Call Me Wryly: An Open Letter to Loved Ones Who Intentionally Misgender Me

Hello friend, lover, family member/sibling. You are receiving this letter because you have called me by my former name, or refused to use my pronoun (they/them), and/or because you have willfully expressed sentiments that are doubtful of or hostile to the existence and experiences of transgender people (e.g. "transsexuals are confusing to our children.")

You might already know, but I'm transgender. I was assigned female by doctors and raised as a girl by my parents. For me being a girl was like wearing an ill fitting pair of pants for 12 years (from adolescence into mid 20's). I had to constantly adjust, cinch in, and fidget to find any semblance of comfort and normalcy.

But also I'd just gotten used to that discomfort and all the rituals surrounding it. I'd become accustomed to the fact that the gender I was raised with didn't quite fit. And honestly, I thought it was like that for all girls. I assumed that being a girl was supposed to be uncomfortable. The cultural teachings I was raised with about, the way Eve was punished for the Original Sin, and how "pain is beauty" supported this theory.

Now, I don't want to get into the specifics of my gender identity and how I realized it (we can talk about that later, just ask) but I want you to know that the thing you have the luxury of calling an opinion about gender is not a luxury I have. My gender is insistent and unconscious. I can't erase it or push it away with a conscious opinion. I can't choose to feel my gender differently any more than you can choose to dream what you dream about. If I suddenly changed my mind back to believing that trans people are just mentally ill (what I was taught and believed before) I would still feel uncomfortable in the ill fitting role of "girl." I'd still have to adjust constantly to get by and probably still feel mysteriously disingenuous (like I did for most of my early 20s).


So I took off the role of girl, and it feels sort of like standing in front of a crowd not wearing pants, or wearing something that is unrecognizable as a garment to most people.

People look away. People call me wrong, they call me obscene. But Lordy is it ever comfortable. Perhaps more importantly, it's honest. Not everyone recognizes me this way, but those who do see qualities and attributes that would never have been able to come through if I was still a girl.

That recognition, the comfort and honesty I share with myself and with my friends and family is worth any rejection or prejudice I face. The wisdom I get from being myself honestly is so much richer than pretending that my soul can fit into the outfit society gave me (which is a very fine thing. Womanhood is beautiful, just not a good fit for me).

Now comes the part that will possibly be offensive/difficult:
When you call me"she" and "her" or when you use my my old name, it hurts me. It stings like a cruel nickname. Like being called "Freckles" if you hate your freckles or "Carrot Top" because you're a redhead. It hurts me. Refusing to use my chosen name and pronoun hurts me. (Using the wrong pronoun/name by accident also hurts, but we all hurt each other through slips of the tongue sometimes).

Refusing to use the name and pronoun of another person is a form of bullying. It's an enforcement of "this is how it is" on people who are harmed by the current status quo of gender. It is the same as saying "I care more about the way I think than I care about you and your well being." When I hear you say, "I just can't change the way I see or talk about you" what I hear is, "I'd rather see the world the way I always have than consider a trans person's reality." It's bull-headed and inconsiderate, and usually ends up with the refusing person's opinion being seen by society as antiquated. Yes it's hard to change old habits. But that's what we do for the people we love. When they need us to, we change the way we do things.

All of this leads me into answering the question you probably asked yourself when you began reading the very first paragraph of this letter. Yes, my friend, the things you said/did were transphobic. They didn't feel transphobic to you because it's all theory for you. Your gender makes already sense to you. So my confusing gender must seem like a theory for you to contemplate and entertain at your leisure, a hypothetical you can safely abandon when it conflicts with how you see the world. But it's not theory to me, it's not a choice or an opinion. My gender is confusing 100% of the time. It's an inescapably huge part of my life. I am what I am, which means I can't be what you think I should be, no matter how frustrating that makes your attempts to comprehend the world.

