Sharing my opinion, for once
[CW: trans-related violence, suicide mention, sadness]
ENGLISH [This article got some facts wrong (they were not going to marry, they just wanted to move in together), but it's the best english source I could find] https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/09/19/woman-killed-brother-motorcycle-transgender-fiance-maria-gaglione-ciro-migliore-italy/
So, this happened last week, just two metaphorical blocks from my home. And, boy, it hit me hard.
It could have been me, us. When I was 20 it surely wasn't 2020. Me and my girlfriend were just like them, walking the streets with every eye pointed at us, deaf to slurs, no hand-holding, low gaze. Distant families, low income, no future. We knew the only thing we had was each other. Some nights, I was grateful even to come back home safe.
It turns out that in some places, not too far from here, surely it isn't 2020 even now. And then, came the shitshow. The Italian shitshow goes on and on. No one understands anything, no one still hasn't learned the word “cis”. No one has even bothered to interview a trans man, or quote some trans sources (with one exception). Confusion, lies and misinformation were published, posted and shared everywhere, from printed press to social media. Even far-right spokespeople expressed disgust. Suddenly, everyone discovered that trans men and their partners exist.
Someone cringed hard on misgendering Ciro on the news, on the papers etc. I think only activists and cis people would be really shocked. For activists it's normal, it's their job after all. Cis people seemed so outraged to me just because they don't get that misgendering a trans man (or woman, or whatever) is the norm here. This is not San Francisco, nor Tumblr. This is Italy, no, scratch that, this is fucking NAPLES guys. It takes blood, sometimes literally, to obtain respect. And even so, some of us never get there. Some people die beaten (up and/or down) in some rural suburb, some other commit suicide, or overdose because there's no place for them in this world. You pick. Some other live with it their whole life. With the humiliation, the public scorn, the oddness. With no one on their side. You don't hear them make a sound, but they're there. If they don't die, they don't exist.
The thing that no one bothers to say is that it's difficult to live a gender-non-conforming life. I dare say hugely so if you're assigned female at birth. You're never man enough. People just don't know where you fit. You're not this, but you're not even that. If I don't know where to put you, you don't exist at all. Some of us never take a drop of testosterone our whole life, and still pass smoothly. Does this make us, what? And when we love women what are we? Where's your neat gender orientation system now? The evident confusion of media reporters on the subject “is this homophobia? Is this transphobia? Mmh” says more than it doesn't. There's an empty space in LGBTQ culture where transmasculine people are, and this void was filled with whatever came to mind at the moment. Love is love, patriarchy is still strong, don't forget, it's Naples, Gomorrah's city, yada yada yada.
What if I dared to even say this: being the cis female partner of a gender-non-conforming assigned-female-at-birth person is difficult AS HELL. Also, you can usually replace this phrase, along with every word-dash-word I just said with one name: femme. “Why don't you get yourself a real man, then? Don't you like dick?“. “You look straight, so act like it. Behave like it. How could you like, or even love that?” Makes you wonder what straight, or gay, or lesbian really means. But partnering a transmasculine person doesn't make you straight nor lesbian, apparently. It's not possible to describe your sexual orientation since bisexuality isn't really a thing, and you look a girl like every other, so you MUST be one. The terms “femme invisibility”, along with “femme-phobia”, were coined exactly to describe this hiatus, this blank space between the gender lines. Girls who look like girls (feminine enough to seem straight as fuck) but date transmasculine people (sometimes, lesbians included, protip: they're called butches). They're often invisible, or worse, not believed in their queerness “because in the end you may like dick”. In the community, these people are often called (even by themselves! I must warn you, they have a mind if their own!) femmes, or fems. That's what Paola was. She was a “normal” girl who was probably attracted (at least) to masculinity, a girl who fell in love and chose to be with a trans man. A girl who easily (and happily!) danced between the gender lines without even knowing they were there. I wonder what would happen if you tried to ask to any Italian (probably cishet) journalist what a femme is. I mean, the girl literally died for being one. Yet, still, no one dares scratching the surface, going into difficult topics, engaging with the complexities, and the simpleness, of what it means to be a femme, and proud of it.
