Honestly when I hear people say “not receiving gender affirming surgeries will make me feel suicidal” I hear the same thing as if someone said “if I don’t get a nose job I’ll feel suicidal”

It’s a physical insecurity that wouldn’t exist in a vacuum. I’m sorry that you were influenced to feel this way, but surgery will not fix something that is rooted in self-hatred. If you change it with surgery, you will find another insecurity to fixate on within a week.

Also, can we talk about how rebranding gender affirming surgery as some life-saving procedure is just promoting and glamorising a very misogynistic and corrupt industry.

9.7.22 Dive Bar

Sat in a dive bar on Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn. I’ve already walked into one bar and out again cos it was too much of a dive I guess. It was too quiet and I don’t want to make up any more than 10% of the clientele. Let me sit in anonymity. I went in because it said PROTECT BLACK TRANS WOMEN on the window but I was the most visibly queer person in there. I was aiming for a place called Mood Ring which a cute queer called Elm had told me about at a gallery. 

Paul B. Preciado curated an exhibition at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art; Every Life Matters: The Work of Lorenza Böttner. ‘Surpassing categories of Abstract Expressionism, figurative painting, and the feminist tradition of performance art, Böttner painted and danced, claiming the right to publicly exist and create in a transgender armless body.’ (Art&Education) It was a wonderful show and apparently not half of her collected works. Her piece Venus de Milo saw Lorenza dressed and posing as the sculpture. ‘Lorenza’s dissident transgender body becomes a living political sculpture, a trans-armless sculptural manifesto.’(Documenta14) She challenges audiences to think about how they view ancient statues that have lost their arms/limbs, how these statues stand in museums and public squares around the world. How are these protected artefacts different from her armless body? How does the audience view her and more generally, physical disability? 

In an interview Lorenza spoke about why she wasn’t pursuing gender re-assignment surgery. She sounded a bit tired. She had spent a lot of her childhood in hospitals having surgery and plastic surgery after both of her arms were amputated above the shoulder following an accident. She didn’t want to be in that space any more, to put her body through that again. [trans surgery add more] I have totally normalised the idea of gender affirming surgery for myself, moreover, I have normalised putting my body through that because the outcome is the closest I’ve come to being able to have a positive relationship with my body. But on some physical, sub conscious level I think I still feel the intensity of that experience, despite shrugging it off. 

This exhibition was the perfect place to ask for recommendations for the evening to come. I hadn’t managed to make plans to see anyone so I knew I was riding solo in Brooklyn. Between that first bad bar and the second I kept seeing queers heading in the opposite direction . They knew something that I didn’t, they could have been going anywhere. I felt like an extras small fish in NYC, London feels minuscule comparatively. In NYC you walk 15 minutes for what would be 5 in London. I kept walking, past those queers, mostly because I had a plan partly because I had no other option. 

I came into the bar that I am now sat at on a whim. I spotted two trans mascs through the swinging door from the street. They were glowing. I took a stool along the bar from them. I can barely look at them.

It took me ages to leave my crap hotel. I often accessorise lightly to subtly queer code my outfit. Some painted nails, a neckerchief, something like that. But that is in London. Here I feel like I’m committing a high pitched ringing noise and I glare at the pavement and pull my cap low to counter it. In the end I painted 4 out of 10 nails and added a neckerchief to an otherwise low-key outfit. But I feel over dressed. I’m swinging wildly from fear driven stealth to desperately trying to signal to my trans siblings. 6.5 years on T almost makes me an elder and I doubt they see me.