Have you been watching Pose? Ryan Murphy’s critically acclaimed new drama has brought New York’s 1980s vogueing ball scene to BBC Two. It’s a period drama like nothing you’ve ever seen, featuring the largest transgender cast in television history. There’s a lot to love about Pose, not least the success it has visited upon Indya Moore, who is 24, non-binary and gorgeous. She also looks very much at home on the covers of Teen Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, L’Officiel and Out magazines, who’ve all wanted to photograph her over the past year. She’s using her platform to advocate for change.
But the most surprising thing about Moore’s new-found fame is that trans people’s extraordinary success stories are starting to feel, well, ordinary. From Ines Rau, debuting as the first trans women to appear in Playboy, to Laverne Cox’s brilliant career, trans people – particularly trans women of colour – have never been more visible in western culture. And yet, as Transgender Day of Visibility approaches this weekend, I have a confession: I’m absolutely desperate to be invisible.
There’s only one thing worse than people staring at you, and that’s people not staring at you. Or so I once thought. As a transgender woman I’ve spent the past 10 years trying to reconcile my innate propensity for showing off with a deep yearning to go under the radar. And that yearning is only growing deeper as journalists and public figures subject Britain’s trans community to a campaign of relentless hostility. In 2014, the UK topped the Rainbow Index, an annual ranking of LGBT equality published by a European human rights group. Last year, we dropped to fourth place – due primarily to negative media coverage towards trans people. It’s in this context that the Economist asked its readers last week, “Should trans people be sterilised?” The seemingly endless stream of coverage that insists on framing trans people as a problem, or intellectual “debate” – as opposed to real people – has left me avoiding the news in favour of the fantasy world of my head. I just want to disappear.
I’ve felt like this before. On that first, hot summer when I came out as trans and threw away the last of my boy’s clothes and was standing in Nottingham city centre smoking a cigarette with a friend. She was facing me, her back to the throng of people making their way down to Market Square. I hadn’t transitioned at that point, but she had, and didn’t “pass” – that is, people generally perceived her as trans. She tried to keep a poker face but looked as though she’d been punched in the guts when a group of men shouted “Oi, that’s a fucking bloke” before they burst into laughter. She told them where to go and, as I recall, inhaled half a cigarette in one drag while I was just standing there, thinking: I can’t do this. I can’t face this humiliation every time I leave the house.
I knew that, for me, I could only transition if I felt I had a good chance of blending in as a woman who is not trans. Luckily, most of the time, I did. But I was messed about by my GP and spent the first year without hormone therapy. I soon found myself humiliated in public. I would stay inside the house for weeks at a time, too scared to walk down the street. The last time someone harassed me in public for being trans was in 2011. I can remember what time it was, what I was wearing, how my hair was styled, and what they said. And for years I lived with the fear that it might happen again.
Then, last year, something happened which broke me out of this cycle of fear and paranoia. I took part in Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls. While it’s fair to say I’m no survivalist, it did mark a major turning point for me in terms of how I see myself. On an empty island, no make-up, no hair straighteners – no moisturiser for God’s sake! – there was nowhere to hide. It was just me, stripped back and bare. I sunk into depression waiting for it to air, terrified of how I would look in this savage state. But when it did, I was forced to accept something I’d been fighting for some time: I looked like a woman. Of course, many women who aren’t trans exist outside society’s limited box of what a woman should look like, but I’m not sure how else to put it. Seeing Julia Robert’s brother Eric, a fellow contestant, discover that I was trans a week into the challenge finally forced me to accept that I “pass”. (And yes, I appreciate the irony of only accepting that I slip under the radar after watching myself on one of Channel 4’s most-watched shows.)
I feel uncomfortable talking about this because I don’t wish to upset people who are struggling to blend in. And of course, people shouldn’t have to blend in if they don’t want to. I know many of my non-binary friends face abuse pretty much every time they leave the house. It’s like they are committing a crime simply by existing. But I’ve recently joined a gym and it’s opened up my eyes to just how incredibly privileged I am. Because I’ve been someone who doesn’t pass, and someone who does, and I know which I prefer.
This is what “passing” means. You can go into a changing room and not feel like someone is going to ask you to leave. You can go swimming, get fit, sleep better, live longer. You can smile at a toddler on the train and, rather than glaring at you as if you’re a pervert, the child’s mother smiles back and tells her child to “Say hello to the nice lady”. You can walk down the street holding a man’s hand and not feel like you’re putting yourselves at risk of violence. Essentially, you can live.
So here’s the thing: Debates about whether trans woman should be discriminated against in public toilets won’t apply to people who pass, which includes the thousands of trans people who transition young with the support of their families. Internet trolls often tell me that I have male chromosomes – OK, but thankfully you can’t see them when I go to the loo. It will be people who “look” trans who face the brunt of discrimination, whether they are or not.
But I am not invisible. People recognise me these days, and if anyone approaches me in the street, thankfully, it’s with words of kindness and encouragement. Still, as hostility against the trans community continues, sometimes I can’t help dreaming about moving abroad and side-stepping these “debates” about what it means to be a woman, to simply go and be one.
