I still remember being about 12 years old, young enough to still share bunk beds with my brother, and listening to my friend gush with my mother over her upcoming Year 10 Formal. Natalie was older than me, tall and effortlessly pretty; the poster girl for teen girl perfection. She was showing my mother photos of dresses on her phone, and my mother’s face glowed as they discussed what hairstyle she was going to go with, how she would do her makeup: and is your mum going to be helping you get ready?
I sat on the top bunk, hiding without realising it. Even then, still a few years away from fully understanding that I was transgender, I felt the kind of guilt that made me want to disappear and leave them the only two people in the room. I will never be able to do this for you, I thought. We will never share this moment.
It’s not something we talk about enough in the public narrative of being trans — the guilt of what we leave behind: or rather, the expectations we leave behind. And that’s to say nothing of the guilt over what we move towards. I’m not talking about the transition itself — God knows we know enough about that sort of guilt — but about all those new gendered expectations that remain treacherously out of reach; the pieces that don’t quite fit with the finished puzzle. The truth is, I wouldn’t mind talking about makeup with my mum, or growing my hair out long enough to actually be able to do something with it. As a child, I’d scorned dresses and ran on the heels of the other boys, yes, but I’d also experimented with nail polish and had hair down to my waist that I refused to cut for years. I was all of this, and I had been a little boy through it all, I know that now — but somehow those two truths are far harder to hold together now that other people know as well. Even something as innocuous as shopping for jewellery feels like a test that I’m failing miserably.
“I don’t see it as a feminine thing,” my friend Han says, showing me their freshly painted nails. “At least not on me. It’s just something I like, y’know? Something for myself.” They’ve always been such a strange, wonderful blend, even before they came out to me as genderqueer. Elbow length hair thrown into an irreverent ponytail to keep out of the way of their un-made up face, long, dazzling nails tucked out of sight in their brother’s hand-me-down overalls. It’s a kind of freedom that almost makes me jealous, until I remember how much of it’s a facade. With their family, at work, they’re forced to choose one presentation or another, or else hover uncomfortably in the middle; neutral in the worst, least expressive way possible.
Well, I say “choose.” It’s more accurate to say that the choice is made for them. It’s not exactly an empowered, genderqueering moment to be designated the role of bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding without consultation, or being left with the role of cleaning up after a party because they’ll “do a better job, considering.” We gender diverse folks, for all our talk of new names and preferred pronouns, aren’t in the business of choosing all that much. We’re essentially given two options: conform or be dismissed.
I walk down the street beside Clara. She’s dressed up as much as I’m dressed down: stylish skirt and chic boots, all carefully selected and Covergirl perfect. She isn’t wearing a lot of makeup though — she still hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it — and I catch her sneaking a glance at her face every time we pass a reflective surface. It’s a nervous tic that’s all too familiar; how many times a day do I check myself in the mirror, studying the rough shape of my eyebrows and the hard set of my jaw, trying to see what others must be seeing and wondering if everything I’m doing is enough? It’s different for Clara, in ways that Han and I will never have to experience — Han exists in that nebulous space between male and female where they can chameleon themelf away depending on the circumstances, and I’m a trans man, not yet fully passing; I have the plausible deniability of being butch, a tomboy, all those things that are still more socially acceptable than blurring the lines from male to female. For Han and I, not meeting gendered expectations is a tedious annoyance, a source of distress for ourselves and discomfort for others. For Clara, it’s dangerous.
So she puts in the effort, even when doing makeup annoys her to tears, and she can never quite get her hair to sit just right, and it takes her years of voice therapy to get her pitch high enough that talking doesn’t get her sideways looks. For her, femininity is non negotiable, in the same way that it is totally off limits to me — so much more so than for cis women and cis men. They get the privilege of non conformity, at least to a greater extent than we do. Their gender isn’t constantly under scrutiny, after all.
To be transgender or gender diverse is to stand at a crossroads, where no matter which path you take, you’ll always feel the pull from the road not taken. I’m waiting for the day when I can forge my own path. In the meantime, we take compromises where we can find them. Han cuts their hair short. Clara forgoes makeup more and more often. I don’t go Formal dress shopping with my mother; instead, she takes me to buy my first suit, and helps me pick out a tie. It’s floral, bursting with pinks and purples and blues. Pretty, I think, and she says it looks good on me. It’s a start.