Featured

Why I’m here

Hello visitor – thank you for checking out my blog.

As the title of this post suggests, I’m going to – mainly for my own documentation – explain why I’ve created this blog, what I hope to get out of it and I suppose what I hope to provide too.

I am an anxious (closeted) queer trans butch brown muslim and I use they/them pronouns. While I’ve been aware of my brown- and muslimness for the entirety of my life, I have only come to recognise the rest of my identities in the past year. Even so, so much of how I understand myself, my context and the way I’ve constituted the past has changed because of that. In less than a year, my image of everything I thought I was and wanted has shattered. And, while I’ve had so much to say about it and processed so much in such a short time, I haven’t felt able to talk about that in a very public way. I hope this blog will change that.

Although I have had the privilege of great queer friends who have helped me talk through some of these experiences, I’m conscious of the emotional labour I demand from them. In particular, special thanks to AK for all the support and space you’ve given me over the past few months to talk over things and calling me out on problematic things I’ve overlooked. Instead of taking up so much space with my friends, I’ll carve out a small space here to express myself and talk about what I need to. This is in the hopes that it will help me process things that happen and how I feel – something I struggle with doing in a healthy way at the moment.

It’s worth noting that many of the things I write about here have probably been said somewhere else and better; I’m not trying to make myself an authoritative voice on any of the things I will talk about. I know that, as a light-skinned brown butch person, I have many privileges which mean my voice is heard more than that of my dark-skinned queer trans femme counterparts. Through writing about my experiences, I hope to work through my privileges, unlearn problematic behaviours and outline ways I’ve learned to actively combat them.

Finally, despite clearly not speaking for anyone but myself, I hope anyone facing similar struggles can engage with what I’m writing and feels less alone and more able to deal with them. Being a queer trans brown butch muslim can be a lonely business in terms of dissecting our experiences – so I hope someone will find this useful, even if this is primarily for me.

Ramadan Mubarak … Or not.

This is a super-cynical take on Ramadan and just me trying to get my frustrations out. I also meant to say more about my queerness and transness but lost that thread very quickly.

EDIT: Also, it’s worth saying that this is just a reflection on past experiences of Ramadan and my feelings about religion will always be complex but I don’t want this to be used against anyone. I’m sure there are plenty of places where Ramadan is a month of spirituality, freedom and understanding where people don’t feel pressured to do more than they can – maybe I’ll find my way to something like that. Maybe I won’t. Ramadan Mubarak!

In the past, I always looked forward to Ramadan as a fresh start: a chance for the good Muslim cishet girl version of Me, who wore hijab and (begrudgingly) obeyed her parents, and was just waiting for the _right_ time to be better at praying. The right time to become the alternate universe Me who prayed five times a day, never questioned Allah and lived life happily instead of coasting through confusedly.

I found myself on an artificial euphoric high, every time I managed a prayer, convinced this proved my worth and that – against depression and all sorts of unseen obstacles – I could achieve an arbitrary number of daily prayers and re-establish my claim to Muslimness. Of course, as the month went on, this wore off and a hope for alternative universe Me to switch the tables and jump in faded away.

Of course, this was before I realised my queerness and transness and allowed myself to call into question a God who would give me these things and then make them taboo. Not to mention the ritual of religion and performativity of faith.

Now, every time Ramadan approaches, I feel this huge burden. Where, beyond normal reproach of periods, I long for them to rid me of this performative nightmare.

Ramadan feels like a competition which no one wins. It’s about who fasts enough even with niggling health problems, whose children fast the most, who prays enough and makes sure to show themselves praying, and who makes use of the month and comes out with ‘renewed spirituality’ beyond just getting through it. Not to mention that it’s not enough to do these things yourself but you’re not really doing them unless you encourage – read ‘almost force’ – people to do them alongside you or feel shame for not doing them at all.

It’s almost impossible to explain the feeling of having a spotlight on you all the time. Of being read as possibly a Muslim woman not fasting and being seen as problematic for ‘flaunting’ it just by eating in your living room or a restaurant, instead of some back alley, or underneath your bed covers. Of people asking how many fasts you’ve kept, Qur’an chapters you’ve read, prayers you’ve made and feeling entitled to question you when they feel you haven’t made *their* quota for being Muslim enough.