Also I need you to know that your words hurt me and scare me. But I'm probably going to get over that fear quickly because I know you. I know how tender and generous you are. I know you care about me and probably didn't intend to hurt me. I remember how we bonded over the specific and fascinating details of our shared passions and history. I remember how we grew together. I love you and probably think of you as family.

In a sense I'm grateful that you've spoken what you believe out in the open and are willing to let others question it and maybe even question it yourself. It gives me hope for my future. It's a concrete set of thoughts and behaviors I can identify as harmful to me. Even if you don't believe me about the pain, your self-aware proclamation of these transphobic words and sentiments could be part of beginning steps to change how you treat and think about trans people. It's an acknowledgement of the conflict between my lived experience and your worldview.

But even if you aren't changing your mind just yet, I still want your friendship and love. Because I know you see there's more to me than just my (confusing) gender and I know you can learn from me as I have learned so much from you. I may not be able to withstand the thousand cuts of being misgendered forever, but for now I love you enough to endure the discomfort. 

I believe in our relationship and in both our abilities to change. I didn't choose to love you, but I am choosing to find a way to keep loving you in the future. Because our relationship is pretty damn great. I know I've been clumsy about it in the past, but right now, today, in this letter, I want to invite you into the uncertainty of my life, which means witnessing the uncertainty of my gender. It'll be hard for us both, but I want you here, with me. You are irreplaceable. I don't want to lose you when/if the time comes that I can no longer stand the pain of being misgendered.

With Love, Hope, and the deepest Gratitude,

Wryly T. McCutchen

The Fosters will melt your heart! (a review)

Last month my partner and I started watch The Fosters on netflix.

It has some problematic elements (like siding with the cops, sappy lingering on teenage romance, and comically flat portrayals of poverty/non-middle-class people) but if you're a sucker for Very Special Episodes then you should definitely watch this show. Every episode is very special. Just like all seven of the principle characters. The Fosters addresses many real life issues that other light hearted family shows are unwilling to associate themselves with.

I was particularly impressed with this show's portrayal of rape and the social aftermath and personal trauma that it causes. I've also been impressed with the way that it portrays the subtlety with which most bullying and exclusion happens. While it is still made more obvious for the show, its presentation is more subtle than I have seen before. It's much closer to the realities of discrimination.

All that said, it's an incredibly schmaltzy show that knows how to stick its tear-jerking claws into your heart strings. The writers are masters at making you think the worst is coming and then softening the dramatic blow so you feel sweet sweet relief (in fact I suspect one of the cliffhangers of the most recent midseason finale will pan out this way). The turn of events can also surprise with very dramatic stuff that seems to come out of nowhere and hit you in the guts.

Just based on the amount of principal characters and the vast array of diverse and subversive topics it covers, The Fosters could have been an awful mess of cute faces and progressive Hallmark moments. Diversity Soup if you will. And I'm not gonna lie, it feels a bit like that in the beginning. But by the 5th episode you are fully in love with every character and you physically twitch when they make the wrong choice for loving reasons. Which is basically what drives the plot of this show.

You watch it for the characters. Because you love them, pretend they are your friends, and want them to be happy. The characters and their motivations all ring pretty true and the actors work exceptionally well together. The way they avoid, sublimate, and misread their stresses and anxieties is painfully realistic. Some of the "drama" of the show is definitely played up in a way that is unrealistic, but that's not really what you watch the show for right?

Also for a show that centers around a lesbian couple and their family, we see a whole lot more of the teens doing sex things than we do the moms. I think that what The Fosters need the most is more sexy lesbian mom sex. This is my biggest critique of the show. Not enough gay sex.

I guess my point here is, if you liked watching Boy Meets world and My So-Called Life and if you get tired of every LGBTQ show out there being "gritty" and "edgy" then this is the show for you. It doesn't turn away from tougher issues but still leaves you feeling good about the world. Enjoy!

