Suppression

As a child, I would sit on the toilet to pee, even after Mum told me, “Guys do it standing up. It’s weird to sit.” I believed my body would realise I was meant to be a woman if I did as women do. 

Sunday, my best and oldest friend, owned many beautiful dresses. Our parents used to cook dinners together to save money, leaving Sunday and me to amuse ourselves. This invariably involved me wearing their golden Disney princess dress. I would pose in front of the mirror, twirl amongst the layered skirts until they lifted into the air like clouds, and soar along with them.

I threw countless coins into fountains, each time wishing for a dress of my own. I voiced this wish out loud, as I did, in front of Mum. The dress never arrived. 

Years later, my favourite top went missing. It was a tight black crop, sleeves barely past my shoulders, too small to cover my midriff. At the time, nothing had ever made me feel as sexy. 

I found it hidden at the bottom of Mum’s op shop pile, folded amongst two other black shirts. 

“This is mine,” I said to her. “Why were you going to donate it?”

She laughed, like it was obvious. “That’s a woman’s shirt, Harv.”

“I know.”

She shrugged, and stared. 

Later that year, we argued briefly about transphobic academic Holly Lawford-Smith. Mum was concerned with ‘cancel culture gone too far’, about an academic receiving threats over ‘beliefs some people interpret as transphobic’. Like many progressive Gen Xers, Mum was caught up in concerns about young wokeness going ‘too far’; about ‘sensitive’ teenagers; about how it was silly to expect people to abide by new pronouns rather than just ‘letting it go’. 

I was concerned with Lawford-Smith’s duty of care to her genderqueer students —and the veracity with which the University of Melbourne stood by her. 

Mum would not accept that Lawford-Smith’s words were transphobic. 

“People need to be able to deal with being questioned.”

When I questioned Mum’s own beliefs, she became defensive and unreasonable. 

We didn’t reach a resolution. We haven’t discussed it since. 

Either/Or

At work; wearing jeans and a billowy shirt. A mother approaches the counter shadowed by her daughter, all shyness and blonde braids. 

‘We need to buy the book before you can read it, sweetheart. So just hand it up to the nice lady so she can scan it.’

An idiot’s grin worms its way across my face. I barely stop myself from leaping into the air—there’s no chance I could control the smile. 

I don’t correct her. I scan the book, my cheeks red with joy. I say, “Thank you! Have a lovely day,” in as feminine a voice I can muster. I hope there’s no moment of realisation as the mother leaves the store—a gradual dawning of Adam’s apple, the weight of my voice, an illusion of my cisgender womanhood dispelled upon reflection. 

The mistake—for her understanding of me as a cis woman is a mistake—brings me joy. But is passing as a cisgender woman the type of womanhood that satisfies me? 

Being seen as genderqueer brings me warmth. Lying in the arms of a dear friend, who calls me a ‘beautiful trans woman’, is the moment that gives me the courage to commit to my identity wholeheartedly. The phrase ‘beautiful woman’, uttered by those who know of my birth as a boy and my upbringing as the same, carries with it a fierce acceptance. “We know,” it says, “and we see womanhood in you anyway.”

This woman’s mistake, in turn, feels special in its own way—I am successful enough in my femininity to convince a passing stranger, even at work, where I'm not even really out. It chips away a fragment of internalised, transmedicalist loathing: that I will not be a woman unless a surgeon takes a knife to my chest, my groin, to the structure of my jaw. 

But the mistake is also incomplete. My experience is not that of a cis woman—and barring occasional bouts of despair, I do not want it to be. I want my androgyny, my transness, my queerness to be a part of me. 

At work again; a later date; wearing similar jeans and a similarly billowy shirt. 

A child, clutching a book in one hand and dragging her mother in the other, finds the register. I’ve seen her watching me as she traverses the store over the last twenty minutes. 

As I scan her book and hand it back, she lets loose the question that’s invariably been burning at her lips:

“Are you a boy or a girl?”

Much happens at once. 

Her mother smiles apologetically at me, silently communicating ‘what a question, aren’t kids silly, isn’t it obvious?’ To her the question represents a misunderstanding—her child needs to learn what to look for. 

That same dumb grin appears on my face again. I glow. I radiate. I levitate. 

I burn to reply to her, this child who has accidentally blessed me with her blunt innocence. 

The first reply crackling within me is “A woman!” The truth is freedom, burning beneath my vocal folds. It’s extinguished as soon as I become aware of it; this Westfield shopping hellscape is not the place. Truth vanishes like smoke in wind. I do not say, “A woman.”

