What Do You Want From Me, Exactly?/Script-less Performance

The more I transition and the more progress I make

Towards the man I am, I doubt more and more

Whether transitioning has absolutely anything to do

With how I feel.

I feel exactly the same.

The treatment I receive, the socialization–

That is what has changed.

Gender is a social construct, you see

It’s something people made

For each gendered presentation

Now that I think about it I wonder if

Perhaps the problem with nonbinary discrimination

Is not one of phobias or hate, but one of

“What do you want from me, exactly?”

There is no construct pre-existing

For non-binary identities

They make them up as they go along and

People who read from the script go

“…uh…. hold on….

I guess one of my cards is missing…”

Ain’t nobody have any fucking idea how to treat people

Without any gender mixed in. It’s a new phenomenon

To complain about people not complying

To your script-less performance is a bit odd, if you ask me

This, again, just coming from someone who lived it.

Top surgery helped me stop feeling like a nonstop imposter everyday.

Top surgery took my sensitive heavy throbbing tits away.

Top surgery took the performance of bra, performance of small-chested ness

The real reason nobody thought my tits were big

Is because I was always, always hiding them.

When I didn’t, people would be shocked.

Now that they’re gone, they’re like

“What were they like before…? They seemed small

What’s the point”

They were fucking smashed into my body at all times

You dense pieces of shit

Looks, are, for me at least

Less than 1% of the equation.

99% of it, for me at least,

Is the gendered socialization.

The very thing some trans women deny they ever had, the same thing

Some trans men deny exists– the very thing

That makes my life transgender

Is the thing the media talks about the least.