It’s impossible to explain the deep shame you feel when you’ve been deemed not enough or been deemed a ‘Ramadan Muslim’ because you’re trying again after a year of not bothering. Those YouTube videos can fuck off.

I know this is a cynical view of Ramadan, I know that ideally, Ramadan is a month of introspection, for individuals, rather than for comparison and competition. But it’s never been that for me.

Now, even more so, I feel this panic as the month starts, knowing I will have to somehow slog through even though I don’t want to. This is the month when my faith is questioned more than any, when my Muslimness is hypervisible. When my queerness and transness are at their most invisible.

I don’t look forward to Ramadan and I really don’t know what to feel – except dread.

Compulsory sexuality

On one of my typical late-night explorations of the limits of my Facebook feed until it bores me enough to want to sleep, I came across a tumblr blog. Specifically a butch lesbian’s inactive advice blog for lesbians.

I’m not a lesbian but I guess as a transmasculine person who feels some affinity to the word ‘butch’ and a complicated relationship with my attraction to women, I was curious about what was on it. I came across a compulsory heterosexuality tag and, although I’ve come across the term plenty of times before, reading about firsthand experiences of it shook me.

Maybe ‘shook’ is the wrong term, but it certainly made me think more about my journey to reconcile my sexuality with my gender (because, when everything is racialised and gendered, my sexuality cannot be divorced from those things).

I read about how people invent crushes which are all very well until the moment it comes to doing something about them. Or their sexuality exists until their feelings are reciprocated and the very real possibility of something coming of that feeling draws a visceral repulsion.

I’ve felt that panic.

I mean, sure, maybe my feelings are more about ‘compulsory sexuality’ than ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (though, given my masculinity maybe that isn’t too far removed). But I’ve felt uncomfortable, anxious and more and put it down to feeling nervous due to attraction.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether I made up that attraction. Or maybe my sexuality is just that complicated, mixed up in dysphoria, anxiety and crises of faith which lead to a feeling of asexuality which doesn’t fully make sense to me. I mean that being that I enjoy masturbating and stuff on occasion and feel like ‘asexuality’ isn’t a good fit for me.

Either way, this hit me and it is definitely something which will be on my mind for a while to come. Maybe I’ll write about it again soon.

Reassessing what I need

This blog is a collection of mostly half-started drafts about all sorts of things I’ve felt the need to talk about since I set this up. What I’ve published is a handful of my thoughts, with many more lingering. In short, it’s kind of a mess. But I suppose that’s the point – if anything, it’s more of (slightly censored for the audience I am conscious of, inevitably but all the same) a journal.

Cultivating my thoughts into publishable pieces is difficult to manage but thealternative is not to process them at all. I have to stop doing that. Besides, I quite enjoy the fact that someone somewhere is with me and I’m not alone. Quite.

I will make an effort to finish off my half-written pieces and publish new ones. But we’ll see what actually happens.

How imagining a cisgender audience leads to the reproduction of biologically deterministic language to understand trans bodies

Since leaving university, I’ve searched for and joined some trans support groups both online and offline. I’ve found them to be a really interesting mix of people at different stages of their transition, not to mention a reality check for the language general trans people use to describe themselves day-to-day.

I will be the first to admit that being at university in so-called ‘queer’, ‘social justice’ and ‘sociologist’ spaces which are constantly reflecting on language and social construction, I’ve come to expect a certain way of talking among trans people. Of course, that’s a really reductive way of seeing the world and a mark of my social environment.

Recently, I read partway through a guy’s blog shared in one of these places where he talks about transness and sexuality and how there’s nothing ‘female’ about him except his genitalia.

This really shocked me. And, at first, I couldn’t help thinking about how it was a strange way to put things. After all, this was being shared in a support group with trans people where the point of our existence is somewhat trying to debunk this idea that anything can determine our gender or is inherently ‘male’ or ‘female’.

I considered pointing that out in a comment but thought about it some more. This sort of language is not unusual in day-to-day trans spaces which are not heavily geared towards using the ‘right’ language. We see it in YouTube content by trans creators, and I’ve heard it in support groups online and offline.

