a couple years ago, at the peak of my #trans life, i applied for a residency at prospect cottage, derek jarman’s last home. i proposed an active documentation of my gender journey if non-perceived, curious to monitor what shapes my identity would take in isolation, wondering if i’d even be queer/trans if not in relation to anyone else. if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? kind of thing, but for gender (sigh).
whilst that (fairly self-indulgent) proposal was (unsurprisingly) rejected, recently, maybe unknowingly, i’ve been exploring those questions after all.
for the last three months, i’ve been living and working in a station in the australian outback - the most isolated i’ve ever been. for 90 days, i’ve been surrounded by only eleven other people, instead of the thousands i’ve been accustomed to in the city.
i have never known invisibility. from growing up in a white town, to embracing gender non comformity in my twenties, i have never not experienced being constantly watched, having judgement, fascination, oversexualisation, sisterhood, fear, disgust, allyship ✊🏻, confusion and other emotions placed upon me by strangers glancing just a few seconds too long. one of the first times my ex stepped onto harringay green lanes with me, he was stunned. ‘i feel like everyone is looking at us’ he said self-consciously, i hadn’t noticed, accustomed to blocking out stares, ‘every one is always looking at me’ i replied, shrugging, sounding more exhausted than empowered.
to say that in the last three months i wasn’t perceived is inaccurate: those eleven people were deeply deeply deeply heterosexual, with most of them having had little to no contact with irl queerness before me. the threat of discrimination never felt too distant, and inauthenticity kept me safe. at the same time, removed from anyone i have ever met and anyone i could ever meet, my appearance started feeling, for once, insignificant.
the selfies album on my phone holds 16182 photos. if i took a selfie a day, that’s be 44 years worth of selfies. those numbers are terrifying, an empirical depiction of a historically obsessive relationship with my self-appearance. whilst i didn’t put an end to that practice in my cowboy era (i wish i’d had, looking back), the constant self-scrutinisation that has accompanied my journey of transition, and my journey of detransition, was, for once, muted. spending my days cooking and cleaning in the same handful of t-shirts, the aesthetic markers of my identity took second place, and my queerness emerged in surprising ways instead.
i found an outlet in dancing, not in the club, serving a look, conscious of appearing cunt and hot at every moment, but alone, in my underwear, in the middle of a field, in 37 degrees, strutting, twirling, jumping. in singing, at the top of my lungs, to cows and to bushes, off-key, loudly, obnoxiously. in channelling my inner british nan in the kitchen, baking, chocolate chip cookies, blueberry muffins and victoria sponge cakes, offering my creations to the grateful and eager eyes of the crew after a long day of work.
one day, helping himself to a plate of food, one of the cowboys asked me if i’d ever considered changing gender. i was taken aback, thinking i'd been serving trade. i’m unsure of what prompted him to ask that, whether my feminine nature protruded through even when i wasn’t trying, or whether he noticed the effects of my medical feminisation still bulging through my chest, or whether he had a curiosity about transness, something i’ve come to find out is a hot topic even in the desert. i told him it’s something i’d explored in the past but left behind, finding peace in embracing my femininity in a different way - an oversimplistic, maybe partially untrue, explanation for what has been a tumultuous journey with myself for the last five years. whilst the question baffled me, it was also oddly validating, knowing that history of mine could still emerge to a stranger. a few days later, as we were mincing meat together, he said he really liked talking to me, mentioning how he felt i brought out a different, more feminine, side to him.
another day, in one of the rare occasions we left the station, on a pub dancefloor, a different cowboy drunkenly told me ‘it’s my first time going out with a gay person,’ looked me up and down, ‘you do every thing i want to do.’ i was taken aback, once again. i thought i was doing the least. ‘you can do this too,’ i told him, putting more energy in the shaking of my hips. he awkwardly one-two-stepped, with rigid elbows, and hands in fists. i cackled, and grabbed his hands, trying to loosen him up. he woah, woah, woah-d, freeing himself from my hands, immediately looking around ashamedly, making sure no one would think him a fag.
i have always been an advocate for the expression of femininity in bodies that are not meant to embrace it, our freedom allowing those around us to free themselves too. often, i’ve tied that too significantly to the visuals of it (i crossdress so bad bunny can too) but, really, it’s a lot deeper than that.
on the eve of re-entering my city girl era, i sit with curiosity, on the ways those last three months might show up in the future. on whether i will find joy in using aesthetics to communicate my inner world, or whether i will find solace in deprioritising that. on whether i will keep on seeking isolation, or whether i will seek external validation even more. on whether i will keep obsessing on what authenticity looks like, or whether i will accept it’ll forever be an unanswered question.