Living masked in a gendered world
So much of who I am can be placed at the feet of my gender and sexual identity. When I was a kid in the 1980s, I remember watching the political and street fights occurring in the San Francisco area regarding gay rights and HIV prevention. Every night a news anchor would terrify us with death statistics, ways gay people were a danger to society, and how AIDS would kill us all.
I bought into this belief because I was still just a kid, and no one explained anything different. When you live in a small, rural town outside the Bay Area, access to gay lives was not a daily event. We talked about gay men and only gay men in school, because the school administration decided gay men were the threat to the societal health and the physical health of the community. Lesbians were never considered, nor were bisexual, or transgender persons. LGBTQ+ at that time was just G. I only knew one gay boy at school, and he only stayed one semester. To me, everyone else in school was straight and cis, since that’s how they presented. Thus, I was the odd man out because I was a gender non-conforming ‘girl’. Almost every week, someone, whether it was a student or teacher would have a talk with me about my seemingly masculine behavior and dress.
“Wear a dress!”
“Boys will never find you attractive.”
“Sit with your legs together!”
“Don’t be so opinionated. Boys don’t like that”.
It was a never-ending barrage of advice and criticism that started in elementary school, ramped up in junior high, and stayed that way until college.
In high school, I made an effort to try and ‘girl’ correctly. I decided to put on a cisgender, straight ‘girl’ mask and be ‘normal’. However, I didn’t have a rule book to even know how to begin. I followed along with my friends, and if I had the energy, I would do what they did: bought the right kind of clothes, listened to the correct music, etc. But in the process of going through high school, I was slowly killing myself. I felt like I was disappearing into the walls, becoming invisible behind my mask. Strangely, because I ended up feeling so badly about myself, I actually wanted to disappear. I wore this invisible ‘girl’ mask to school every day. It was a badly performed mask, but it was the best I could do. But that mask ate at my authenticity and self-esteem. I spent the last two years of high school feeling like I was floating through a bad dream rather than living life. I did what was expected of me; I got good grades, teachers liked me though rarely remembered me since I was nearly invisible, I participated in school and friend activities as needed. I hated the whole experience.
What I taught myself that day before freshmen year started when I purposely put on the mask, was that I was not good enough as I was, that I needed to change to gain acceptance and friends, especially the attention of boys. However, by putting on this mask I achieved nothing good. When I had friends, I didn’t feel they knew the real me. When I finally got the attention of boys, I couldn’t understand what they saw in me. The mask hid me so well, that by the end of freshmen year, I didn’t even know what I wanted or needed anymore. Who was attractive? Who was a healthy friend? Were my behaviors appropriate enough (they weren’t). So in the end, I poorly hid my gender non-conformity, but effectively hid myself from the entire world, even myself.
It has taken years to overcome this shame society and me gave to myself. It took just an instance to put on the mask, but decades of work to take it back off. In fact, I didn’t come out as transgender and gay until I was 48 years old. I had better self-knowledge of my gender at 8 years old then I did at 20 years old. Years of hiding who I was out of fear of what others would think or fear that I would die of HIV crippled my inner self. The mask I put on before my freshman year ate any attempt I had at being a real human being. It consumed my attention, my active joy, my self-esteem, and nearly my very life. I lost the ability to fight for myself and see myself as a person deserving of love, autonomy, and happiness.
Today I see kids in this very hostile political climate stand up to society and peer pressure to be themselves. With the help of their families, friends, and support groups, these kids are seeing the joy and vibrancy in life that I missed out on because of fear. I am jealous of them and so happy for them in equal measure. Being the gender they are and being supported in achieving their gender is a profoundly hopeful way to live. And, guess what? These kids will get a chance to live an authentic more joyful life than I did. Will it be perfect? Of course not. But it will be real, they will be real, and that will make all the difference in their lives.
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