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Description
Videte Ne Quis Sciat - do not let them see

I’m Fynnegan, he/him. I’m an 18 year old aro, autistic art student. I have post concussion syndrome, c-ptsd, major depressive disorder, anxiety and agoraphobia… I am also trans, that is not a mental illness/disorder just to be clear, it is just on my list of things.

I have to be real, I used to be a bit of a trans med when I was younger and ill-informed, in my deviations from a couple years ago that may be more apparent, and I would just like to be clear and say that I no longer think that way.

This piece is about being trans, but it is not despair, it is not a vent, it is not an ask for validation. And I cannot emphasize this enough; it is not about passing, as passing.

I’m about to get meta-transgendered, bear with me.

This piece is a post ironic understanding of my own transgender identity, and the social complex it creates with every person I dare interact with. Yes it’s a lot, this is my trans flavored manifesto.

While this piece is not about passing, passing is an element of it. Passing, can be an essentialized understanding of what being trans is, that we are simply trying to look like our cisgender equivalents, and to never break that mold. However, not even cis people pass 100% of the time. And I believe that passing (in some circumstances) can fall under transmedicalism. But being trans, is not a medical diagnosis. It’s a performance.

Preformativity says that gender is a gesture, its expression, it’s a social phenomenon.

Performativity makes no reference to gender dysphoria, or any medical concept at all. So whereas transmedicalism is a kind of bioessentailism, preformativity is a kind of social constructionism.

These are exact opposite theories of gender. And I am a believer in the preformativity theory.

This is not me saying that your dysphoria isn’t valid. Or that passing can’t be important to you. Because passing for me, can and is important… on occasion.

Passing saves me from the body checking that cis and trans people alike, do when they assess a trans person. I’ve talked about this before, but starting testosterone then being able to see how people pay way more attention to your voice to see how well you pass now, and congratulate you on it. While yes, I’m very happy with where i am right now, maybe I don’t want everyone around me to be overly attentive to every change that my body is going through. There’s an exception for my very, very close friends, where they can say whatever because frankly they know my boundaries better than most friends and mutuals.

The art of a trans person passing is this awful hyper visible experience, that feels like a damn spotlight follows you everywhere you go, and since gender is a performance, it is expected that you continue to preform, and just like a play, there is good and there is bad acting, there is successful, and ineffective gender expression.

This is not a unique feeling, many trans people are upset with the concepts of passing, it is limiting, and exclusionary to gnc and enbys, and I hope you understand how problematic passing is.

But passing for me is a necessity, because as a semi stealth trans person, it saves me from the trans label. If that sounds like I’m ashamed of my trans identity. I am not, and that is a wrong interpretation of what I am saying. Trans people experience such heavy scrutiny (as seen above) and sometimes, not being labeled as trans around new people saves me a lot of trouble. I am very proud of my trans identity, I am proud of myself! But I want to be the one to control at least some of the narrative around me, I want to be the one to bring up that I am trans, I don’t want people I’ve had one conversation with to then out me to my entire class, where i then have to experience the captious eyes, and then the very idea that I am preforming my gender becomes so apparent it consumes others fractured image of me. Then that along with my list of mental problems listed in the first paragraph, it begins to seriously affect my interactions with these people.

…This piece is about all of that, the fucking storm of ideas concepts theories and feelings that fucking consume me whenever I think about being trans, is so overwhelming. I feel like I’m trapped in a room of mirrors, like I’ve explored every concept and whenever I turn around to escape I wrap back around the core concept, that I am trans. And this is my life. When I want nothing more than to break the mirrors, and be free of it all. But that won’t happen, because unless my generation makes dramatic radical change that I can only really see happening with a violent revolution, it’s going to only slowly get better, and the only joy I’ll find will be in the little things in life.

if I dare talk about my problems with cishet, neurotypical, “ally’s” I’m met with “oh life is so hard /disingenuous” because people don’t understand that I see the world through a different lens that I can’t really take off, or that I’m “looking for reasons to be mad” do I even have to explain how fucking idiotic that is? Because whenever I hear that, I realize this person has completely missed the point and created their own narrative and idea about what I’m saying. Or that I need to be more civil, patient, understanding. No, just fucking no! If I sit around and wait for everyone to “come around” at their own pace, it’s never going to happen! Because unless people are challenged, they rarely want to change their minds. Am I just supposed to wait around for the next group of peers to hate crime me, then calmly sit them down and ask them to reconsider? …oh yeah, the blood is representative of the violence I have faced as a trans 😩 /half-joking, and how I could have avoided it if I would have just conformed to cisheteronormative society.

This is honestly lengthier than I originally intended about 24-32 hours ago, but I posted such a brief not even 200 word paragraph to my Instagram story, along with this piece. I was then bombarded with dms from cis people who thought that I was in need of comfort, cis people who misread what I said about passing, and assumed I was insecure about how well I pass. Whereas the trans people who dm’d me agreed in solidarity with me. Look, I’m not 13 anymore, I don’t vent or seek support or validation by posting something on my story, I rarely use social media just because it’s really fucking annoying and I was proven right with the storm I was met with.

And more importantly, the idea that cis people think i or any trans person for that matter needs their validation. I don’t. I do not want it, I do not seek it, I am plenty secure with my identity, there’s a lot in my life that I’m anxious or insecure about, human brains are paradoxical, and I am very, very sure of myself, and very confident. The complex that ally’s create for themself is honestly fascinating, in the most mundane way. It’s comical. And frustrating; that trans people have never been I control of the narrative about trans people. We are a diagnoses, a medical phenomenon to be observed, questioned, and compartmentalized to be palatable to cisgender society.

Sorry for being trans, and making art about it.

