Trans myths and why they need busting
I’ve spent too long neck deep in books and academia, seeing the world through paper and screens. Someone recently called me out of touch, calling me out for because they felt I was not reflecting trans lived reality. Every piece I write reflects a version of my reality, a series of personal myths I have put down for others to read. My personal myths are only as relevant as the pieces that fit others lives, they take what they need or want from me, sculpting my myths into their own. Busting myths is a bit like busting ghosts, ephemerals things that keep haunting you, never quite leaving you no matter how hard you try to ignore them. My personal myths make no sense to others outside their own contexts. This is why all the trans myths that have layered onto trans lives are so difficult to budge, each person contextualising and reinterpreting those myths.
Trans people have likely existed as long as humans have had self-awareness, being treated as mythical beasts roaming through society, one part venerated, one torn down and reviled. To be trans is to be a mythical constructed being, all the lies and half-truths passed down across the generations. All the constructions of trans identities each trans person has to find and construct their own myth to present to the world. There is no one way to be trans because there is no one way to create a self-myth, no way to be an allegory other…