The second reply feeds on my air until its hot tongues lap at my own. “Either,” I say. “Depends on how I feel. What do you think?” This feels safer. Maybe the mother will interpret it as more frivolous, more easily dismissed in brief conversation with her daughter during the car ride home—“Some teenagers like to confuse people by pretending”. In this reply, I, the radicalised, crossdressing freak have not disrupted the values of this unknown family core. 

This second reply is a compromise, a half-lie, an obfuscation. But it also feels punk; maybe the memory of the genderbending pariah in the bookstore sticks in that child’s mind, until one day during the big wreck of her teens, it explodes into her own journey of realisation. Maybe she will tear down the traditional values of her family, and maybe it would have been because of the bravery, all these years ago, in my reply. 

That reply is not quite as freeing as the truth, but it still holds potential for freedom between its syllables. “Either. Depends on how I feel.”

Except that’s a lie. I didn’t say it. In that moment I am not some out and proud trans woman. I’m not even an openly confused little genderqueer gremlin. I’m nothing. I’m a coward. 

Yet in writing this piece I feel compelled to lie. I feel my words would have more weight if I had the strength to acknowledge at least part of my queerness in front of this young girl. I feel that my story would be more important, impactful, impressive, standing before all of you, if it includes a triumphant ending. 

But it doesn’t. Do you want to know the answer I really give?

I duck my head, shrug as nonchalantly as possible, and say “Boy”. Like it’s nothing, like I don’t even care. The mum smiles at me, but the girl can tell that something about what I said isn’t quite right. 

Even though I lied, I still feel seen. 

The mother turns to leave, the girl collects her book from me and follows. At the door, she turns back and waves to me. 

I don’t know exactly why the lie felt it needed to be there. Perhaps to give me space to explore why I felt safer with “Either” rather than “A woman!” Perhaps to make me look like a better activist. Perhaps it was just wish-fulfilment. 

Perhaps answering “A woman!” would be making the same kind of mistake as made by that first mother. It would communicate to the girl that I am a cis woman, born this way, no different in gender and sex than herself and her mother. Maybe I prefer ‘either’ as an answer because it at least hints at queerness. 

Regardless of the reason, the lie cannot live. I say “Boy”, and feel my insides curl up and shred themselves into tiny little pieces. The girl leaves.

I said “Boy”.

Trans Euphoria, and the First Nine Seconds of Caroline Polachek's Desire, I Want to Turn Into You

Caroline Polachek’s voice soars in a plaintive, sorrowful cry. It cascades down her register before a crescendo begins the album in earnest: “Desire, I want to turn into you.” 

This is the first moment of Welcome to My Island, the first track of Desire, I Want to Turn Into You. Her voice is raw, ethereal—euphoric. 

This is also the moment of my own euphoria. A burst of vivid, limitless, unconstrained femininity becomes the war cry that I pursue even as I doubt my worthiness. 

Her voice—its sheer presence—scores its way across my bones, weaves itself through my sinew and takes possession of my musculature. When the song plays I become a puppet to her voice, directing my dream of one day living that moment—that endless, ever-soaring moment of her vocal ascension—myself. Her freedom becomes my mantra: each time I hear it, I come closer to believing it possible—and permissible—that I may feel that same euphoria. 

Femininity unbound. A voice that begins in the heavens, falls to Earth, through the depths of the ocean, only to rise to the stars once more. 

Caroline Polachek is a trans ally. I Believe, a later track from Welcome to My Island, is a tribute to trans musician and hyperpop trailblazer SOPHIE, who was also a close friend of Polachek's. 

Knowing this, gives the engagement with femininity that is palpable in her work an intentionality, and a generosity. It's as though she's sharing access to feminine joy through hearing her sing. In those moments listening to her, I am somehow seen and savoured in a way some people in my life will never understand.

It’s a paradox. For someone who’s spent so long obsessing about presentation, performance, and perception; the sheer privacy of my relationship to this song, and its huge impact on my decision to pursue transition and gender euphoria, is almost mystifying. 

It has nothing to do with the clothes I wear, or the pronouns people use for me, or even the timbre of my voice (because there’s no way in hell I’m ever hitting those high notes at Polachek’s own octave). It is only to do with me, and my intimate relationship to this one, specific piece of art. 

Being trans is so often about practicalities, and equally insecurities. To face these horrors, I find solace in my war cry. A seed of euphoria, the emotional space I crave to live within. It still sometimes feels juvenile, pointless, inconsequential. I use the war cry anyway. I let the yearning guide me.