Misgender

I love words.  Their substance conjured out of nothingness.  Their power and scary magic.  The orgasmic joy of new words.  This fortnight, my new word’s been misgender.  

Misgender.

A prefix applied to various parts of speech to mean ill, mistaken, wrong, wrongly, incorrectly or simply negated

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the state of being male or female, specifically referencing social or cultural differences, not biological ones.

A word with its DNA on its sleeve.  You know what it means immediately. 

Misgender.  Mis-gender?

Getting clocked, in other words.  Read.  Seen for what someone said you were, rather than what you are.

When El Punko first transitioned and was misgendered, he’d give a vicious stare and say, ‘I’m not a girl!’  As if being called a girl is an insult.  Well, it is in this culture, even if you are a girl, but if a man's mistaken for a woman, it’s not his fault.  It’s your fault for being so stupid. 

Now the Bit-ler, when referred to as ‘that man,’ looks at her colleagues who wait to see her reaction; they smile when she smiles.  If a woman is mistaken for male, it’s her fault for falling below the bar of what’s female.  It might embarrass you that you’ve called it to her attention, but really, if she’d get herself some bigger tits and spend more time painting her face and has she never heard of diets and body wear?  Geez-o-man, a little plastic surgery goes a long way.

Lil Miss Gender.  Ms Gender. 

When the Bit-ler tells me she’s been misgendered, the bra burner inside me rises up, furious that the most successful way to be a woman, regardless of anything else about you or what your sexual preference may be, is to fit inside a skin that’s attractive to men.  Which has always been a major brain fuck to me, that what is masculine decides what is feminine.  

Then I think, well, you aren’t biologically female.  You’re trans and how special is that?  Knock the boundaries off gender and be yourself.  BE yourself.  Be misgendered all over God’s green earth.

El Punko told me early in the game that he was sick of being so fucking special.  People just want to get on with life and not be singled out, for the most part.  Unless you’re a narcissist, I suppose.

So then the Pollyanna in me says, isn’t it great that trans-women broaden society’s concept of what is female?  By becoming more visible, they allow for greater variations on femininity.  In essence, allow women to take back what it means to be feminine.

Mizzy Gennuh.  Mzzgnnndrrrrrrrrr

But in actuality, that’s a load of meaningless bullshit to someone who’s been outside the gender gates their entire life.  

Misgender.  The new word that dashes hopes and aspirations, exiles, ostracises, shouts inadequacies from the rooftops with the utterance of a few simple words.  Misgender.

Best Laid Plans of Mice & Transitions

It seemed a reasonable idea.  Bit-ler (Butler-in-Transition) would do the handover of our old house as male, start in our new house as female.  There’d be a slight bleed through of maleness in the new house, but once two women were living there full time, the unnamed man would exit stage left.

Gargoyle Possum

We hadn’t factored in Gargoyle Possum.

A geriatric stray cat we naively rescued, blind in one eye, hair like a worn horse blanket.  He met our kindness with claws and teeth, a copious bladder flow & rampant sexual acts despite being neutered.  His propensity for vomiting on the table got him a trip to the vet who diagnosed a brain tumour.  Prognosis, eighteen months.  We were heartlessly relieved.

 

Like many stories of this sort, everyone adjusted, including the Gargoyle.  Once he stopped using us for blood-sport, he showed himself playful & incredibly intelligent, uniquely Possumy.  Cat piss & table vomit grew routine.  His eighteen months came & went.  He continued his nightly hump of the duvet. 

Garegoyle's favourite sleeping spot.

A few days before the move, he started that quiet withdrawal of a dying animal.  Though we’d taken him into our tribe as well as our house, we’d known from the beginning where he was headed.  Our reaction wasn’t coordinated or planned, but in the middle of digging up plants and packing boxes & taking down beds, we each sat with him, keeping the distance he requested, giving the witness he deserved.

I was 50 minutes away at the old house when it happened.  Bit-ler was inside the new house, at the mercy of agents documenting the number of nails in the walls.  El Punko & his equally old cat, the Toothless Wonder, were outside with the Gargoyle on the new front lawn, movers grunting past as if life never ended.    

Gargoyle opening his fan mail.

Gargoyle’s final grand mal seizure was a savage farewell to El Punko, but Gargoyle never minced around.  And though he was gone, his lungs kept breathing, his heart kept beating. 

We needed a vet.  

No phone reception.  No internet.  Bit-ler went to a neighbour for help.  

Gargoyle left us via lethal injection.  His legacy, outing the Bit-ler. 

The helpful neighbours have made several overtures to us, always when the Bit-ler is somewhere else.  And they always refer to the Bit-ler as male.  El Punko & I struggle to stay gender neutral.  Bit-ler laughs at our stories.

 

Life doesn't bend to best laid plans.  We’re left flying by the seat of our pants, no idea how our arrival as the local trans-family will be received.  At the moment, not caring.  It cost the Bit-ler too much to get here.  A few begrudgers won’t stop us.  And the thing about this transition business is, it surprises you, where your allies turn up.

Gargoyle Possum at play.

Thank you, Gargoyle Possum, for living long enough to teach us that.  Best of luck to you in your new humping grounds.