Whatever Gets You Through by Jen Sookfong Lee

Author:Jen Sookfong Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2019-04-16T16:00:00+00:00

I used to write about being trans all the time. I had a blog when I first transitioned. I was convinced that writing would save me. If I wrote about trans girl sex and love, boys would realize it’s okay to desire us. To fuck and date us. I pretended this was for all of us as trans women, but if I’m honest, it was always about me.

Nothing changed from my writing. People consumed it. Thousands of views per month. My poems shared on social media, published nationally. My voice on the radio, saying trans girls are worthy of love. The truth is, nothing I said or wrote fixed anything.

I can’t render this body beautiful with language. Make myself desirable or human by naming how I’m erased by the politics of desire. I have this persistent urge to say to the boys I know that if I weren’t trans, they’d fall in love with me. I am learning to keep my mouth shut. Some truths are larger than me. I can’t speak them, no matter how blessed I am with language.

An older trans woman attacked me in conversation for how I write about being trans. She said she was worried about employment when she transitioned, whereas I seem to only care about my love life. As if my love life is a luxury of my body. As if exposing this to the world in poems and articles is an act of my narcissism.

I was at a poetry reading recently. A novice poet got up and read her work. She was nervous. Her husband watched and clapped loudly for her. Her poetry was not perfect, but it was honest. One of her lines struck me, and I keep repeating it in my head. She said a girl is always beautiful in the eyes of someone who loves her. I hold these words inside me like a prayer.

Is a trans girl only heard by the ears of someone who loves her? I don’t want to convince boys that trans girls are sexy and lovable. I want that to be something they already know. My writing about our desirability is another kind of violence.

The most beautiful things I write are the spaces between my words.

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