Thinking back on that anon that asked about being an openly trans teacher in Cambodia (shout-out if you're still here :P)
I think one factor that contributes a lot is that I've decided to try my best to present who I am as a matter of fact, fait accompli type of thing. I try my best not to offer any explanation or excuse or like... Mitigation of who I am, and I think it helps too?
I'm not confrontational about it, exactly it's more like, for the question of my name, an exchange I had more than once was:
Me: I'm Matt
Person: Oh, is that short for anything?
Me: No.
And obviously not everyone will be in the same position of safety to answer that way! I'm not saying it's going to work for everyone or, hell, it might even stop working for me eventually! But I genuinely do feel like just being like yeah that's who I am, no I won't volunteer an explanation, has been quite helpful in not giving people a sense that they were allowed to question me, of that makes sense
It's a little like Jordan Waller* said when he described growing with two moms in the 80s-90s in the UK, about how his family was bullied a lot until his moms stopped trying hide that they were both his parents, if that makes sense. The idea that if you don't give people a visible point of anchor, they mostly won't dig for one
*An actor who played Alfred Paget in ITV's Victoria series over 10 years ago, but this specific interview did the rounds a bit
At 20 weeks on hormones it's becoming apparent that I'm "passing" alot better than I used to. I know this because a lot of straight, cis dudes have never let their "I'd fuck that" gaze linger on me for so long. I mean in a way I'm very flattered that dudes are checking me out and want to fuck me, but it also makes me nervous that some ass-clown is going to freak out and murder me or something when his heterosexuality is threatened by the realization that I'm trans.
Being trans is just chock-full of unique, interesting, joyous, and sometimes frightening experiences. I guess the point I'm trying to make, if there is one, is that being trans is pretty awesome!
I almost forgot to mention, but today one of my year 7 students started asking me a question then got shy
I encouraged her to ask, and she said "it's kind of a personal question" so since we'd been talking about the translation of boyfriend/girlfriend I said I was single
She said it wasn't that
Me: okay, then I'm giving you permission to ask, and we'll see if I answer
Her: since you're a man, which bathroom do you use?
Student 2: the staff bathroom, duh!
And tbh I thought this was both a bit funny and sweet, because it was such an innocent, curious question tbh?
So I said I generally use the ladies' because I don't wear my binder outside of school, and also that i didn't particularly think it was a stupid question, that trans people aren't that common and as long as questions came from a place of curiosity I was fine answering, and that if a question they asked was inappropriate I would explain why and not get angry
And honestly I was just happy to have such a genuine interaction with my students, it really made me see that existing in this kind of environment is enough to make a difference and that's cool^^
As we inch closer to TDOV here in Cambodia, and in an attempt to counter the asshole from earlier today, I have to admit: I didn't really pay attention to this before. I probably will continue to not do much to mark it in the future, because I don't have many people to mark it with... But I'm especially aware of its importance this year, and it's not because of me.
I've more or less resigned myself to the fact that I won't ever see someone like me on TV or around me, because both TV and the parts of the community I have access to on the internet are adamant that my way of being a trans man is an Incorrect way to be a trans man, and the people who disagree a re too few and far between for me to meet them easily
But I also have the joy and the privilege of being a teacher. I am a visibly trans teacher, whose pronouns are respected and whose identity hasn't been challenged, and who is planning to try and get pregnant this summer... And I guess it hit me this evening how game changing that is!
I didn't know what trans people were until I was in my twenties. Prior to that, I had heard one "freak story" on TV about a man who had gotten pregnant. I remember feeling mind boggled about what that man's body situation could be, and how he could reconcile his gender and his body. I remember, at 21, feeling myself teetering at the edge of learning something about me and pushing it back down because it was too enormous to deal with
But now that I am a visibly trans teacher (just by existing!!) I know I'm changing lives. Because I exist next to them, my students now know what trans people are, years ahead of where I was. Because I exist next to them, some them will not have to wonder what the fuck is broken in them. Because I exist next to them, some of my students have gotten/will get some practical advice on how to navigate trans ness. Because I exist next to them, some of my students will hear a coming out from a loved one and, instead of thinking that person is a freak, they'll be able to think 'oh yeah, like my French teacher back then'
So sure, transphobes suck and I don't think I'll ever stop feeling small and alone and scared/furious to the point of tears when confronted to them... But at the same time, what a fucking privilege it is to think that my simple existence can have such a tangible impact on people's lives. To know that not only are things changing, I am part of the ones changing things, on my tiny little scale
It doesn't erase the shit I had and will have to go through, but it's still a comfort, to the depressed teenager that I was, to know that at least some others will have it easier in life
Got some lovely questions in the question box today, which made me go through the interesting exercise of explaining what is LGBTIA+ and why it exists in a way that's both understandable for an 11yo non native speaker (since this is about the youngest age our students are in secondary) but also not over simplistic x) "What is transgender" was an interesting one too!
But the one that felt trickiest to answer was the trans girl asking how to find love as a trans person. I answered with school appropriateness in mind, but I kind of wish I could have answered in a more... blog like fashion?
So, to you, young trans girl in my school: I already love you. Your friends already love you. And right now you are in a place where other people pick the ones who surround you, including potential romantic partners, and that makes things feel lonely and scary, but you will grow up and you will get more control over your life, over the people you meet, over the places you go to. You will meet people who will love you as a friend, and people who want to date you, and who will think you're the loveliest girl they've ever encountered.
