Something that’s been on my mind a lot lately has been a type of knowledge that I’ve been calling “girl lore.” Girl lore is tricks of the trade for feminine gender expression, social customs, and an understanding of one’s body beyond health class. Having access to girl lore gives one grace in their performance of gender, makes things go a little bit more smoothly. When someone doesn’t have access to girl lore, their attempts at gender can seem misguided or cringe. Some examples of girl lore might include knowing how to work with hair products, understanding how clothes fit, navigating certain currents of feminine conversation (like false praise), and aspects of hygiene.
Everyone has some girl lore internalized, but some people have access to more than others. Having a “cool mom” or older sister goes a long way, and if one is transfem sometimes coming from living as a gay man prior can mean access to feminine circles that straight eggs could not enter. Sometimes cis women miss out on girl lore in their upbringing due to repressive parents or poverty, and some girl lore circulates in ways more specific to socioeconomic status. Girl lore is not without bias - it can be repressive, it can reinforce patriarchy - but the important thing about it is it lends to how well one “fits in.”
Early in transition I was hungry for girl lore. I was trying to come off as more feminine and kept running into barriers where I felt like the knowledge I needed was just out of reach. I felt cringey because while I was technically checking the boxes - changing my body, affecting a new voice, wearing feminine clothes - I could tell I didn’t have finesse. I had taste enough to detect the problem but not yet the skills to address it, and so I had to go out and very deliberately hunt for those skills. One respite I’ve found is that ally cis women are often willing to share lore, but the trick is knowing what to ask for, and that requires vulnerability. While there’s still a lot I feel cringey about with myself these days, I can tell my skills at “girl” are improving and I’m slowly gaining the lore I need to present myself how I want. It takes intention, curiosity, and time. It also takes a good deal of self forgiveness, which is much harder.
The other day I read the satirical sci-fi novel Future Feeling by Joss Lake, which is told from the perspective of Penfield, a young trans man living at the end of the century who struggles with gender envy around Instagram celebrities. Due to shenanigans, he runs afoul of the Rhiz (long-I, short for rhizome), an international queer shadow government/mutual aid network, and is tasked by the organization to set things right. During his quest we see Penfield at one point pining to enter the men’s sauna at a NYC bathhouse, but the secret society of cis men who possess the room are unimpressed by Pen’s (very trans) proposed demonstration of his masculinity. Pen is caught intellectualizing in lieu of applying the lore he needs to read and enter the room. Later in the novel Pen receives an offer to enter the sauna brotherhood, but he rejects it because he’s grown past the need for masc acceptance on cis terms. He’s found a greater masculinity, one that is big enough to encompass the uniqueness of his transmasculinity and the queerness therein.
I’ve started to encounter what I would call trans girl lore, though I’m finding a lot of what deserves that title is just not well-circulated. Something increasingly palpable to me in American transfem community is a void in our history, the lack of continuity between the transfem culture of the 20th century and that of young transfems like myself in the present. I blame this void on the genocide of trans people by the institutions that refused to prevent the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s, and also on transnormative oppression that forced those who desired to transition to break away from their communities and go stealth. Because we lack these femmes in community, there’s been a lot of what seems to be rediscovery of lore going on in terms of transfem gender expression, understanding sex, and nuances of the physical changes that come with transition.
In 2010, trans activist Mira Bellwether wrote the zine Fucking Trans Women (issue #0), intending for the publication to start a dialogue about what I would call trans girl lore around sex. Before her death in 2023 Bellwether expressed frustration with how one topic - muffing - seemed to be the only takeaway that many readers had from the zine, and also that there never were enough subsequent contributions to release an issue #1. Discovering and sharing lore means being real and vulnerable, reflecting on one’s experiences and giving them form. That’s a lot to ask of people, especially as a stranger.
I feel like being part of a community means we have a responsibility to share lore each other, and so I’m trying to do what I can to open up. At the personal and social level, this looks like being a lot more frank about my personal experiences and showing curiosity towards others. I’ve made some attempts to organize and disseminate lore and resources in my local transfem groups, but last time I got ambitious about it I was left feeling dissuaded. With all that’s been going through my head about girl lore lately I’m starting to get the itch again, and I think I can learn from my mistakes. We’ll see what comes of it.