I will be running a workshop on individual and community preparedness in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 7 from 2-5pm at the Rhizome House, 2174 Lee Rd Cleveland Heights.
This week’s essay first appeared on my old blog, Birds Before the Storm, in 2019. I don’t write a lot about gender or transness, because there are plenty of people with more to say on the topic than me, and because honestly my gender isn’t a really big deal to me, most of the time. Particularly since Covid and choosing a more isolated lifestyle, I rarely think about my gender—my pronouns in my own head are “me” and “I.”
I don’t want my transness to matter at all. To me, it’s quite simple: we as a society realized that sex and gender are separate things and are socially constructed, so I ask people to apply the social construct of “woman” to me. That should be the end of it. But it’s not the end of it. Because of the all the anti-LGBT hate, violence, and legislation, just existing is a political thing for us. So then, here’s this essay. I’m quite proud of it.
Afraid of the Woman in the Mirror
When I was a kid, I was terrified of the woman in the mirror. Say her name seven times in a dark bathroom while spinning. She’ll appear. Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.
I never did it.
I also, for a good chunk of my childhood, wouldn’t close the door to the bathroom.
I almost saw her, every time I passed the mirror. In my mind’s eye, she was old. Almost beautiful, almost ugly. Long dark hair framing her face. Confidence, terrifying confidence, in her eyes.
In fact, she looked a lot like me.
I didn’t come out as trans until my 34th birthday. I’ve known for a long time. In fourth grade I tried to change my name to Kelly, but I was already being beaten up enough as it was. Around the same time, I realized that I wished I’d been born a girl. It wasn’t an overpowering need. I wasn’t convinced that I already was a girl, trapped in the wrong body. Just that, all else being equal, it would have been better to have been born a girl.
By high school, I grew my hair long and strangers constantly mistook my gender. Every time, I flushed with joy, then immediately shame, then anger. Every single time.
In college, I started to wear women’s clothes. When I dropped out of school to ride freight trains and try to overthrow the government and smash capitalism, I wore dresses and skirts more days than not. By my mid-twenties I’d named myself Margaret, wore makeup, and… and still saw myself as a boy.
I was in denial.
See, the thing is, I’ve always, always been terrified that I would end up a trans woman. Even as I became one, I couldn’t see it. I wouldn’t admit it.
I live in the forest now, alone in an off-grid cabin I built with my hands and my friends. It’s a black A-frame with a sharp-peaked roof, and two magnificent orb spiders guard the front porch alongside a nest of wasps I don’t have the heart to evict. For a moment, while I built it, I worried that I would be too scared to sleep there. On stormy nights I can hear the rain heavy on the steel roof and see the moon through the south-facing window, and it’s just every bit the setup of a horror movie.
Then I remember who I am.
I’m not the victim in a horror movie. I’m a thirty-something anarchist trans woman who has stared down cops and confronted fascists. I carry a knife I made myself from a block of steel and almost all my clothes are black. The thing is, I’m the scary thing in the woods.
I’m the woman in the mirror.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Birds Before the Storm to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.