One of the interviewees has expressed their wish to remain anonymous, so certain identifiable details have been omitted to protect their privacy.
Well let’s just get started then. Can you go ahead and do the quintessential UVA introduction: your name, your year, your pronouns, and how you identify?
Leo Smith: Leo Smith. He/him pronouns. I’m a third year studying mechanical engineering.
Anonymous: Yeah, my name is [anonymous]. My pronouns are he/they. I'm a second year and a double major.
Eli: I’m Eli. I’m a second year. My pronouns are them/them and I identify with a lot of labels: gender queer, non-binary, transgender masculine (trans masc). That’s how I would best describe the mix of labels I would best use to describe myself. And I’m an English major, CS minor.
And speaking of labels, did you feel pressured to find a label for yourself or labels to identify yourself with?
Eli: When I first started questioning my identity, it was my freshman year of high school. I think I was searching through labels a lot because I didn't feel like I really knew what was happening with how I was experiencing my gender identity, especially because I enjoy a lot of elements of feminine presentation. I love makeup and I love my skirts, so I was just struggling to navigate how presentation related to my gender.
I was searching for a label to try and say, “this is exactly what you're experiencing” and I first found that I think in like gender queer—this very queer, as the label says, mishmash.
I initially started using non-binary because it was more recognizable than gender queer. More people have a picture in their head of “oh I know what this label means”—of a much more masculine presenting person. I didn’t feel comfortable using it for a while, but then I started adjusting it and the label became more accurate to myself.
Definitely by the end of my sophomore year, I started really falling in love with the trans label. It came with a space and community and history that I could finally start like exploring and it validated my identity in a lot of ways.
Definitely by the end of my sophomore year, I started really falling in love with the trans label.
Using trans as an actual label for myself felt like transforming a part of me—like saying “I am different. I am new.” Change and transformation is what trans meant to me and I really love it now.
Yeah, I feel like part of that desire to attach yourself to a label—not just within the queer community—is rooted in a desire to be recognized as worthy according to others. So we adopt labels to make ourselves more palatable and to give others the language and tools to respect you with. I think that yearning for acceptance becomes that much more frustrating when people have this insistent refusal to use the tools you give them.
Anon: Or they’ll use the language because it’s the “right thing to do” and not because they’ve reconceived who you are. It becomes interesting when labels are so specific and obscure that they're not helpful for the reasons that labels are meant to be helpful—which is for people to understand you.
But now, I’m working on not being as desperate for labels. I told a lot of my friends this, but this past summer, I stopped needing labels as much when I started using he/they pronouns.
Now, I’m just trans masc and I use a lot of masculine language. I'm not saying I’m a straight man because God forbid. But, I’m somewhere on the masculine side of the gender spectrum and I know I'm attracted to people who aren’t men.
But other than that, I don’t have a lot of great words because I have a greater community, so I don’t need them as much.
But other than that, I don’t have a lot of great words because I have a greater community, so I don’t need them as much.
And what's your relationship to masculinity been like?
Leo: Weird, especially as a Black trans man. I didn’t worry about racism until I transitioned; it wasn’t the main thing in my head. Also, my high school was predominantly Black, so coming to a predominantly white school like UVA was weird because I’m now perceived as a Black guy, which is stereotypically more threatening.
It was all quite new all of a sudden. I feel like I didn’t get the prerequisite training of how to navigate the world as a black man like I’ve never had a police interaction as an adult Black guy.
I feel like I didn’t get the prerequisite training of how to navigate the world as a black man
I’m an extremely anxious person and this is probably 90% my anxiety, but I feel uncomfortable if it’s not known that I’m trans sometimes. Being trans, I feel less threatening on a stereotypical scale of masculinity. So if I’m hanging out with a group of women, I feel the need to say, “Oh I’m not actually as scary.” I guess sometimes I get worried and I don’t want to freak people out. Walking around at night, I’ve also been trying to be aware to not be creepy and scare them.
But when I’m with a group of guys, I feel the need to say a masculine comment to reaffirm my masculinity.
What has been your relationship with medical transition?
Leo: I think it’s almost exactly a year since I started transitioning. But when I first started, I discovered that there is so much choice. Even with bottom surgery, there’s a spectrum of types: you can keep your vagina and get a penis, have a vaginoplasty or phalloplasty.
There’s a surprising amount of variation, which was something I was interested in. I didn’t know that you could microdose on T or take other medications to block certain effects from T.
