“Progressive”/Consequence/Socially Valuable/Hiding vs Hidden
It’s always more appealing
To live in the ideal
Than it is
To live in the reality.
That’s why,
Personally
I find it hard to understand
The urgency, the priority of
Queer identities
That don’t have an application
To daily lives, daily realities—
Identities such as
Identifying as non-binary
Purely as a theorem,
Without ever having lived
A moment non-conforming—
To cross dress, mix-express
Or change your gender or sex
In any real-time way.
This same ideology forces people
To prematurely commit to things they later regret
However
It also enables
People who don’t walk the walk
To talk the talk—
And unfortunately
Due to our societies biases
The “trans voices”
They are the most comfortable hearing
Are ones that fit their idea
Of an attractive, ideal queer body
Which, in turn
Is honestly—
A heteronormative cisgender body.
That irony is not lost in me
But it does seem to be
Completely lost on
All of the straight cisgender folks
Appropriating queer identity
In the name of “allyship”
Not realizing that
The insincerity of it all
Is a double edged sword,
Carving out a place
Where a trans face could be
And instead
Putting a more palatable,
“Progressive” choice
On display.
Who knew
There were no fat trans people,
No ugly trans people—
Who knew
That there were only two kinds
Of trans folk—
The black trans women being murdered,
And the cisnormative allies
Preaching to me about how
Healthy and without consequence
The HRT their friend takes is—
Even my endocrinologist
Insists there are no consequences, and
In the very next breath
She explains that what I’m experiencing
Are “common side effects”
Lmfao what counts as a consequence?!?
Will it be a consequence when I’m dead, or
Will y’all just focus on something else
And blame that?
Lmfao I already know, I’ve always known!
The doctor told me
When I was six
That if I didn’t lose weight soon,
I would die any minute.
Still waiting …!
But what I really learned
Right then and there
Was that I could be hit by a truck
Or a plane
Or a meteor
And people would say
My heart gave out
“From da obesity”.
If you’re femme as fuck,
All the time
Day and night —
When does your masculine side
Need to come into the light?
Don’t you think
You could be doing something
More relevant to your perspective?
Why is it that
People have an easier time
Using the right pronouns
For someone they deem
Socially valuable?
What is it about
Pre-HRT bodies
Bodies like
Ash Hardell
Bodies like
Alok Vaid-Menon
That make people tune in…?
Is it the budget, or is it
That they don’t look like sin?
Why don’t people even fucking notice
That trans discrimination
Peaks when people’s bodies don’t fit in
Which, for me at least
And for Caitlyn Jenner
And for Chaz Bono
For the faces of celebrity trans folk
Who are ridiculed by the public
For any other guy out there
Who has to pick up his prescriptions
With fat tits, a beard, and two names—
Personally, the trans experience
Started when I stopped being able to hide it.