It was strange hitting my personal goal of passing as a gender noncomforming trans woman, because:
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Yes, I'm a woman;
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Yes, my womanhood is important to me;
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Yes, my pronouns are she/her ONLY.
But also:
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No, it doesn't mean I wanna have long hair;
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No, it does not mean that I wanna wear skirts and dresses all the time;
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Might surprise you, but we do not live in the 1950s and women can wear pants and still be women.
I consider myself passing, but not as a cis woman, but as a tme lesbian. Folks who don't know/don't care about lgbt shenanigans will just call me a woman (correct), and those who do will assume I'm a huge lesbian with some kinda gender shenanigans going on (correct.) But, no one ever gets the full picture: transgender woman with butch lesbian characteristics.
It can feel fairly isolating because a lot of people associate butchness with transmasculinity, and, well. That's just categorically wrong for me. Prior to my transition, I used to keep my hair long and I used to put in a lot of work try to signal to people that I was different somehow (I really, desperately wanted to ditch manhood).
When I used to try to fit in with the other trans girlies, the fact I was excited to cut my hair short and experiment with gender noncomformity seemed to threaten them somehow. After a while, I actually felt somewhat more comfortable hanging out with transmascs, but being openly transfem around them became increasingly hazardous (transmisogyny is unfortunately still an issue).
With time, I kinda learned to pick and choose my friends very carefully, and people who wanted to be close friends right away represented a huge red flag for me. All of this to say: I'm not openly transfem nowadays, and I spend an enormous amount of time carefully considering and rehearsing my words to avoid outing myself accidentally.
I'm about to get into college again (after attempting and failing so many times), though I have a really good feeling about it this time. I have no idea if what I'm doing is sustainable long-term, so. I'm a little bit weary, I guess.
