hayeshellcat

[hayeshellcat]

[hayeshellcat]

This is how I doodle.

[hayeshellcat]

I want the sun to rise or the world to spin. I'm learning to settle for both.

[hayeshellcat]

I would love to do a series of interviews with trans folks who came out during the "Pandemic Era." I've seen several stories, including some very cute comic strips, about this. It is certainly my story. The social and political realities following lockdown in 2020 pushed my defense mechanisms to a breaking point. On the one hand, I'm incredibly grateful. On the other, I am still sorting through the wreckage and trying to piece together a life that honors my authentic self. Today, I am angry and depressed.

^^See? Look at me. All angry and depressed and stuff.

I'm posting this as a commitment to myself that I will follow this thread of ideas, and I will create something of meaning. I want to connect with people like me and learn what their breaking point looked like. I want to hear and feel the incredible courage and relief, the heartbreak and hate, and the awesome sorrow of the daily struggle for a life.

And I want to share this. I want to show people how supernaturally resilient and powerful we are, and yet how trans experience is supremely natural. It all fits. It all matters. We are of this world.

If you are a trans person who came out during the Pandemic Era, I invite you to please reach out to me. I would love to speak to you about your experience.

Likewise, if you're confused and you feel deep down that you're about to break wide open, I am here for you. DM me and we can talk. Who you are, no matter how you define that, deserves to breathe and grow. You are perfect. Freedom is closer than you think. You matter. You belong.

I love you all very much.

[hayeshellcat]

Aaaaaaah

“what have you been doing over quarantine?”

well, uh…

[hayeshellcat]

[hayeshellcat]

{Quotes:Nitya prakash/Richard siken ,crush}

[hayeshellcat]

What is going through your head? Like, really going on? Your unresolved shame about watching transgender porn? Maybe it’s your fetish for womens’ lingerie. Maybe your irrational fear that I am a violent sexual predator. Or that I am diseased. Mentally unstable? Confused? Maybe the drugs I took scrambled my brain, or I had a porn addiction that went on for too long and I went too far down the sissy hypno rabbit hole. Maybe despite knowing that the larger social justice community vilifies TERFs, you can’t help but hear J.K. Rowling or even Dave Chappelle and think, “My gut tells me that they’re speaking the truth.” Is that your feminine intuition you’re feeling? Your real, actual experience as a real, actual woman telling you that what you see is unnatural: a wolf man in sheep womens’ clothing? Or you, as a man’s man, see women in the two appropriate, socially-sanctioned contexts: 1) objects of sexual desire and conquest, or 2) precious, pure mothers, daughters, and sisters who rely on strong men like you for protection.

[hayeshellcat]

I do not judge you for having bias. I was socialized in the same systems. I do not care if you slip up. I care that you try. I care that you learn. 

And you don’t.  

You dance the moral dance. You retreat into your stuff. You. You. You. Even when your mouth says “great hair” or even “I love you,” your uncomfortable body language betrays you: your thinly-veiled, hostile anxiety;  and, most of all, your inability or unwillingness to do the challenging work of changing your mind about who I really am and how it all fits together.

Listen, I understand the nature of the work. It is fair to call it challenging - though, like everything else, it is only difficult in a specific context and will get easier with intentional practice. I know bias. I know transphobia. I know our culture. I know the gender binary.

[hayeshellcat]

Misgender me once - no shame.

Apologize, correct, move on.

So many people who I am trying to keep close in my life, cis people I love and who were my friends before my transition, perform this song and dance reliably. They always behave appropriately when they make mistakes, but they never really learn. They keep making the mistakes. I am so hurt and angry about this. I am learning that I can usually tell within two or three interactions with a person whether they have the capacity to empathize with me on my transition journey - if they can devote the attention and energy needed to navigate their bias and to show their actual interest in learning about me. So. Fucking. Many. Cannot. Long-term friendships. Blood relatives.

Misgender me five or six times, every time - shame on you. Fucking SHAME ON YOU.

