The Publishing Announcement That Almost Wasn't
I got a piece accepted to a dream publication --- and then decided to pull it.
After five days at Creating Change last year, I just had to get out. People do have positive experiences at this conference, but it’s always intense, plus it was located in the city where the majority of traumatic experiences I’ve had took place, and by the end of it I was so overstimulated and triggered that I decided to check out early and start the eight-hour drive home. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyway. I stopped at a trucker motel (in a town called, no shit, Lost Hills) around 3:30 AM because I realized I’d been barely sleeping all week, I was shaky from caffeine, and I’d be a danger on the road if I kept going. It was maybe 40 degrees out and there was a stray cat in the parking lot, which in my addled state I tried to pick up and bring inside, and it scratched the hell out of me before running off. I went into the motel room, feeling completely alone in this extremity of feeling, and wrote a prose poem in one shot with a bleeding hand.
A few days after I got home, I saw a call for submissions for trans writers for a feature issue of Brevity, which has been a dream publication for a long time. Still flying from the experience, I submitted the prose poem. And they accepted it.
I was excited for about five minutes.
And then the fear kicked in.
Who will be mad at me, and for what? Immediately, I reasoned, I need to imagine every possible criticism someone might have in order to make sure I am unimpeachable. Am I airing dirty laundry about the conference or the community in a way that’s not helpful? Being a pick-me for the cis (somehow)? What if I said/did something in this piece that caused harm to someone and I just don’t see it yet? I can’t take that risk, I need to pull it right now.
And then I’d remind myself of who I am and what I’m here to do. And then I’d be randomly overcome with panic and the urge to write them back and withdraw. And then I’d talk to the other members of my trans n’ trauma writing group (I’m not kidding, this is what we call ourselves!) for hours and hours, and I’d walk away feeling my courage, and then I’d think but what if and the cycle would start all over again.
This went on for eight months.
-
A lot of my work explores queer and trans experiences that are ambivalent, complicated, or negative. This is a direct reaction to growing up in the shadow of the AIDS crisis and coming out among a community that had moved toward respectability as survival, hiding or downplaying things like suicidality or substance abuse or domestic violence. I remember seeing rainbow-striped pins and magnets proclaiming “It’s okay to be gay!” and thinking what a bullshit slogan that was, how I was not okay and how no other gay person I knew was okay (and yes, I know that’s not what it means). I see SO MUCH of this echoed in present-day demands for trans people to perform trans joy, particularly to reassure cis people that we are fine no matter what is done to us. I also love LGBTQ people, culture/s, art, and entertainment, especially what’s messy, and I feel blessed to be part of it all. The mode I write in can be described as: It’s great to be gay, and we’re not okay.
Writing in this mode can be liberating, but it also presents some serious pitfalls, not the least of which is that it’s written and published in a political and social context of oppression and violence. And so I’m always hesitant to share something in which I am not feeling my best about being an autistic trans person. It can be a lonely experience. But at the same time, it’s also beautiful, with a certain liminal magic, just like the I-5 corridor, and I hope the imagery in the piece caught that.
I want to protect other trans people. Most of us do. I’ve been in so many conversations in which I’ve tried to talk trans friends out of self-censoring, for similar concerns: e.g. If I’m honest about how I feel about my surgery results, will that be used to prevent someone else from accessing medical transition they desperately need?
-
I’ve been out as trans for 15 years. I’m from a time when nonbinary people were barred from accessing medical transition. Wherever I went, I was almost always the first nonbinary trans person anyone had met (except in trans spaces), and the pressure to set a good example was a huge factor in why I started relying on drugs and alcohol to cope. For a long time, silence was how I took power back. I refused to explain my gender to cis people. I refused to write the book I kept getting asked to write — a memoir about my gender that would explain trans identity to cis people.
When I look back at the past 15 years, I see a sea change of trans people talking — talking back to institutions, talking to each other, talking just because they had something to say. What’s missing from the conversation is my voice. What would my life look like if I’d self-censored less and feared criticism less, and instead put myself out there more and leaned into being humbled sometimes? Would our movement have something that it’s otherwise missing right now? And if I start using my voice more, who else might say “If they can do it, so can I!”
Because right now, lots of people are trying to erase us from public life and the public record. And I realized that, as a trans person in 2024, the best choice I can make is to refuse to be the first erasure.
this poem is so so beautiful. congratulations <33