But why? Our existence is proof that biological determinism doesn’t make sense.

It seems to me it’s due to the fact that so many narratives of trans experiences are for cisgender people. Or at least written with them in mind. And, beyond possible dysphoria leading to a fixation on parts of our bodies that don’t make sense and can maybe be rationalised in such language, I think being in a cisgender world is a huge part of it.

Trans people joke that we have two narratives for our transness: the one we share with cis people of having always known, and the one we share with fellow trans people of something arbitrary making us trans as a joke about the fragility of gender. But it’s honestly true and nine times out of ten, in order to navigate our transitions and transness, we’ll be talking about it with cis people.

If you want to access trans-related healthcare such as hormone therapy or gender-affirming surgery, chances are you’ll talk to a cis GP about it and then a couple of cis doctors at your Gender Identity Clinic. This means you have to rationalise your transness in a way that makes sense to them and I think it’s something that inevitably rubs off on how we think about our bodies.

Want top surgery? Better talk about how boobs are inherently womanly and how, as a man, they definitely aren’t right for you. Rather than, of course, a more nuanced reflection on the way gender is pushed on to us and inevitably makes us feel dysphoric when we’re misgendered, even if – in an ideal world – we wouldn’t necessarily be bothered. Cis people don’t allow room for that without questioning the degree to which you actually want and deserve that healthcare. Everyone knows you have to want something forever to get it, right? (Not.)

Ultimately, we can’t get away from thinking about a cisgender audience to continually bolster our claim to our transness – which inevitably affects what language we use. While it’s always important to be as inclusive as possible, remember this before you jump down a trans person’s throat and maybe consider how more room needs to be allowed for the diversity of gender and gendered bodies.

Transitioning… and how I feel

As a queer, but more significantly trans person, transitioning – as you might imagine – has been on my mind.

Transitioning when I talk about it, refers to social transition (that is, ‘coming out’ to either yourself, family and friends as something other than the gender assumed of you and living that) and medical transition (hormone replacement therapy and sometimes medical procedures such as ‘top’ surgery and ‘bottom’ surgery in the case of transmasculine people). Both are unnecessary for someone to be trans but both are often portrayed on YouTube and are at the forefront of trans discourse (as I understand it).

With that clarified, let’s get back on topic. Transitioning has been on my mind. More and more since graduating from university and moving back to a home with little physical room for me and next to no mental room for my transness, has the reality of my future been on my mind. Since realising I was trans over a year ago, I have thought about transitioning a lot.

At first, I thought dysphoria was something I had thankfully missed out on suffering from but, unfortunately, that’s not the case. I don’t exactly feel repulsed by my body (I kind of don’t feel anything at all, almost), I don’t feel like it is my body. When I look in the mirror, I look masculine – I am not a woman – but there are certain parts of me which don’t fit that and those are parts that I would like to change. Mainly my chest. In an ideal world maybe this wouldn’t be the case and some days the feeling dwells deeper than others.

An article I read recently about depersonalisation and dissociation in relation to gender dysphoria piqued my interest and, in all honesty, resonated with me a lot. The concept of dissociating from feelings in a general everyday sense, is something I definitely relate to. I feel like I coasted through secondary school, wrote a short story about faking happiness despite feeling numb, and don’t really feel that strongly about anything – even now. I thought it might just be depression and anxiety but this article changed my mind and helped me to realise my dysphoria may present in other ways.

All of this has culminated into a long brewing understanding that I really want T and, at the very least, top surgery. But I’m at home, very much closeted, jobless (though I’m searching hard) and I don’t see a way of coming out any time soon to my passively homophobic and transphobic family. This has been haunting me for months. Worst still is the idea that I could get an appointment with a therapist at a GIC and they could tell me I’m not trans enough because I’m not 100% certain of my gender. (I keep veering between non-binary trans-masculine and trans man.)

Both fears are suffocating me and, while I know my first priority is to earn enough money to move out, the possibility that not being in a body that feels right is hindering my feelings to the point I’m not really me is killing me. How can I even begin to approach the topic of transness and muslimness not being an oxymoron with my family and how, beyond that, can I stave off my own doubt long enough to convince a therapist and myself I’m trans enough for HRT and surgery? There’s no rush, I know, but I don’t want to wait until some unforeseen time when I can finally be me. Somehow, soon, I’ll have to figure out how to broach the topic with family and how to narrate my transness in a palatable way for a gender therapist to approve HRT for me.

