One Month Before Departure
I know I can’t be the first queer person in my family. But as far as I’m aware, I’m the first one who’s out and open.
As of writing, my dad doesn’t know I’m trans. He probably has his suspicions though: leaving breadcrumbs is one of my more satisfying hobbies. Normally I’m reluctant to talk about trans issues with him, but the week the Cass Review (an NHS-commissioned investigation into gender-affirming care for young people in the UK) comes out, I can’t help myself.
We’re having lunch together in a pub, discussing my plan to go to Japan for a summer writing course.
I’m angry. So angry. I’ve read the entire review, the immediate wave of condemnation from trans writers and organisations, and the worrying wave of praise it’s getting from politicians across the spectrum.
By the end of our meal, my cheeks are red and my voice is grated. I’ve spent the past hour ranting about the state of trans healthcare in the UK, getting so passionate that my dad has to gently tell me to calm down.
I flush even harder, suddenly aware of where I am – surrounded by white cishet couples in a countryside pub. Though I try not to assume people’s politics, when you live in a town where the centre-right and far-right party recently came a close 2nd and 3rd in local elections, it’s hard not to leap to conclusions.
It’s tricky to tell how my dad feels about trans people. I don’t think he’s hateful – just unfamiliar, but he isn’t choosing to remain ignorant.
That’s the extent of it, I think – until the car ride home.
It’s tense, in the way that a church confessionary is tense. The apprehension of secrets peeking out of their hideyholes stifles the air around us.
“What about you? Do you feel like you’re in the wrong body?” my dad asks.
I cringe slightly at the cliched way he phrases it, then go silent. I could tell the truth, but is it the right time? Do I know enough to know for certain his reaction won’t be negative?
“I guess I’m still figuring it out,” I say, the words spewing out of my mouth like bugs bursting from a pustule.
It’s not a complete lie. To be honest, I don’t think anyone can ever figure this out. Gender, sexuality, bodies – they’re all so nebulous. All oceans that we’re dropped in and have to wade through, soaking wet and aching, until we find something buoyant. A place we can call home – at least for a little while.
It’s my dad’s turn to go silent. A few seconds turn into a tortuous eternity.
“I’ve never told anyone this,” he says. “But when I was around 14, 15, I had similar feelings. I imagined what it would be like to be born as a woman and have a different body.”
I’m stunned. My brain and vocal cords disconnect, short-circuiting so that the only sound that escapes is a bubble-popping oh. Part of me feels as if my dad has told me this before – threads of prescient tapestry woven into my flesh.
I don’t remember what he says next. Suddenly, I’m a disembodied ghost floating about outside the car, vaguely aware of him explaining how he learned to dismiss his feelings and forge a peace with his body.
Few trans people are lucky enough to have as accepting a family as I do. Even so, not everyone in my family is, and most of them, including my dad, don’t even know.
I wish I had asked him more on that car ride instead of freezing up. Like most fathers, he’s very rarely so vulnerable.
I’m not sure if my dad is trans, or was, or whatever – that’s not for me to decide. Everyone experiences bodily discordance at some point in their life. And I think everyone is touched by Transness, to some extent. Transness with a capital T, because I mean transness that transgresses boundaries – bodies and the categories we assign to them.
One Week Before Departure
It’s my birthday and I’m sitting in Wetherspoons with my two best friends: H and G, a lesbian couple. We’re finishing the night with a classic game of setting me up on Hinge. They help me pick some photos and we struggle to balance the prompts between too cringe and too serious, then get onto my preferences. As always, I select non-binary and femmes.
Immediately, G (the loudest and proudest lesbian anyone can ever meet) jumps on my ass.
“Why?!”
Being trans makes sexuality so much more confusing. I don’t fit snugly into the binary of man and woman. I’m transfemme (mostly), and up until more recently, the only people I’ve ever been with have been transmascs. I used to hide behind a title of bisexuality – too afraid to even consider myself a lesbian.
But if you asked me whether I thought other transfemmes could be lesbians, I would’ve said yes, obviously. Same goes for transmascs, as well as people who’ve been with a man in the past.
But I didn’t hold those same standards for myself.
Ever since my last relationship, I’ve been exploring the idea in the background, letting it simmer and stew. The first time I embraced my queerness was when I labelled myself as bisexual. Giving that title up felt like forfeiting legitimacy. I felt needed it to prove to others I was queer, especially because I’m a pre-gender-affirming care, nonbinary transfemme who is comfortable presenting ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, and will probably wear a binder from time to time in the future – even when/if I finally get my boobs.
