Watching the L-word as Spider-woman
Before I began mounting the monster truck of transition and wheely-ing through the ring of fire of my life like it was Thunder Thursday, I listened to the podcast ‘Transponder’ with Mila and Jayna. These two hosts were funny and charming and eminently relatable, representing a step on the transition journey of which I was envious and to which I aspired. They were out, living as women in the world, with lives and careers, and the love of good friends, living fully and authentically. I had good friends. But my friendships formed a network built around a version of myself with cropped hair, a deep voice. A rumbling sadness covered by extroversion and humour. Existential dread disguised as trapped wind.
I frequently sat listening to Mila and Jayna on the edge of my bed with a face full of stubble dreaming of the day when I could be like them.
And now, somehow, I am.
Mila and Jayna helped me to understand who I was, because I was like them. I had never met anyone like me before, spending much of my childhood believing I was the only one. My resonance with these women suddenly exposed my nature to me in a moment we in the community call ‘cracking your egg’. Now, years later, I am the person with a podcast talking about being trans with audiences, living as my authentic self. I’ve become Gwen Stacey, the friendly disabled girl bitten by a radioactive transgender spider. I've experienced radical physical changes, gained a whole new perspective on life, and if I'm stuck inside for too long I start climbing the walls. I’m swinging across UK conference stages, not the New York City skyline. I'm scaling hills instead of buildings. But I am that girl.
When Transponder came to an end, as podcasts do, Mila and Jayna reflected upon a phase of their lives with which I remain, to this day, unfamiliar. These women described how being trans had become so much a footnote in their lives, so distant a memory, that they no longer felt trans at all. They had become superheroes who no longer held a secret identity.
They were just spider-women in the world.
Last night I started watching the L-Word. And while this was not a show I’d have watched when it was released, not least because it would have shattered my egg like it was dropped from the international space station. I suddenly find myself really enjoying it. Now… it’s relatable to me.
I think this means I’m beginning to change how I see myself. Maybe I have found myself finally entering this elusive phase of my transition.
In a previous post I described how MS imposed itself at a time in my life when I was discovering who I was as a woman. I’d been learning about my interests, fears, aspirations, desires. Like carving a mandala out of painted sand. It was beautiful, incomplete, capricious. And MS is a hurricane.
Suddenly the pattern of my being I was learning changed, and would need to be learned anew. What you desire, aspire to, even what you fear when the world sees you as a man is not the same as what you fear when the world sees you as a woman. And this is not the same at all as what you fear when the world sees you as a woman in a wheelchair. MS makes changes to your life so frequently that you’re on a perpetual journey of self-discovery. Now that my MS has stabilised for the moment, I have enough room to begin to learn who I am now.
And that process might have taken an unexpected turn as the dramatic changes of transition slip further into the horizon. Masculinity, normalcy, becoming the memory of distant shores I once visited, long ago.
When I was up on Butser Hill with the lovely woman, Luna, who came to my aid with prayer and company on my climb, there was a strange moment. When Luna first approached me she was bubbly and curious, but when she approached me a second time she was cautious, described that she was out of her comfort zone here, and trepidatiously hesitated toward a question she clearly wanted to ask. In the recent past I’d have been concerned that I’d been ‘clocked’, that she’d realised I was trans and wanted to ask about it, at least to ask me to confirm her suspicion. But in this moment the possibility didn’t cross my mind. When she asked me whether she could pray for me, I didn’t feel relieved. I completely forgot, even, that I was trans at all.
Walking up the hill together Luna mentioned that it was nice to see another female face on the climb. And I didn’t feel particularly affirmed, even, it just felt… true.
And now here I am watching the L-Word. And I’m a little amazed. I don’t instinctively see myself as radically different to the women on screen. I don’t see myself as a trans woman watching a show about women. I am a woman watching a show about other women who, like me, are attracted to women.
I’m heading to a hen weekend on Saturday, of a member of a family I have known and loved for well over a decade. We went to a wedding together in Goa, we’ve been to festivals singing and dancing into the night, and we went to a hen weekend together in Ibiza. When I went to that last hen do I felt like an outsider. Everyone was abundantly welcoming, it wasn’t because of anyone else’s actions, it was my own poison. But I felt like I didn’t belong, that my womanhood was almost a costume, a lie I desperately wanted to be convincing because it told a deeper truth of my identity.
Now, though, as I’m binging the L-Word and realising there’s a ‘Gen-Q’ spinoff I can’t wait to move on to, I realise that I am one of them. I’m on stages, on podcasts, making friends, finding connection, establishing myself wholly as the girl I am.
And with this change in how I see myself comes a change in the relationships I can build. Shon Faye describes the loves of her life as her friends. I recently spent an evening sat on a couch with friends, snuggling together with a load of cushions, talking and laughing. It was honestly a beautiful night. And this kind of affection and closeness is not something I would ever permit myself while I experienced my identity as a costume. But now I have come to see myself more clearly, leave my secret identity behind, this closeness is suddenly something I thrive on.
And these closer, more intimate friendships form a web of relationships that connect me, the real me, to the world, make me whole within it.
I no longer feel out of place. I no longer wear a costume. This is who I am. I’m embodied. I’m here…