When I was growing up, my family had a VHS copy of the 1960 Broadway recording of Peter Pan. In the scene here, Tinkerbell drinks poison to save Peter (Mary Martin), and Pan implores the children in the audience to clap for Tink if they believe in fairies in order to revive her. It’s a raw deal for Tink, who night after night depends on the children’s interest and charity to make it through the play. Sometimes the dance of legibility that we as trans people do with cis society reminds me of this scene - a desperate plea for belief, one that asks so little of its audience in exchange for survival, that highlights the tenuousness of the arrangement.
Part of legibility is being credible to others, to be understood as who and what we say we are. Depending on the context, we have to work hard to sell that understanding. I’m not talking about the liberal framing of “respecting identity” here—that’s different than, you know, just accepting that I am a girl. Credibility isn’t just an issue for trans people, think of the lesbian who “just hasn’t met the right man,” the erased bisexual. That said, there’s an order of magnitude between how credibility comes into play for gender vs. sexual orientation because of how pervasive expectations around gender are in the systems and social spheres we inhabit.
Last night Lindsey and I were at a friend’s place to celebrate Eid Dadani, the Iranian new year. It was a cishet crowd besides the two of us, and all parents and grandparents, with a maelstrom of small children swirling through the living room and smashing things the whole time. In an attempt to tamp down my autistic overwhelm from the noise and the overhead lighting, I made my way to the back porch and struck up a conversation with one of the women there. I learned to my surprise that we had met once before, on a somewhat auspicious occasion early in my transition. It must have been May 2022 when I attended another friend’s doctoral program graduation party. I was boymoding and a month in on hormones when something snapped in me and I decided to introduce myself as Erin to everyone I met there. This was totally unplanned, I just couldn’t take meeting anyone new as my deadname. So apparently I made an impression on this woman, or our mutual friend who couldn’t attend Eid had mentioned me to her before the party. Either way, I felt suddenly exposed because I had to contend with the image of month-out me: short hair, pink button up, scraggly face. I felt like I was being evaluated by the other guest on what I had done with my time in transition.
Later on, Lindsey and I were in conversation with a few other people when she made a joke about how we divvy up chores in our relationship. It would have made sense to make this joke with a queer audience, but because Lindsey had to couch some language for the crowd it came out sounding like it implied “Erin is my husband.” It was a slip of the tongue that happened for a number of reasons, and I know she doesn’t think of me that way, but I was taken off guard, and socially it was like a bomb went off in the room. The other people there started making awkward comparisons to their own hetero relationships in an attempt to move on. I was hurt in the moment—it felt like the joke dismantled all of the work I had put into Showing Up As A Credible Woman At The Stim Hell Cishet Party. I retreated to another part of the house to drink.
Talking in the car with Lindsey on the way home (with a brief stopover at Lily’s for hugs and commiseration), I found myself returning to how much my credibility at the party felt like it hung by a thread from the very start. I knew I could trust the hosts to see me as I am, but as hosts their ability to be supportive around other guests was limited. I also knew going in that there were likely not going to be other queers in attendance, which meant the party was going to take more emotional labor. Even steeling myself with resolve and a clearly femme-coded outfit beforehand hadn’t turned out to be enough to keep the house of cards of “I’m a woman, trust me” from falling over. I wish I didn’t have to psych myself up for events like this and could just be myself, instead of spending the whole time wondering if Kyle in the side garden is deliberately avoiding talking to me or making eye contact.
For a little while after the party I felt embarrassed that being understood as a woman is still something I'm reckoning with. I realize now though that things have shifted, and I'm grappling with a new aspect of the problem. When I first came out, what I wanted more than anything from the cis people in my life was validation. These days, I'm confident in who I am, and the struggle is more with how the rest of the world seems to interpret me. I don’t know yet what it means for me to reject that need for credibility, but I do know I can’t keep living like Tinkerbell, imploring those around me to believe in order to stay alive.