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

Rage Rant (all I have time for before my haircut)

Sometimes I rage for no reason at all (or at least for no reason I can immediately discern). Right now is one of those times. The minuscule shortfalls of life feel like personal vindictive misfortunes laid out by a vengeful god. It's a good thing I don't believe in god because my anger would make me a very poor believer.

Acceptance of anything feels just out of my reach and all my joints are swollen with anxious fluids. My ankles feel just about ready to pop. And fuck, today was a good day at work. This collapse into seething is sudden and vicious and I am beginning to feel guilty about even feelings this way. I hate myself for letting it get this far. Blaming this body and its shortcomings has always been the easiest course of action to manage. I hate my hands for being dry and my fingertips for bleeding.

I've started to envy the people on tv who always have a reason when some awful feeling crawls inside their body. I wish there was always an answer beneath every outburst I feel might come spilling out of me. I just feel angry. There is no reason to it at all.

I can never observe myself with an anger like this. I can only be with that anger. There is not room for noticing what kind of person I am. And as much as I have fantasized about releasing the pain of self-consciousness I am scared of what not noticing myself might cause.

Even now after I have escaped the suffocation of my work environment, have scuttled away to the safety of a cafe and am sitting somewhat comfortably I still feel like my heart might be a volcano and that my dry hands could smash clean through a forty piece china set. I want to punch every motorist in the balls because one car came too close on the way over here. I want to give up entirely on the belief that good exists in anyone.

Again I blame myself for the venom. I think "I shouldn't have had so much diet soda" or "I should have drank more water" and I sometimes I just get exhausted thinking about how to attend to all the implications of the concept known as "self care".

Academic Roadblocks. Help me get through?

This is the kind of day where I have crawled back into bed 3 times.

This is the kind of day that I make my wardrobe decisions for very practical reasons:  I picked a warm top, with soft absorbent cuffs, perfect for wiping away wet salty regrets.

I feel lost. No that's not right I don't feel lost. I know where I am and I know where I want to go. I feel stuck. I feel stopped at every fucking turn and my chest is ready to give in

The heater is on full blast and I still feel frozen.

Applying for grad school is expensive. Each application costs a $50 or more and each school requires an official transcript be sent out from my alma mater which cost 10 bucks a pop.

That right there is close to $300, not to GO to any of these schools, just to be considered. On some level I see this as paying to be noticed by academia and it makes me sick.

Sometimes, for me, academia is a loan shark.

Yesterday I started looking into requesting official transcripts. Former students must apply to regain access to their school information. This morning, after waiting a full twenty four hours to have my student account rebooted I was excited to log on and send out my transcripts.

I couldn't order transcripts because of the holds had been placed on my account

Not only am I required to write and turn in an self-evaulation for the quarter during which I was asked to leave the graduate school program (which I can easily remedy and might give good closure), but more significantly I owe money.

Unbeknownst me, I owe the Evergreen State College $350. More than 100 of which is interest accrued during the three year period I didn't even know I owed money.

350 dollars is the exact amount of money I've saved up to apply to three grad schools. There is no room in my finances for something like this.

I don't want to be writing about this today. I want to be tucking my head under the covers and crying about the impossibility I feel right now. The frustration and shame are crushing. Distractions keep tugging at my numb, begging me to push away this reality.

I hate this because it's one more roadblock, telling me that grad school is too expensive for people like me to even apply for. And that I am not "serious" about writing because I don't have enough money. I feel like I should just give up and accept my station as clinically unhirable in my chosen field and not worth a twinkle in the eye of academia.

This is the exact kind of barrier that years ago made me think that if I was good enough at school, if I was smart enough, if I did everything just right, I'd somehow end up "better off" than my family.

I've given up on being better than or even better off. I just want to learn how to eek out some sort of subsistence by doing what I love. And I want to have a degree I can make a few bucks with. Right now I don't have and combination of the following necessities for doing so:
the right contacts or
the right professional tools and/or
the right letters at the end of my name

Getting these things is starting to seem like a complete impossibility. I know I'll feel differently tomorrow and my fighting energy will rise to take on these barriers. But I will need help.

I've never done this before, but I am starting to realize that part of planning for tomorrow, when I will be fighting for this again, is asking for help.

So here goes.
Will you help me follow my passion and become the writer I dream of being?

If you can please donate.

You can do so through my gittip account.

Or contact me through twitter and we can work something else out.

I know that those of you who read my blog care about my writing, and whether you can give or not, the fact that you care matters a whole fucking lot. So thanks. For the bottom of my bruised heart.

