What Etiology Can’t Say

If asked at the beginning of my trans journey would I want to be AFAB, I’d have said yes in a hurry. To not have to worry about the process of transition, one that our society has riven with pitfalls and danger, sounds awesome. I would have sooner lived as who I was meant to be.

In the last few weeks, I’ve changed my tune. I like the freedom to find out what femininity means to me, what I want and don’t want. It’s a creative tableau for womanhood. Once, the notion of such abstract thought would have surprised me. Yet with every euphoric effort that works and does not, clarity emerges on who I — Allison Julia Whitney — want to be. And what I am becoming. 

But of course, society wants to define gender for us. Even the most well-intentioned of the cissssss have wanted to know why. Why why why.

The only people I’ve subjected myself to the world salad that is my etiology are my loved ones. Everyone else who happens to know I'm trans that is not trans themselves can f off. When did I know I’m a woman? Idfk when did you know the world doesn’t disappear when you play peekaboo?

Because I've had the good fortune to have a lot of love in my life, one thing I’ve been adamant about is not retconning my past. I was not assigned female at birth. My relationships are what they are. I’m grateful for the ones that love me. If they ditch me once I come out, that’s something I have no control over. My gender is not their responsibility. I can only be myself.

But I do wonder…

There’s a great scene in Emily St. James' excellent Woodworking where one of the trans characters thinks of a past visit to New York City. They never lived there but as they rode the subway on their trip, they had a sliding doors moment about how their life would have turned out if they had chosen a life tailored to the who they really were, rather than living the life of compromise many humans do, doubly so for trans folk.

Those kinds of moments are what I grieve from my lost youth. Not How would I have navigated being a lesbian? or What would my relationships with my family be like? No, my sliding doors moments are banal. But I feel them all the same. 

When I was a kid, Hot Topic was an oddity, a hangout spot for the goths and social lowlifes, the people I tried to avoid at all costs but couldn't help but befriend anyway. At the mall by my house on a typical Friday night, dozens of white kids decked out in black hair, lipstick, and nail polish would congregate there like old ladies gathering for mass. They rarely bought anything but they hung out all the same because it felt close to the subculture they were trying to emulate.

I always told myself that things at Hot Topic were not for me. The t-shirts were garish compared to the solids I preferred (and still do). And the tchotchkes they sold never held much appeal. Hot Topic was more an entity or a mindset than a retail store.

But occasionally, I would go in with girls who were friends (until my wife, I never had a romantic interest I could shop for at Hot Topic). And I would see the delight on their faces as they shopped. There was something about that store that felt specifically feminine, away from the kind of girl-coded stuff I was attracted to (pinks, high-pitched voices, social conformity). And I liked seeing my female friends happy as they browsed and bought dark clothes, black nail polish, chokers. There was a confirmation of true existence to the young women I knew who frequented Hot Topic. I rarely felt as happy while shopping despite being a bona fide mallrat. 

When I began exploring my gender, I knew Hot Topic was going to be a place I wanted to try, even as retail stores flag. The one closest to my house closed earlier this year, which just as well considering I used to go there with my kids. There's another that's 30+ minutes away but worth the trip. 

As I stepped in today, the store's famously black aesthetic assaulting my vision, I was in my own sliding doors moment: being a teenage girl. Buying something useless from Hot Topic at the beloved mall just to spend money and feel good about myself. Then going to the nearby walking trail, putting headphones on, cracking open a Pepsi, and sipping it through a straw. Atticus by Finch blasting through my ears. Solid clothes, beanie. Sun out, cool weather, fresh air. Just existing. 

That's what I grieve more than anything. Not how things would have been had the doctor seen a vagina between my legs and sent me on the other societal path of binary gender. My grief is small picture: that teenage girl's ordinary days. What I could have enjoyed in an afternoon with no school and no work. An afternoon existing as myself. 