PS: I tried to keep spoilers to a minimum in this review but if you want to read more about the show and don't mind spoilers Autostraddle has some amazing posts about it.

Allen's Treehouse*

When I was fifteen my bother had a saw fall on his head from 20 ft in the air. I don't remember if I actually saw this happen or not but there's a clear picture in my mind of what happened and I remember thinking he was dead or that surely he was doing to die. My brother is not dead. Though they did put several staples into a considerable gash that was smack dab in the middle of his hairline.

My brother has always been interested in beautifully doomed ideas (not that he'd ever call them that). During his teenage years he'd blather incessantly about plans for a perpetual motion engine. I loved him for that.

The saw dropped from a bucket of tools he was hoisting a up to the platform he'd rigged between the two douglas firs that loomed over my dad's garage. Allen had set up a complex system of ropes and pulley's in order to bring up the tools and the doors he'd salvaged from the clutches of condemned buildings.

Nothing brought more color to his face than encountering a sturdy old thing he'd found a new use for. (I look forward to growing old with my brother). He was going to build the entire treehouse out of the heavily beveled planks that sat in old frames and had, without humans, lost their vocation. It disappoints me deeply that my shame-prone, teenage-poet self never noticed how lovely of  project he'd embarked on (though I guess nobody starts out a good poet huh?)

Sometimes we, we being he, myself, and our little sister Ariel, would climb up there to play cards together or just to get away from our parents for a while. Nothing against our parents, but we lived in a small house. We were all post pubescent or in the full throes of it by that point. And kids over a certain age just feel some relief knowing there's a place in the world where adults the age of their parents can't get to.

This was not a tree house for children though. At nearly forty feet up the climb was physically strenuous and probably too dangerous even for us. You'd arrive at the top pretty winded and surprisingly grateful to have something solidly geometric and level for your body to rely on. It was never not scary for me. Though I think Allen was never afraid. Sometimes I think  he never is.

It was a paradise up there. Seriously. It only takes thirty feet of climbing to reach an altered state. And us being the super uncool straight edge kids were were (I think I was even afraid of drinking beer at the time) it was the most badass we got to feel. When school let out for summer we took our binders up and threw them all the way down.

But one day in August a strong gust of wind blew in, brusquely tossing half our playing cards onto the neighbor's roof. That malicious chunk of wind also knocked loose a door that had yet to be strapped to anything. It hit Ariel on the shoulder and head pretty hard, and she decided never to climb up there again.

I still went though. Still dreamed with my brother about how good it was going to look with all those unhinged things brought together against the wind and in spite of gravity and expired purposes.

But when he dropped that saw on himself, and was rushed to the hospital in need of metal teeth to hold together the new mouth he'd almost opened in his skull, our parents got scared. And we stopped trying to make lofty things out of old openings and rusty hinges.

The treehouse waited half finished and lonely for about a week. Then a bunch of raccoons braved the heights and started a family up there. The last time I climbed up (without my parent's permission) the whole place smelled like shit and animals.

Three years ago the city had my family cut those trees down. And now whenever I visit my childhood home there's too much sky. I have no idea what happened to the treehouse of old doors. I like to think it's ghostly opening still hangs up there, 20 feet above the mossy roof of my father's garage. But the wind probably blew that away too.


*as with all memoir, the exact details of this piece are subject to vast amounts of creative misremembering and some pretty shady guesswork.

Breakfast sensations (short sweet)

I stuck my tongue into the bottom of the nearly empty syrup ramekin and let the sweet meet my thoughts. It was pleasing. The exceptionally bright and heated morning made it a chore to walk on the unshaded part of the sidewalk. But we walked there anyways.

We met our friends for breakfast. They'd just returned from Ohio after two weeks of waiting for a family elder to finally succumb the whatever the hospital told them as the matter. And I don't want to talk too long about intimate suffering that doesn't belong to me. But it was good to see friends again.