<3 WRM

No-home Sickness

My partner and I are currently between cities; in the process of leaving Seattle and finding a new city. Our roots are raw and recently cut. It's hard to be without a real home. It's even harder when I get sick.

I'm sick today and I was sick yesterday. I thought I might not be for a full 12 hours. But i was wrong. I suited up in an unapologetically dapper ensemble and took my sweetie out for fancy french food. It was excellent except for the vapid couple sitting next to us prattling on about the pounce of internet speculation. Though even through that my companion and I enjoyed exchanging mutually disdainful looks.  My partner tweeted about his fears and cynicism surrounding the tech culture and ruthless gentrification in San Francisco.

Neither of us want to live here but the job might be the right thing for my partner. So for now, we tolerate it.

After dinner and the 3 tablets of acetaminophen one of the waitstaff was kind enough to give me we left to go to a party. It was a party hosted by my partner's employer and the second one of this type that I've been to.

I had great conversations and even remembered a lot of people's names this time around. I was having a good time but found myself a bit lonely.

My partner was doing some "work" (having private conversations and bolstering confidence of students and coworkers). This meant I had less access to him and  ended up talking to people I didn't know very well. I don't mind this, but it takes energy.

And I like the people my partner works with and for. They are friendly and think well of me. This is apparent in every interaction I have with them. But the conversation fatigue set in much faster than I'd anticipated. But I miss the ease of a crowd that include people who're already my friends. A social slight completely unintentional and certainly indiscernible to anyone but myself  started me down a spiral of thought about how I don't belong.

One of the funny on-topic things I'd tried to put forth didn't fly and was passed over in favor of input from a community member. In that moment my joviality came crashing down. I made myself some tea and crawled out to the fire escape to spend some time alone. It was restorative but even then I felt my muscles shuddering softly in fatigue.

It took us an hour after that to leave. The long good byes were very long. We got wrapped up in an engaging but ultimately draining conversation about health insurance (which only served to remind us of how very uninsured we  currently are). I knew I was tired when we got out on to the street. I let my partner talk as we walked toward the BART station. I wasn't really listening and found myself grateful that one of my partner's friends accompanied us and that they conversed while I could concentrate on walking.

When we got on the BART I felt good to be away from the party (crowds can be an big energy suck) I felt almost normal, minus the slight nausea and high sensitivity to the hot stuffy  atmosphere of the train. My partner and I spent the whole ride back to the East Bay barely touching staring sappily into each other eyes. I was grateful for this elongated moment of emotional intimacy.

Unfortunately the instant I stepped off of the train I felt my energy crash again. On the escalator up to the terminal my partner stepped up to embrace me and I said "No. Too close."

The escalator up to the street was out of service so I had to climb the steps. The first two seemed fine, but each of the 25 or so after that seemed to threaten me with upheaval. I had to stop at the top and rest for a moment to make sure I didn't hurk.

During the seemingly endless four blocks from the BART station to our for-now-home in oakland I had a hard time walking and talking at the same time. The poet in my tried to consolidate what I was experiencing "I feel like a ghost".

My lungs worked half time, even the slow steps I took shortened my breath considerably. I felt my heat beat like an echo. The lag in my body's transmission of sensory information made legs clumsy and inarticulate. My marrow turned heavy like mercury in my bones. Last night was the first time I've ever asked a loved one "will you help me up the stairs?" If I'd had any energy left to feel I might have felt ashamed. But all I had room for was frustration and effort.

I wish I could just talk about just one of the three things that happened to me last night. My sickness, my social anxieties, my partner's bitter fears about career/location/health insurance, but all three happened in a drawn out mixed up progression that left my heart exhausted and my body ghostly.

This afternoon there is a part of me that thinks "maybe I shouldn't have gone out last night." It was extremely spoon-expensive and nearly drained all my bodily resources. I had no idea how fully it was going to take my energy. But ultimately I'm glad I could and I'm glad I did make it out last night. I'm lucky to have had the small burst of energy I did. And to have the energy I richly enjoy most of the time.

Fancy clothes and fancy dinner, flirty party conversations were worth the risk and the cost. But it's important for me to talk about that cost. At the end of the night I was a wreck. I needed my partner to help me up the stairs and into bed. I didn't have the energy to empathize with his fears about my health or our future I could only ask for tea and help taking off my clothes.

We're both scared about the future and uncertain about what we can handle and what will sustain us. Cobbling together hard limits and expectations form the world around us is nearly impossible. But we're working on it. Together. For that I am endlessly thankful.