Pronoun, proximity, violence
As my transition went on, I’ve decided to focus on how I feel internally even though internal and external do not have a clear boundary. I use she/they pronouns, identifying as trans femme. My gender expression is pretty gender neutral, so people would often perceive me as a man. It’s weird because many people perceived me as not masculine enough when I was misguided that I was a gaysian man. Asian men are often not masculine enough in the white centric norm unless you are Bruce Lee. Now I know that I am a woman, I am not feminine enough. This is clearly not about me. This is about how society would perceive me. I will never be woman enough for some, or worse I will be a possible threat to their cis hetero normativity, which could lead to many forms of violence.
I took a self-defense course and learned that the condition of being physically attacked involves three components.
Ability — Do they have the ability to harm you?
Proximity — Are they in the distance to be able to harm you?
Intent — Do they have intention to harm you?
All three components have to be present when physical violence happens. A child might be in proximity and have intent to hurt me but not the ability. Someone might have the ability and intent to hurt me but they are miles away.
I think these can be applied to non-physical attacks. Ability and intent can be easily applied to mental/emotional violence. Proximity can be seen as how close to the individual in a relationship though harder to measure. A family member could more likely hurt me mentally and emotionally than a stranger. Internet trolls could harm a person but that's a more complex process of their voice being internalized. Once internalized, the emotional proximity is extremely close, ourselves. At the same time, if I am careful of internalization, a stranger misgendering does not cause that much harm because of the relational distance with whoever misgenders me. Granted, accumulated microaggression is oppressive. And using correct pronouns will save lives.
There was a time I was being misgendered in rehearsal space over and over. Or people would just use my short name, Kei, instead of my pronoun. I felt frustrated when nothing had changed after I reported to the management. Cis gender people have ability to harm trans people. In this instance, I felt close enough to my colleagues so them misgendering me hurt a moderate amount. But I didn’t think anyone had malicious intent to hurt me. Then how would I convey them to be careful with my pronouns?
Transition for me has been the process of unlearning. Unlearning who everyone else told me I was. Unlearning what gender is. Unlearning what women mean. It requires much patience, safety, and protection to unlearn. I cannot survive without unlearning all the entanglement of gender. Cis people do not have to do that, but I am asking them to unlearn what they know about gender by being around them. Despite the anger and frustration I felt, how could there be safety and protection for cis people to unlearn gender in this intense political climate? It is not my duty to educate them or provide them with protection, then what is the best way to reach out to them? I asked for their help. Help my wellbeing by gendering me correctly and chime in when others forget. Asking for help has been a great lesson for me because there is no way to live alone with my social location in the US. Immigrant, Asian, trans femme. I will never survive alone. And nor could any human beings. The closer you are to the dominant power, the easier it is to pretend that you could. The power of the oppressed is the proximity to reality. The oppressed are closer to the nature of change and vulnerability. Wisdom and care is soft strength. Delusion of power that enables temporary control is in the end hindrance for the peace we all might long for deep down in our hearts.