The first time I went into the store today, the clerk greeted me fondly. Her face mask obscured her age but I would guess mid-20s. It put me at ease. I did a long sweep around the store, starting in the men's and slowly, casually working my way over to the women's following a needlessly long horseshoe pattern. No one in the store but me and her.

And there they were. Solids. Darks. A couple of tops I liked and a pair of pants I really like. 

And there she was. Me. A teenage girl. Looking because it's ok to look. Looking because it's not a big deal to look at women's clothes when you are a young woman. 

But instead of empowering me, it overwhelmed and I didn't have the emotional ability to linger. I walked out quickly. A sense of what...shame? Maybe a little. Anger? Kind of. Regret? No. I don't know.

Really just a burning hate that the world is what it is. 

I hate what has been taken from me. I should not have needed to be trans or cis to enjoy a moment like that at 16. Looking at things that our society deems girl-coded. Feeling feminine in myself. I hate that I got pushed in the opposite direction. I hate that my children are getting pushed in that direction too, even as my wife and I have tried to subvert it.

Part of me just wanted to sit down and cry. To physically grieve the memory of that teenage girl who should have just gotten to live her life. Going to the mall with her girl friends, having a secret crush on one of them and not knowing what to do about it, gossiping, laughing, ignoring the stares from the boys and the creeps. Or going to the mall by herself because it's her day off and she is feeling lonely even as she is not alone. 

She deserved better. All trans people do. All teenage girls do too.

By the way, if you wanna get me this top in an XL, I know a 40-year old trans girl whose teenage self would thank you.

I knew I was going to go back later. My journey felt incomplete and again, there ain't a Hot Topic around the corner from my house anymore. But I needed to work up the nerve and what better place to do so than a mall? I made the requisite trip to the bookstore, I got some pretzel dogs, I did some reading and some walking. 

I am still a mall rat. I always will be. I feel awful that the youths are going to lose these spaces. I see the vacancy rate, better than the early years after covid but still bad, and I know what's coming. These temples of capitalism will always touch the feminine within me, the person I have always known I was. I can't articulate the full connection yet or maybe I can and just don't want to. I just want to grieve what's lost and enjoy what I have until then.

When I went back in, the same clerk cheerily greeted me again, realizing who I was. There was genuine warmth in her words. And I wanted to say to her: Hi I'm a trans woman. I really like some of the clothes over here. Can you please just stand with me and help me browse? That's weird and I'm sorry but I don't feel safe doing this alone.

I said none of that. The store had more people, my nerves rose. I stood in the woman's section once more, working up the courage to buy something.

And then...

If there is one thing I have learned about the girl/woman who has been inside of me all of these years, it's that she is me. And if she is me, then she is empathetic. I am empathetic. She was not crying out, wanting to be let free. She was not trying to falsely recreate a memory that was not there. She was telling me that she loves herself, to not be hard on herself, that I/she have/has come a long way. And she's proud of herself. I am proud of me.

So in the end, I went back to the men's and got a t-shirt from with some anime character on it. My concession was that the character is female. I'm the only transbian in the world who doesn't like anime so so this one is for the t-girls. It made me feel good to find it. 

At checkout was a different clerk, 21 if a day, with braces and the fresh face of youth. She looked at me with the polite demeanor of a retail worker as she asked about the sale they were having. And in that moment, I felt a connection with the teenage girl I didn't get to be, the memory I did not have, that while I am not free and will always grieve, I had done something for her. Acknowledged her. And loved her. And in the process loved myself. 

There was no walk in the woods, no Pepsi through a straw. But a sense of elation, perhaps euphoria or euphoria-adjacent. I have taken my transition step-by-step. The last few days, I've woken up with debilitating dysphoria and have considered scrapping everything altogether. Today, I gave myself a break. I gave myself love. I gave myself grace. 

The door slid shut on the ersatz memory. It'll be there, lodged in my mind, recalled with and against my will. But now, a new, tangible one will be here too. It will not replace what could have been. But it was something I made for me, after years of denying myself this joy. 

And it's good enough.