Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re talking about an aspect of being transgender that I suspect most cis folks have never even thought about (which makes some degree of sense, because you’ve never needed to). Time to learn about: BOYMODE and GIRLMODE.
Basically boymode is simply when a trans woman, or nonbinary person, dresses in their old man-coded clothing after having begun transition. Girlmode is the same in the other direction, when trans men or nonbinary people dress in their old woman-coded clothing after having begun transition. I don’t actually boymode anymore, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
When I first began transitioning and slowly dipped my toes into getting and wearing women’s clothes, the sensation was almost completely overwhelming. After a lifetime of feeling awful and gross and hating my body, just changing my clothes had a massive effect on me.
I went into much greater detail about the importance of that in the trans tuesday on HEAVILY GENDERED CLOTHES AND TRANS PEOPLE.
Because dressing in the clothes I’d always wanted was SO overwhelming at first, I didn’t feel I could do it every day. I needed time to process and, for lack of a better term, feel my feelings. I needed to explore all the things that were happening and going on inside my head.
And so I ended up alternating for a few weeks… a day dressed as me, a day in boymode. Rinse and repeat until I became more comfortable and used to how women’s clothes made me feel and how it changed the way I moved.
Once that happened, boymode dropped out entirely because I didn’t need it, and certainly didn’t want it. Except the entire world is not like being at home, is it? But at the beginning, I was trapped at home as it was early on in the pandemic.
For a more in-depth discussion of a PANDEMIC TRANSITION, do see its Trans Tuesday.
Even though society was still largely shut down, I still had to make masked grocery runs, and at first I was terrified to even take out the trash dressed as myself. A lot of that is how scary it feels to possibly be PERCEIVED when you spent your whole life not.
But even worse is the very real concern we trans ladies face of harassment (or worse) when people think we’re “men in dresses.” The combo of the two was a new level of being overwhelmed that I had to acclimate to.
See the trans tuesday on CONFIDENCE for what it was like when that all changed for me, and I started to very much WANT to be perceived and seen, to rightfully take up the space that’s mine.
You can also see the changes confidence brought about, and the stark difference in being in a tux in boymode and in a dress as the real me in the trans tuesday on A TRANS RE-WEDDING.
But the bottom line is that before I was entirely comfortable being perceived as myself, I simply could NOT handle doing those grocery runs as myself.
So as I collected lady-cut t-shirts and tops and jeans and skirts and dresses, and slowly pruned the old male-coded clothing from my wardrobe… I held on to some of it. I mean a few have sentimental value, but those are a separate thing entirely.
I held on to the others as a costume, a shield I could wear just so it was one less thing I had to worry about. But it made me feel… awful. See the Trans Tuesday on GENDER DYSPHORIA for more on that.
And yes, wearing a dude t-shirt and jeans to get groceries was enough to hurt. It felt like 400 pounds of darkness just absolutely CRUSHING me. But for a while I felt I didn’t have any other choice.
Because there’s a much more important reason someone might boymode or girlmode, and that has to do with legal identification. During that time, I was still in the middle of trying to get legal ID I could carry with me that proved I am who I am. See the Trans Tuesday on LEGAL NAME AND GENDER MARKER CHANGES.
And for more on how that situation absolutely impacts tons of trans people, especially in states that make changing those things difficult (with many added layers of cis gatekeepers who have to approve of us), see the trans tuesdays on the 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS.
So if I was out dressed as me, and a cashier needed to see ID to check against the card I was using, or a cop pulled me over for something… I’d have to explain to this total stranger that I’m trans and don’t have a new ID yet.
Then, not only do I have to worry about whether or not they’ll believe me, but I have to worry about how they’re going to REACT. And unless you’ve been visiting another planet for the past fifty years, you’re aware of how many cis people treat us.
That is a forced outing of us as trans to whoever we’re talking to. And listen, I don’t hide my transness and have zero desire to, but I also don’t shout it at people who may very well harm me for it.
And sometimes all that felt like it’d be too much to bear. But the dysphoria of going boymode was ALSO too much to bear. It’s even worse, actually (at least for me, I don’t speak for all trans people). Imagine being stuck between those two options. IMAGINE IT.
I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t boymode at all anymore, and I haven’t in years. I just couldn’t.
Can’t.
Won’t.
It’s asking me to hide my truth, which I was forced to do for my entire life, and it would destroy me. Entirely. I cannot put myself through that again, not ever again. I don’t know how to explain to you how bad living a lie every moment of your life is. It’s misery.
But what was going to happen if a cop pulled me over or someone else needed to see my ID for some reason? A lot of uncomfortable shit. Because even back then, I looked almost NOTHING like the photo on my old ID anymore.
I found it hard to believe my old ID and early transition me were the same person (much less now, where I look like an entirely different human being), so how the hell would a total stranger, who may already be bigoted against trans people, react?
So, cis friends, maybe try to think about what that might be like for you, to have to put on a costume so that people won’t hassle you. So that bigots might not know to direct their hate at you.
But the costume weighs half a ton and has big blinking lights that only you can see, and they repeatedly flash I’M A LIAR in your face, and it stabs you in the heart all the while. We shouldn’t have to choose between that or possible harassment.
And to my trans siblings out there who still have to boymode or girlmode for safety, I know it’s hard. I know it hurts. But if it’s what you have to do to stay safe, know that it doesn’t make you any less trans. It doesn’t mean you’re a fraud or a fake or not trans enough.
Because this is something we’ve ALL had to deal with.
Even though we absolutely should not have to.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillystranstuesdays.com