I've been battling a fickle fever since Thursday and the oatmeal in my bowl is about all I can handle. I make conversation as best as I can and try to remind myself that just being there, that is a big deal. I don't have to be witty to be enough. I miss my friends and I am glad they are back in town again. And I don't have to be entertaining to deserve this life.

March Was Enormous

It's been almost two months since I've posted.

So much has happened. It's hard to know how to tell it all and what I should mention first.

Last month took a trip back to Seattle. It was a strange delightful and full of both warmth and ache.

And also It was very very wet.
I collected so many hugs from the loved ones I left behind in the Puget Sound.
I visited my grandmother who'd had a stroke the week before I arrived

A few hours after my after my flight got into SeaTac I received the first of two life-changing phone calls I would get in March.

The call was from chair of the MFA program at Antioch University. He said "I'm delighted to offer you admission to our program." The cohort begins this June. I was elated and confused and many many feelings besides that. Antioch was my top choice of the three schools I applied to, and the personal attention, professed commitment, and recognition I've received from the faculty has been amazing. But it's going to cost a lot. After a conversation with my partner in which he advised me against going graduate school (he asked "Could you wait a year?"), I spent two very painful days thinking I wouldn't go.

I know I might be in debt forever, and that this decision is more risk than investment but I couldn't say no. I sent off my Intent to Register form last week. Bring on the debt.





Last Thursday morning my father called me to tell me that my grandma Iris McCutchen had died. It's been less than a week. My mind and my body is still processing her being gone. And I have NO idea what to say or think about this.





I'm sick this week, but part of what I've gleaned from the frenzy of March was to keep moving and that  I shouldn't let shame and fear stop me from doing.

Earlier this week I started a Patreon account (a crowdfunding tool for creative folks like me):

And I've once again committed myself to writing a poem every day in the month of April. And sort of against my better judgement I'm rebooting my tumblr to archive the poems I write over the next 29 days.

So here I go.

Being Poor is Part of my Culture

Privilege check: There were some things my family didn't have when I was growing up: new clothes, fresh vegetables, access to the internet, cable tv, etc. but we always had an adequate amount to eat, our house held in the warm and out the cold, and even though it was cramped with six of us, my family was (and still is) a loving one. We also had a loving network of friends and extended family who shared resources with us when we needed. I am endlessly thankful for all these resources. Because of them, I didn't really know we were poor until middle school and I realized that "cool" was something my parents couldn't afford (esp since my dad's business just went under). The comfort of love went a long way. I was poor, in my mind I still am, but, when it comes to my family (both blood and chosen) I have always been fortunate. Being poor taught me how to recognize and respect this fortune.

Getting Over My Toxic Exceptionalism

I'm applying for grad school this fall. Specifically I'm applying for MFA programs in order to study both poetry and creative non-fiction.

As some of you may know I have a fraught history with education. I dove straight into college after high school and after college straight into graduate school for teaching (which I failed to finish).

My motivation for crashing headlong into academia was a strange amalgam of insecurity, fear, shame, and a trust in the messages public school had taught me about exceptionalism. I was taught and believed that I was exceptional based on my high achievement in early schooling and ability to charm adults. I believed I was exceptional and this belief has derailed my life for a long while.

In high school my grades started to slip little bit, for a few weeks this terrified me, but eventually, in order to maintain my view of myself as exceptional, I decided that some parts of high school just didn't matter, that I was above them and that I should just concentrate on getting out because college was where I would really succeed anyway.

Being a fist generation college student I always felt a sense of non-belonging in academia. There were words and social structures I didn't understand (like fellowship), and even though I was sure that my intelligence made me exceptional, I felt constantly terrified that I would be spotted as an impostor in this unfamiliar world of academia.

In order to blend in I concentrated on more "rigorous" studies. I eschewed full time focus on some of my greatest passions poetry, writing, feminism, queer studies. These where things I KNEW I loved but didn't let myself do so openly. Somehow I learned that no successful person ever showed anything but ancillary interest in such topics.

