been holding this in my body: feeling sore & tired and just need to get it out somewhere. the other day a cab driver interrogated me incessantly about my genitalia. “do you have a penis?” “do you have female hormones?” “who do you have sex with?” i was noticeably uncomfortable & kept trying to deflect, but he pushed & insisted to know what was between my legs. i was anxious because the car was moving, he had my address, i was the only one in the car. so i just sort of complied. i felt disembodied: thought of all the stories i know of what happens to trans girls & gnc femmes of color when men are too curious. thought about how powerful i feel on stage and how traumatized i feel in public. i eventually got home (safely), but was overwhelmed with deep sadness not necessarily at this individual man but the world that enabled him and this. i thought about the hundreds of times absolute strangers have interrogated me about my genitalia, my body, personal details of my life with this..look in their eye as if i am not a person right there in front of them. i thought about all of the comments & discussions random strangers online have about my genitalia & body. i thought about how this was and is never understood as a transgression of a boundary because as a gender non-confirming person i am already seen as transgressive & therefore incapable of having boundaries/privacy, my gender presentation is made into a spectacle for public consumption & therefore cannot belong to me. it brought up how dismayed i have been to witness conversations about harassment that once again erase trans & especially gender non-conforming people, even though we experience assault on the daily & are blamed for it because of our gender expression. i felt the fear, anxiety, and paranoia about going outside — knowing that this would happen again, that there would be no discourse to acknowledge that it happened. i thought about how in a moment of supposed “victory” and “progress” gender non-conforming people like me still can’t exist in public without constant fear and how so few people seem to care about this. care about us: we who are neither women nor men.
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