#sometimes you don't know you're a trans man and don't have a healthy reaction to it

[tryst-art-archive]

Context: 2006

Looking through the archive, I think 2006 is when I started to get properly serious about art. At the very least, there's a life to the things I was making that seems to indicate a shift in my relationship to making. I'm not sure if that was a conscious move at the time though; there's evidence from later years that I saw 2006 as when I began doing less work of value.

My memories of 2006 are blurred into memories of the rest of high school, but I do know I went to Ireland with Mare and his family that spring, and I attended an art summer camp that Mare had been to before. Ireland was a very cool experience, and the camp allowed me to meet more art-inclined folks and try new media forms that I wouldn't've had access to otherwise, like flameworking (small glass sculpture).

But, I was still massively depressed so encountering a bunch of people my age who were also inclined toward art and were, in my opinion, better at it than me knocked my overall confidence and self-belief down a bit, even as I simultaneously got more invested in the Khra-nicles characters and viewing myself as An Artist.

I'm pretty sure I was wearing colors again by 2006 (it'd been brown and black all the time), but I wasn't following fashion beyond the sway of whatever happened to be in stores. I did have a particular style, but it involved long, unstyled hair, handmade necklaces based on my OCs, and oversized shirts and sweatshirts that pretty much hid my mortal form.

I had a bad case of "Not Like Other Girls" and had applied moralism to the fashions of the time--baby doll T-shirts, low rise flare jeans, Ugg boots, thongs, push-up bras--while deliberately going in the opposite direction. (Mum criticized me more than once for essentially following the fashions by so resolutely refusing to.) Skirts and make-up were adamantly off the table as I defiantly reveled in doing only the most pragmatic personal maintenance.

Unfortunately, I'd developed an anti-feminist streak by this time. I recall that starting when I was in 8th grade, but it persisted for several years, and what evidence I can find suggests it was at its worst in 2006 and 2007, when I was 15 and 16 respectively.

It was, simply, misplaced anger. The idea that women "can have it all" was good in theory, but in practice it connotated not that women had the option to do whatever they wanted but rather the mandate to do everything, and I resented that. I also resented every gendered expectation heaped upon me, and looking at that now, I'm dead certain that was gender dysphoria. I was resentful of being a girl and everything that the world around me had decided that meant, everything that meant for my body. I didn't have an outlet for any of that anger, and so I chose the easiest target, one I perceived as the creator of the expectations: feminists.

I didn't see the contradiction in being staunchly pro-lgbt and being anti-feminist. I also didn't see a contradiction in being anti-feminist in name and pro-feminist in action, because I didn't see "caring about women and girls" as necessarily being feminist. It was a lot of mental gymnastics that I didn't even realize I was doing.

I don't remember the exact point at which I grew past this particular phase, but I think it was either senior year of high school or the start of college (2008 or 2009, basically). Regardless, I don't think there's a ton of this phase to be seen in the archive. Most of what I made relating to it was in the dA journals deleted years ago.

Still, it shows up in some comments and descriptions as passing asides, so if you see it, know that I did get over it.