By the time I reached my senior year in college I had been able to weave some of my passions into the conventional academic success route. I was working as a tutor at the writing center and taking courses in education and literature.

I knew that to survive and be acceptable as a literary & creative person in this world I would have to be a teacher. And my current politics and conception of the world told me I needed to be a public high school teacher. And I LOVED the idea of teaching. I still do. But for a long time I ignored the realities of what a public school teaching position meant. I care about pedagogies and how people learn but I don't have the capacity to throw my full self into the physically demanding often 60 hour work week of being a radical high school teacher.

Though I ultimately failed in the program, it was through Evergreen's MIT program I learned the most invaluable tool for deconstructing the lie of exceptionalism.

On the very first day all the students in the cohort read a small section of a study by Carol Dweck. It demonstrated that children who were taught that their intelligence and skills where changeable attributes vastly outperformed children who where taught that their intelligence and skills where fixed. The belief that your skills are changeable enables you to take the risks necessary for doing great work. Even though I learned it that day on a conscious level it has taken years to really sink in and integrate into my views of the world.

My intelligence and skills are not exceptional. Nor do I need them to be. Knowing this frees me from the burden of "using my gifts wisely and graciously". It frees me for the expected paths of people of high/exceptional intelligence. Part of me is ashamed that I once thought of mysef this way.

But another part of me knows that thinking this way was a reflexive short cut to getting myself into a different situation in life.

I knew I didn't want to have the same sort of life my older cousins and my neighbors where having, so I latched onto an idea that obfuscated my responsibility for those wants. I didn't want a different life because I just wanted it, I of course wanted it because I was a different sort of person than my family and community. I let myself believe I was excpetional.

This was of course a mischaracterization of both myself and those in my communities. I wanted the things I wanted because I wanted them, it was simple as that.

The terrifying freedom in Dweck's growth mindset is that I no longer have a excuse to duck the things I feel compelled to do and to do well and frequently. I can no longer hide behind my "gift" of intelligence as an excuse to do what the world has deemed to be the right thing. Now I'm forced to look into my own wants and based on what I find there, create "the right thing".

Increasingly in the last 3 years this has been writing and the study of feminism, classism, and queer issues. I never directly studied such issues in college (though I enjoyed supplemental courses and queer/class/feminist lenses whenever they were brought into classes).

It's funny that being in the "real world" rather than in school has really brought home for me in a material way how very little it matters whether one is exceptional or not. Commitment to and showing up for what I want to do matters so much more. Effort is the only real measurable form of progress I can make toward creating a significant body of work.

In some sense I have always known that writing was the life for me (mind you not the only life I live). Even before I knew how to write, I remembered the thrill of telling stories to my siblings and friends on camping trips or on the playground.

I had a strikingly beautiful realization my junior year of college that's resonated since. When assigned to do an anthropological study on the language of students who are in the age group you anticipate teaching. I chose to record a conversation between my two sisters (15 &17 at the time). In listening to the tapes afterward I realized that the family & community I had so tried to escape and exceptionalize myself away from where the very source of my love of language and my ease at slipping into playing with it. My family's dinner tables is rife with puns and amusement at near/internal rhymes and regularly engage in both intentional and unintentional spoonerisms.

When I started writing poetry in the 9th grade My father claimed to have no interest or ability to understand poetry. To this day that moment, or I suppose the many moment that led up to my reaching this conclusion, infuriated me. At the time I used my frustration as an excuse to distance myself from my "lowbrow" family. But today I know, my lowbrow family is the source of much of the rich, risky, unselfconscious choices I make in my writing. And that my father was simply reciting what his teachers had told him about his ability to understand language.

I am not an exception to my community of origin. I am what I am to a large extent because of that community. My family taught me not to be afraid to play, and they didn't teach me that because they thought I was exceptional, they taught me that because they loved me and I was a part of them. I still am. My family will always be a part of my writing.