I’m not what people expect when someone assigned male at birth says they’re trans – to the point where people often mistake me as transmasc. For me, this confusion is a feast. Being able to dance between stereotypes and remain undefinable makes me feel as uncontainable and free as fireflies shimmering in the moonlight, or an octopus dashing between rocks, cycling through its myriad disguises. It makes me feel limitless, bursting with radiant possibility.
Even though I know I’m not attracted to men, I still sometimes feel that I have to keep a bisexual label close to my chest in order to be accepted. A dagger glinting with bisexual lighting – just in case anyone tries to take my queerness away from me.
Two Days Before Departure
My desk is in shambles; murky undrunk tea stews in chipped mugs. The suitcase I’ve been living out is frothing with clothes from where I’ve frantically searched for a comfortable outfit.
Cradled in my hands is a cuttlebone collected from the beach. I scroll down on my laptop to read the cause of death. Another name to add. For the people with no names, I add a heart instead.
I don’t know why I decided to try and paint the names of every trans person murdered in 2023 onto cuttlebones. There’s so much else I could be doing before my trip, but after finding the Trans Murder Monitoring project, I need a way to process my feelings.
Cuttlefish die en masse every year – it’s a natural part of their life cycle. A couple of months after laying their eggs, around June/July – right in time for Pride – their bodies start to disintegrate. Rainbow-flashing flesh peels away, until all that’s left is the calcareous arrow-shaped cuttlebone – washing up on beach like funerary boats.
I don’t get the whole way through the list. It’s too long; I am too tired. Out of all the names, I only recognise one: Brianna Ghey. Murdered by two other teenagers in the UK, one of whom had messaged, “I wonder if it will scream like a man or a girl.”
Brianna was 15. Younger than my sister. I cry intermittently as I read.
Most of the murders occurred in Mexico and Brazil. The fact the UK only had one murder doesn’t make me feel any safer; it doesn’t make it hurt any less, nor feel any more distant. Each story resonates in some way. The brief, concise description of their deaths taken from local news and family members is all that’s there to describe them. Entire lives summarised in a couple of sentences; beautiful lives defined by nothing but their violent deaths.
The list doesn’t include the names of those who took their own lives. I wonder how many cuttlebones you would need to record them if it did.
Day of Departure
It’s going to be my first time travelling outside of Europe. My first time in a country where I can’t speak the language. Four weeks living with complete strangers, surrounded by a city and a culture that might not accept me. And the thing I’m the most anxious about… is a sticker.
I got it a few days before – a round trans flag with the text ‘Trans Rights are Human Rights!’ in bold white text. A pretty uncontroversial statement, if you ask me.
As I’m packing, I rediscover it in my pocket and slap it on my headphones.
I’ve been debating how open to be in Tokyo. I’m less concerned with the people of Japan, and more worried about the foreigners joining me on the writing course. I’ve heard from other queer people that whilst Japan isn’t progressive when it comes to gender equality and queerness, most Japanese people tend to be conflict-avoidant, making it safe to express yourself how you like in public. Especially if you’re a tourist.
“I don’t think you should wear that.”
My dad – the helicopter mum that he is – insists on going through every item I decide to pack, three times.
“Not that it’s bad, but I don’t think it’s safe. Do you know how Japan is about that stuff?”
My dad knows I care about trans issues. He knows I’m gay (although, not in the right direction). But he still doesn’t know I’m trans.
I ignore him at first. I wear my headphones proudly like a revolutionary neckerchief all the way to the airport. But my dad’s words start gnawing at me.
The airport. The plane. What if someone tries to start something before I even get to Tokyo?
I don’t want to start my trip off with a negative experience. I know how my brain works, and it’ll all be downhill from there.
My phone vibrates. A notification from Erin in The Morning: ‘Trans Youth Suicides Covered Up By NHS, Cass After Restrictions, Say Whistleblowers’.
Maybe the sticker isn’t a good idea.
I rip it off and fling it into the bin, replacing it with a less “controversial” pride sticker that I hide on the top of my headphones.
Day One in Japan
Five hours here and I’ve already left a bag at the airport and gotten on a train to a completely different city. To top it off, it’s raining, just like it was in the UK.
When I finally arrive at the guesthouse, I meet the host and three others staying for the workshop.
They’re all white, all Australian – and all guys.
I commit the cardinal sin. The very thing I’m constantly fearful people are doing to me: I judge them. I don’t know a single thing about them, yet immediately feel as though I have the authority to categorise them.
I can try and justify it by saying I do it out of fear. But others who have suffered far worse than me don’t distrust and write off people with the same eagerness that I do.
“What are you up to?” I ask R. My heart is thumping. I’m fighting the twin yōkai of social anxiety and my own prejudice, yet somehow I convince myself to push through. Back home I would’ve just scurried to the closest cafe and ensconced myself behind the protection of a screen. But this is Tokyo. This is once in a lifetime, baby!
