On Trans Day of Visibility 2026

I am the shortest person in the men's bathroom, the only one with painted fingernails and a KN95 mask that hides my mustache, so nobody is quite sure if I'm in the right place. I try to get by on the unspoken bro code of eyes-to-the-floor. I wait for the one stall and do not join the merry-go-round of urinals. I hold my breath. I wash my tiny hands after, thoroughly. This all garners more double takes than I'd like for comfort. If it were up to me, a huge germaphobe, I’d go single-stall or women’s room every time. But when I ask the employee at Michael's to unlock the bathroom, without specifying, they nearly always choose the men's for me. (As we joke every time, I've been "Assigned Male At Michael's," or AMAM.) So you tell me what I'm supposed to do.

In the same day, wearing the same outfit, I get "ma'am" and "sir" from different people. Sometimes, from the same person in the same sentence, a stuttered self-correction, an awkward admission. I do not correct people any more when they get my gender wrong because nearly everyone does. "Ladies and gentlemen." "Mr./Mrs." "Right this way, sir." "Ma'am, please step up." I don't fault people. Whatever they say. Our society has made any other outcome impossible at this moment in time. My visibility as a gender nonconforming person is in being an anomaly to the gendered roles. On the best days, it's an interesting experiment, a curious question I get to take data on throughout the day. Other times, most of the time, it is a draining mental calculation, a puzzle I cannot unwind, a Saw trap of a binary society's creation.

It's demoralizing to be chronically misunderstood, but I also recognize that most people don't have the interest or capacity to unpack their deeply-ingrained ideas of gender. So I'm "her" at Costco renewing my membership card and "hey man" later picking up my car from the mechanic. Neither fully right or wrong.

I tend to narrowly miss everyone's expectations of the gender I should be performing, whatever they think that is.

I used to hold identity labels very closely. Felt wrapped in the security of knowing there were good words to describe my experience. Lately, I feel like the only experience I can cling to is change itself. The certainty that whoever I am now is not who I will eventually be. That none of us are exactly what our parents thought we'd be as babies. Labels are only useful if you need them to be. I am a person. Even if they take away my hormones, tell me what to call myself, try to make me hide myself away, at the end of it all, I will still be a person. I have changed before, and I will change again. It is a process they cannot stop.

I don't really talk about being trans in my daily life these days. I don't offer my pronouns up by pin or in conversation anymore unless asked, and usually I'm being just asked because someone thinks they have clocked me as Trans. In "what direction" they think, I'm never entirely sure, and neither are they. Who knows what is said about me when I'm not there to hear it. I don't really care what people call me. It always says more about them than me.

I often feel like there is a two-way mirror between me and the rest of the world. I can see out relatively clearly, but when people look at me, all they see is their own ideas reflected back at them. Whether their worldview includes trans people and gender nonconformity or not, that is what they see and I become reduced to a symbol of their ideology.

I am hyper-vigilant of my trans identity and all its outward signals (my genderfuck tattoos, the X on my ID, the aesthetic gender nonconforming choices I make), and yet it is invalidated constantly in my interactions with people. Rarely am I seen as neither gender, and when I am, people react negatively to that idea. Social interactions follow an unconscious script based on gender, and when you defy expectation or surprise, often people overreact. Whether I am uncomfortably overly included and accommodated (very common in white "liberal" spaces) or openly excluded and ignored (usually from either version of single-sex cis spaces), I am only seen as what I represent, rather than as a fully realized human person.

Visibility for trans people right now means exposing ourselves to discrimination, violence, or the loss of our lives. Trans people everywhere are scared, and rightly so. I think about where I'm going, how I'm getting there, who I may encounter along the way. I consider every accessory, every outfit, how much you can see my tattoos, my makeup or strategic lack thereof, the patches and pins on my backpack, the color of the cover of the book I bring along. I want nothing more than to be able to just exist, to not have to worry about who is looking and whether it is with malice. It is exhausting. And I have it relatively easy with my white privilege and masculinity.

I consider also how I am seen on the cameras that follow my every move through the city where I live. The watchful eyes of CCTV, CTA buses, traffic cameras, all recording some version of me, presumably the most authentic one, a fully objective, all-seeing third party point of view, and I find myself wondering what the movie of my life would look like as seen on surveillance. These little shiny eyes capture moments of joy, sorrow, frustration, road rage, hugs goodbye, silent questions asked to ourselves. They see every outfit of the day, the seat given up for the older person on the bus, every door held open behind you. The little ways we are human to each other. Who am I to the camera on the street outside the bank? What is my gender according to Ring? What does trans healthcare look like in the Panopticon?

Despite it all, I am happy to be trans and endlessly grateful to be able to live my life authentically. I would choose to be this way over and over again. We all should have the right to modify our bodies or not, to make informed decisions about how we want to exist in the world, to be ourselves and be loved openly in return.

I wish for a future where visibility did not come with risks or threats attached for trans people. I wish for a world where our existence is normal and did not elicit suspicion or violence. I wish for a world where everyone is encouraged to explore who they are, and be their best selves in public.

This TDOV, don't just look at trans people as objects of debate or display. Don't consume us in media and not advocate for us in real life. See us. Listen to us. Recognize our shared humanity. Understand that we are people. We are humans first.