Felix Ever After(69)
I smile back, even though I’m too nervous to say anything as I sign my name. I take the same seat I did before, as far away from everyone else as possible. The same people are here, too: Tom, newspaper folded in his lap as he talks to Sarah, still with her bright red lipstick. Zelda checks her hair in her phone. Wally wears a Miles Morales T-shirt. He grins and waves at me, and as I wave back, I feel so awkward I think my hand’s about to fall off my wrist.
When it’s time to begin, Bex has us do introductions again, even though we already know each other—just protocol, I guess—and then begins the discussion. “It’s the fourteenth. The Pride march is in a couple of weeks,” they say. “But sometimes, it can be difficult to find pride for ourselves. There’s very little visibility for people of all genders, and many cisgender people don’t believe transgender and nonbinary people deserve the same rights. It’s even more difficult for transgender and nonbinary people of color, and especially transgender women of color. Though we have transgender women of color to thank for the Stonewall Riots and the Pride march, they’re often erased and ignored, even by other queer people within the LGBTQIA+ community. How do we find and cultivate pride for each other and ourselves when we’re in a world that seems like it doesn’t want us to exist?”
I wasn’t really expecting a discussion topic that would hit so close to home. The words of grandequeen69 cut through me. You don’t matter. You don’t exist. I realize with a flinch of shame that I’d started to believe those words, too. It’s hard to feel pride for who I am when it feels like the rest of the world doesn’t want me to.
The topic clearly resonates with others in the room also. Sarah already looks like she’s near tears. “Gay cis men, especially white men—it’s like they’re one identity away from being what they’d consider normal, so they hold that identity over us, enjoy their privilege and power in their little elitist group, try to push the rest of us away. Treat us like dogs. Just last week, a group of them laughed at me the second I walked into a bar. I wanted to ask them if they’d ever heard of Sylvia Rivera. If they realized they sounded just like those white gay boys who’d laughed at her, too.”
“Well, let me ask you a question,” Zelda says. “Why’re you even looking for their approval? Fuck them,” she says. “Who needs to deal with snotty little shits?”
“I’m not looking for their approval,” Sarah says, obviously pissed by the question. “It hurts. That’s all I’m saying. It hurts to not be included, to be rejected—especially when it’s by people you thought would understand and accept you. You have to admit that it hurts.”
“Sometimes I wonder if it’s better to just—I don’t know, only be around people like me,” Wally says. “Not deal with the transphobia, the racism, the anti-queerness. Just surround myself with a hundred other Wallys and be done with it. Create my own world, my own bubble, so I don’t have to be rejected by anyone else.”
“The only issue with that idea,” Tom says, “is that not everyone has the privilege, or the ability, to create that bubble we all crave.”
“So what do we do?” Sarah asks. “Force the bastards to see that we deserve their time of day? Make them understand that if it weren’t for women like me, they wouldn’t have any of their damn rights in the first place?”
Tom gives a nonjudgmental shrug. “Is that really what you want to spend your energy on?” he asks.
“What should I be spending my energy on instead?”
“Yourself,” he suggests. “Loving and accepting and celebrating yourself, and loving and celebrating and supporting the young women like you who will come next. Changing this world, yes—we need people who will fight for our rights, fight for justice in the courts so that it will be better for the next generation. But creating our own world, not just for ourselves in our bubble, but one that can spread to those who need it most—one filled with our stories, our history, our love and pride—that’s just as beautiful. That’s just as necessary. Without that, we forget ourselves. Crumple under the pain of feeling isolated, unaccepted by others, without realizing that, above all else, we need to love and accept ourselves first.”
I came here with the plan of speaking, of joining in the discussion, of asking my questions. I have so many thoughts, and my heart’s almost out of my throat. I force myself to speak. “Excuse me,” I say.
Everyone’s heads swing toward me.
My voice cracks. “How—uh—do you even know your gender identity in the first place?”
Sarah shifts in her seat impatiently—and I don’t know, maybe it’s a stupid question to ask; maybe they’re already leagues ahead of me, and this is a boring point to discuss. I feel like I should apologize for interrupting, for wasting their time, but Bex gives me another smile.
“It’s just,” I say, clearing my throat. “It feels like there are so many options, so many genders. How do you know which one is right?”
Zelda speaks. “Too many options,” she says. “Too many labels. There’s such an obsession with putting everything into a box now.”
“I don’t know,” Wally says with a shrug. “If this was a perfect world, and there wasn’t any transphobia or treating other people like shit for who they are, then maybe there wouldn’t be a need for labels. But the world isn’t perfect, and when I have to deal with ignorant bullshit, it helps me to know there’re other trans guys out there.”