“What I Wanted to Wear”: The Battle for
Self-Expression amidst Transphobic Street Violence
On Sunday, July 12th, 2015 at 11:10 pm, Alok
Vaid-Menon, one of the two members of the Trans South Asian poetry collective, Darkmatter,
posted a picture on Facebook of themselves in a dress. The caption stated, “The
story goes something like this: Every morning when I wake up and look at my
closet I ask myself, ‘How much do I want to be street harassed today?’”
(Vaid-Menon). Vaid-Menon, who prefers the pronoun ‘they,’ answers their own
question with, “This means I usually gravitate away from the skirts and dresses
and move begrudgingly toward the more conventionally ‘masculine’ clothing. I
consider for a moment how peculiar it feels that I have been made to find
safety and security in masculinity—this thing that has been such a site of
violence and anxiety in my past.” This post was particularly salient in the
social media world, receiving almost twenty-thousand likes and producing
valuable dialogue on what it means to be trans and gender non-conforming in a
world that demands conformity to gender binaries in exchange for physical and
emotional safety. This post’s capacity for discursive production, however, was
not limited to the world of social media. It also inspired a movement called
“What I Wanted to Wear” on the website, Medium, which is a self-proclaimed
online
“community of
readers and writers
offering unique perspectives on
ideas large and
small”
(“About Medium”). “What I Wanted to Wear” extends
Vaid-Menon’s post into a project centred around trans and gender non-conforming
subjects’ clothing selections, fixating on the disparity between what they
desire to wear and what they ultimately choose to wear to avoid street
harassment and life-threatening transphobic violence. Each contribution to the
project follows a similar pattern: the user creates a post that contains two
juxtaposing photos—one that resembles relatively cis-normative attire,
representing “what I wore,” and one that reveals the individual’s authentic
gender expression, representing “what I wanted to wear.” The term “authentic”
in this context refers to the gender expression with which the individual most
closely identifies, although the notion of authenticity is often used in
dominant gender discourse to dismiss trans and gender non-conforming
individuals’ identities, which will be discussed later on in this paper.
Beneath each set of photographs are quotations from the trans or gender
non-conforming subject that foster a discussion about the connection between
clothing, gender fluidity, and transphobic violence. Each post ends with the individual’s
preferred pronoun use and the statement, “Feeling deep ambivalence about how we
dress is something the trans and gender non-conforming communities experience
acutely, but it’s not just about us. We’d love to hear from everybody about how
we navigate self presentation each day.” I use the words “trans” and “gender
non-conforming” in accordance with the movement’s terminology, although many
contributors have more specific identities, such as “transwoman” for Aaryn Lang
or “agender trans male” for Pax Gethen. This combination of visual presentation
and text depicts clothing choice as a symbol of self-expression and raises
awareness about the daily struggles that gender non-conforming people endure,
which are potentially life-threatening, to express a fluid gender that defies
the
“two-sex model” of binary gender, “radical
dimorphism, [and] biological divergence” that has dominated gender discourse
since the “late eighteenth century” (Lacqueur 5-6).
Gender 2.0 and Matter.” Meredith Talusan, one of the
founders of the “What I Wanted to Wear” movement, who also prefers the pronoun
“they,” discloses that one of their primary reasons for creating this project
is because “[t]oo often, our stories are told by journalists who are not
trans .”
Talusan points to the problem of visibility for
trans individuals within historical, literary, and cultural narratives, from
which they are often excluded. Sandy Stone, a prominent transfeminist theorist,
discusses a similar problem with the colonial, medical, and historical
discourses that surround trans individuals. She states, “The people who have no
voice in this theorizing are the transsexuals themselves” (163). In her text,
“The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,” Stone’s proposed
solution to combat the erasure of trans subjectivity is to “create a
counterdiscourse that authentically represents the complexities and ambiguities
of lived experience” since “the transsexual currently occupies a position that
is… outside the binary oppositions of gendered discourse” (164). According to
Stone, the ability to “write oneself into the discourses by which one has been
written,” is to become a “posttranssexual” (emphasis in original 168). The
prefix “post” follows the same function as “postcolonial,” indicating not a
temporal progression, but a stance outside of the binaristic gender discourse
to which trans individuals are subjected. The posttranssexual, thus, defies
gender norms, similarly to how Ania
Loomba terms postcolonialism the “contestation of
colonial domination” (12). Like Stone’s notion of counterdiscourse, clothing is
a powerful symbol of self-expression that can be used to rebel against dominant
social structures. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha, or nonviolent
resistance, was the call for the Indian masses to spin their own cloth, khadi,
to rebel against Britain’s colonial entrapment of India through its cotton
industries (Tarlo 71). Gandhi adopted his iconic loincloth as an “experiment,”
and “an expression of his innermost grief and ‘mourning’ of Indian independence
from British colonialism” (74). Nevertheless, just as Gandhi’s Satyagraha was
never fully realized, Stone’s utopian vision is admirable on a theoretical
level, but the physical reality of transphobic violence constrains the trans
individual’s ability to bring Stone’s call to action into fruition. The threat
of violence significantly hinders the trans and gender non-conforming subject’s
ability to defy gender binaries.