Description
Videte Ne Quis Sciat - do not let them see

I’m Fynnegan, he/him. I’m an 18 year old aro, autistic art student. I have post concussion syndrome, c-ptsd, major depressive disorder, anxiety and agoraphobia… I am also trans, that is not a mental illness/disorder just to be clear, it is just on my list of things.

I have to be real, I used to be a bit of a trans med when I was younger and ill-informed, in my deviations from a couple years ago that may be more apparent, and I would just like to be clear and say that I no longer think that way.

This piece is about being trans, but it is not despair, it is not a vent, it is not an ask for validation. And I cannot emphasize this enough; it is not about passing, as passing.

I’m about to get meta-transgendered, bear with me.

This piece is a post ironic understanding of my own transgender identity, and the social complex it creates with every person I dare interact with. Yes it’s a lot, this is my trans flavored manifesto.

While this piece is not about passing, passing is an element of it. Passing, can be an essentialized understanding of what being trans is, that we are simply trying to look like our cisgender equivalents, and to never break that mold. However, not even cis people pass 100% of the time. And I believe that passing (in some circumstances) can fall under transmedicalism. But being trans, is not a medical diagnosis. It’s a performance.

Preformativity says that gender is a gesture, its expression, it’s a social phenomenon.

Performativity makes no reference to gender dysphoria, or any medical concept at all. So whereas transmedicalism is a kind of bioessentailism, preformativity is a kind of social constructionism.

These are exact opposite theories of gender. And I am a believer in the preformativity theory.

This is not me saying that your dysphoria isn’t valid. Or that passing can’t be important to you. Because passing for me, can and is important… on occasion.

Passing saves me from the body checking that cis and trans people alike, do when they assess a trans person. I’ve talked about this before, but starting testosterone then being able to see how people pay way more attention to your voice to see how well you pass now, and congratulate you on it. While yes, I’m very happy with where i am right now, maybe I don’t want everyone around me to be overly attentive to every change that my body is going through. There’s an exception for my very, very close friends, where they can say whatever because frankly they know my boundaries better than most friends and mutuals.

The art of a trans person passing is this awful hyper visible experience, that feels like a damn spotlight follows you everywhere you go, and since gender is a performance, it is expected that you continue to preform, and just like a play, there is good and there is bad acting, there is successful, and ineffective gender expression.

This is not a unique feeling, many trans people are upset with the concepts of passing, it is limiting, and exclusionary to gnc and enbys, and I hope you understand how problematic passing is.

But passing for me is a necessity, because as a semi stealth trans person, it saves me from the trans label. If that sounds like I’m ashamed of my trans identity. I am not, and that is a wrong interpretation of what I am saying. Trans people experience such heavy scrutiny (as seen above) and sometimes, not being labeled as trans around new people saves me a lot of trouble. I am very proud of my trans identity, I am proud of myself! But I want to be the one to control at least some of the narrative around me, I want to be the one to bring up that I am trans, I don’t want people I’ve had one conversation with to then out me to my entire class, where i then have to experience the captious eyes, and then the very idea that I am preforming my gender becomes so apparent it consumes others fractured image of me. Then that along with my list of mental problems listed in the first paragraph, it begins to seriously affect my interactions with these people.

…This piece is about all of that, the fucking storm of ideas concepts theories and feelings that fucking consume me whenever I think about being trans, is so overwhelming. I feel like I’m trapped in a room of mirrors, like I’ve explored every concept and whenever I turn around to escape I wrap back around the core concept, that I am trans. And this is my life. When I want nothing more than to break the mirrors, and be free of it all. But that won’t happen, because unless my generation makes dramatic radical change that I can only really see happening with a violent revolution, it’s going to only slowly get better, and the only joy I’ll find will be in the little things in life.

if I dare talk about my problems with cishet, neurotypical, “ally’s” I’m met with “oh life is so hard /disingenuous” because people don’t understand that I see the world through a different lens that I can’t really take off, or that I’m “looking for reasons to be mad” do I even have to explain how fucking idiotic that is? Because whenever I hear that, I realize this person has completely missed the point and created their own narrative and idea about what I’m saying. Or that I need to be more civil, patient, understanding. No, just fucking no! If I sit around and wait for everyone to “come around” at their own pace, it’s never going to happen! Because unless people are challenged, they rarely want to change their minds. Am I just supposed to wait around for the next group of peers to hate crime me, then calmly sit them down and ask them to reconsider? …oh yeah, the blood is representative of the violence I have faced as a trans 😩 /half-joking, and how I could have avoided it if I would have just conformed to cisheteronormative society.

This is honestly lengthier than I originally intended about 24-32 hours ago, but I posted such a brief not even 200 word paragraph to my Instagram story, along with this piece. I was then bombarded with dms from cis people who thought that I was in need of comfort, cis people who misread what I said about passing, and assumed I was insecure about how well I pass. Whereas the trans people who dm’d me agreed in solidarity with me. Look, I’m not 13 anymore, I don’t vent or seek support or validation by posting something on my story, I rarely use social media just because it’s really fucking annoying and I was proven right with the storm I was met with.

And more importantly, the idea that cis people think i or any trans person for that matter needs their validation. I don’t. I do not want it, I do not seek it, I am plenty secure with my identity, there’s a lot in my life that I’m anxious or insecure about, human brains are paradoxical, and I am very, very sure of myself, and very confident. The complex that ally’s create for themself is honestly fascinating, in the most mundane way. It’s comical. And frustrating; that trans people have never been I control of the narrative about trans people. We are a diagnoses, a medical phenomenon to be observed, questioned, and compartmentalized to be palatable to cisgender society.

Sorry for being trans, and making art about it.