Good evening my bitches. I say good, but I’m not feeling it tonight (other than chillin with my fur babies as seen up top).
I’ve finally encountered a form of “trans erasure” and I’m between mad, upset, and hurt.
What is trans erasure? from Wiktionary.com it is “Noun. trans–erasure (uncountable) (LGBT) The tendency to ignore, deny, or minimize the existence of transsexual/transgender people or transsexualism/transgenderism”. In my case, the experience was somewhere between denying and minimizing me and my life.
It starts out with my best friend’s daughter getting married this Fall and a wedding shower at the end of the month. It also coincides with a trip I planned to see my kids and grandchildren.
Since I’m now out to my family my plan was to see visit them as D. But that created a dilemma for me. Because if I see my grandchildren as D (and they know me by that now) then would it confuse them more to see me as my male counterpart at the wedding later?
So I decided to visit them as D. Which means I should attend the shower as D as well so I’m consistent. And that’s when the erasure hit.
My friend emailed me this morning requesting I not show up as Denise because it might upset the groom-to-be’s conservative parents. It feels as if they think I can just switch it on and off and go back and forth between being Denise and my former male self. And THAT, my bitches, is erasure: it’s denying me.
