selfie-actualization

A few weeks before I left for Thailand, my friend Felicia asked me, regarding my then-upcoming surgery, “What if you feel the same?

Well, it’s early days yet, but I think I can safely say that I don’t feel the same at all. When I feel good, I feel better, and when I feel bad, I feel worse. In other words, I feel more. More of everything. And that is a good thing, even if the hurts cut deeper.

A source of pain over the past few days has been being misgendered (by airport staff, by a flight attendant, by some asshole aggressively trying to hand out free samples at a mall). Before the surgery, I was misgendered constantly, but I was resigned to it. And I tried to prepare myself mentally for the likelihood that it would continue to happen after I’d had FFS, given that the structure of my face was so “male” before the surgery and that there are limits to what can be done.

But it’s different now. I know that to some extent, those cues might still be there, but I can’t really see them. I look at photos of me now and I see myself. And so whereas before, I was resigned to being misgendered, now it makes me angry. Now, I want to say, “Really? You’re gonna look at me and you’re gonna call me sir? Fuck you.” I don’t give a shit if people can tell by looking at me that I’m trans. I’m not ashamed to be trans. Trans can be beautiful. So by all means, go right ahead and process me in your head as a transgender woman. But “sir”? Give me a fucking break.

These feelings get channeled into photos. Photos in which I can see myself in ways that I’ve never been able to before.

 

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Back in November, I wrote, “I’d started using Instagram recently and rapidly got pretty hooked on it. After a few weeks, I realized that often what I was chronicling was my own absence from things, the ways in which I didn’t know how to participate in what was happening around me, how I was behind the camera while everyone else was in front of it.”

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Now, I want to be in front of the camera. I’ve taken more photos of myself in the past week or so than I probably have in my entire life prior to that. I take photos with a spirit of righteous defiance, defying those who still misgender me and perhaps defying my own previous resignation to being misgendered. I revel in the photos. They feel to me like a way of saying, “I am here. I am Carolyn. I’m real. I exist. I’m a woman. I’m alive. I’m not going to hide anymore." 

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"I won’t run away. This is still my world. 
I won’t run away anymore." 

Joseph Arthur, "This is Still My World”