Since leaving school I'm so grateful to have gone through the euphemism of "getting back to my roots". And so as I start drafting my artists statement and gaze over grad school applications I am terrified. I am terrified that by going back to school I will once again fall into thinking about myself as exceptional or that I will not be accepted if I refuse to. I am afraid that this deeply important connection I have developed to my families (both blood and chosen) will not be seen as valid or rigorous enough. I am afraid.

But I am applying anyway. Because I want learn how to put a book together. I want to learn what tools I need to make a living out of my passion and how to use those tools. I want the credentials to teach and to have the professional and academic communities offer a venue for my ability to recognize and mentor the voices of others.

So yes, I'm scared. But it is no longer the fear of being found out as non exceptional, or as an impostor. I know that I will always feel a little bit strange and out of place in the academy.

I'm afraid of the cost, not just in dollars (most application to grad schools cost at least 50$) but also on my psyche and on my relationships with the people in my communities and families. I know that schooling will pull me away from the people I love (especially considering that some of these schools are hundreds of miles away). Never again do I want to be encouraged to disregard my roots. But if through an MFA program I am pulled closer to my craft and I'm able to cultivate a more sustainable relationship with my passion it might just be worth it.



Postscript:
This post was of course inspired greatly by the work of Carol Dweck, my family, my own failures, the process of deciding to apply for grad school and Sherman Alexie's fantastic piece for the Atlantic about the poem that changed his life (which I found both deeply inspiring and unfortunately slightly dismissing of his culture of origin).

Some of my upcoming posts may include drafts of my artists statement.

Dear Dad*

*I just sent this letter to my dad over facebook after he commented on a picture of my new hair with the words "Too short!"

Hey, I didn't like this comment. I'd like for us to talk about this in person in the near future, but because this is the second time I've felt the need to delete your comments I wanted to let you know why.

I do not appreciate the majority of your comments about my appearance. Especially when your words encourage me to appear "prettier" or more "girly/womanly". I've decided to look the way I look because it feels right to me. I like my hair short. I like my armpits & legs hairy and my belly and thighs a little fatty!

I love these things about myself and would appreciate it if you would comment no further on the choices I make about my own physical appearance. In other words: 

Unless I ask you directly (even if I am asking all of my internet community) I am not soliciting your opinion of my appearance.

When you tell me that I should have longer hair or that I should lose weight I feel afraid that you want me to feel ashamed of or doubt the choices I make in about to my own body. This fear is out of sync with the person I know you to be. You are and have been an incredible father and parent to me. I feel mind-bogglingly lucky to have you in my life. Truly, I love you more than I can say.

I am asking this of you because I trust in the person that you are and I believe in the relationship we share as as adults and friends. As my father & friend, I know that you don't want to hurt my feelings or pressure me to do something that doesn't feel right to me, because I know that you love me (this is never in doubt) and that you want me to love myself (this is the part I am afraid about).

The ways I've chosen to appear and how I treat my own body are the best way I know to love and express myself. It saddens me to think that you dislike the ways I am finding to love myself and my body. But I can live with the dislike. (people who love each other often do things that the other dislikes!) What hurts the most is being asked, cajoled, & hinted to about how I should change or stop doing things that clearly make me happy because of that dislike. 

If you dislike my hair that much then don't look at it. Stop telling me to grow it out. I love you the way you are. It doesn't mean I have to like everything about you. I request the same courtesy from you.

I know that you and I have differing opinions about fashion & appearance. But these are differences of aesthetic opinion. And I would love to discuss these differences with you more in depth when I see you at Christmas. But for now, can we keep our conversations about fashion and appearance general/philosophical & not about me in particular?

Thank you so much for being my Dad! There is no thanks that could be enough for that! I love you so much and can't wait to see you over the holidays. Give my love to Mom!

BIG HUGS! 

Wendy R.M.

This was difficult to write. But important. So glad I did.