Member-only story
Becoming a black man in America
The year was 2013. My discomfort with my assigned sex had reached a peak, and I began posting on my personal blog and Facebook page that I was considering transitioning to male. Through a lot of reading, conversations, and contemplation, I came to understand that my gender was non-binary, but my subconscious sex was male. So I pondered adopting a more (conventionally) masculine gender expression, in the hopes that I would eventually be read as male rather than female when out and about in public.
Being seen as a man on the street has its advantages, and is normally and rightfully considered to be a privilege. However, I wasn’t just becoming any man on the street; I was becoming a black man. My exploration of gender identity coincided with the start of the Black Lives Matter movement, which helped me begin to see through the lie of respectability politics I’d grown up with.
Raised as a girl by an interracial (black/white) couple, I wasn’t given “the talk” about how black folks are profiled and targeted. I wasn’t taught to regard the police with suspicion. I didn’t understand the continuing, deadly impact of systemic racism. My worldview was distorted by the fact that most of my friends and lovers were white.
I foolishly considered myself to be color-blind, and figured the black folks who got themselves into trouble simply didn’t work hard enough. Class was the issue, I thought, not race. I prided myself on being a black woman who, for a number of years, earned more money than my white husband, and trumpeted that fact as an unmistakable sign of progress in overcoming racial disparities.
All that began to unravel when I read more and more reports of unarmed black men and boys being shot and killed. I could now see myself in their place. I openly questioned whether transitioning to male would be putting a target on my back. Though of course black women (and non-binary people) are also profiled and targeted for violence, I worried that being perceived as a black man would, literally, shorten my expected lifespan.
A white male friend commenting on my blog opined that as I was short (though at 5' 4", average for a US-American woman), slightly built, and middle-aged, I would not be seen as a threat. This was meant to be reassuring, but my height, age, and musculature really…
