Recently, whenever I think of dressing up, I have to consider hair, makeup, and everything else with the outfit. Part of me doesn’t quite understand it, but I do. Internalized transphobia seems to be the thing that people define it as. The forcing of gender expression into a binary. However, I see it as more of a barrier to me feeling truly authentic in my “other” form separate from what I was assigned at birth and socialized in. For me, the binary exists as a struggle to not feel like a fake.

Looking at my face, I keep thinking about getting makeup to cover my face, but then I start thinking about where to keep the makeup and how I would have time to put it on. I look at silicone breastforms and hip pads which would create more of a feminine body, but I have to consider how I would take them to the place I want to change at and how much privacy I would have. This is one of the reasons why being a hatching transfeminine demiflux magnifies the struggles of commuting, and why commuting creates more of a struggle in being a hatching transfeminine demiflux.

That struggle is not being able to bring everything out of the closet when I enter a safe space, so I end up not allowing myself any expression.

I consider myself to be a person that is decent with planning things, but when it’s come to my expression in the past year, I could never have planned for that or the imposter syndrome that would follow. Every time I think about going out wearing a cute outfit and heels and a wig, I have to stop myself and then feel the recoil of stopping myself in such a way.

And after all that, I look at a reflection of myself and feel like a fraud.

That feeling of not being able to express myself and then feeling like that expression does not reflect who I am hurts, and I want to find a way to surpass it, but I feel stuck right now.

How do you force yourself from expressing yourself and still feel like you?

Is there a space between you and not you?

Working at a pharmacy seems like it should be organized and neat on paper, but in real life, it hardly plays out that exact way.

Just before writing this post, I had to deal with a half hour start to my shift that included juggling multiple phone calls and desperately searching for a patient’s prescription that had not been entered into the system yet. To make things worse, someone was in the drive-thru and I could not respond to them, so they eventually drove away. In reaction, I moved myself and the call to another computer and began to feel anxious about all of that being for nothing.

That is only one example of how my brain sometimes works against me.

From what I know from my mother, I did not speak until I was 4 years old, meaning I had a lot of catching up to do. I was also fixated on doing my own thing, and I still am now. She told me that she took me to a psychologist, and the only reason I was not diagnosed with high-functioning autism was apparently because I was an active extrovert.

I thought learning about this would give me more control and more of a grasp on some of the things I do, but some cannot be explained by that anecdote alone. And it also clarified another reason why my mom acts the way she does. Trying to correct my bluntness, explaining the concept of “normal” as she does, and causing me no scarcity of grief because of the way I phrase some things are examples of how she tries to correct my behavior so I would be a more “productive and normal” member of society.

Nevertheless, I do indeed have a better grasp of some of the habits I have. Singing in the car, whistling and listening to songs on my AirPods at different times, and either drumming my fingers on the desk or some other action such as trying to play a game while doing something else are different attempts to self-stimulate or to ground myself. At least, that is how I understand them in an attempt to grasp my own habits without a formal diagnosis.

But even more than the habits and the fixations and my tendency to ramble, I feel more control in that I can better comprehend the ways in which I do not fit the mold of “normal”. And perhaps that is okay, because if I have to ask what normal is, then in what context is it truly meant to be understood?

Until then, I’m trying to understand myself more one day at a time and find a safe space where I can. be all of me and not fixate on what others think or on how I would define myself in any other context.

Emotional labor was defined by Arlie Hochschild as the work we do behind the work we do. To use her words, it is “evoking and suppressing emotions” to suit the job. You are doing labor, but what is being monitored is your ability to present a specific feeling during that labor. I disagree with Hochschild, however, in that emotional labor can not only be an aspect of jobs, but also one of daily life. Similar to Carl Jung’s concept of the persona, one has to balance and control emotions in order to present a specific self around others. This oftentimes draining task can be described as labor, as well as the tasks necessary to maintain that mask. And for the LGBTQ+ community, I would argue that a lot of emotional labor is during one’s time in the closet.

Unless someone is able to come out in a safe and accepting environment, or able to find enough support to be able to come out in the first place, there is a lot of work in disguising everything from prying eyes. For me personally, this has meant trying to name five different hiding spaces for my shoes or skirts. This has meant having to search for my clip-on earring collection because it is constantly disorganized. And this has meant more as I have come to realize more about my gender identity. All of that hiding and planning and changing in the car or in a restroom is physical and mental labor, but the emotional aspect is nowhere near ignorable either. After every chance to wear an outfit that makes me feel happy and comfortable on campus, or even a chance to put on a pair of heels for the day, there is always the realization that I have to change back before heading home. This also restricts the possibility of wearing makeup as I would have to spend time meticulously putting it on and then taking it off again. This knowledge of having to change back weighs heavy on me, and I have recently felt drained just from the thought of not being able to freely transform each day. Yet I have to hide the constant frustration around my parents and the annoyance of being called “sir” by someone at work. I have to put on the face around family, coworkers, and customers alike and manage my resentment on a near-daily basis. I see it as having to keep a lock on the closet sometimes. The only time I can unlock it is when I am online talking to a friend, by myself with my longing and admiration, or with someone that I feel comfortable coming out to.

Is this a stretch of Hochschild’s concept of emotional labor? Maybe. But I would like to ask the reader: when you have to suppress something around others, do you feel drained? And is it just at work, or every day, that you feel you need to manage one part or another of your emotions?

Further to the point, after how long does it take until one feels alienated from their environment due to managing these emotions constantly?

Will Overman

It is indeed possible to feel secure with your own body and yet
have insecurities appear just as prominent. I feel that I have come to
recognize this sort of experience in the last couple of years.

For the longest time, I was raised under masculine gender norms and yet also fit many
stereotypically feminine traits. For example, for as many times as I am loud,
competitive, and quick to take charge in a situation, there are others where I
am quiet, vulnerable, and defer to others. In this way, I came to experience
and embody this peculiar paradox of social molding as well as the expectations
within my household. This, combined with my recent discoveries regarding my
gender identity, has fastened for me a sort of double life. And yet, I also
recognize that my body, as Foucault would put it, is “docile”. I have
been molded to be secure and fit within the norms that groups such as school
and family would put me in. Continue reading →