A few days ago I made a decision about my gender expression. It so happened that yesterday, I passed by the very same beach where all this brave discovery began 6 years ago. I sat and meditated for a while and then made a video.
The video below is episode 2, from 6 years ago and is truly where I started with a deeper level of self discovery.
..and this is the video that I made…episode 5..
Since travel bans started, I’ve realised that the main reason I wanted to leave Trinidad so badly is that I didn’t want to face Trinbagonian attitudes and pressures toward the transition I had been deciding upon. This country is an amalgam of homophobia, transphobia, gender misunderstanding, alongside chauvinist and misogynist ideals. The list continues with the sentiments expressed in hypocritical barbershop conversations that don’t bring us, as a country, any closer to loving people outside of the gender and sexuality ‘norms’ that we think legitimize our opinions.
I share my life so that people like me could know that we are real and gain the courage to overcome Caribbean sentiment. Differences in gender and gender expression is not a ‘white people thing’.. For me, “..my whole life I’ve felt like I am in between things.” I think we, myself included, the whole world have been really stuck on a very ‘this’ or ‘that’ way of looking at gender but the more I understand myself, the more I’m able to articulate it. When I say ‘between things’, I don’t mean between genders (male and female). I mean between my ability to express my masculinity and being perceived as being more feminine than I am because of my curvaceousness and other physical female traits.
I don’t want to be a man – I don’t want to switch out my vagina for something else. I don’t want to change my name or write ‘MALE’ on my forms.. what I do want, is to be able to express my masculinity visibly. I tend to overcompensate on feminizing myself because of my body. I want my masculinity to be SEEN but I still want to BE a woman (in terms of my gender assignment but not femininity).
Disclaimer: Please note, this is MY experience of my gender and gender expression, and is not to be applied to everyone you consider to be different in these areas.
JanBerry 