Me, Myself, They

by Joshua M. Ferguson

  My appearance has changed significantly over the years and both of my parents are increasingly comfortable with how I express myself. They are proud of my authentic expression, and their cautionary words were always about trying to keep me safe, and came from a place of love. There are some people in my family, though, who simply can’t accept me because of how I present myself and my identity, and that is a painful wound that I never thought I would have to bear.

  Many parents tell their kids to dress differently because dressing the way that makes them feel comfortable might invite unwanted attention. If only I could wear blue jeans, a T-shirt, no makeup, cut my hair short, and walk with a macho swagger like some assigned-male-at-birth people — a ridiculous notion, I suppose, since not all cis men have to dress or express themselves in this way. Some members of my family (thankfully they are in-laws) have asked me why I don’t just live a quiet life as a “gay man” with my cis male partner, instead of coming out as a non-binary trans person and inviting so much attention. Goddess, then my life would be so easy! Why can’t I just be like that? Why can’t I just be an assigned-male-at-birth gay man who lives my life relatively quietly and peacefully?

  Fuck that. It isn’t who I am. I’ve never been one to surrender to the notion that I should dress safely to prevent unsafe attention. And I’ve been through too much pain in my life from the dehumanization to accept someone else’s opinion about how I should express myself and my identity. In fact, telling me I should be someone else is a form of dehumanization that I never expected from people who I thought cared for me.

  My parents’ mild protests about the way I dressed during my adolescence, especially when I first came out, have stuck with me, though. They weren’t trying to hurt me intentionally. I know that now. I had been sexually assaulted, was being bullied constantly at school, and was severely depressed, even suicidal, so why wouldn’t they try to figure out how to help me? And I do find myself wondering if they were right, for that time of my life and that time only, even just a little bit. Am I really saying this? Perhaps it’s the part of me that remembers how incredibly painful it was to deal with people’s responses to my expression. But this thinking isn’t healthy; it makes me assume fault, subconsciously, for the potential risks that I’m taking to be who I am in public. We aren’t to blame for the actions of others. We should all be free to be who we are if we aren’t hurting ourselves or other people. Of course, many trans, non-binary and gender-nonconforming people, especially people of colour, cannot express who they are because the risk for violence is too high.

  I used to be scared to dress a certain way. I’ve faced some seriously unsafe situations in my life, some that you already know about. Yet I don’t want to be fearful of being myself. It feels so good to just be me. I think of it as a battle, which is why I feel like I’m a sorceress from some wondrous realm — a magical monstrosity come from another dimension.

  There are many places that are too unsafe for me to visit. Like nightclubs and bars — I used to love to dance, to just move and connect with my body and the collective energy on the dance floor. The next time you are in a club or a bar, look around at the faces of people who are dancing. The pure joy and freedom on these faces of people, otherwise confined by the rigidity of culture and behaviour, and the expression of their bodies is infectious. Most people love Hallowe’en because it gives us a day to let loose, to enjoy the carnivalesque catharsis (releasing feeling and emotion) found in self-expression, and it’s so healthy. Dancing gives us a taste of this freedom that has held meaning in my life, to become less controlled with the way we feel inside and outside of our bodies. Dancing tells an energetic story about who we are and how much we know ourselves.

  Clothing also tells a story. My clothes reflect my truth in a fluid way that can fluctuate every day. I dress up most days and put thought behind what I wear, because I want to feel it deeply. For too long, during my adolescence and early adulthood, I was suffocated by the fear of being who I was. I wasted too much time worrying what others would think of me. When I attend professional events — like film festivals, wrap parties for TV shows or films, or other industry events — I feel safe most of the time to dress as I am, since artistic communities can be inviting places for people like me. I feel a sense of deep happiness when I can put together delicious outfits that make me feel sexy, seen, and beautiful. I doubt that I’m alone in wanting to feel beautiful, so here’s a story about how my invisible visibility often makes me attuned to a gaze that isn’t always safe.

  My outfit that night was glorious. I wore tight leather pants, four-inch platform heels, a transparent lace top with a black bra underneath, and a corset. This was the first time that I had worn a bra in public since my breasts had started to grow. I felt confident and awake, as though somehow my fairy godmother (probably one of my goddess-like grandmothers) had made a visit to bless me with wings for the night. It was a magical feeling. I was living Joshua on the outside, feeling completely free to appear as I am, unburdened by those who feel insecure and who take that out on me. I arrived at this film industry party with my husband, who wore a shiny black dress shirt that had red roses painted on the front. We arrived with flair, as though we were making an entrance at a posh event in an Italian fashion house, empowered by the way clothing can make you feel who you are unlike anything else.

