On Being Visible…

On Being Visible…

Visibility is a variant thing. Sometimes it feels easy, sometimes it feels impossible. There are times when being visible doesn’t feel like an act of subversion or an act that requires more courage than you can possibly muster up and use.

A really important member of the Trans community Laverne Fox recently wrote a piece in Elle http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/news/a44830/laverne-cox-we-day-speech/. She makes some really good points. And it’s really hard as a white trans woman to call into question something a trans woman of colour has said when it comes to issues of visibility and safety and so forth.

But I feel like I have to wonder. Privilege is complex, and, I think in the case of trans women it’s especially complex. Some argue that trans women had or enjoyed male privilege, I personally don’t think it is that simple. But I do have white privilege, but then I lose a whole lot of privilege by being trans. It’s just not so simple.

I wonder though, what place Laverne comes from now. No question, she has walked this walk for a lot longer than I. But the reality is she now comes from a place of fame and success that many trans women will never come from.

I think these kind of articles can be really difficult for those of us way further back towards the start of our journeys. When the question of passing is as much about how we have garnered up our courage to step out and walk down the street, and we flinch and fright at each and every sidelong glance. Every whisper is a whisper about us, and every oncoming person feels like a risk to personal safety.

I write this, sitting in a cafe with a couple of days of growth on my face, mostly white, because IPL is taking care of that, but I have just returned from an IPL treatment. I made a choice, to be visible. I made a choice to walk down the street to my coffee shop and have a coffee. It kind of feels like it’s a brave act. An act of deliberate visibility.

It’s actually really quite scary. I think, I totally agree with what Laverne says, but, I think it is sheer ignorance to think that not blending in, saying a big fuck you to passing and just proudly being who we are, it contains a layers of stuff that can be really scary.

The coffee shop I sit in, is friendly, the staff are great, always accepting, but the patrons is a real mix of people, and it’s a pretty middle class kind of area, with quite a segment of more elderly people as well as young families and millenials. I suppose I am trying to just say, it’s a bit of a melting pot.

Today this melting pot is scary, well, scarier than usual, because today, my visibility is really obvious, more obvious than normal.

So all of that mixes together to make me fell like, the not blending in thing is an act of bravery, an act of courage and an act of defiance.

I am being defiant, I am, but it’s really a scary thing to be doing, and I can’t help but worry about if I am safe, will stay safe, and get home safe.

There’s no question I am now more comfortable in my skin than I ever have been. I would not never want to go back but, yeah sometimes it’s just scary as shit.