Hi, I’m trans, lovely to meet you
Says no trans person ever when they first meet someone. It seems obvious, but the reality of being trans and the fiction spread about being trans are two completely separate things. It is tempting to be trans 24/7, live it, breath it, wear pink/white/blue every day, and generally use your gender as the focal point of your entire identity. I know, I did it back in the day, and wrote extremely bad poetry about it. Yes, I was the kind of teenager who forced their bad poetry onto unsuspecting students in the bar when they first came out, and I would have made an amazing Vogon. For me my gender was the gravitational pull that everything else centred on, and it lasted a good five years post-transition. Yet, as a slightly less bad writer in my mellower middle age, gender is still something there in the background that sits awkwardly with the rest of the world. While yes, I really do enjoy gabbing about trans issues, the reality is that my ardour has died down, and things like hockey, PhD’s, and the rest of life have pushed trans things further down my personal agenda. That, and the bad poetry went the way of my first uni girlfriend.
Many trans folk have the initial burst of euphoric freedom punctured by the realities of life, meaning that their gender becomes something precious and worth fighting for. Much of the reason we project our trans identities into the world is a defence mechanism…