It feels impossible. But I have to.

—

Sorry I’ve been gone for much longer than expected! My head’s been on fire with these thoughts for ages. They’re not complete by any means but just a window into how I feel right now. Until next time!

It’s been a long time…

Here I am again, making a similar post to the last time I stopped in on this blog. Perhaps I’m slightly more depressed and anxious than the last time, and dealing with different issues than when I was still a university student struggling to meet deadlines, but the comparison still stands. I’ve come back because I know I need an outlet for the myriad of feelings I have – regarding my transness, my queerness and my muslimness and the cultural struggles I’m facing at home. Not to mention other issues surrounding my relationship and my mother’s health. It’s got to a point where I haven’t been writing anything at all and I know it’s because I feel like I can’t be open about who I am on platforms where I am identifiable – mainly because I’d be judged. Even if I’m not talking about explicitly trans and queer stuff.

So it comes back to writing on this blog, in the hopes that I can clear my mind enough to write about other, less deeply personal issues on more public platforms, and develop my writing more because it’s something I genuinely enjoy. Well, as much as a depressed person can enjoy anything.

But in order to actually write and not give up five seconds after beginning, I need to cultivate a plan of attack for how I’m going to approach this and other responsibilities I have. Like searching for a job. I think I’ll try to write a piece for this blog at least once a week and see where it goes from there. I don’t want to make too elaborate a plan because I know I’ll end up giving up before I’ve started and I honestly really need this.

Why I (temporarily) disappeared

I come back to this in May, while I should be doing my dissertation and revising for impending exams. For 4 months, I disappeared, and I just want to explain why in as few words as possible to avoid procrastinating too much.

Essentially, when I created this blog, I was on the ‘third week’ (more like sixth for me) of Sertraline, an anti-depressant. This time is well known as the moment where, after however long of having no energy at all, you get a burst of energy and can do a lot. I didn’t realise I was going through this, because it was much later than expected, and I started on a lot of ideas I had in that time. Inevitably, there was a slump after that, and various things happened which exacerbated my depression and anxiety – at some point, maybe I’ll revisit those things and explain them. This made it pretty much impossible to leave my house to go to university and attend seminars and delayed my assignments a lot, so I just didn’t have the energy to come back to this.

Also, to be honest, I’ve been going back and forth over feeling depressed and anxious about my future because, right now, it feels pretty bleak: I’m not out to my family and I don’t feel like I can even begin to approach getting a job to save enough to move out to a place I can be myself. That’s not to say it isn’t possible – I just feel like I don’t even know how to work in the ways capitalist society wants me to, for even the minimum wage jobs (which by the way deserve much more than shitty pay) and I certainly don’t feel like I can be productive enough, considering my depression.

As such, my faith in my ability to write and even my interest has dwindled – partly because I just haven’t had the energy to do it and I’m too depressed to have an interest in anything. Slowly, once I’m done with exams and my dissertation, I want to come back to this and remind myself that I can achieve things and I have interests that I am good at and that I can do something substantial with – because right now it just feels like all I’m good at is collecting football cards, playing games and procrastinating.

Anyway, I do know I can write and I know once the weight of my degree is off my shoulders, I should be able to return to this. I have a few pieces in my drafts, too, which I really want to finish writing – plus plenty more to talk about after this nightmare of a year.

Have no fear, I will be back!

“You look like you’re wearing a binder.”
She said it with laughter in her voice.
You’re not wearing a binder, are you?
She meant.

My throat tightened in that moment.
I can never tell you.
And that was before I could even know what binding might mean to me.

Maybe she’s the only one who’ll understand
But what understanding is that?
What would I trade for a small ally
In that house?

An opportunity for her to say
“My little sister is not my sister.”
To celebrate something
I have only just realised
Is something I will carry
Forever.

The normative world is not mine
What am I supposed to become in spite of it?
Or because of it?

— 26/11/2016 23:02:58