If “Tomorrow Will Be Different” provides a vision for a future of trans equality, I hope it will be one in which the dignity of transgender individuals is not up to cisgender arbiters for approval.
Mourning My Manhood
I woke up today missing my manhood, not in the sense of body parts but in the sense of the man I was before I became a woman. Not in a regretful way, but more that I don't think I spent enough time thinking about the things I liked about being a queer, feminine man. Part of it was that I found this footage of me at a kiss-in demonstration I did when Ralph Reed spoke at Harvard in 1996, where I ended up kissing a man dressed up as a nun.
Some things I miss about being a feminine, queer man:
- I miss challenging people when I walk hand in hand with another man.
- I miss not caring what other people think.
- I miss people not paying attention to me on the street.
- I miss needing to be brave when people do pay attention to me, call me a sissy or a faggot, and how I defy their words by refusing to look down.
- I miss not being bound to the expectations of my gender, already unable to conform to them by sleeping with men and not behaving in a masculine way.
- I miss challenging people when I wear feminine clothes.
- I miss being perceived by other people as a minority.
- I miss not feeling guilty about having casual sex.
- I miss not feeling a little threatened or afraid whenever I sleep with someone new.
- I miss not crying nearly as much as I do now.
- I miss loving a man as a man.