Why I chose to tell a transgender story through my work.

There’s a question that I have asked myself a few times, since I transitioned.

Should I be doing creative work that references my transition? Or should I treat my transition as something apart from my work?

it’s a question that made me think about my creative impulses, and the reasons for my writing. It’s a question that made me consider a scenario in which I transitioned in silence, writing about a world outside of it, writing as though it wasn’t the most important part of my existence.

I am so much more than a transgender woman, I am a writer and an artist, a creative, a designer, a publicist, and I’m proud to be all those things, and I could have focused on them and doubled down on them, without opening my soul to the world.

I think there are a good deal more stories in me than the transition story I’m currently living. Why not tell them instead?

I know the mainstream public have decided that they must be allowed to read as many transgender stories as they want, in as much lurid and graphical detail as they desire. That in some way, they must be entitled to understanding the origin story of every trans person in detail and in any format they want, with accompanying visual aides and a Q&A at the end.

If you present your identity as a trans person, those questions are unspoken but existent. If you present your identity solely as the gender with which you identify, those questions loom even more obviously and awkwardly. And so a story is expected of transgender people, and as I writer I have felt a story has almost been demanded of me.

But someone else’s demands are a terrible reason to create anything, or to tell any story. Someone else’s needs or desires don’t make for a decent muse, nine times out of ten. And in fact, knowing these expectations of trans storytelling in my work has made me feel less inclined to provide it.

So why do I?

I suppose there are two reasons that stand out to me.

I think the first answer is that I want to write something that talks about where I’m at today, where I was yesterday, and where I’m going to be next. And my identity as a transgender woman is part and parcel with that. I cannot - and do not want to - separate that identity from my journey.

I am proud to be a transgender woman. I am proud of what it has meant for who I am, and I am proud of each of the fears that I have had to face in order to reach this moment, each catalyst and each tourniquet. Telling those stories is something that I want to do. Standing by those stories feels right. Giving those stories to other people to help them to understand feels right.

And I don’t know how much more work I could really do, without owning that story first. To some extent, it has felt as though if I don’t get these thoughts and feelings and ideas out of my head, off my chest and onto a page, most anything else that was going to come out would be a mere distraction. I would be talking around a topic that was of great importance to me, that I deeply wanted to address.

My work would suffer until I stopped trying to avoid it.

I can’t see how this particular trans story ends, I can’t even see how it twists and turns next. Too much is hidden from me. Too much of myself is unknown, at this point. But I do think I’ll keep telling the story, as I turn the pages myself, keep sharing it as I live through it. It’s a story I hope is worth reading, as much as it has been worth writing, so far.

xox Joany 🍕