The “What I Wanted to Wear” contributors therefore
find commonality in their fears of pervasive street harassment and transphobic
violence, which they cite as primary reasons for the disparity between their
desired dress and their actual clothing choices. For instance, Christian
Lovehall is one of the creators of the Trans March of Resilience (TMOR), which
occurs in conjunction with the Trans Day of Remembrance annually on November
20th. In a video on
TMOR’s Facebook page, Lovehall describes this event
as a “call to action to honor the lives of those lost due to trans-hate
violence, crime, due to bigotry, due to suicide. It is also a platform created
to honor those who are still here today, those who have displayed resilience by
fighting
365 days a year… [and] by simply living their lives
as their authentic selves.” Lovehall notes that “authentic” self-expression for
trans subjects is difficult due to transphobic violence. Trans activist, Janet
Mock, discusses the problems with the notion of authenticity in her memoir,
“Redefining Realness.” She comments on how she often
receives “back-handed compliments, acknowledging [her] beauty while also
invalidating [her] identity as a woman” (155). She states,
To this day, I’m told in subtle and obvious ways
that I’m not ‘real,’ meaning that I am not, nor will I ever be, a cis woman;
therefore, I am fake. These thoughts surrounding identity, gender, bodies, and
how we view, judge, and objectify all women brings me to the subject of
‘passing,’ a term based on an assumption that trans
people are passing as something we are not. It’s rooted in the idea that we are
not really who we say we are, that we are holding a secret, that we are living
false lives… This pervasive thinking frames trans people as illegitimate and
unnatural. If a trans woman who knows herself and operates in the world as a woman
is seen, perceived, treated, and viewed as a woman, isn’t she just being
herself? She isn’t passing; she is merely being.
Mock evokes Jessica Xavier’s notion of “passing
privilege”—the ability to “[pass] undetected as a member of the majority:
white, straight, or nontransgendered” (emphasis in original, 1). Mock fights
against the stigmatization of trans subjects as artificial in the notion of
“passing,” arguing that transgendered women are as authentic as cis women. Cis
individuals are born with what
Xavier terms, “birth privilege,” which entails
“being born into a physical sex that matches your internal gender identity”
(1). Although Xavier never explicitly uses the term “cis-gender,” I use this
term for individuals who have birth privilege. Mock problematizes the notion of
“passing” as a verb that signifies that trans individuals are assuming a false
identity since she feels like and identifies as an authentic woman, even if she
has no birth privilege. While Mock uses a semi-essentialist argument to cite
herself as a “real” and “authentic” woman, Vaid-Menon critiques the notion of
authenticity as an ideal to which trans individuals must aspire. In one of
their “What I Wanted to Wear” pieces, Vaid-Menon says, “so many narratives in
our culture as obsessed with ‘authenticity.’” They apply the notion of
authenticity to “[h]ow we trans people are celebrated because we have ‘embraced
our truth,’” which becomes harmful as it “standardizes visibility as
authenticity,” “understands authenticity outside of violence,” and “erases all
of the calculations we must make to keep ourselves safe and whole.” While
Mock’s suggestion that trans people are just as authentic as cis individuals is
theoretically ideal, it nevertheless is an idealistic notion that erases, as
Vaid-Menon points out, the specific “calculations,” such as the choice of
clothing, that trans subjects make on a daily basis to avoid transphobic street
harassment and violence.
My paper assumes an intersectional approach in the
discussion of clothing choice and transphobic street violence. Vaid-Menon and
many other “What I Wanted to Wear” contributors are racialized, which brings
into question how race and class privilege play a role in the issue of gender
expression and street violence. Xavier’s notion of “passing privilege” explains
how upper class trans subjects have more access to resources, such as medical
and cosmetic treatments, which enable them to “pass” as cis-gendered or
binary-gendered individuals and attain increased security. Xavier notes that
“accessing these medical technologies is difficult and expensive, and usually a
function of class and race privilege” (4). The hierarchy within the trans
community is structured by passing privilege, like all other intersecting modes
of privilege, and informed by class and race privilege, which alters one’s
access to resources. Higher class trans individuals, additionally, are at
significantly lower risk of violence and street harassment than racialized,
lower-class trans individuals due to their ability to escape impoverished
neighborhoods, high density housing areas, city centres, and public
transportation. Wealthy trans people can attain increased security both on and
away from city streets as they have greater access to private transportation
methods and upper-class communities. The value of passing is its connection to
“physical safety in public spaces,… job security and
access to the social, educational, economic and professional pathways of the
nontransgendered” (2). These institutional inequalities have a direct
correlation to one’s passing privilege, and often to life-threatening street
violence.