[hayeshellcat]

Now, here is what I really want to say: The fucking issue is that these common, mundane experiences of misgendering betray what most people are actually paying attention to. It hurts so fucking much when I go through this stuff and I see that cis people are not learning to see me as I am. They are learning the protocol for when they mess up, which is simple and offers a tasty moral reward. I believe that most people are far more interested in feeling good about themselves than they are in putting in the work to empathize with me and to understand my experience as a transgender woman. This. Fucking. Sucks. 

(excerpt from "On Becoming A Lady Person, Pt. 3")

[hayeshellcat]

Chef's kiss to all the lovely folks hitting me with "miss" and "ma'am" out there.

[hayeshellcat]

On Becoming A Lady Person, Pt. 3: On Pronouns and Misguided Moral Conduct

Journal Entry

9/11/24

Notes

All conversants are cisgender women (numbered), plus me (“Me”); various substance use disorders, co-occurring mental health disorders, and post-acute withdrawal symptoms in play.

As a trans woman early in my transition, I am accustomed to special attention, often in the form of compliments on my wardrobe or some aspect of my physical appearance. I understand that these are meant to be affirming. I suspect simultaneously that these comments serve various ego trips and growth processes as the cis women adjust to the existence of an unfamiliar presence: a transgender woman (admittedly, a rather stylish one, with great hair).

Setting

Smoking area in the fenced-in yard of a large treatment center for women. It is dusk, mosquitos are dodging blue tobacco smoke, searching for exposed skin. Children’s toys are scattered about. Around 10 women sit in an approximation of a circle, in mismatched lawn furniture; or stand by the nearby entranceway. It is early September, in the mid-70’s F, in the American Midwest. 

Scene

Woman 1: (staring at me for an extended period, then turning to the larger group, in a sudden burst of social energy) Doesn’t he have such great hair!?

Me: (smoking a cigarette, listening to music in can headphones - one headphone off-kilter enough to track conversation; casually, this is my 20th such compliment today and I would prefer to just accept it without noting the misgender, and shift attention back to my music and my American Spirit): Thank you.

Woman 2: (in a chair beside W1, quickly and in a hushed, sharp tone) Her hair.

W1: (embarrassed, realizing her mistake as quickly as she is corrected) Her. Shoot. Sorry. (body language of guilt; in her haste to receive her gold star for complimenting the resident tranny,her attention faltered and she revealed her bias)

Me: (quickly, quietly): No sweat.

Woman 3: (standing 10 feet away, didn’t hear the full exchange, just the initial compliment; aggressive, disgusted tone and body language; to W1) It’s her. (to Me) You know you can correct her, right?

Me: (again, quietly; wanting to move on): Yep, I know. She caught it. 

W3: (to W1, walking closer) Do you realize what you did? You said he. It’s she.

W1: (more embarrassed, body language of guilt intensifies) I know! (to Me) I know you.

Me: (slightly louder, clearer; now entirely focused on managing the situation, not on my music and my cigarette) It’s okay. It happens. Thank you. (arms gesture, indicating “let’s drop it here”)

(I put my cigarette out and get up to go inside.)

Woman 4: (comes outside as I am walking in; turns to another woman and speaks, purposefully within ear-shot of me and the larger group): Damn, he’s lookin’ good!

Me: (I smile at W4, make eye contact with W3, who is staring back. I raise my eyebrows and shrug slightly, as if to say, “See? I have to pick my battles.” I head inside with my headphones on.)

Analysis

What can we learn from this situation? What would I like other people to understand about this, what I assume is a common experience for trans women who brave social situations with cis women?

(1) Yes, for me, misgendering is exactly this common. I am in a unique social situation (a residential treatment center), but I think that I am pretty safe to generalize this experience. Let’s summarize what happened and put a timeline to it. 

