctly and be respected. I’m just done giving a shit that some people will never see the light.