Even though trans individuals are unified through
the absence of birth privilege, passing privilege creates a dichotomy and
hierarchy within the trans community. Xavier cites sociologist
Erving Goffman’s book, Stigma: Notes on the
Management of Spoiled Identity, suggesting that
“those who lack passing privilege… cope with their
stigma through tension management,” which is a set of “tactics which reduce the
impact of their stigma on their interpersonal relationships”
(2). On the other hand, those with passing privilege
are more focused on “information control” and “remain vulnerable to [the]
discourse” around their social stigma. Thus, according to Xavier, trans people
are split into two dichotomies based on their primary focus: 1) tension
management and 2) information control. The second aspect that passing privilege
creates is a hierarchy within the trans community. Xavier argues that there is
an “unspoken hierarchy amongst transsexual women” that “destroys solidarity” as
those with passing privilege can easily forget about their own privilege and
about the individuals who lack it (3). She further suggests that the ignorance
of the privilege constitutes the oppression itself (4). Therefore, Xavier argues,
“One of the tasks of transfeminism… must necessarily be to raise the
consciousness of those trans people who are passing privileged” (4). In
addition to Xavier’s fears about the divisiveness that passing privilege
creates in the trans community, Stone notes that passing privilege promotes
inauthentic identities and relationships, championing gender fluidity. She
states, “Transsexuals who pass seem able to ignore the fact that by creating
totalized, monistic identities, forgoing physical and subjective intertextuality,
they have foreclosed the possibility of authentic relationships” and have
“chosen invisibility as an imperfect solution to personal dissonance” (167).
One of the “What I Wanted to Wear” project creators,
Meredith Talusan, demonstrates the difficulty in choosing to avoid personal
dissonance and dressing in a way that feels authentic or conforming to social
expectations of binary gender. Talusan’s post is entitled, “Binary Drag.”
Talusan, who is a self-proclaimed transitioned
transwoman, points out that they feel the need to perform “binary drag,” which
means dressing “as conventionally female as possible,” in “formal or
professional situations.” Talusan fantasizes about wearing a suit even though
they combatted such “gender-polic[ing] over the years” as someone who was
incorrectly born male yet identified as a woman. Challenging narratives that
envision an endpoint to gender dissatisfaction after transition, Talusan feels
that transitioning has not eliminated the gender-policing that they face. Talusan
points out, “I’m happiest being a woman, but I also find the binary gender
system deeply oppressive, and dressing in ‘men’s’ clothes on occasion helps me
cope with those feelings.” Talusan embodies Stone’s mentality of embracing the
gender-fluid space that the trans identity enables rather than attempting to
flip from one gender binary to the other. Nevertheless, Talusan admits that the
“threat of discrimination, harassment, and violence” is a significant concern
for them. The negotiation between clothing choice and safety is paradoxical in
Talusan’s case since their transition, and being read now as a woman, prevents
them from wearing masculine clothes.
Talusan admits, “I benefit enormously from being
read as cis, but it also makes me feel erased, and that peoples’ respect for my
basic humanity is predicated on looking and acting cisgender. For me to be
accepted, there has to be a huge number of trans and gender-nonconforming
people like me who are not.” Talusan acknowledges that there is privilege in
appearing cis-gendered, yet this causes a deep feeling of erasure from their
authentic identity, which is fluid. Talusan also expresses an awareness of
their privilege within the larger trans community in which numerous
intersecting factors, such as race, gender, sexuality, and class, contribute to
“passing privilege” for some and increased chances of violence for others.
In conclusion, my paper examines how the “What I
Wanted to Wear” project promotes an intersectional dialogue on the lived
reality of trans and gender non-conforming people and the social restrictions,
such as transphobic violence, which limit their authentic gender expression. I
also examine “passing privilege,” which Stone calls “the denial of mixture” and
“the construction of a plausible history” (166). Many of the “What I Wanted to
Wear” contributors, such as Alok Vaid-Menon and Meredith Talusan, acknowledge
that passing privilege affords them safety but erases their gender fluidity and
authentic self-expression. Raising awareness about the struggle that trans and
gender non-conforming people face, this project responds to Sandy Stone’s call
to action by creating a “posttranssexual” counterdiscourse that acknowledges
the need for safety.
Works Cited
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