Gender and Anger - Some Thoughts

I’m going to say that while the ideas in this essay are not all my own and are formed by much of the dialogue I’ve seen in trans/LGBTQ+ spaces, I’ve framed them. :)

I think what surprised me most when B. came out as trans and I started interacting with different spaces is how irate some people are about trans people existing. I could tell you that nothing changed about the fundamentals of my life after my spouse came out, but that’s not totally true. We still do things exactly the way we always have - it’s just that she’s so full of joy and self-love that it’s cast a rosy glow over it all. It’s like the salt on a caramel brownie, the cherry on the sundae, a comforting kiss on the forehead. The clothes B. wears and the things she calls herself don’t effect the lives of most other people. It means nothing to others and everything to us.

So why are people irate that she exists? If it doesn’t materially effect them at all?

When we are young, we are handed a gender box. It’s strict and small, and we’re told that we have to stay in it Or Else. In many families and communities, even lifting a flap is punished by ostracization and bullying. We all try desperately hard to conform to the box. And for some of us that box is comforting. There are rules there, and if you follow them everything will Be Okay. It’s predictable. How often as a girl was I told that I had to take others into consideration? That if I just walked confidently and dressed a certain way, I wouldn’t be assaulted? That boys were looking for girls who are ___? That if I did these things, I would be a Good Person, and I would have a life that was safe?

But it also harms us to stay in the box. Women who stay in the box are powerless, victims, giving everything and recieving nothing, their time eaten by makeup and clothes and hair and thinness. Men who stay in the box are lonely providers who must produce, support, and protect, no emotions allowed except anger, not allowed to see their family as people but as obligations. Are these extremes? Yes. But many of us have experienced at least some of these feelings.

For some of us, the box is constricting and attempting to stay in it is killing us. In my case, I am not a thin girl who is conventionally attractive. My ADHD means that caretaking and “the mental load” is not something I can adopt some days. I loathe makeup. I almost killed myself by trying to do it all anyway, refusing help and drowning and trying to pretend everything was fine until I had a mental health crisis. Some of the box fits - I like to cook and taking care of my kiddo is one of my favorite things. I’m into frilly clothes, I’m still indulging my American Girl doll obsession. But I learned to bust the box a little at the seams, to lift the flaps and punch the sides out. I like my box now, for the most part.

That’s my story, but so many people can just not make the box fit at all. And what happens when you fully step out of the box and put a toe into the nothingness?

You find that, actually, the box doesn’t exist. It never did.

It’s not real. It’s been made by you, in collaboration with the mores of your parents and your community. But it’s intangible, it’s not really there. It can’t really hold anything, and it definitely doesn’t hold you. Trans people walking around in the world are evidence of how little that box has any power.

Which, for some people is frightening. If the box doesn’t exist, then what are the rules? How will we keep safe without rules? Many people have suffered for the box, have lost everything because they needed to stay in it and needed to make it fit. Families lost, jobs lost, connections gone in service of the box. For some people the suffering is rampant. And they cannot face the fact that if the box isn’t real, then they are suffering for nothing. They can’t face that maybe they didn’t need to suffer that much, lose so much. And it makes them angry that anyone would try to make them face it.

Trans people are walking embodiments of making people face it. Not only have they destroyed the box, but they are SO happy about it. They are thriving, colorful people full of elan. You’re not supposed to get joy from leaving the box, and yet. And yet!!

I don’t know where this leaves us, when the angry people get control of the country. I know this isn’t most of us, but it’s enough of us that I’m afraid right now. And still, just the other morning, B. came galloping down the stairs with a gigiantic grin on her face, wider than the sky. “I can put my HAIR in a PONYTAIL!” she said, pointing, “and I’m so cute!” How can you do anything but love her fiercly and agree?