  The night evolved into dancing with other artists at the party. Actors often see me, my truth, and share their energy generously with me. This is the beauty of working in an industry where people connect with their own truths and the truths of others to tell a story on screen. I’ve found friendship with some magical people in the industry. It’s the purest joy to be around people who know who they are and who don’t see humanity in limited terms. The feeling of freedom while dancing was electrifying.

  I became sharply aware that people were also looking at me.

  While I was dancing, the staring happened in small waves, and then I began to really notice. There were suddenly multiple people, mostly cis men (because I know who they are), looking at me on the dance floor. They were staring intensely, with no awareness or respect for my space. I started to feel hyper-aware and nervous. Single men who were attending this party weren’t the only ones staring. Men with wives standing right beside them were staring. It started to overwhelm me. The staring increased as I became absorbed in the dancing. A few men started to make their way closer to me — many people know this feeling — and I was increasingly uncomfortable as they encroached on my personal space. I looked around me, head spinning like an owl’s. Was anyone else noticing what these men were doing? I looked at Florian, who was watching at a distance because he doesn’t dance (only once at our wedding!), and I couldn’t be sure that he was even noticing what was happening.

  They started to converge on me. It felt wild and dangerous. What the hell was happening here, and how could this be socially acceptable? I suddenly became the object of desire instead of the monster — or maybe the monster had become the desired. One of these guys actually started to cross the line on a physical level with me. He began to touch my body from behind with his body. I can imagine that people frequently get away with this type of behaviour in clubs and bars. It was obvious that his touching wasn’t related to his dancing; it was being purposely directed at me and to my body. I knew what he was doing, and it was really gross and intrusive. I moved away from him and some of the other guys who were getting closer.

  I danced with my friends a few feet away from Florian for the rest of the night. Florian later told me that he did notice the guys who were staring and moving closer to me, which helped affirm what I was feeling and experiencing. It was a relief to know that it had actually happened, that I hadn’t manifested it out of my own fear, and that this happens all the damn time to cis women, trans women, non-binary people, and gender-nonconforming people. I empathize with others who must deal with this constantly. This experience won’t change the way that I express mys
elf through my fashion, but it has made me more aware of the public attention that I face as someone who not only visibly disrupts the binary, but who ignites a curiosity that some people invade my personal space to explore.

  My relationship with being a visible and invisible person grows more positive as our society shifts to accept people like me. I want to be seen. But I also want to be treated like a human being, not an object of study, a sexualized trans body target, or the source of someone’s deep-rooted fear.

  Pieces of you on me

  the projections, the dissections

  — they wound me,

  yet they also open a space

  a place for seeing me

  Subject to reject the object

  I am open

  To be an agent of disidentification.

  Stare. Look. Illuminate.

  Be aware that I am human.

  six

  The Body

  The body is a complex subject for some trans people. It can be a place of pride and self-identity, or the subject of curiosity and questioning. It can be a place of suffering and distress when it does not match the way we feel about our gender identity and expression. And often it can be used against us, to render our identities false; transphobic people attempt to reinforce the notion that we must accept and not betray the body we are given at birth.

  It’s not up to other people. Our bodies are our own.

  And yet I don’t know of one trans person who hasn’t been questioned about their body, their genitals, and their sexuality. I accept that people are curious, but this curiosity often turns trans people into objects of study. This objectification can reduce us to commodities, to fetishized objects, or targets for the projection of fear and disgust.

  Trans people are often reduced to our genitals, mostly one or two parts of our external morphology, and the medical procedures that some of us need to minimize the effects of gender dysphoria. These medical procedures, known as gender affirming surgery or gender confirmation surgery (previously called gender reassignment surgery), and the ensuing bodily changes — particularly, those arising from hormones, from facial surgeries, and from top and bottom surgeries that modify genitalia and secondary sex characteristics — have become the focus of the conversation around trans identity. Some trans people require affirming surgery to achieve a necessary and healthy, contented relationship between their gender identity and their sexed body. However, not all trans people undergo gender confirmation surgical procedures.

  I have been asked many intrusive questions since coming out as non-binary. If these questions were posed to a cis person they would be seen as highly inappropriate, because cis people are granted more privacy when it comes to their bodies. Somehow, the intense focus on the trans body makes it socially acceptable to ask about our genitalia.

  Do you still have a penis? Do you have a vagina? Do you want breasts? Do you still have breasts? Are you intersex? How are you trans if you haven’t had top or bottom surgery? Do you take hormone replacement therapy? What hormones do you take? Do you know your chromosomes? What is your sex?

  These are just some of the questions that I have had to endure. My attempts to be kind and empathetic in those moments test my patience. Nonetheless, I do try to welcome these conversations in order to broaden the narrative about the body in relation to the diversity of trans identity.

