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.