This exchange, in total, lasted about one minute. A well-meaning cis woman tried to do a “social good,” let’s call it, and betrayed her bias (i.e., she sees me as a man). In the process of walking twenty feet to the doorway, just seconds later, this exact behavior repeated itself, in what I believe to be the same moral context. When I say moral context and social good, I mean this: “Look at me. I’m affirming this person who is different, and I am so caught up in my goodness that I lose focus and do a whoopsie-uh-oh microaggression.” This is my own intuition and analysis, not the facts. 

Here’s what I want you to know: Yes, this (the misgendering, the well-meaning corrections, the awkwardness, the body language of anxiety, guilt, and defeat) happens frequently, many times a day. This is especially true in social settings with people who are unfamiliar and unpracticed with transgender experience. That includes the vast majority of people everywhere. I am in the rural Midwest. It applies to 97.285% of folks up here.

(2) I am well-practiced dealing with this. I understand intuitively what is going on. It is bias and momentary inattention. It is not malicious. When I say “No sweat” or “It’s okay,” what I really mean is: I don’t like this, it’s not okay in the big picture, but in this small social interaction, I am offering grace and forgiveness with ease. I am able to brush it off and move on, which is what I want to do. 

Now, if I am in a similar scenario and I do not have the emotional energy to truly shrug it off, I might say the same things (no sweat, it’s okay). In such a situation, my feelings may be hurt and I may have some stirred-up shame and gender dysphoria to deal with. My comments about it being all right are arguably insincere. Still, my emotions are mine to identify and express, and the current, mundane, distressing social interaction is not where I wish to process those feelings. I will seek out a safe person and ask for support; or some other self-care-type thing. 

As a final comment on this, I want to explore another perspective, which is that I could be more vocal and more assertive in my follow-up communication around these microaggressive microsituations. Where I am in my transition and general mental health journey, I have come to realize and accept that I am not a typical warrior. I have no righteous tack. In Jungian terms, I am probably an introverted intuitive. Whatever. I am working to honor the truth that I really value righteous vocality in my friends within the community, those who might be labeled social justice warriors. I have to protect my energy, though, and so the idea that I am going to resolve whatever problem I am presenting here by learning to speak up for myself is uninteresting to me. 

(3) Woman 2 acted like a true ally. This is common sense if you have done any work on the topic of trans allyship. The thing to do is either a) As W2 did, quickly and calmly offer a correction, and move on; or b) Don’t say anything. Option b, I want to emphasize, is equally okay - at least in my case. Other trans women might have different expectations. Duh. The bottom line is that we either will or will not correct someone, and our reasons are our business. In this case, it was late in the day, I was trying to decompress and enjoy a cigarette, and I was half-invested, socially; signified by my headphones half-on/half-off. I made a split-second decision that it was not a good use of my energy to speak up. W2 made her own split-second on my behalf, and it was A-okay by my own boundaries. Cool cool cool. I wish this had been the end.

On that note, before I move on to my last point, I want to emphasize this:

(4) This was a truly mundane experience. I neither enjoyed it, nor was I particularly hurt. Next, I am going to talk about why this stuff has the capacity to hurt me, and so I want to make it clear that I personally view these exchanges and microaggressions through a thoroughly generalized lens. They all just blend together because I have a certain amount of experience dealing with them. It is almost like a weird scripted conversation that I am forced to perform like ten or more times daily. I disconnect emotionally and run through my well-rehearsed lines as quickly as possible. At this point in my transition, I think that this is a healthy approach rooted in resiliency and born from my mental health and spiritual work. As I hope I am making very clear - this is my own perspective and is always subject to change. Earlier this year, with less experience, it would have conceivably hurt a lot worse. Or if I am having an off day, it still might get my goat. But generally…

The reason I have to work at making this stuff not a big deal is the same reason it actually really, really hurts me. 

(5) The issue is that we (the cis women and I) have different perceptual experiences of what is important and what is worth our attention. Otherwise stated, the problem is a lack of awareness or focus and/or a lack of empathy. 

Misgender me once - no shame. 

I have misgendered members of the community. I get it. I know how this happens. I have also learned the protocol and best practices of apologizing, making the correction, and quickly moving on. 

