Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Today we’re talking about what everyday existence is like for trans people, living in a cis-made world that doesn’t account for our existence, or worse, tries to stop it. Here comes THE CONSTANT FIGHT (of existing while trans).
Does the above gif of the Burly Brawl from Matrix Reloaded confuse you? Stick with me, I’ll explain it in a bit. Truly! I’m not gonna start lyin’ to you now, six years into these essays.
I’m going to begin by talking about a specific issue trans people face, which will open the door to the larger topic.
I think most folks are familiar with the “security theater” we have at airports in the United States, and the way things have gone way off the rails since September 11, 2001. But what you probably don’t know is how much worse it got for trans people.
When you’re going through security at an airport now, one of two things happens. You can go through the scanner, or you can get a security pat down. Sometimes you get both. So what’s the issue?
First let me say there are big ethical concerns with the scanners, they’re discriminatory in a lot of ways against some ethnicities and cultures, and if you’re not familiar with that please do some research. But today I’m just talking about it in relation to us trans people.
Did you know those TSA scanners have different options the operator must select when scanning someone? Male or female. Never mind that nonbinary people exist. Never mind that intersex people exist. Never mind that trans men and women exist. There are even cis people whose bodies don’t conform to what those categories imply.
Let’s say there’s a trans woman on HRT who has not had bottom surgery, which means they have to tuck in public (see TUCKING AND BINDING for more). She is a woman. Her ID says female. If she’s going through the scanner, based on her appearance, or presentation, or even based on ID, let’s say the operator correctly indicates female.
It scans her, and registers an anomaly at her crotch. Not only is she now possibly out to all the TSA agents present (which brings its own dangers as they may be transphobes), they have to resolve the situation. Two options: pat her down, or flip the switch and indicate to scan male.
This misgenders her. It scans her, and it registers her bra and breasts as an “anomaly,” which is certainly how the bigots in society want you to think about trans people. And the only option they have left to get her through security is a pat down.
So now a stranger is going to manhandle her breasts to be sure she’s not smuggling weapons in her bra, and be sure that they’re “really” breasts, and is going to manhandle her crotch to see what’s down there.
Either way, again, she’s suddenly out as trans to (or registered as trans by) all the TSA employees present, and everyone else in line who are now wondering what the hold up is.
Knowing the awful violence trans women face, you maybe see extra dangers here. You maybe also see the potential for sexual assault. And we have to go through all of this just because we want to fly somewhere.
And it’s even worse than that. Here’s a story about a trans girl who was ordered to be strip searched when trying to pass through security. She even told them she was trans, but it didn’t make a bit of difference.
Some choice quotes from that article:
“…detected an anomaly on her groin…”
We are not anomalies, we’re human beings.
“They wanted her to take down her pants and underwear for visual inspection.”
No one should have to do that, especially not a kid.
“…(she) has continued to experience symptoms of emotional distress including anxiety, shortness of breath, uncontrollable shaking and nausea when reminded of the incident.”
Yeah, it’s fucking traumatic.
“It’s only a binary option. It’s based basically on the operator’s assumption based on a person’s appearance.”
Do you see how this even hurts cis people? It should be enough that it hurts trans people, but it also hurts everyone else!
Are you a cis lady with broad shoulders? Or a strong jawline? Maybe they’ll just hit that male button. Are you a cis man with a rounded face? Or are you shorter with narrower shoulders? Maybe they’ll hit that female button.
A stranger just gets to take one glance at you and decide if you’re “male or female enough.” Does that not completely enrage you? The gender binary, THE FALSE DICHOTOMY, hurts cis people too. It’s all about policing gender conformity.
“Trans men and trans women and nonbinary people often get flagged because they don’t meet the societally defined definitions of what male and female bodies should look like.”
Neither do a lot of cis people. Why, it’s almost as if those definitions are part of the problem!
“The stereotypical definition of what should or shouldn’t be on a male or female body is problematic, and it doesn’t reflect the reality of real bodies in society.”
Corrrrrrrrrrrrrrrect.
“Nearly one in five transgender travelers have reported being harassed or disrespected by airport security screeners or other airport workers, according to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey.”
Not even just flagged as an “anomaly,” but harassed or disrespected.
“It just felt very invasive because I was a child, and he was an adult, and I didn’t really feel like I had the choice to advocate for not wanting to be touched inappropriately.”
How is it okay to do this to anyone? Especially children?? Why is it okay?!
You can read several trans people’s accounts of dealing with this issue here.
“Transgender travelers are ‘particularly vulnerable to invasive searches at airport checkpoints’ … trans and non-binary people can be forced to discuss their genitals with TSA agents in non-private areas, are sometimes subject to invasive pat-downs by officers they don’t consent to, forced to reveal their genitals to TSA agents, or otherwise humiliated following full-body scans.”
“Ah, but there’s a way around it,” I hear some dense and defensive cis people shout. The TSA Pre-check. Uh huh, sure. But that costs $85.
And uh… do you know how much transitioning costs? And how trans people often lose employment when coming out? See the 2022 US Trans Survey Report parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 for more on the conditions trans people are living under.
So for our tiny marginalized population, many of whom often experience money problems due to the way our society is set up to shun and punish us… a lot of us aren’t going to be able to afford that. Too bad! Just announce yourself as trans to strangers, and let them touch you.
There’s no easy way out of this for trans people, not until the TSA fixes it. There are some reports the machines may be less “picky” about trans people now, but that’s subjective and unconfirmed. But this has been a problem for like, what, almost twenty years now? More? They still haven’t done anything about it.
