Today I took a physical step towards my transition. I cut my long hair to a more male look. It took a long 2 hours to get rid of my enormous amount of hair. It is also very thick and dense which is great but takes a lot for the hair stylist. This is the result:
I love my new hairstyle and next week I am going to add colour and a piercing! So I’m not finished yet!
This morning I went for a walk with my daughter and dog and I felt so happy. Since I have started to really take steps to open up and try to express my identity I feel different, better, healthier and above all happier. I start to realise that I have kept hidden a big part of myself. Not only have I tried to conform to my birth gender, also my sexuality and my creativity have been oppressed. For about 20 years I have not properly made any art, writing or other creative expressions and I feel totally liberated now I am sharing it here on my website. It feels as if by coming out I can also allow myself to be creative again, to grow again.
As I am questioning my gender, I am also questioning my sexuality and I think this exploration will take longer. I have experienced some serious traumatic events happening to me over the years, and I think that has made me so closed up. I was literally hiding myself away, to keep safe. But now I feel I can take some steps to open up and I will do it gradually and slowly, because I am still apprehensive and anxious to expose myself. I am still worried I will choose the wrong people to hang out with, to form relationships with. And to be honest, I am a little worried about what kind of responses I will get to what I post here.
But I do feel very strongly that I don’t want to hide away anymore. I want to get out there and meet others like me. I am very excited about that. I want to get a discussion, a conversation about being transgender with others. Because it needs to be normalised. I want for younger people to be anyway they identify with and for gender as a concept to disappear. Cause it does not matter at all. It shouldn’t matter what sex you are, what your sexual preference is, or what the colour of your skin is, or your political views. Every unique person should be able to express their identity in any way they choose, in any situation, without fear of discrimination or adversity of any kind. Because it is nobody else’s business but your own.
That idea is at the base of my political view; revolutionary socialism. In a socialist society there is no place for discrimination, racism or sexism because it is based on a democratically planned economy in which the main goal is to achieve the highest level of quality of life for everyone. This means there is no place for profiteering or monetising every aspect of life like capitalism does. Capitalism is build on the idea of profit and private property at the expense of the working class. It is based around exploitation and competition. This places groups of people against each other, it divides the working class in which minority groups are always disadvantaged. And being trans or gay in a capitalist society is challenging the idea of competition, because normalising gender would place everybody on an equal footing which goes against the concept of division and competition. Being trans is like being free, free of the shackles of the limitations gender puts on people. Being trans means you can express your identity any way you like. And that is threatening the status quo. Capitalist society needs women to be insecure about their weight and looks so they will keep buying beauty products and services and they can be kept under control. It needs the sexes to be put against each other, male and female so they can be controlled.
Going back to my own journey, I want to also make another small change. From now on I would like to start using the prefix Mx. and the pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’.
I’ll sign off for now, speak again soon!
By Mayola 24/10/2020
Gif-Art 