I can prove to you that I am invisible

I am not the only person in the world who is invisible. Those of us who are the many versions of Mr. Cellophane walking around out here can sometimes see one another (though you have to get the angle and the light just right to make it happen). But everyone else? They don’t really notice. Maybe you’ve bumped into me on the sidewalk, mumbled a vague apology, and moved on with your life. You never actually saw me.

I know the truth.

I am invisible.

How do I know?

If you actually saw me, the real me standing right here in the Target check-out line next to you, you would probably frown instead of smiling and glancing away. You’d see my face, you would see what it took for me to get out of the house today and walk out into this world, to pretend to be normal and typical long enough to survive, and you would know that it was your actions that made me so afraid.

Oh no, I’m not blaming you personally for the depression, the anxiety, the dysphoria. I mean, you’re not a monster. You wouldn’t build a world where there is no safe place for me, would you?

Or would you?

If your eyes were open to the things I see every day, how could you willingly continue to hurt all of these tender invisible people around you?

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My wife’s little brother and his girlfriend are expecting their first baby in the spring. My coworker and long-time friend is expecting his first grandchild around the same time. Another friend recently welcomed her third grandchild into the world, and in each of these cases there is one thing everyone wants to know about that new baby above all other things.

Are they a boy or a girl?

I’m not mad at you for caring about that, too. If you have kids of your own you probably went through the excitement of finding out what sex that baby would be. We’re all socialized to believe that it’s important to know, that it’s important to form gendered ideas about that tiny human before they draw their first breath. I was brought up to believe that same thing.

But for a slice of the world’s population (go on, minimize the importance by placing a percentage measurement on us), that guess in the delivery room is wrong. And it frames everything we know, everything we learn, every experience we have. I’m betting you know this, and you still do it anyway.

You want in on a secret? I did it, too.

I knew. I knew that it was wrong to let a doctor declare my kids’ sex at birth. I knew that getting it wrong would hurt them and cost us something important as a family, and I am full of regret for letting my upbringing and my fear of powerful doctors override my internal sense of rightness.

But I’m still guilty of it.

It takes a lot of effort and clear intention to change things in the world around us. You’d have to have been dead or Rip-Van-Winkle-asleep in the last ten years not to get the message about systemic racism, about toxic masculinity, about misogyny, about missing and murdered indigenous women. And if you knew about those things, then you probably knew that there were gender-diverse people around you being born who were going to be mislabeled.

You knew we were a possibility.

You knew we existed.

When you grow up with a gendered label that doesn’t fit you, you feel isolated. The top internal narrative for most transgender people?

I am the only one who is like this.

I am so alone.

Ask yourself why this is. Look around at our language, at the current culture in your community, and imagine being three or six or ten-years-old and knowing that everyone around you got your gender wrong, that they don’t see the real you, that they don’t understand your inner turmoil. Look for yourself in cartoons or TV shows, and good luck finding anyone like you (though it really is getting better). Careful – the book you really need to read might be banned in your state. Your teacher might not be allowed to talk to you about how you feel even if they see and understand what you’re going through. By the time you finally try to look in the mirror and see yourself, you might notice that you’ve faded around the edges, that you cannot see the real you there, that you’re… invisible.

What would it cost you to change this one thing? How would it feel to welcome that sweet, delicate baby into the world and wait until they can speak for themselves to declare who they are? And once they do announce themselves, what does it mean to you?

Would you be comfortable even having a conversation about gendering babies with your family or friends?

Here’s the other thing I want you to consider, because I know the likelihood of anybody willingly giving up the announcement of their kid’s/grandkid’s/someone-or-other’s-kid’s birth sex/gender… Read your audience.

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“My daughter is going to have a boy!” my friend told me.

And I smiled the biggest, happiest smile I could manage, and I said back, “I’m so happy for you.” And internally I held onto that part of me that hurts, and I did not share it with him. I did it because I care about him. And I wonder what it would look like if he cared enough to see me standing there beside him.

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Your trans friend,

Robin

PS – Here’s the alternate ending if you’re interested.

“My daughter is going to have a baby!” my friend told me.

And I smiled the biggest, most genuine smile, and I said back, “I’m so happy for you.”