Before I came out as trans, even before I fully understood my transness, I had a particular inner drive to start dressing more queer. I wanted my femininity to be more externalized, and I focused on wearing "boy clothes" but in bright colors, I learned how tocross my legs in "the girl way," for subway rides, and started using the higher registers of my voice. I also stopped hiding my interest in things like drag culture.
I lived in NYC at the time and immediately took note of how the general public started taking notice of me, touching me (like a man guiding me off an elevator by putting his hand on my lower back, women putting a hand on my arm or shoulder while talking to me, stuff like that), and some people trying to talk to me in public more - for better and worse. I was called the f-slur in a CVS by a woman yelling at a cashier, but I also would get asked for directions by other visibly queer people. My boyfriend at the time hated it.
The public assumes a general kind of ownership over femininity and overt displays of queerness that I was honestly unprepared for. But I found myself needing to keep on the path -- I wanted my community to be able to recognize me. I was no longer comfortable camouflaging myself. My relationship ended when I finally came out and started experimenting with more overtly feminine clothing.
It was a very difficult time in my life.
A large part of my early transition was learning how to dress in a way that is both gender-affirming and doesn't attract too much attention, figuring out how to dress business casual, how to dress club-appropriate, how to dress fashionable, how to dress edgy, how to pair down for the grocery store.
Being able to code switch between cis male heteronormativity and the queer style you prefer is a privilege in a vague sense, but it's also a cage. Letting go of fear and going all in is also a certain kind of privilege, but it's also kind of not because there is always danger in being visibly queer.
The journey to inner and outer congruence is complicated for anybody who wishes to be visible as queer and/or trans. The world pushes back, but so do we.