I don't have the best body image, so I just decided to go for it and see what would happen. If I was a cis guy, I would just have to deal with whatever happens, so that’s kind of the route I wanted to go down. That way, I didn’t have to choose or worry about anything.
If I was a cis guy, I would just have to deal with whatever happens, so that’s kind of the route I wanted to go down.
You’re reminding me of the argument that people often bring up that gender is a social construct. And this phrase feels like a cornerstone to trans activism, with the end goal of making gender less salient in our lives. With that normalizing goal in mind, there’s been a lot of critique surrounding “passing” within the trans community, right?
Anon: I know a lot of people feel like passing is a form of compliance. There’s this simultaneous comfort from being accepted, but also it feels shitty to not be fighting anymore.
When you pass, you “won” the game—maybe the worst way possible. For example, passing trans people at pride won’t automatically be recognized as trans and that is so isolating. Being trans is just so isolating from the queer community even.
Eli: A lot of people consider passing to be a very cis, normative ideal that creates a pressure to conform to. Passing also comes with the burden of cis white centered ideals, thinking of athletes who are cis women of color who are constantly monitored, undercut, and attacked for not conforming to white ideals of womanhood.
Passing also comes with the burden of cis white centered ideals
It’s also a difficult line to walk because for a lot of people, passing is their safety. Passing is an access to safety from trans misogynistic violence in particular.
Beyond trans misogynistic violence, what are trans issues that are often overlooked, especially within the UVA context?
Eli: One issue that we've talked about within the trans and gender nonconforming group is the lack of gender neutral housing at UVA. You have to pick a boys floor or a girls floor. For myself personally, I was really anxious about coming into UVA. I had applied for Brown and hadn’t gotten in my first year. I was terrified to be in a girls' hall, especially because I was hoping to start testosterone—terrified to be so out of place. Housing has just been a massive, additional anxiety alongside starting college in a new place.
Anon: I don't know how to explain how difficult it makes living. When you’re stared at all day or constantly called the wrong pronouns, it chips away at your energy and makes it harder to do simple things. You’re just exhausted from being put in a world where you don’t quite fit.
When you’re stared at all day or constantly called the wrong pronouns, it chips away at your energy and makes it harder to do simple things.
As a white person who grew up in a Christian school, as a “cis het” person, I never had fight to exist in a space. I've never had to fight because of my identity to be in a space, like so many other people in the world have. This experience is so new to me, it’s exhausting and isolating because my non-trans friends can’t resonate with my experiences. It feels like growing up again, like I’m a five year old, except I’m twenty.
I think that’s why a lot of trans folks make close relationships so quickly because we know how hard it is. But being in college, I feel not more safety, but more freedom to start initiatives here or talk to people and access resources that are here than I would feel like in the world because the social culture of UVA is changing and in flux more than the culture of America at large.
I think that’s why a lot of trans folks make close relationships so quickly because we know how hard it is.
So being here at UVA means conceiving of a space that is so safe in preparation for a space that will not be as safe, like the workforce.
We’ve talked a lot about the obstacles and difficulties that are embedded in trans life, but I wanted to know, what do you find most beautiful or joyful about being trans?
Leo: When the gender euphoria hits. That’s great. When I was first questioning, I would go to—and this is every trans person’s story—Starbucks and when they called out my preferred name, that was a really good feeling.
When I was first questioning, I would go to—and this is every trans person’s story—Starbucks and when they called out my preferred name, that was a really good feeling.
All the small moments like the first time I got a binder and went to school with it. All those moments where your gender is reaffirmed are the most joyous.
Anon: Whoa, I don't think I’ve ever thought that ever because it’s mostly just hard. But there is beauty in the way people discover who they are in a way that’s more than just their sexual orientation.
Discovering yourself in terms of your gender is so grounding, but it’s even life-changing to realize “Whoa, I was living wrong” or rather, being forced to live wrong. But, then you get to figure out how to live correctly. And that journey is difficult, but when people pursue it, it’s so admirable because I can see from afar the beauty of trying really hard to be yourself.
Eli: The reassembly. The knowledge of myself and the introspection that I've gained. And the idea that I am becoming a person of my own creation. I often return to this theme of destruction and recreation in my poetry. I feel very much like this sort of amalgamation and sort of my own creature.
I am a double Frankenstein, both monster and doctor, doctor and monster.
