As a child, I thought Sisyphus was foolish. Every day, he wakes up and attempts an impossible task; he continues to push his rock up the hill no matter how many times it rolls down. After spending every waking moment of the past two years fighting to convince the world that I am a man, I finally understand why one must imagine Sisyphus happy. He chooses to roll his rock up the hill not because he hopes to reach the top, but because he has learned to enjoy his ascent. Acceptance from my cisgender peers, like the acme of Sisyphus’ hill, will always remain in sight but out of reach. Transgender people who seek cisgender validation must learn that allyship is conditional and often unobtainable, making it an unreliable source of happiness.
I will never be cisgender. I can change my name, cut my hair, carve out my curves and pump hormones into my blood, but none of that will make me cisgender. Surprisingly, I’m okay with that. I’ve realized I don’t need to be cisgender to be a real man - my transness and my masculinity aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m not a man trapped in a woman’s body - I’m a man trapped in a cisnormative society. I’m far from the first trans person to feel alienated by “born in the wrong body” rhetoric, so why does it continue to dominate public understanding of transness? When I came out as trans to my biology lab partner in freshman year, the first thing he asked was when I was going to “get all the surgeries” and transition for real. This wasn’t the first time someone assumed I wanted to medically transition, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Cis people are willing to support us only when we make ourselves look like them, only when we accept that we’re in the wrong bodies, only when we acknowledge that our existence is anomalous.
Wanting to be cisgender isn’t inherently harmful, nor is it an unfamiliar feeling for most transgender people. Some may argue that most trans people experience gender dysphoria, so it isn’t unreasonable to assume trans people would be happier if they were cis. However, acceptance that mandates cisgender aspiration excludes queer people who don’t fit neatly into binary constructions of gender. If trans people are “born in the wrong bodies,” what is the right body for a non-binary person? Those of us who feel comfortable with the traditional categories of male or female have cisgender counterparts we can compare ourselves to. I’ve adopted the gait of my former debate captain, the posture of my geometry teacher, and the mannerisms of my chemistry classmate. While I can use cisgender men as an example of masculinity, there is no cisgender standard of androgyny for my non-binary peers to model themselves after. Non-binary people don’t fit cisnormative understandings of gender, so they are often overlooked by cisgender allyship.
Although binary trans folks don’t face the same challenges as their non-binary counterparts, they must successfully pass as cisgender in order to be accepted. Caitlyn Jenner and Hunter Schafer are both famous transgender women, but Jenner is the only one who faces constant transphobic harassment. The main distinction between these two women is the level to which they pass. While Schafer is often indistinguishable from her cisgender costars, Jenner’s voice and secondary sex characteristics often give away the fact that she is transgender. To cisgender people, passing is the greatest thing a trans person can achieve. Passing isn’t impossible, but it isn’t easy. I’ve done everything short of medically transitioning to look more masculine, and I still get misgendered daily. Passing isn’t always comfortable, either. Sometimes people treat me normally, but other times a girl in my physics class tells me “I couldn’t even tell you weren’t a real boy,” and I’m left wondering if approval from people like her is really worth fighting for.
The truth is, even when trans folks accept cisnormativity, even when we agree to reject our bodies and conform, even when we do everything in our power to pass, societal acceptance won’t make us feel any better about ourselves. While drafting this essay, I heard a group of boys behind me mock trans people for being “delusional” and “sick in the head”. I turned around and confronted them, and one boy attempted to reassure me by saying, “don’t worry, we aren’t talking about the ones like you.” His acceptance should make me feel happy; I finally reached my goal, I rolled my rock to the top of the hill. Instead, I’m terrified. I’m scared that if I stop conforming, if I stop expressing my masculinity in the same way they do, if I stop being “one of the good ones,” these boys will turn on me and I will lose everything.
I may be at the top of the hill, but my rock is teetering and could crush me at any moment. I can feel the warmth of cisgender validation, but I can never hold it in my hand. The promise of allyship may be alluring to my transgender peers, but it will never be enough to make us happy. If we can imagine Sisyphus happy despite his failure, perhaps we can imagine ourselves happy without cisgender validation.
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