“Just go BOYMODE,” the ignorant people cry. Which, one: I shouldn’t have to put on a costume and pretend to be someone I’m not just to not get assaulted, two: would be incredibly painful and bring my GENDER DYSPHORIA flooding back, and three: wouldn’t work anyway because I have boobs the scanner would pick up.
Can you imagine how horrible this situation is? I have tons of places I’d love to visit someday… people I’d love to see. Oh but wait, in a lot of places my healthcare is now illegal, I’d have to worry that if there was an emergency and I had to go to a hospital they’d stop my HRT and thus medically detransition me, and in 63% of this country the TRANS PANIC “defense” is a legal excuse to inflict violence upon me.
And here’s where it dovetails from one specific bad issue into our topic of the constant fight… because so very much of our society is exactly like this for trans people, to different degrees.
So, what’s that gif from Matrix Reloaded all about? I explain it in my book Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix, so read that if you want more, but the gist is: throughout all the Matrix films, Neo is on a transition journey to his true, real, self-actualized self: Trinity (yes, really). In those films, Agent Smith is the personification of transphobia.
And that Burly Brawl scene in the gif is representative of this exact thing: the constant fight of existing while trans. The section of the book about that scene is routinely the most impactful section when I’ve done readings at bookstores, or on podcasts, and seems to pretty effectively convey the issue to folks. So I’m gonna give you that excerpt.
All right, so let’s talk about the Burly Brawl. Yes it’s spectacular and amazing to watch, yes it’s clever and original and something never seen before and rarely seen since, but that’s all surface-level stuff.
What you have to understand is this brawl is a manifestation of every damned day of our entire lives existing as an out trans person in this world. Sure you can abstractly understand “life is a constant fight,” but that glosses over it. You don’t really understand.
It’s every time we’re deadnamed, intentional or not.
It’s every time we’re misgendered, intentional or not.
It’s airport security scanners reading us as “anomalies” because we don’t conform to one of two binary buttons the TSA agents have to press so the machine knows what it’s scanning.
It’s the false dichotomy society wants to force everyone into.
It’s states taking away our right to public bathrooms, despite all actual evidence showing trans women in public women’s bathrooms cause no issues whatsoever.
It’s states taking away the rights of trans people to play sports with other people of our same gender, despite actual science being entirely on our side.
It’s states taking away our rights to access the healthcare we need.
It’s cis people being the gatekeepers of that healthcare.
It’s cis people being the gatekeepers of whether or not we’re allowed to legally change our names and gender markers.
It’s the “trans panic defense” that’s still legal in half the United States.
It’s having to present in boymode/girlmode when we go out sometimes so that cis people will leave us alone.
It’s having to count on cis people to include us in movies and television because there aren’t enough trans people behind the scenes who can make that happen on our own (and often that representation is stereotypical, transphobic, or outright harmful… in most media made by cis people we’re often only the butt of a joke or a victim of violence).
It’s people stealing our voices and twisting our words to suit their own ends.
It’s TERFs.
It’s tucking and binding so cis people won’t be uncomfortable with our bodies and possibly decide to assault us.
It’s spending two years and counting in voice therapy to help you gender me correctly in public and on the phone.
It’s my own healthcare provider, who’s covered all of my transition, having no way to denote a trans person in their system… meaning that despite having no uterus, I keep getting reminders to get my regular pap smear, and they likely have already forgotten I’ll need prostate exams.
It’s cis people (rightfully) protesting and becoming activists when Roe fell, and saying that was the start of the fascists coming for everyone… when they came for trans rights first and have been attacking our bodily autonomy for years. We’ve yelled and screamed and begged people to help, and the general cisgender population has… shrugged, and left us to fend for ourselves.
It’s cis people leaving trans men and non-binary people with uteruses entirely out of the abortion discussion, as if they don’t exist and need access to the same reproductive care.
It’s us having to beg cis people to vote for other cis people who will respect our human rights and treat us as equals every single election and still having so much of this country not give a damn.
It’s waking up every day to more news of trans kids being excluded or barred from receiving health care that’s been clearly outlined for them by every major medical association.
It’s the purposeful erasure of trans people from history, despite the fact that we’ve always existed, it just wasn’t safe to be open about it and we didn’t always have the terminology to describe it.
It’s people forgetting or actively denying that LGBTQIA+ people were rounded up by the Nazis in the Holocaust, and when the Allies came to free everyone who was still alive they left the LGBTQIA+ people in the fucking camps.
And keep in mind all of that is compounded for trans women of color, and even more so for Black trans women, all of whom have it much more difficult than I do.
If you’re a cis person and you want to truly feel the weight of this fight and what it’s about, read all (all) the Trans Tuesday essays that reference anything I just mentioned above.
Then, and only then, will you begin to understand the weight of the Burly Brawl and what’s really happening.
This is the Burly Brawl. This is what the cis binary status quo has made existence like for trans people. This is the constant fight. And that’s not even all of it! There’s so much more! I’ve only given you a starting point. Do you have some idea now of the magnitude of the dangers and aggression we face? This is the society cis people set up for us, and the Burly Brawl is every day of our lives trying to live within it.
And despite that, we persist. That’s not something we do on a whim! Or for kicks! Or because it’s the hot new trend! And so here is Neo, reaffirming his transness and his decision to transition… realizing what it means, what the world has become for him and for all trans people. This is why he’s afraid. This is why there are walls around his heart. Every one of these Smiths is a misgendering, is a cis gatekeeper of trans healthcare, is a piece of legislation making it impossible for trans kids to exist, is a person assaulting us for who we are, is deadnaming. And so much more.
All at once.
Welcome to being trans in the cis binary matrix.
Every facet of our society fights us everywhere we turn, it never ends, and we can’t change it on our own. Living as a trans person should not be a constant fight!
So, cis people… when will you decide to help put a stop to it?
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com