Wandering groups of drunken men are not conducive to a trans woman’s health

Trans gal in the wild

I was walking down the street with a beautiful glowing feeling inside of me.  I had just come from a delicious meal, a lovely bottle of wine, and the company of a gorgeous woman who was touching me, making me laugh, and being fun to be around.

Christmas everything was out, light displays on the medieval buildings, transforming the facades from their glorious patina to a fantasy landscape.  The Alps loomed somewhere in the dark just outside of town.

As I walked her back to her flat, a group of 20-something men, loud, boisterous crossed in front of us.  One of them said in a very loud voice, “oh my God, a trans, look, a trans.”  I didn’t notice whether they turned and looked and was glad my companion didn’t speak Italian, as she might have been concerned.  

[This post is not an anti-anyone, anti-place post.  But when so many people who write to me in DMs online, are writing about safety, I can’t help but think about it].

The men were not Italian.  I am not anti-immigrant.  But Italy has an unfortunate position.  So much of our modern immigration is the result of social displacement: economic desperation or political.  In Europe, economic migration is frowned upon and most countries do what they can to not take economic migrants.  The US was built on economic migrants.  But the US was growing, it was a new nation.  Europe is not growing, and it is anything but new.

So, what we have in Europe is almost no integration, very little opportunity for them, and as a result, the dislocation doesn’t go away.  In Italy, also, human trafficking, including of economic refugees, has become one of the main lines of business of the mafia.  Not a good combo.

The six men who walked in front of us were speaking Italian, but not without accents.  My fight or flight kicked in, you never know where a drunk will go.  My only instance thus far of anything physical with a stranger came from two immigrant men in England who threw food at me because they thought it was fun to throw things at a trans person—and nobody among the very, very, very many people who were walking by and noticed said a word, or did anything other than look away and pick up the pace.

I note this because my children are right.  They tell me I need to take up martial arts.  That I need to be able to defend myself.  But this is also a fantasy.  As a half-assed martial arts student, I am likely to have more confidence than none, and might do something stupid other than trying to run away.  It’s like, when you have a gun, you are more likely to get shot.

And in the meantime, I am processing every day what it means to be a trans woman.  It has been incredibly helpful to me developmentally.  When I made the commitment to whatever being I encountered on Ayahausca to ‘take the good with the bad, and that being a woman wasn’t going to be just the good bits’, it also helped me to force myself to grow up.

I embrace the fear.  I don’t like being afraid, but I accept it, and realise that I have to modify behaviour.  I don’t want to, but I know I have to.  I wonder, however, if those men would have been more forward with me had I walked alone.  In a way, walking with a tall-ass bad bitch cis woman, elegant, beautiful, was a shield.  And that is also a strange feeling.

The other thing I thought as their words echoed down the cobbled streets was the silly thought of being a ‘trans woman in the wild’.  But I was also flattered that they saw me as trans.  I don’t think anyone has done that before.  Mostly it is as a man.  And although I am not a man, someone can be forgiven for thinking I look like one.  But it was a real compliment that what they saw was not a transvestite, a man in a dress, but a trans woman.  It was also a compliment that they thought it was worth mentioning.  Part of me didn’t like it, the part that wondered whether we were safe, but another part of me was flattered to be seen as I really am.

Generally I feel safe in Italy, even though people stare at me.

Over dinner, my companion and I joked that although the table next to ours had not spoken a word to each other throughout their entire meal, and were mostly scowling, they did spend the entire evening staring at us.

“D’you know what?” I asked my companion.  “You know that your life is good, when the people next to us are so stupefied and amazed by our presence, that they can’t take their eyes off of us.  They are so beside themselves, that their mouths are open, and it’s a wonder they remember to breathe!”  She laughed at that.  But it was so true.

It was a Saturday night.  We are in peak season in this region for food festivals.  The Italians are out and about, but there are lots of visitors too.  Getting a table in any good restaurant is not so easy.  I figured I should walk in, it is much harder for some reason for people to say no when you stand in front of them.  I was 50 metres behind a young woman who preceded me in, but then she turned, opened the door for me and welcomed me in.

“Hi.  Do you think I could book a table for two at 7:30 tonight.”

“Mmm,” she said, showing doubt, but then put her head around the corner and said in answer to a woman asking what it was about from the other room, “there’s a woman here looking for a table tonight.”  So sweet.  I said ‘thank you,’ it takes so little.

“We’re full,” said the woman as she entered the room, and then went to the floor plan that was drawn out, sitting on the counter at reception, and I could see that every table was taken, and that there was “complete” meaning ‘full’ written across the bottom of the page and underlined twice.  But somehow, the magic of the ballerina giraffe was present, and she found a way to give us a table.  Later, when we showed up, she thanked us for being punctual and gave us the best table in the entire place.

So many restaurants have become places of such great affirmation.  I have been seated without a booking so many times and placed at the nicest table in the room over and over, especially in London.

I want to be seen.

There was an article I read not long ago about a trans woman who wrote how she felt the need to be invisible.  This incredible pressure to always be polite, to never be rude, to not rock the boat, to not be too noisy.  Whatever.  Any woman will know what it means to not take up space.  Trans women might even live it and feel it more.  A bit part of it relates to personal safety.  When we’re seen we are at risk.  Another part relates to “passing”, a sad obsession within the trans community [this is not a criticism.  It is the observation of how sad it is that we feel the need to pass, that we feel the need to be anything other than what we are, for reasons of social pressure, safety, impossible beauty standards, take your pick].  When nobody notices you, because the default assumption for a trans woman will be that to be noticed spells trouble, so being invisible gives the feeling of passing.

This particular article provoked heated discussion in the trans community.  When I first read it, I felt a lot in common with the author.  That the sentiments she expressed were also mine.  But as I read her trans critics, who far outnumbered a few supportive voices, they pointed out that being invisible is a way of apologizing for our existence.

And I found that their comments resonated within me.  It reminded me of the “angry black woman” trope that used to be so prevalent in especially US discourse about race.  But I have and had so much time for the “angry black woman” because its her voice, her courage that allows me to breathe.  In the Queer community, Stonewall, a seminal moment that has come to represent gay rights, people often forget that its foundations lay with the anger of black trans women.

I don’t want to be angry.  But I also don’t want to have to disappear to make someone feel comfortable.  With my family, I have been forthright.  With anyone who tells me I have to sympathise with my wife, “are you kidding me?”  Apart from her knowing before we even began to date seriously, sympathising with her is negating myself.  No thank you.  I did that my entire life.  That’s over now.  Ditto with the very few friends who have expressed this view.

All of this makes me realise that I have an obligation to create space for myself.  I cannot be submissive anymore.  I cannot be a doormat.  I do not wish to carry these traits forward into trans-womanhood.  My life is it stake.  The pursuit of truth, freedom and happiness.  

And so yes, I will be highly visible in life, I will speak out, and I won’t apologize.  I don’t want to humiliate or attack anyone, but I will be relentless in protecting my right to exist as fully free and independent person.