Now, here is what I really want to say: The fucking issue is that these common, mundane experiences of misgendering betray what most people are actually paying attention to. It hurts so fucking much when I go through this stuff and I see that cis people are not learning to see me as I am. They are learning the protocol for when they mess up, which is simple and offers a tasty moral reward. I believe that most people are far more interested in feeling good about themselves than they are in putting in the work to empathize with me and to understand my experience as a transgender woman. This. Fucking. Sucks. 

My experience tells me that 75% of the time, people get so caught up in their own egoic morality trip (i.e., getting the psychic reward of complimenting the tranny (W1 and W4), or in performing the little social justice drama of pronoun-correction protocol (W3)) that I, the object of the microaggressive behaviors, become absurdly inconsequential to this whole affair.

You motherfuckers forget to learn anything at all about me. Who I am. What I want. How I connect with others. You are so caught up in doing good. You would rather be good than pay attention to me. To see me as a fucking human being. I am fucking interesting, goddamnit. Complex. Nuanced. Feminine. Passionate. Compassionate. Attentive. Empathetic. I have such a rich inner world and if you take the time to get to know me, my transgender experience will come to make such beautiful sense that it will enrich your whole worldview and every other relationship you have. 

So many people who I am trying to keep close in my life, cis people I love and who were my friends before my transition, perform this song and dance reliably. They always behave appropriately when they make mistakes, but they never really learn. They keep making the mistakes. I am so hurt and angry about this. I am learning that I can usually tell within two or three interactions with a person whether they have the capacity to empathize with me on my transition journey - if they can devote the attention and energy needed to navigate their bias and to show their actual interest in learning about me. So. Fucking. Many. Cannot. Long-term friendships. Blood relatives.

Misgender me five or six times, every time - shame on you. SHAME ON YOU.

Fuck you. Fuck you. I do not judge you for having bias. I was socialized in the same systems. I do not care if you slip up. I care that you try. I care that you learn. 

And you don’t.  

You dance the moral dance. You retreat into your stuff. You. You. You. Even when your mouth says “great hair” or even “I love you,” your uncomfortable body language betrays you: your thinly-veiled, hostile anxiety;  and, most of all, your inability or unwillingness to do the challenging work of changing your mind about who I really am and how it all fits together.

Listen, I understand the nature of the work. It is fair to call it challenging - though, like everything else, it is only difficult in a specific context and will get easier with intentional practice. I know bias. I know transphobia. I know our culture. I know the gender binary.

What is going through your head? Like, really going on? Your unresolved shame about watching transgender porn? Maybe  it’s your fetish for womens’ lingerie. Maybe your irrational fear that I am a violent sexual predator. Or that I am diseased. Mentally unstable? Confused? Maybe the drugs I took scrambled my brain, or I had a porn addiction that went on for too long and I went too far down the sissy hypno rabbit hole. Maybe despite knowing that the larger social justice community vilifies TERFs, you can’t help but hear J.K. Rowling or even Dave Chappelle and think, “My gut tells me that they’re speaking the truth.” Is that your feminine intuition you’re feeling? Your real, actual experience as a real, actual woman telling you that what you see is unnatural: a wolf man in sheep womens’ clothing. Or you, as a man’s man, see women in the two appropriate, socially-sanctioned contexts: 1) objects of sexual desire and conquest, or 2) precious, pure mothers, daughters, and sisters who rely on strong men like you for protection.

If I’m not with you, I am against you. I am your moral, spiritual enemy. Your instinct tells you who is on the home team, who is basically good. 

And I’m not. Your gut tells you I’m wrong. Bad. Evil.

Here’s the deal. My whole life’s journey to this point might be summed up by the suffering I have endured navigating this whole social framework. I have done the work to explore it, understand it, and discard it. It sounds hokey and pretentious and I don’t care. I see the Reality and Truth beyond all of this. I see how who I am as a transgender woman is actually a natural, wonderful thing. I feel wonder. I see the beauty. I will own some amount of psychological projection. But fuck you if you are here to tell me, whether in words or actions, that I am wrong, unnatural, sick, confused; that I do not belong here. I do. 

