This is me.

Or: On being Caspar and being Slytherin

Today classes were canceled to provide for a much needed pause to reflect on recent campus events. There were meetings set up for this reflection to occur in a safe place. I went to those meetings. And now I have some reflections of my own that I want to discuss. They have nothing to do with what is going on with my school. They are about me. And maybe that’s selfish, but I have a lot of thoughts in me in light of the heaviness of today, and I want to get them out publicly. I want them to be public because I’ve been doing a lot of private reflection in my journal lately. I’ve been coming to conclusions and they’ve been personal and I haven’t wanted to share. I think it’s time for me to share though. I’m a sharing person. I don’t like quietly figuring things out. I want people to know how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking.

I don’t think I’m a boy anymore. I’ve had Judith Butler shoved up my ass since school started and have been reading all about how gender is a performance. I call bullshit. The self is real. I feel a very real and a very powerful and a very feminine core at the center of my being. This core is not the product of society. I do not feel this because society has told me this is who I am. My gender crisis, perhaps exploration is a better word but that is not the way I experienced it, came from feeling wrong. I was being as androgynous as I could possibly be in every facet of my life. I sang tenor, I wore a binder, I wore men’s clothing, I changed my name and pronouns. I did everything short of physically transitioning that I could think of doing. I didn’t seek physical transition because something held me back. While I embrace my lesbian identity with every atom of my being, I did not with my trans identity. I hid it. Just this semester I started having my professors call me Caspar. I had come back from two weeks of my birth name and being called a daughter and a sister. There was no dysphoria. I came back and I came out and now I don’t know.

Throughout this process, my mom has told me to meditate. To clear my mind and to turn inward. This, of course, goes directly against Butler’s (and many other theorists) view that the self does not exist, that gender is performed, there is not core of our being. And then one night, I was crying. I was crying because there is too much on my plate right now. I was crying because the weight of all the shit I went through last semester hit me. I was crying because I realized how I need to actively seek out help and stop expecting people to notice that something’s wrong. I was crying because I remembered how helpless I felt last year and I don’t want to do that again. I was crying because I want to do better and I was crying because I know I can do better. After a while, I started to calm down. My heart steadied. My breathing became less rapid. I took out my journal and wrote:

23.12.2016 My gender is confusing. I think that I like being a boy, but I’m not really one. I think I am a girl. Even though I’ve said I’m not a lot. I’m crying right now because of [unbelievably redacted] and I’m in too much physical pain to go to Skate Night and I really wanted to go and I just feel very connected with the core of my being and it is feminine. A masculine feminine. It embodies aspects of both, but if you strip it down, take everything around it away, I think it’s feminine. It’s red. I can see it. A red rod sitting in the pit of my stomach and extending up my spine. Pulsating. Beating. It’s strong. It’s me. 

 

I felt something wrong with saying I was a boy. I feel a warmth in my chest when I’m called my birth name. I feel a weight when I’m called Caspar. Not a bad weight. It’s just heavy. I feel like I don’t know anyone with similar experiences to whom I can talk and I feel alone. I’m happy and I’m okay, I just feel alone. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. I’m supposed to be alone. To study myself. To figure it out. Maybe alone can be good.

I turn now to my Hogwarts House. I have made several Pottermore accounts to get resorted. With the exception of Ravenclaw, I have gotten Gryffindor every time. I always felt very secure in being Slytherin. On the old Pottermore, I did get Slytherin. Several times. I don’t want to hear shit about how Harry chose his house. The hat didn’t ask me. I started finding more quizzes. I keep getting Gryffindor. It’s not that I don’t want to be in Gryffindor, I just want to be in Slytherin. That’s been an integral part of my identity for the last thirteen years and I don’t want it to change. I’m too old to go to Howarts now. I’m scared that I grew up and that I changed. That what I value and how I react have changed. Even if they’ve changed for the better, I just don’t like thinking about how identities are never stable (Judith Butler would like that part of this post).

I want to be in Slytherin. I feel like I belong there. But maybe this means I’m getting braver. That I’ve stopped using my cunning to skirt around issues. I’m standing up and facing them. That this change in me is actually increased stability. I’m no longer trying to camoflauge into those around me. I’m stubbornly and unashamedly being me.

And maybe that’s okay.