The Lovely Lady Tanner

1) Tell us about you


I'm a transgender twenty-four year old. I'm by many accounts some mixture of hipster and hippie, though such terms are often linked with disparagement. The gist boils down to this: I know who I am and what I value, and all of my world and will is bent towards making a universe more full of love, acceptance, and understanding. All of my artistic endeavors work towards finding and building connection with the people around me, from dancing, to singing, to playing the piano, to kink and shibari. There's a better world to be made, if we can fight our fear of letting people see the most vulnerable parts of ourselves. To some extent, this is the only description of me that I feel truly matters.



2) What impacts your gender identity?


This is a complex question, of course. I fear my answer will be novel-esque.
It must be admitted that my role model for men was never great, growing up. It would be untrue to say that the violence of the men in my life didn't bother me--scar me, even--but it would be just as untrue to claim that was the biggest difference I always felt. It was the modes of thinking that always alienated me. Even while I presented entirely masculine, and had never heard a differing concept of gender than that which prevails, I simply lived in a different world.


If I'm honest, though I much prefer female pronouns, I don't feel entirely aligned with women, either. Though I have often identified as genderfluid, this doesn't adequately describe myself. Rather, to me, gender has always been like wisps of smoke--visible as they are cast off by the source, but intangible and impossible to grasp when you reach out to hold them. The closest term I've found sounds nonsensical, but I feel it quite strongly: gendervoid. It meshes with other terms that sit roughly nearby on the spectrum: agender, omni-gender, pan-gender. All these words seem to most so boggling that it seems they can't have basis in anything other than delusion. But the truth is, while I find the feminine concept of the world generally more aware, and I definitively desire more of femininity in my presentation, I know that it is only marginally closer to who I am than any masculine identity would get.


Men in my life have always enacted small, verbal forms of violence on women--indeed, on many groups, identities, and races. Standing as I do at some point between, or some point askew, this has always galled me. Simply put, distance gives perspective.
This is not to say that my male body does not present discomfort. It is wrong, but androgyny or agendery are much nearer to my own mental image. I do not like my testicles, I am indifferent about my penis, I wish I didn't have so much body hair, and I am seething-loathful about my thinning hair. Overall, though, I have some form of truce with this body, and I do not feel an affinity towards having a vagina any more than I do having a penis. When I think about it, the parts of myself I feel most express my gender are, somehow, my face and my hands.


My hands have strength. They have veins from playing piano, they have scars from slips and cuts. But they also have dexterity. They are soft and smooth, and they are the tools by which I interact with the world. They clutch and caress with equal ease. Somehow, they feel more like sexual organs than the genitals I was born with. They have explored the bodies of many more people than what's between my legs. They are my anchor to the keyboard, and through my hands the ivory and ebony feel electric, reviving me and reminding me what I live for.


My face was once much prettier, before puberty overtook it, but it remains pretty in some ways. That puberty filled it out, but it will never blunt my eyes, or shorten my eyelashes. My eyebrows are shaped almost without input. My lips are full. At the same time, my chin is not terribly narrow. I can never escape the gray shadow of stubble; it is there moments after I shave. It is also an essential part of my interaction with the world: lips and tongues, food and smells, words and looks and sympathy.

What a strange world, where these parts most engender my inner self.

When you boil it down, my gender is confusing to me as it is for anyone else: I stand between, closer to feminine, and repelled by the blindness to pain that masculinity often brings. Being called a man twinges painfully, and being called a woman fits better than anything else, but it still never feels complete.
Take this long answer as you will.






3) What do you feel sis gendered people need to know?


That transgender is not always the same. We are not each a face of a single entity. We share many struggles, and we know each others' pain minutely--but for a trans-man and a trans-woman, knowing the pain and understanding the cause can make their difference almost as large as that between the average cis-gendered individual and any trans individual. Our solidarity does not come from sameness--it comes from sympathy, empathy, and the awareness that minority has forced upon us.



4) When did you come out to you?