The work is worth it.

Please, give me your attention. This is truly interesting. Your intuition, your gut feeling is telling you that something is not right. 

It is not me. 

Please, take a deep breath and start the work of figuring out what it really is. I promise nothing but love and acceptance if you choose to include me in your journey. I can help. It is worth it. I promise. 

Lastly - she/her, please.

[hayeshellcat]

$0.50 for the pair. Small town thrifting is a trans girl's best friend. Also, shout out to the cashier who correctly gendered me when I asked to use the restroom 🙏

[hayeshellcat]

I am out and I am me, and it is fatally weird to be me. In this world, being my True self depends on the constant weathering of a beautiful and violent storm. It is painful. Yes, I must express the pain. I must express it in order to know it. What is expressed is known. Felt. That's my dance. As I dance, I inevitably return to the joy and Love. When I move as motherfucking ME, my pain and bliss are One. It fucking rules. How wonderful it is to be a trans woman.

[hayeshellcat]

On Becoming a Lady Person, Pt. 2

It has been so hard for me to write. I am caught up on all kinds of barriers, including the most nefarious of all: the idea that what I write needs to be of monumental importance. 

I am electing to discard this belief. I am choosing to share myself. 

My name is Hayes and I am in rehab for the third time this year. I am a proud transgender woman, I think I love myself, and I am often unaware of my emotions. I have done some mental health work this year, and I believe that I have so many qualities that are lovely. I have experienced moments of gender euphoria. But as a general rule, my default setting is freeze. Without a healthy connection to how I feel about things, I often “shoot from the hip” trying to guess how I should feel about my situation, though in reality I am only aware of feeling numb and alone.

So many people tell me that I am brave because I am transitioning. I really hate that. I tell them that I hate that I have to be brave, and that I most often do not feel brave at all. I am just… choosing to experience myself, foreign and incomplete as my authentic self-concept is, just four and a half months into my transition. When I am frozen in my default dysphoric mind-state, I cannot see how that is possibly brave or commendable. I am an organism fighting to stay alive. It is mere biology and selfish instinct. My nascent ego has no emotional investment in this process.  

On the other hand, my intellect understands that any being in bloom is absolute, awe-inspiring beauty to behold. Context determines bravery, and the experience of a transgender human being in the United States in the year 2024 is objectively difficult and dangerous. Subjectively, it is so terrifying that I am constantly fighting my limbic system for baseline functionality.

One major problem I am running into is that the analytical mind at work here still feels to me so male. So often, I feel dead and cold and… masculine. 

I have done the work of grieving my dead self, to an extent, but I cannot shake the dysphoric undertones of my working, rational mind. It makes sense. I spent a long time unable to confront my trauma history, operating as a cisgender male with a dark, shameful secret. I was drawn to male thinkers, in part because of the misogyny of the modern era and the dearth of compelling female voices in Western art, literature, and psychology. Moreover, I think that I had a vested interest in really giving this “being a man” thing a shot, and followed well-worn paths of White male minds.

To illustrate my point, here is an off-the-cuff list of my recent intellectual role models: David Foster Wallace, Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, Alan Watts, Ram Dass. 

Yeah. Fuck. 

As I move forward with my transition, it is vitally important that I explore my essential beliefs and thought structures. I need to understand and heal from my trauma, or I will continue to use substances to cope with this very scary path I am on. If I use monumentally obstructive chemicals like methamphetamine, I will put my medical transition at risk (not to mention my actual human life).

So, please - I invite you to come along with me on this next part of my journey. I do not care if this is monumentally important. I hope that it reads well enough, but I plan to post very rough drafts of my journaling and commentary on it. I do not know why, but it seems important to do this publicly. Even if only one or two of you out there read this, that will be enough.

I am fighting, after all, to be seen. The organism must be observed. The ego will follow.

[hayeshellcat]

Hi. Working on writing some more stuff. I'm about 4 months into my transition now.

How's it going?