In one of my dreams last night I had a beard. Still in its infancy and very fair, a light blond beard, but clearly a beard. It’s not the first time that I’ve dreamt of suddenly having — or suddenly noticing that I have — a beard. And I’m always a little upset, or troubled, by the discovery. Having a beard isn’t really — or maybe “yet” — one of my goals. I don’t know if it ever will be.
In my dream last night, though, I can remember myself thinking distinctly, when discovering the beard on my cheeks, “Well, I can shave it off if I don’t want people to see it”. It was more of a discomfort with respect to the external world than with my own self. I didn’t want to be perceived wholly as a man, as a cis-man.
For brief, superficial interactions, like traveling, going through the airport, or out for dinner with my cis-male buddies, I don’t mind, I actually enjoy, being perceived as a man. But on the whole, in my life, in the connections and interactions that count and/or that last, it is important to me that my queerness, my “non-binary-ness”, my “transness” doesn’t get lost. In fact, in my dream last night, I thought or said explicitly to myself, “I can still wear feminine clothes for fun, if I ever want to, even with a beard, that’s precisely what queer is, what genderbending means and what I want to do. But it will feel uncomfortable, at least at first, out in the world.” [Probably these feelings and thoughts were, at least partly, spurred by my recent reading of the book “Queer Theories” by Donald E. Hall.]
But regardless of the shyness or awkwardness that I might (eventually) feel when presenting (even) more queer and/or when genderbending, the certainty of NOT being a woman, NOT feeling that I am a woman or feeling that I am NOT a woman is stronger than ever. It hit me again last night, after my shower, as I was preparing for bed: I saw myself in the mirror and saw him, saw the boy. Yes, I was socialized as a woman because of the genitals I was born with and I can sympathize, even empathize, with cis-women on many points, especially in the STEM world. But I am NOT a woman, I am actually a beautiful, beautiful boy and this seems so evident, so clear, so blatant to me, that I cannot understand how anyone could see anything else, ever. This thought, this feeling, I realized, is always there for me, but last night after my shower, as I saw my reflection in the mirror, it was there stronger and more clear than ever. It was almost as if the reflection in the mirror had taken on a life of its own to say, to tell me, “I am a boy — here’s the boy that you are — how could the world ever have seen a woman or anything else here?!”
The Little Prince and the Fox 