The Italian “discourse” (to use a really nobilitating term) shifted towards the trans man, the alien, the monster, the mutant. The freak, the weird, the queer, the inverted. What has he got in his underwear, what he does not. What his ID card says under: Name/Gender, what it doesn't. I'm awfully sorry, but here are your chromosomes, what are you asking of me? A convenient way to avoid the life and experience of the femme who died for the strange creature she dared to love. Because speaking of Paola is impossible. There are no words. And if some exist, you must be privy to a big chunk of community culture, know the community's past, have at least read Stone Butch Blues. I doubt even Paola wouldn't know what I'm talking about specifically, but I bet she instinctively would understand everything I'm saying. She did everything right. At 18, she told her parents and family she loved a trans man. That she was moving in together with him. She was trying to escape an inescapable situation, to run from the void of not being seen or understood by anyone. To unsee the unspeakable, undescribable discrimination without a name she and her partner were subject to every FUCKING day. What more could she have done? She had been with Ciro for almost 3 years, probably suffered with and for him, and yet even imagined a future with him. But we're stuck because we are the media, we have to inform the public, and we haven't decided yet if murdering the girl was homophobic, or transphobic, or what.
I'm gonna tell you what it was. It was disgusting, and it was Injustice (with a capital I). Who cares what Ciro is? What Paola was? In which neatly labeled box their relationship fits? They were a queer couple, struggling with the problems a queer couple faces in this part of the country. One of them died simply because their relationship made no sense to anyone. Not even to the Italians watching tv and thinking “it's not right, but I don't know why”. Well, no shit, nothing new. There are a lot, and I mean A LOT of cis girls who partner themselves with butches, trans guys and anyone in between. There are literally thousands of Paolas in the world, caring every day for non conforming guys discarded and mistreated by society, kissing their wounds, saying “you're handsome to me” every single day. It's the Paolas of the world that keep suicide rates lower and lower among trans people, armed with just patience, strength and love. Sometimes there's nothing else. Sometimes there's no one else. There's only a smile, a kiss, and a “tomorrow will be better” separating happiness and depression, even life from death sometimes. Does transness really matter? Does the transness or cisness of your parner really matter? Let me tell you, even if it shouldn't, it still does. When you live somewhere where it's not 2020, and probably will never be, it does.
When I discovered of Paola's death I was having breakfast. It was Monday, and, ironically enough, I had to write an email to arrange for my mandatory psychological therapy. Mandatory because I have to produce a piece of paper signed by a professional, attesting that I really really REALLY want to live as a man for the rest of my life, in order to obtain a legal change of my gender. As a matter of fact, I have to produce a TON of papers that I have to submit to a JUDGE, in COURT (paying from pocket a good deal of money to a lawyer, of course) to obtain from the State a legal gender change, and even if I do everything right I might come across a fascist or clueless judge who has the power to just say: no, not now, have surgery(ies) first, or even NOT EVER. That's why Ciro still has his female birth name on his ID card, you smartass journalist, you shithead Arci-lesbian. Because transitioning is hard and expensive, and not every one can afford it economically or emotionally. I was having my coffee, and I was petrified.
As a trans man, unaware of being trans for most of my 20s, living in one of the culturally shittiest places on Earth, and with a supportive girlfriend who has been with me for almost 15 years, I felt sick to my stomach. I literally stopped functioning for a couple of days. Sometimes I still can't manage to hold my girlfriend's hand walking in the streets, even now that I “pass” as a man, and we “pass” as straight, and no one gives us a second glance.
Negatively, I thought that if I was in Ciro's place I would have taken my life the next day. Positively, I thought that I was lucky to have the means to run away from my toxic family and live my life as I see fit, transitioning and all. But most of all, I felt Ciro's sorrow. I felt the sorrow of every cis female/transmasculine person relationship on my very skin. I still feel it. The best part was, when I talked with my girlfriend, she told me she felt the same. This piece is actually 70% her thoughts. She ached with me, got angry with me, destabilized with me. I read shit and lies about ME and HER in the news and was appalled, she pointed them all out, she pointed out even things I was too blind to see. I felt seen, on the first page and on everyone's mouth for the first time, which is a really scary feeling for me. She felt the same, hugged me and told me “it all will pass”. We decided to take the week and practice self-care, rebuild, love each other. We're just lucky. Luckier than most of the Ciros and Paolas out there.
You know what all of this has taught me, by the way? To live my trans life in the best possible way. To be the most accomplished, self-loving, and content man on the planet. To love my girl each and every day. That me and my girl surviving queerness in Campania is nothing short of a miracle, and that I should cherish that for as long as I live. We, queer in the beginning, straight in the end trans/cis couples, are ALL Ciro and Paola. May their love never, ever die.
mr.blackbuck@protonmail.com