We came to this class for our own reasons, some to learn, some to validate our own political beliefs.
When I signed up for Mary Klages’ seminar on trans literature, it seemed like the obvious choice. What else could I have done? Something wasn’t sitting right with me when I entered a women’s literature class, and it had been two semesters now of my feeling the need to clarify my use of “we” in a written exam. That term didn’t speak for me, not for all of me, just a part. I left my genderfluidity at the door, thinking that, because I was taking a class on women’s space, I would have to erase all the contradictory parts of myself just to make it one.
This isn’t the only time that I’ve erased myself. My Intro to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies professor only referred to a room full of nonbinary people as “ladies.” I didn’t correct her. I joined the class late. How could she have known? And when those first-day-of-class pronoun circles would come around, I knew that no one would remember in a week that I had used a set that didn’t quite add up. It’s the first time I’ve been out on campus. I don’t feel up to the task. How do other people stomach it? A file folder announces my “he/she/they” every time I sit down, and I’m not sure how to stand behind these terms, not when I’ve kept them hidden for so long, and certainly not in this class. In a room full of cis-women, I still stand out, and my being in a “femme period” is no defense against their turning to nonbinary students to explain something of ourselves. It’s as if my pronouns speak louder than anything else I might do. I feel marked, seen, in a way I can’t control. Gender, for me, was always this simple feeling, and being internal, it was something I could keep all to myself. My pronouns have escaped me, now, and I’m having more trouble speaking.
This isn’t something new, just something I feel more aware of. My skin crawls, and I find that I can’t get a word out. What could go wrong? It’s only an English class. I should know how to approach these by now. Most of our conversations encourage us to connect with our personal experiences, but when I think of my own, my shoulders tighten up. It feels like I’m choking on myself. Maybe that’s what’s uncomfortable about all of this: that I don’t have the opportunity just to theorize, because every theory says something about my lived experience, and I have to live with it, as much as I can pass. Am I ashamed of this? Shame might be part of it, but I fear this discomfort comes from confronting and being open about who I am, in public no less.
What was it that drew me to this class? I’m in a femme period. It would have been so easy just to hide in another women’s lit class.
Was it when I watched The Danish Girl for the first time, and my mom turned to me and said, “Some people will do anything to not have to admit that they’re gay?” She wasn’t watching the same movie I was, the one where Lili Elbe puts on a dress for the first time and can’t stop herself from smiling. For all that the film does wrong, there was so much irrepressible joy in this moment that I couldn’t help but smile, alone, with her.
Or was it the time when my dad yelled, “Are you a man?” at me when I just wanted to go to JAX to get some cargo shorts?
Was it when I knew better than to call myself anything other than “female” on my job applications?
Maybe it was when Marco Rubio announced that the State Department would be withholding passports from people who applied with an “X” gender marker on the day I was heading off to the post office, and I turned to the postal worker, scared, and asked him what he thought would be best to do in this moment. I was so excited when I learned about “X” the night before. He sat there quietly for a while, the punk music blaring, bold, behind him, before finally saying, that upbeat feeling fading: “I think it would be better for you if you pick one” (meaning “M” or “F”).
Whatever it was, by the time I was trying to write a final paper on how trans men are seen as both invisible and boyish for Audrey Burba’s class on visual culture, I learned that I had nothing to back up these ideas, just a TikTok video reviewing a trans Peter Pan retelling that made me want to argue that trans men are seen as childish. I had no real texts to draw on. I knew how to run with the idea, but all that I could claim as background came from Jackson Bird’s comment that his being transgender gave him more of a baby face in Sorted. That was minuscule. I would be better off looking somewhere else.
It was during this time that I realized that I hadn’t read any books, maybe besides Gender Queer, about people like me or with stories like mine. I kept thinking back to my women’s, gender, and sexuality class. Had there been something there? Gender was part of the title. There was some textbook reading about someone being genderfluid and growing up in Hawaii, but it wasn’t brought up in the class lectures. In fact, our only real discussions had been about women’s experiences.
I remembered just how isolating that felt.
I think it was the very day I scrapped my proposal that I decided to sign up for Mary Klages’ class.