The other day I cried when my coworker made a joke about me. Big, vulnerable, Kim K tears. The energy reverberated through my body for the rest of the day, leaving me sore and weak. As someone that notoriously does not cry (flashback to 2004, pretending to cry during a screening of ‘Raise Your Voice’ starring Hillary Duff because all of my friends had salty tears running down their face when the brother died) it’s jarring to think I have become so sensitive to my environment and the words produced around me. With the estrogen, progesterone, and T-blocker metamorphosing and enhancing my body and mind I can’t help but wonder if this is the girl experience. This specific experience consisting of heightened and intuitive emotion, the public’s view of you being a total bitch, and pointed accusations about your intentions, while men can say anything and generally be viewed as right. Even while identifying as a boy, I was always told I was wrong and mean.
The joke made was one of my character, with my coworker poking fun at the way I express my comedy. “You’re so mean, Billie! You have a problem with everything!” When I make jokes it tends to be sassy, jagged, and self depricating in a way that is still playful and light hearted. I have always been told that I am mean. Whether it’s because I’m truthful without being asked or because I’m making a joke that someone takes too seriously. It starts to beg the question of if I am seen as aggressive or mean because of my femme leaning presentation. Forever being pegged as the ‘mean girl.’ Funnily enough, my values and beliefs, I’d like to think, contradict this. I am deeply a girl’s girl. Being nothing if not supportive and uplifting when it comes to all women as well as constantly doing the work to respect the cis vs trans experience. These two experiences differing in point of view, however a woman is a woman.
In fact, I was raised to be a girl’s girl and a mama’s girl. I’ve never had a real connection to my dad or his masculinity. I was scared from a young age from the power he asserted and made well-known. His emotions contorting and transforming into that of the scariest demon in your closet. Opposing that, I watched my mother endure poor female friendships that she poured all of her love and attention into, countless accounts of abuse and mistreatment from men, and her generally navigating daily life as a woman. I watched as she was denied raises at work, I watched as she held our family together despite my dad’s abuse, I listened at the bathroom door as she leaned over the toilet to regurgitate the self worth she had left in order to satisfy the male gaze. I used to think that any anger my mom performed was tied to me and her disappointment in me. As I grow older I realize her anger is intrinsically tied to her womanhood and the pressing weight of society shaping everything about her, and me it turns out. The truth of the matter being that I witnessed my mom burn as a bright, fierce, and confident light in the world as she navigated the rocky waters she sailed. Joining as her co-captain, I learned so much about being a woman.
Although I have always been femme, I am now understanding girlhood from a new perspective as a new normal becomes apparent and my body changes from hormone replacement. Am I aggressive and mean or am I systematically responding to a society and its treatment towards me and other women? It becomes increasingly visible with female relationships. At one time, I was the non-threatening friend. A cis-gay commodity to women, who did not see me as an immediate target. Now that I align so fully with my expression of gender being female, I am now the competition it seems. Cis people feeling threatened by trans people has been a rapidly expanding discussion, however cis women feeling threatened by trans women feels personal and pointed. It seems I will never be good enough for either.
Pondering society’s view of women, both by men and other women, I have come to realize that no matter how much complexity and depth you have as a female, you will always be looked at as a bitch. Whether due to assertiveness, brash honesty, or the ability to remain confident in a male dominated world, women will be viewed as too much and angry. My opinions, thoughts, and intellect being unwanted and frowned upon.
I suppose I cried over her joke for a few reasons.
The first reason being that when you are experiencing a lifetime of being typecast as “the mean girl” you start to believe it. Her words held power as she said them, despite her intentions for them. As I let the pain seep from my tear ducts I explained to her that her words felt factual, as if the almond shape of her nails were ripping through my thin layers of skin trying to expose the deepest layer of muscle. Standing there fragile and emotionally naked I cry harder. I start to think about the experiences that molded me, shaped my mind like a mound of clay.
I’m immedietly brought back to the gym I spent my time in 6 days a week from the ages of 8-14, where I trained as a competitive gymnast, surrounded by boys secure in their boyhood constantly belittling my experiences and how I present in the world. Longing to be one of the girls in bright, sparkling leotards screaming words of affirmation and support at one another in swelled gestures of uplifting love for each other, while being told i’m not masculine enough by my supposed ‘teammates’. I endured being shoved into the sturdy walls of my middle school hallways and announced as a faggot. My close friend-group of girls all proclaiming which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle they most identified with, me being left with no option to choose as there were four girls and four ninja turtles. Overhearing my dad laugh to his friends as he bets with them that I will inevitably lose my virginity at 15 just like him, failing to realize that a friend of his stole that from me years prior. These experiences stick to me like magnets.
As I take the time to analyze, I also feel I cried because I say the same things to myself, whether in private or out loud. With my own self perception, I allowed her the stage to repeat every word I have ever said within the jokes I tell. This shouldn’t allow someone to use that same material against you, but when we listen to people speaking about themselves in such specific ways, we start to believe those words as such. So we say them without thinking. The words slicing through my body like a hundred paper cuts.
ha ha ha!
Everyone’s laughing again. Except for me this time.
With rivers paving new pathways along my reddening cheeks I say to her, “maybe this is a lesson on how I speak about myself,” a lesson I truly don’t want to be true. Maybe I am a mean girl, however towards myself. With enough self hatred you can make anyone believe you are too much. Maybe that’s it, I am too much. For myself and for others. My personality being too much for others to process, so I get cast out from the friend group, the work hang outs, the group chats. Suddenly no one seems to realize that I wasn’t invited to that “girl’s night out” and no one seemed to question it either. So I sit alone at home, stewing in the mean girl rage I've learned to express and watch as the posts flood into socials from the night I wished I was having.
As I unpack my experience with girlhood, I realize I am a product of the female machine. Taught to never be enough, especially as a trans woman. Feeling secure of yourself as a woman seems to be the antithesis of being a woman, creating a multi-generational supply of self deprecating “mean girls.” Maybe we deserve the title for the trauma we undergo, wearing it like an honorable badge. A reclamation of our power.
Continuing to cry in front of my coworker, she immediately understood where these emotions stemmed from. Sympathizing and cradling me in supportive energy, to which I did not anticipate, she saw my inner child standing in front of her. A baffled little girl confused by the big feelings she’s produced. “I will never speak like that about you again, even as a joke,” she expressed. I believed her. Despite the narrative of women hating other women, I think at the deepest center of our core we don’t. We just outwardly take on the behavior of our oppressors (men) in an attempt to be taken seriously. We internalize our experiences and spit them out as newly reimagined traumas.
I leave this interaction confused on the direction I go next. My humor an integral defense mechanism against the world, but if I can dish a joke and can’t take it, am I left without that part of myself? How do I balance my emotions and sensitivities amidst new hormonal changes while staying in tact with the side of myself that loves to be brash and obnoxious. I lay restless in my anxieties and further confused on how to navigate this cruel world as a woman as I continue to allow estrogen to simulate such an experience that is so deeply feminine and sacred. Each week counting the needles as they are dropped into the red sharps bucket, and while the number of needles goes up, my girlhood becomes more and more apparent and crushing.
Had to sit with this and read it again… I’m so in awe of you!!!! Tender, beautiful, unflinching, your voice sings!
Speechless. So much love for you 💕