It was a journey, I suppose. I heard about the term genderfluid when I went to college, learning it from a new partner (now a partner of six years). It made so much more sense than anything I'd learned. It took two years to realize fluidity was a step in the journey, and I was more feminine than I'd understood before. It wasn't about stepping towards femininity--it was about seeing the ways I'd distanced myself from masculinity without ever understanding it. I didn't have the words, so I did without. The entire process has been so subtle and powerful, like the shifting of continents over the earth's crust, that the best answer I can give is this: it was not a shocking, sudden movement. It was a slow crystallization, and I continue to learn today.



5) Shout out to big supporters:


Oh, goodness, I'm no good at this. There are so many people who have supported me. I worry that those who don't make it on the list will be hurt. I wouldn't have survived the last four years without the people who share my life, and I'm sparing with the people whom I'll allow to say. Suffice to say this: if I keep you around, you're a gem that lights up my world. You make life worth living. I'll help you remember that even when everything seems dark, the same way you did for me.



6) Learn more resources:


Honestly, my education in such matters is a hodge-podge of personal experience and interaction with other members of the community. Most of my internet learning goes on through Wikipedia, so if you're willing to treat it like tv-tropes, go nuts. Otherwise, I don't go in for searching out specific places people can learn more. I'm busy figuring my own world out.



7) What would you like to see the Albuquerque leaders do to support you?


I would like to see less binarism. Leather Fiesta, while a wonderful time, had a men's dungeon and a women's dungeon. It was a painful thing to look at. It was painful in more ways than one. I understand the reason, and I support it: safety and comfort. But I think there could be a middle-ground: smaller dungeons that people are absolutely not allowed to be in unless actively playing is one possibility that comes to mind. I don't know the answer. I don't mean to say that my pain overrides the reasoning behind it. I just know that the presence, and its results, were very painful to me.


8) What would you like others going through your path to know?



Shit happens. Pain happens. I won't pretend that happenstance isn't a cruel, uncompromising taskmaster. But I will tell you this: every failure, every pain, and every disappointment is an opportunity to remember who you are. We have a choice to absorb our pain and let it become us, enacting our pain on others in sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle ways. Or we have a choice to feel it, let it pass through us, and take from it the lesson we typically forget applies to both physical and emotional discomfort: this tells you something should be different. Find what should change, and try to change it. Remember how that pain washed over you when you feel the urge to cause pain to others. Remember it as the signpost it is: this was wrong.




9) What is your biggest inner personal challenge?


Not typing too much.
More seriously, it's balancing shame with self-love. I learned shame early, and have only recently begun to learn self-love. The world I grew up in taught me that I was worthless, and this was the spur for me trying to learn how to be a good person. Which is undeniably a good, central part of who I am. But it is also the source of my depression, my suicidal ideation, my fear of being trapped in one place for the rest of my life. From shame I learned how to demand of myself how to be perfect, and was only with humility that I learned that perfection doesn't exist, and how to admit that I have done good work in the name of my journey. I take pride in that, as I take fullness from the work it will always demand.




10) What do you get tired of hearing or experiencing?


"Why aren't you going to transition?"
I'm not unlearned. I know what transition entails, to a large extent. It's pain, and it's money, and it's years of work, all to get only marginally closer to presenting how I feel. When I put on a dress, I get more dysphoric--those curve-demanding garments remind my brain that my body is nothing like what our culture demands of a woman. I know myself enough to know I'll never feel like I look beautiful to others that way, even if it does get closer to my weird gender identity. As it stands, I sometimes feel beautiful to others now. Handsome, sometimes.


This body is a walking container. If I'm stuck with a masculine one, at least I like my hands and my face. At least I have people who love me. I'll incorporate masculinity and femininity until I find a blend that expresses who I am. And I'm tired of people telling me that fear shouldn't stop me from transitioning.



Thank  you Lovely Lady Tanner for opening your world to  us. Your words and insight are greatly appreciated.