I was in a relationship that was not that good for me. This feels like home more than other places feel like home, but it’s so conservative in terms of stylistic conventions and content, and so predictable. When I was writing for Fictionmania, I was like, “I am drawn to this part of the internet and therefore this part of psychosocial space” or whatever.
You write in the afterword that you’re not very proud of that material now, but there was one that I absolutely loved where two protagonists brutally murder the Spells “R” Us wizard, who force-feminized male protagonists without their consent. And so, in order to access that, you can’t fuck around, you know what I mean?” “You can lie to yourself in a lot of ways, but when you get down to this thing that’s about sexuality, it’s almost just below your consciousness. So saying “you are not alone in this thing” feels like a really different impulse than “I’m going to go out and crack some eggs.” I was trying to do a more nuanced version of “I’m going to go out and crack some eggs,” because that’s not exactly it, but also back then it could be really fucking lonely to be figuring this out, or to have figured this out and still not have people to talk to who get it.
And how do you find some power? What if I am the one who is recreating patriarchal hierarchies and saying, “I’ve been trans for longer than you, so I must tell you how to do it.” It’s almost a power fantasy, that you can have this influence on somebody else’s life, while Maria is very alienated from her own. I could see doing it with good intentions but it just doesn’t feel chill. So the idea of “I’m going to go find people who aren’t ready to figure out they’re trans and make them figure it out,” I don’t know. You’re getting there with your lifetime of whatever you’ve been doing to try to keep yourself safe. My approach to therapy is very trauma-informed, so rather than saying you were doing something crazy, say, “Oh, you were doing a thing that probably makes sense in some way that isn’t immediately apparent.” So when people are figuring out they’re trans, it’s not a blank slate at all.
One of my central things about people (and I didn’t invent this) is like, we’re all trying to do better, but most of us don’t really know how to, you know what I mean? And if you are trans and haven’t been given the tools to understand that you’re trans yet, but you need to not be hurt by the fact that so much in the world is so gendered - and when you’re constantly interacting with it, even though it feels wrong and bad - you’re doing a lot of work to not feel things. That’s not one of the ways I tend to understand being trans, but I think it’s a really useful lens into transness: Let’s frame the fact that so much shit in the world is gendered.
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