Self Portrait

   

Self Portrait, 2018. Dev McCauley

  At the onset of this assignment, I tried to think about how masculinity fit into my life. For the most part, I never thought that it did. I was raised and perceived of as a “boy” or a “man” until I was eighteen. Many of my childhood friends were male. I grew up doing and enjoying many of the same things that boys my age seemed to like. But as a kid, I didn’t really understand what gender meant and what my relationship was to it until high school. I went to an all-boys preparatory in conservative Phoenix, Arizona. It was during my high school years that I realized something felt off. As boys grew confidently into their “manhood” around me, I began to feel more insecure. Despite my being associated with them, I started to understand that I was distinctly different from the men around me. As my own body began to change, I fought to hide the things that signaled my assigned gender. I obsessively shaved my face, grew my hair out, and dressed as androgynously as I could within my school’s strict dress code. I was quiet and reserved. I didn’t want to be noticed. I became so averse to my perceived masculinity that I tried to change my body in more extreme ways. I neglected to take care of myself—I starved myself—to try to gain some semblance of control. When that didn’t work, I looked for other answers.

     It wasn’t until I was eighteen that I realized I was trans. I had thought about the possibility years before, but felt too afraid to explore those thoughts and emotions. I was afraid that if I started exploring my feelings of transness, I would come to realize that they were true. I was afraid because the men around me had shown me that it wasn’t okay to be trans. They mocked trans women. They made fun of other boys for looking or acting like “sissies”. The school strictly enforced a “no cross-dressing” policy. I received detention for growing out my hair, not wearing a tie on mass days, and painting my nails. Maybe trans people existed somewhere in the world, but they certainly weren’t supposed to exist at Brophy College Prep. It took years to accept my identity; in part from the transphobia I experienced (and continue to experience) around me, and in part from the transphobia I had internalized as a result.

     I learned that my experience with transphobia was not unique. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality’s 2015 Transgender Survey, almost half of transgender individuals had been verbally harassed in the past year and nearly 10% physically assaulted. In 2017, 29 transgender individuals were killed in the US alone. Men perpetrated almost all attacks. In light of these facts and my own experiences, I feel the need to explore the question, what is the relationship between masculinity and transphobia?

(487 words)