  Put yourself in my heels for a second. How would you feel if a total stranger asked you about your genitalia? Would you feel any less uncomfortable if the question came from a friend or a family member? The answer would likely be a resounding no. And that’s because it is in fact inappropriate for anyone to pose these questions unless the conversation is welcome. The intent to objectify and reduce trans people to examined bodies — an idea that trans people’s bodies are open to objectification and study — renders us less than human. We all have the right to our privacy when it comes to our bodies.

  Like most people, I was taught from a young age to treat my genitals as “private parts.” Yet the bodies of trans people aren’t private. They are somehow dragged into the public realm. Many trans people with public profiles — like Chaz Bono, Laverne Cox, Caitlyn Jenner, and Jazz Jennings — have had to endure highly intrusive and embarrassing moments during live interviews when suddenly the topic shifts to a focus on their bodies, as if nothing else about them really matters. There are many examples of brave trans people meeting these intrusive questions head-on to challenge the discourse and the hyper-fixation on trans bodies. When a trans person challenges these types of questions, it highlights the serious issues with turning trans people’s bodies into objects for public consumption. We have become, in a way, bodies to consume, study, and objectify. This focus on our bodies creates a barrier to understanding us as human beings.

  * * *

  • • •

  The confusion about my body, and the bodies of others around me, was ignited in my first year of high school. Gym class, in particular, made me aware of a deep discomfort about how I felt about my own body in relation to my classmates. Of course, part of this class mandated that boys and girls split up into separate changing rooms. Changing out of my clothing in front of others, making my body public, distressed me.

  The requirement to shower in the boys’ changing room after class further opened up our bodies to one another. I felt uncomfortable, nervous, and anxious — not only to get naked in front of the boys in my class, but because I could sense that some of the boys also felt nervous and uncomfortable. To avoid this discomfort, I would change in the little bathroom stalls away from my classmates. This led to me feeling isolated, so I spoke with the gym teacher about my extreme discomfort. The teacher self-identified as a woman and her gender expression at the time could have been read as masculine. She was receptive to my request to change somewhere else, so I was allowed to use a private room to get changed before class. The room — isolated, away from the changing rooms — doubled as the janitor’s storage space, with mops, brooms, and cleaning supplies. I felt like just another object, an abject “boy” at the margins of the two spaces that weren’t meant for me. My classmates saw that I was singling myself out and of course I was talked about. I felt like an outcast of my own making before I’d even realized that I was trans. I often skipped gym class to avoid the issue altogether.

  * * *

  • • •

  I have conversations with people about my body when and where I feel comfortable, but for the most part this happens with close friends and family, because I need support from the people in my life who love me unconditionally as a human being. It’s a complex experience to live in a body when it is the subject of discussion and investigation.

  My non-binary body is my never-ending story. It is a text written with the prose of my flesh — the sensual and the superficial. The non-binary history of my body is layered and etched, and it continues to evolve while my physical and spiritual place in the world shifts. This corporeal experience happens like a communication between who I am and the stories that surround me in the media about other trans people. Three years into coming out as non-binary, a quest to achieve comfort with my body became a central part of my life. Should I transition as a trans person? What does this transition look like if I’m neither a trans man nor a trans woman? How do I transition if there is no fixed gender for me to transition to? These questions continue to affect me with a precise awareness of how others interpret me, how others understand me or want to see me, to place me in the artificial categories of one or the other. And these questions relate to how I understand myself, especially compared to the stories of other trans people.

  We feel a need to manipulate the unknown, the unfamiliar, into the similar and recognizable, and so we reduce people to their bodies. The unknown drives fear, and the fear of the “other” motivates hatred as compensation for insecurity. So, in essence, my expression is informed by my body, and its unfamiliar hybridity can
be threatening to what we think bodies should look like.

  So, am I transitioning? When I was in my mid-thirties, I began to intervene, with medical assistance, to minimize my gender dysphoria and to become more comfortable with my sexuality. But my transition is not a linear journey. I am transitioning without an end point or goal in mind. My gender blooms like the never-ending cycle of the seasons. I don’t have a death of self and a rebirth, nor do I have a transition story tied to a beginning, middle, and end.

  You wouldn’t be alone in thinking that I look like a woman because I wear makeup, have long hair, wear heels, skirts, and dresses, but my body will morph, never the same, over the course of my life.

  My mom tries her best to understand who I am. She shows me compassion when trying to understand my gender identity. And still, she and many others tend to think of my gender as either male or female. She’s said to me, “Joshua, how are you non-binary if you do all of this work to look like a woman?” I forgive my mom for reducing me to a narrow definition of gender expression to try to make sense of my gender identity. People are swept up in the dominance of the gender binary. I explained to my mom that my expression does not determine my identity. Her perspective is limited by gender that looks exclusively either masculine or feminine.

  Indeed, what does non-binary look like?