Burning Words

I find myself having a strange dilemma these days.

I’ve never really passed for straight, or at least not until recently. From the time I was old enough for people to make assumptions about my sexuality, people have thought I was queer. In my early teens, that meant most people assumed I was gay. In my later teens, and then initially at uni, that meant that they still probably thought I was gay, but otherwise genderqueer and a bit confusing. And then when I first transitioned, when I wasn’t particularly confident and didn’t have the money to replace my old wardrobe, I found myself pretty seamlessly going from being read as gay to being read as a dyke.

As a consequence of all of this, I’ve never much cared as being read as queer in the past. It’s just been assumed, and it always felt as if it was being trumped by the trans stuff. I’m probably one of the more out queer people on this campus these days; I’m a past president of the campus queer group, and I tend to wind up being called up whenever there’s something happening here that calls for a queer voice. I’ve had closeted queer people that I’ve never met come up to me and come out to me before so they’ve at least been able to tell someone in this city. I’ve never had a problem with being the one to speak up when it’s needed; it’s been barely a month since I was interviewed on the TV news about the civil unions campaign, and my name’s probably going to be in the paper again in a couple of weeks when I speak at this press conference. So I’m pretty out on that front; I find myself in the slightly odd position these days where many more people I know read me as a dyke than know that I’m trans.

The upshot of this, however, is that I’ve generally only lived in queer, or otherwise really progressive circles, even a bit of a bubble if you will. I’ve never really had to take crap from people specifically for being queer (or not since I was about fourteen), because I tended to get judged based on being trans first. I’m not in that position anymore, though; since I don’t get misgendered accidentally any longer, it’s increasingly only those who need to know that I’m trans who find out about that. And since my presentation has changed some as I’ve become more comfortable with who I am and gotten myself a little bit more money, I’m increasingly being read as a straight girl by people that I’m just meeting. While this is very useful in environments where being out as queer might not go down so well, and a great relief not to even worry about being othered, I also find it very odd in light of all of the above.

There’s something deeper at the heart of all of this, though. I had a fairly conservative and heteronormative youth compared to most of my friends these days; most people I know now find it hard to believe that of all my friends from my mid-teens (who I was very much out to and who were fine with me), I’m the only one who isn’t engaged or married - at 22. I may have been presenting as in some way queer for years, but the expectations learned in those years, for me, have always been pretty ingrained. There’s a certain life that I’ve always expected I’d wind up having, even if delayed a few years because of the delays I had in transitioning. I’d always identified as bisexual because I knew I was attracted to women too, but I think on some level I always thought I’d wind up in a het marriage. Which is where I get to my current dilemma.

I’ve been starting to realise over the last couple of months that I don’t think I’m actually bisexual, and that I’m rather more likely a dyke. I’ve never really had to consider sexuality before, but now I find myself having the sort of internal battle over being a lesbian that most of my friends here had years ago. The prospect of going without that het privilege for good really scares me, and for one thing, it means an end to that particular idealised future. Beyond that, it means that I’m always going to have to worry about how less progressive types are going to react to me, even now that my transness is largely reduced as an issue.

I’m feeling that one directly at the moment. I have a job where all of my coworkers are straight, and where I suspect my being found out to be queer would probably result in my being treated differently, especially by the older women, meaning that I’m very much not out, and with no plans to become so. I’m not used to having something to lose by being outed as queer - but after a coworker saw me at a gay club on Thursday, and I’m assuming saw me kissing another girl, I find myself pretty worried that it’s going to get back to the girls in my department. It’s a situation I’m not used to being in, and a fear that I’m not used to having. There’s something else, too: the prospect of coming out specifically as a dyke feeds into my internalised transphobia, for being a lesbian is a bit of a cliche for transwomen, and I hate finding myself fulfilling those stereotypes with a bitter passion.

So I’m in a bit of a strange situation, and it’s all the more difficult for being unable to coherently explain it to most people. I’ve been effectively out as in some way queer my entire life, but it was either at high school, where I was so marginalised anyway that I really didn’t give a damn, or it was in the comfortable bubble of the queer community. Now that I’m stepping outside that, and finding comfort as being read as normative for the first time in my life, the prospect of actually being a dyke, as opposed to bisexual, and of being outed outside that comfortable bubble, appears as pretty fucking terrifying - and it’s a fear that I never really saw coming.

Tags: personal, queer issues, trans