Just My Luck

    A word on gender: demographically, I’m about as lucky as an American can be. Privilege is not a free ride up the ladder, but it is a running start, and no one is actively attempting to knock me off. The hitch is that I might be trans. I don’t know. It’s on the table. The current label I’m rocking with is “genderfluid”. I present male in every official capacity but there are internal consequences to that that I have not yet unwound. There is a very real calculation that my trans friends have had to make: If I transition, it will improve my quality of life minute-to-minute and undo the silent curse that has dogged me since childhood. It will also make navigating the world as a political being one-thousand times more difficult. Just recently I saw a tweet by a game developer comparing her experience in the industry before and after coming out. It is harder to get a job, people trust you less, your voice holds less weight. You are more likely to experience violence, sexual violence and workplace harassment. The amount of money you make decreases. This is as much an indication of misogyny as it is transphobia, and of course, this is all intersectional. It stacks. It is, for example, easier to be white and trans than it is to be black and trans. I also recognize that to be in my position, to decide whether or not I present in a way that opens me up to misogyny, is a form of privilege. But ducking that incurs a blood price. I pay it silently, psychically, every hour of every day, with every eye cast upon my skin and every “young man” and “sir” sent my way. Like in any economy, the price ebbs and flows. Sometimes it’s nothing. Sometimes it will ruin my day. That’s where the “-fluid” comes from, in my case. The value calculation is still ongoing. Maybe I can take it. But maybe, as James Baldwin says, “I duck it, and I die.”