bikeshedding an intermediate representation (no it's not about programming)
I've seen myself as transgender for about 4 years until at my film festival I bumped into a screening of A Sweetness from Nowhere (Polish title translation being uhh "a sudden flashing-through of sweetness") directed by Ester Bergsmark. I missed both the Q&A sessions, because I was still in Berlin and not at the festival yet, which sucks, but I'll manage.
The movie is a visually poetic exploration of (I'm sure I'm getting something wrong but it was a Saturday morning and I didn't sleep enough) the feeling of unsafety and fear that comes naturally to trans people in Current Society, inching slowly towards finding trust and comfort in others (and raves).
It was not the first movie this festival where I found that I fall asleep when overwhelmed and confused, but it was the first of those that left bits of it in me. Two memory snippets remained: one – the voiceover (the director?) talking about always having in the back of their mind the statistics of murders of trans people, the other – a scene with a person hiding from an attacker inside a fridge. The first couldn't be farther from me, the second felt like me exactly.
Just after I came back from the festival, I got a call from a clinic that I cleared the (about 4 months long) waitlist for starting the process for, well. It's not diagnosis, since it's not done by a psychiatrist, it's the medical opinion that the court or the endocrinologist will want. I'm now tasked with writing up the little biography that will be used as a basis for the process. And so the thoughts well up.
"Do you encounter social dysphoria? In what ways?" Yes, I've found this is what pains me the most: when I get sir'd by everyone who doesn't know me personally.
"What have you changed in your looks so far?" I grew out my hair, but I still dress, well, androgynously, would be an overstatement. I have like 3 skirts that I've tried on and immediately dumped in the deepest reaches of my wardrobe, because I hated seeing myself in this kind of mismatched state.
"What do you want to look like?" Uh, not sure, but just feminine enough to not get sir'd?
There is a repeating element to my life story, as I go through all these asks: risk avoidance. Follow the rules. Don't piss off anyone. Don't skip school. Study study study. Better be an hour early than 5 seconds late. Save up enough money to stay afloat for 5 years, as soon as you get a job. Don't make enemies (Hamiltonian Burr would be proud).
I think the first day I came out on the fediverse there was immediately someone who offered me DIY hormones, if I wished to try. I'm sure there are people who came out after me who have followed up on what they came out about much stronger than I did. Names, hormones, clothes.
I, on the contrary, exist as Me only in the vastness online, and in the small bubbles of air in my room, at my parents' house (but only when no one's over, except the parents' friends who do know), at my office. So, I've never felt particularly threatened by the outer world's transmisogyny – but have I come out to it?
It would be oh so poetic to scribble out some fancy words, that from now on I will face my fears, learn makeup, show the apartment building landlady middle finger, whatever; but that is not what is going to happen. Never have I ever committed to something in bubbly speech and held up my promise. This is already pathetic enough to write out as it is.
For now, I think, it's just gonna be the same, sitting in the freezer, reading the Polish translation of WPATH Standards of Care that the clinic asked me to read. One day I will live up to the promise I made myself 4 years ago – probably.