You'll find love the same way anybody else does: at work, by accident, or through a dating app (so many dating apps!). Love finds a way into your life, romantic or otherwise. I have a friend who couldn't leave her place much due to her social anxiety for years, and she and her girlfriend have been going strong for years too! Good things happen against the odds more often than you'd think.
But know this, if nothing else: I don't know you, but I love you. Maybe I'm just your teacher, maybe not even that, but as far as I'm concerned we're already family in a way, and I hope knowing that makes things a little less lonely for you.
PS: Also, did you know there's also a trans boy in the school? I have no idea of you have anything in common with him outside of that, but if you're comfortable being out it doesn't hurt to find out^^
Pregnant trans male characters, and the ‘mpreg’ label
The other day, while daydreaming about The Witcher (as is my current pastime-slash-obsession) I made a post that said this:
I have such a strong urge to write trans!Jaskier pregnant with Geralt’s magically helped baby it’s ridiculous
However, should I do it, I flat out refuse to tag it as mpreg and you can fucking fight me on it.
It seems to have resonated with some people (there were likes, at least) but it also confused some others, and so I figure I might as well seize the occasion to expand on something I’ve been chewing on for a while. (I’m pretty sure I’ve at least brushed the topic in conversation with either @kawuli or @trovia before, possibly both. Unfortunately, I can’t find these posts/texts anywhere :/)
So, why am I okay with writing a male character being pregnant but not with labeling the story as mpreg (“male pregnancy”)? It’s actually a very straightforward thing: it’s about trope rules and expectations.
Here’s the thing: from what I’ve read in the past (and judging from the tags of mpreg fics I see on AO3) the classical mpreg trope comes in two flavors:
Temporary magical womb
A/B/O fics*
The first flavor features cis male characters receiving the (afaik, always temporary) ability to bear a child without, for some reason, having any other modification made to their bodies or thinking about the logical and/or practical aspects of that pregnancy. In fact, this part of the story is pretty much entirely ignored, I assume for convenience’s sake.
The second flavor, based on outdated information about wolves (judging by the Alpha/Beta terms), make use of imaginary biologies to cast the child-bearing guys as a “third biological gender” which in my experience amounts to ‘cis guy with a self-lubricating anus and a womb’.**
In both cases, male pregnancy is inherently assumed to be something impossible and outlandish, something Other that can only be achieved by breaking the rules of our universe…which means, in short, that it ignores the fact that trans men exist, that not all of us get rid of our birth genitals and that testosterone doesn’t automatically prevent pregnancy in a trans guy.
Now, mpreg as a trope was born in the ‘80s, so that was definitely before trans identities entered general social awareness, and considering it’s not like people are well educated on trans matters on average, I assume the way this trope works is mostly due to ignorance rather than malice or transphobia specifically.
However as a trans guy, and especially a trans guy who would like to be pregnant some day, if the stars align that way, I cannot and will not put the mpreg trope in the same bag as what it could be like for a trans man to decide to be pregnant. In mpreg fics that actually try to engage with the logistics of their tropes, the focus is (again: from what I’ve seen) on the mechanical aspects of it, and how the character feels about that new thing their body is suddenly capable of doing, sprinkled with the classical and at times kind of sexist pregnancy tropes (cravings, mood swings, etc.).
But as a man who can and would like to get pregnant someday, my questions are very different. Yes, some of them are mechanical, but overall? I know how a womb works, so barring HRT related complications, I have some idea of what to expect, and I know any medical professional will be prepared to handle that aspect of things. The questions I have, and therefore would like to explore/would like to see explored run more along the lines of: what if the hospital personnel is hostile? What if people around me disapprove and leave me without a support system? What if someone hates the idea of me doing this so much they decide to get physical about it? What if I have to resign myself to being misgendered for nine months straight in order to carry the pregnancy to term? What if my child is bullied for who their parents are and the way they were conceived? What if discussing the topic of me wanting to be pregnant reveals some kind of previously unsuspected transphobia in my partner, my family, my friends? What if I decide to go through this and it costs me my job, my house, my life?… I’ve never seen any of these questions ever being asked, or even imagined in an mpreg fic, and given that nowadays the mpreg trope is almost exclusively found in A/B/O fics, I don’t expect them to ever crop up in the genre.
The reason I refuse to label any potential trans![male character] story as mpreg is because whether you look at it from a literary angle or a political one, mpreg is not what I’d be writing. Mpreg is impossible/imaginary in all its aspects. Writing a trans male character going through a pregnancy would, for me, be very rooted in reality, or at least a possible state of reality, and I refuse to label my own body, my own life and my own worries like they’re only possible in a world that is not only not real, but also completely ignorant of people like me.
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* For those of you who don’t know, A/B/O stands for Alpha/Beta/Omega and it’s a trope based on pseudo animalistic biologies in which the Alphas are naturally dominant, the Betas are naturally submissive, and the Omegas are…well, it varies from fic to fic, but as far as I’ve seen the Omegas are generally the more-or-less-cis men capable of carrying children. (Also they seem to have the same kind of effects on Alphas that Bella Swann had on Edward Cullen, but I’m mostly going by tags and summaries here so I could be wrong).
** At this point, you may be thinking ‘whoa, that guy doesn’t seem to like A/B/O fics!’ you are right. However, this isn’t meant as a condemnation of those fics. Write what you want and all. I’m just here to talk about the sub-category of A/B/O fics that feature mpreg and how that trope is handled in general.
It sure would be nice if I could manage to not freeze up whenever someone asks my pronouns. I just start stammering and then say something weird like "um, errr, ya know, whatever.......". Having never been addressed properly sure makes asking to be correctly gendered feel strange.
