Reflections: Surface Level podcast

EP: Beautiful Gowns, Pt 2 *I wrote this over a year ago, when the episode came out. It's been sitting in my drafts since... until now.*

Honestly, this is why when we're having conversations about gender nonconformity and masculinity there needs to be different representations of masculinity present in the room. Not just people with penises. And not just people who have not experienced life through a coersed feminine lens.

Some of us did not get to choose femininity.

Thankfully, through the tutelage of Black beings I will forever admire for praying life into me and laying healing hands when my body needed it the most, I realized my capabilities and unlearned the internalized misogyny deeply rooted into my psyche. This helped me to heal from the onslaught of misogynoir and femmephobia I experienced, which has freed me up to do and be anything I can imagine. It’s so fly. Sometimes I can reflect what people deem as feminine in my physical expression. However, my grounded state of being is more aligned with masculine energies. Which, by the way, means nothing. We are the sum of our parts. All of us.

If you're gonna talk about us, incorrectly, at least have the balls to invite us into the room.

Tomboy is a reductive term that came from an ignorant, Cisgender point of view projected onto Trans identities.

Some may identify with the term, but to me it sounds and feels like a form of coercive branding; especially in reflection of my younger experiences with that word.

I had no other language for my experiences so I was forced to use this word to describe myself, as I heard it used to describe me. But Tomboy is so far from who I am and who I was as a child.

I was a human soul, a blob if you will, that saw himself as he saw the boys, bois, and masculine-leaning people in his life. One and the same.

I am still a blob in a human body. I see myself in some forms of the masculine in my life, and I see myself in some forms of the feminine as well. I know where my essence lies, however. I see Them as I see Him, one and the same.

That is my truth. Let's expand these queer spaces for more truth to be let in.