Stumbling into trans dykehood: the making of a queer love story
CW: Gender Dysphoria, Cheesy Story
I met my life partner at the Reelout Queer Film & Video Festival in Kingston, Ontario. It was this event that would foreshadow our future together as a queer lesbian couple. At the time, I was still identifying as a cisgender man and had hidden my gender identity under a thick layer of masculinity, muscles, and ginger red beard. None-the-less, I felt queer in my heart and decided to go on a friend date to see some rad films. We watched a steamy flick of two gay men in Columbia, a barber and a soldier, who shared an overnight love-fest in the barbershop. And we also watched a very upsetting story about a trans sex worker who was nabbed and murdered by a transphobic asshole.
I was in the closet as a trans woman, but out as a bisexual man. And my partner had not yet reflected on her queerness and was never confronted with the opportunity to explore it. When we were walking home, snowflakes floating down from the night sky, I asked her if she would go on a date with me. She hadn’t been in the dating scene for some time and was caught by surprise. She paused to think and mustered a yes. I walked home grinning.
Our first date was in her house. It was a crowded house with stinky carpet and many housemates (all lovely folks, of course). We had a homemade sushi night and stayed in with some wine. I had worked as a server for a sushi place back in Newfoundland and I was able to cobble up some rough looking rolls. As it turned out, we both loved food and we bonded over that hard.
It was a while before we started going steady. I was immensely shy, and she was uninterested in committing to a label. This was a wonderful way for us to progress through the various stages of love. It allowed us to nurture a non-possessive and not-so-jealous attitude with each other. We could sleep in the same bed with friends and cuddle with loved ones and be happy for each others various life intimacies.
The more time we spent with each other, the more we realized that we had some rad synergy. I told her, months later, on a trip to Montréal for a conference, that I loved her. She agreed, and from then on, we were going steady.
I had problems with my sense of embodiment, and that left me with countless insecurities. I had decided several years prior that I could never be a woman and I was terrified of the backlash from my family who were invariably anti-queer. I took on a hushed-up label of gender queer, all of the while moving into lifting culture at the gym. I gained a substantial amount of muscle, and for a while my body felt good in being distracted by the constant strain of regimented exercise. I had mentioned in passing to my partner that I was gender queer. But I tucked away my issues with gender into the deeper recesses of my mind and forcefully forgot about them.
Almost two years after Reelout, I moved to Ottawa to start a PhD program. It was a tough move, but we had decided that we could make it work. It was difficult at first, but it worked out. We would Skype often and send each other love letters. I tried to get her to join a Minecraft server with me, but she wouldn’t have any of that. There were many hurdles, but it was worth the work we put into it.
Two months into my move, I was sitting in lecture, a class I worked for as a teaching assistant, and the professor was instructing a sea of 400 undergraduates about the complexities of gender and sexuality. To illustrate the textbooks somewhat dull explanation of (trans)gender realities, she put on a short documentary about a trans woman coming out of the closet, and the struggles she encountered with her family and her partner.
I had a sudden ball of pressure in my chest, and I almost started crying. It was that moment, as I was about to turn 29 years old, that I realized I was a trans woman. I bumbled through my tutorial lesson and managed to keep my calm disposition, but the seed was planted, and my mind was making connections between the discomfort I held with my body and the potential undercurrent of gender dysphoria. I called my partner when I got home to inform her that she was indeed dating a woman. And to my surprise, she did not panic or freak out. In fact, she was very supportive. Yes, I have a rad girlfriend!
I cried myself to sleep because I had no idea what to do. The next day I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, learned about the transitioning process, and began to make connections between my life experiences and my womanliness. That evening, I emailed my dad a panicked message to tell him the truth. That was a struggle that I will never forget. We don’t talk anymore.
She took the bus to Ottawa as soon as she was able, and though she didn’t tell me until later, she did a ton of research herself. While I was shaving my beard and learning about make-up, she was consulting our queer and trans friends so that she would know how to approach this without bombarding me with questions and anxieties.
When she arrived, we sat on the bed in silence and I eventually mustered enough courage to tell her a super difficult truth. I said, “I don’t want to hold you hostage. If you need to leave me because this is too much, I would totally be okay with that”. I was afraid that she would force herself to stay, even if she didn’t find me attractive. My whole life, I was fed narratives of the repulsiveness of being trans. I was saturated in internalized shame and I believed that no one could possibly love me.
This was unintentionally upsetting for her. She was aware that I didn’t have a conventional gender orientation and she saw through my masculine ruse from the beginning. In fact, she was already embracing her new lesbian identity and had already come out to her family, who accepted both of us and all our queerness. Even while I was struggling with the idea that I was a woman, she had already accepted it wholeheartedly.
We kissed and she’d later reflected on how my lips were so soft without the thick tendrils of my ginger beard.
The next morning, we listened to cutsie queer music and she walked me through the clothing and make-up she and some queer friends gathered during a collective closet raid. We went to the mall together to buy some womanly things and a ton of cheap make-up. I was terrified. I felt naked walking through the mall without my outer layer of masculinity, muscles, and beard. I felt so exposed to a hostile world, but she squeezed my hand and led me around from store to store. It would be a very long time before I could go to a woman’s store alone. That night she waxed my body and dealt with all my pain. We drank wine and talked about how we met, that night at Reelout.
Happy Pride everyone ❤
