i didn't used to think that binding my chest made that much of a difference. when i looked down from my vantage point, the tits were still there as prominent as ever. even
when bound. and binding didn't change my high alto voice. my chubby cheeks. my peach fuzz. my capable-of child bearing hips.
every time i pushed the door to the men's designated bathrooms open, i felt like i was the deceiver. like i was sneaking in and didn't want to get caught. but if someone in the library had just 'sir'd' me, i sure as hell wasn't gonna use the women's designated bathrooms, lest that same person who sir'd me saw my transgression and rescinded my masculine-read, ambiguous gender exemption.
biologically more masculine than feminine, without the help of medical transition, i still see my visceral reflection in more women than men. and it's not entirely the pain of all i've experienced from being read as a woman that makes me resent the resemblance. there's something, someone innate inside me that makes me hurt less, pressing. someone who balances on the sidewalk curbs and as he's about to fall, tells me that we can survive--he has my eyes, but a deeper voice and hips that are gonna bare lots and lots of poems.
when i deconstruct my personal boxed up gender and always find something infinitely more queer than dichotomized, it makes me realize, that the only section i'm ever gonna really fit into is the camp of play. you see-- i wanna hit the town in stolen latex and pumps sometimes, dirty baggy jeans and t-shirts and knit caps most of the time, glitter and faery wings at special times, and flowing skirts when the air is just right. but the catch is, i'm still more masculine than feminine, and my tits--i still don't connect in any way with. my voice is still supposed to be several octaves lower, and my should-be junk is just an entirely different ballgame. my gender and my should-be body aren't from the same mechanism, you see.
so i didn't used to think that binding my chest made that much of a difference. and i guess it didn't, until i learned "that much" about something called confidence. after a friend told me that most guys don't care who else is in the bathroom, i learned that he's sort-of, most of the time right. and though it's pretty shitty that of all people--the people working in the doctor's office were the ones who questioned my id didn't believe that i was at least eighteen, and even though they saw me through yet another fake screen of adolescent identity, at least my trans version was picked-up on in some capacity.
and when i don't look down on myself and catch a side-glance of my reflection instead, the masculine inside of me is able to swell up with much more pride. i'm not sure whether my sex was supposed to be boy, or man, or just some version of male, or something else entirely in between. but something about me, about this, also makes me now feel like more of a lie, when i'm sneaking into the women's designated bathroom, it feels awry. every time i push open the door, i'm afraid to get caught there too. and because the medical community feels the need to police my identity, i have to stress out about where i can empty my keeper in congenial neutrality.
so as i'm being psychologically evaluated, i don't separate my should-be sex and gender, or use the term genderqueer like it’s not a contradiction to transsexual, or tell the therapist of my affinity towards glitter and voguing and flexibility. and it almost works. until the therapist comes to money, and i explain that i know exactly what i want to spend my life doing, but that has nothing to do with a traditionally titled 'job' or 'career' or industry and i'm not worried about making money. and the therapist interprets my unwillingness to exploit as a source of uncertainty. my propensity for a radical sense of equality and feminism as a female femininity. and my unorthodox upbringing as a Freudian peculiarity…. and it's about Now that i realize that i just lost gender points for opinionated, unwilling to capitulate, non-gender related diversity. and thereafter i became conscious that being a class and race traitor loses you points with the Patriarchy.
i didn't used to think that binding my chest made that much of a difference. and it doesn't make "that much" of a difference. but binding has transitioned my entire means of arriving at everything.