“I was going to check out Asakusa, if you wanted to join. Just waiting on S to see if they want to come too.”
The next two hours are awkward and uncomfortable at times. For the rest of the day, I continue to make assumptions about S and R.
Within a week though, I’ll be proven categorically wrong. Within a week I’ll feel as close and safe around these two – along with everyone else in my guesthouse dorm – as I do with my friends back home.
Week Two in Japan
It takes a week for me to see the first signs of queer existence outside of nightlife in Tokyo. As a foreigner in Japan, no one really cares about your identity or appearance – that’s all masked by your status as a gaijin. But openly presenting as queer, or anything outside of the rigid monoculture of suits and a select few haircuts, seems far trickier for anyone Japanese who doesn’t exactly fit the criteria for ‘Japaneseness’. Not that those people don’t exist – Japan is rich with subcultures and countercultures – but it is rarer, and takes more bravery, to display them.
I’m on the train leaving Shibuya, falling in and out of a half-sleep. The carriage jolts to a halt and wakes me up. That’s when I notice them. Androgynously dressed with glossy pink nails. On their bag is a badge: ‘Trans Rights are Human Rights!
I beam immediately, all of a sudden high on giddiness. Whilst the streets of Tokyo feel incredibly safe as a queer foreigner, they’re equally crushing in how lonely they make me. I’m biassed, having grown up near UK cities where there are thriving queer communities visible at all times. But Tokyo, despite being the mosy populous city on the planet, reminds me more of my small shambolic hometown with how isolating it is.
Queer people I speak to tell me the same thing. They express their frustration over how underground queer life here is, with Pride being the only time they can really be freed from the shadows.
I think of the sticker sitting in a bin at Heathrow, long since disposed of. I want to talk to the person opposite me – ask them a question, say something, anything. But by the time the train reaches my station, I still haven’t worked up the courage and leave without saying a word.
At least I know there’s one person in this city who cares. There’s safe harbour somewhere in this ocean.
Week Three in Japan
“Looks like you’re not going anywhere,” they say, “unless you’ve got like an umbrella in that bag.”
The rain smatters against the tiny windows, its rhythmic hum interrupted by thunder or a passing train. I’m at a small, community-orientated event interviewing a local queer DJ with acid-green hair and immaculate makeup.
“I’m not hafu,” they exclaim – referring to the Japanese word for being mixed race (specifically “half”-Japanese and “half”-non-Japanese). “I’m doberu (double)!”
The way they dress, their brazen openness, their bold affability – I haven’t met anyone Japanese like this yet. To be honest, I’m getting mad gender envy.
“If you’re mixed in Japan, then you’re already other. That’s why I think the people who are mixed and queer are the ones really pushing for change here.”
Hearing about queer struggles in a different country and culture to mine shines new perspective on my own. It was only two years ago that Japan changed a law requiring trans people seeking a legal name changes to have bottom surgery first. Imagine having your name predicated on the state of your genitals. On having to sterilise yourself. Or having to be deadnamed every day, or biting your tongue and letting a genocidal policy erase you.
A decade on from the legalisation of same-sex marriage in the UK, Japan is still the only G7 country to have it outlawed. I have the feeling that it’s hard to be trans without conforming to an unforgiving gender binary here too. For many, it seems the only way to survive in Japan is to fully conform to a narrow understanding of gender, sexuality, and bodies.
Last Days in Japan
Five of my new friends and I are huddled around a table in an izakaya chain that E – the only other Brit in my dorm – affectionately calls the “Wetherspoons of Japan”. All I can think about is how much I’m dreading going home.
For the past year, I’ve been fighting to get gender-affirming care either through the NHS or privately, but money and waiting lists have kept me in a numbing stupor. When I return, I know I’ll have all that to deal with again.
“Oh Tess! I made this for you last night after reading the story you wrote.”
C – who I’ve only interacted with a few times, but whose own writing has brought me to tears on the trip – reaches into her bag and presents me with a sticker.
“It was blank with the person on it, so I coloured in the rest.”
‘Trans Rights are Human Rights!’ is written atop a trans flag coloured with felt-tip pens.
The sticker I can’t escape. A chorusing echo. Cuttlebones crawling back into the sea, ropes of flesh re-lashing around them – rainbows galloping across the sky to envelop them in soft, glistening skin.
I cry later that night, adding C’s gift to my laptop. The tears mix with the coffee I’m downing to keep myself awake whilst writing.
Bitter, bitter, bitter. But I’m alive. Still alive.
And so lucky and grateful to be so.