Verboten

“They’re gonna kick you out of the lezzie club.” she warned.

Yes, the lezzie club. Verboten refuge. At sixteen I chopped off most of my hair and mailed it in for my first membership card. I skipped my senior prom to drive down to Boston with my girlfriend for Pride Prom instead. My mother tried to conceal her disappointment.

By the time I was eighteen I’d dated more than half of the eligible lesbians my age in that secluded New England suburb I grew up in and decided to move to the City. Cities meant Girls. I got accepted to Smith College but it was obvious I was no Smith Dyke, chewing granola and smashing the Patriarchy. I just wanted booze and warehouse parties and one night stands. I balked at anyone (usually men) who dared say to me, But Josane, you’re too hot to be a lesbian! as if women resorted to other women out of desperation rather than desire.

Yes, we do desire. New York was everything I ever dreamed of and more. I felt free in the New York City gay scene. It was extravagant, it was expensive, it was…superficial. But you could be anyone youwanted any night of the week in a way that you can’t in the cloistered queer circles of smalltown U.S.A.

Then after a few years my hair grew back and I no longer felt like parting with it. Call me Samson but I felt better that way even though I know I could have had more dates without it.

But then I met her, and none of that seemed to matter. Green eyes, long legs. I am only dust and clay. My friends, my roommates have no idea where I am these days, but the shrewd assume I’m in love. That may be true, but it’s not the reason I’ve disappeared.

_________________

I had these two lesbian friends, Liz and Liz. The Liz lezzies, ever competing to see who could lay the most girls in a single month. Then they started binding their breasts and told us one day that they would prefer to be called Alex and Luke. We all smiled upon them and said that it was good. I even felt Luke’s packer once, right there under the table at the diner we all used to frequent while he told us about his first ever blow-job. We were all very happy for him.

But then one night we were all out at one of our favorite lesbian bars and we met Diana. Jess was smitten with her in an instant. They danced to a few cheesey pop songs. Then Diana leaned in and said something to her and everything froze. They exchanged a few more words, and then Jess walked away.
“What happened? She was really cute.” I asked when she regrouped with me, the ex-Lizes and our friend Katie. 
“She said she was trans,” Jess explained. “and I was like ‘yo, it’s okay if you’re not into me but you don’t have to make shit up like that. Just be straight with me. “
Katie exploded with laughter. “Trans? No way. Ew. I’d hate to make out with a girl only to discover she had a dick.”
“Yeah,” Jess said, “Too much male energy.”

Male energy? A transwoman that you were initially attracted to has too much “male energy” but Luke and Alex don’t? I thought. That moment echoes in my head at night when I try to sleep. Not just for what they said, but because I said nothing about it.

I still haven’t said anything to them in fact. I haven’t said anything about it to Diana either, though she is asleep next to me.

     This is a brief overview of the ideas I’ve been examining for my senior thesis. I’m interested in examining the effects of internalized oppression  and the way that queer subculture directly or indirectly polices gender and sexuality while criticizing the mainstream culture for doing the same. It shames me to admit that it has taken me this long to notice how the lesbian community in particular perpetuates transmisogyny. The term transmisogyny exists to emphasize the fact that issues of sexism, whether it plays out in the form of slut-shaming, rape and violence, disdain of femininity, or any other expression of misogyny affects transwomen as well as cis women (cis means non-transgendered), though it is rarely acknowledged in feminist or lesbian discourse. There is also a disconnect in the way that lesbians embrace transmen as allies and romantic partners but not transwomen that I think inadvertently perpetuates the same problem in society at large where masculinity is privileged over femininity. Make it stop.

          -Josane Cumandala