Deeper voice5/7/2023 ![]() ![]() I could hold an entire meeting hostage as I worked through a half-formed idea, watching as heads swiveled toward me in silent, animal unison, waiting patiently for me to finish even as I stumbled through a thought. In fact, my voice hijacked rooms all the time. Joining a group of women engaged in excited banter at lunch, for instance, I noticed that my own enthusiastic interruptions halted entire conversations. When she died suddenly, at 69, four years after my transition, I dealt with the hole in my chest by trying to honor her legacy: flying higher, achieving more and charging through the glass ceiling that had ultimately caged her potential.īut that glass ceiling didn’t apply to me so cleanly anymore. She was a physicist from humble beginnings who went on to be an executive at General Electric, where she faced skepticism, hostility and the loneliness of often being the only woman in the room. ![]() Growing up, my mother taught my sister and me to speak up, to be assertive and to take up space. But there were also more sobering moments, like the time I found myself on a dark street with a woman who quickly crossed to the other side. Sometimes this friendliness led to vulnerability, like the time a beefy guy I sat next to on a plane gulped down two gin and tonics and then told me, tearily, that his wife was leaving him. There were the “Hey, brother”s from gas station employees, the oddly subservient “Sir”s from salesmen who wanted something from me and the presumption of camaraderie from men at the gym, on the train, at work. To be seen for the man I was felt glorious, sure, but also jarring. I read somewhere once that first phase of identity formation is figuring out who you are, but the next one - the one we rarely talk about, especially in stories about trans people - is finding your place in the world. It was so sweet, after a lifetime of blurring my eyes in order to look at my reflection, to find myself looking back at me. The effects of the hormone were remarkably fast, and every morning I’d look at myself in the mirror with reverent awe, charting the muscle forming, the spray of hair covering my chest, the stubble on my lip. I moved to Boston in 2011, and my first week of work at a newspaper there coincided with my first shot of testosterone. I noticed he never did the same to the man who sat on the other side of him. One boorish co-worker at a transcription job I had in graduate school made it his business to reiterate to me, in tedious detail, whatever it was our boss had just told us to do, and it was easier to stand sentry, nodding politely, until he went away. Early in my professional life, I was sometimes simply squeezed into silence. I was frequently interrupted and talked over, especially by men, and especially at work. When I spoke, something clicked in the gunman’s eyes, and he immediately let us go.īut my voice also made me invisible. That night, my voice - high, sharp, an immediate tell - saved me. ![]() I dated women, and my ex and I were once held at gunpoint by a man who went on to target two other straight couples, shooting the men. I was a tomboy kid, a swaggering teen steeped in queer culture, then a masculine adult. ![]()
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