“Never the Enemy”
by Axton N. O. Mitchell
Raised
I was raised a girl. That’s how the world saw me. That’s what I was told to be. A little girl with crooked pigtails m, buck teeth, and scraped-up knees. She didn’t like being touched. She didn’t like being stared at. She never liked how the world made her feel.
Taught
She was taught to smile. Not because of happiness, it was just safer. She learned to laugh off the gross comments much before she could read chapter books. She learned how to keep a boy from following her home. How to hold keys and lighters in her balled up fist.I know that just existing in a body the world called “girl” comes with a constant background noise of threat.
Assaulted
I was assaulted, as a little girl, as a teen, and as a man. A few years after passing the awkward transition phases; I was years on hormones. A woman I was dating at the time liked to get me drunk enough to forget. Not that I want to but, it’s worth mentioning I never remembered one single time. She told me it was easier that way. Then the used up it’s me not you.
Myth
There’s this myth that once you transition, it all goes away. As if you can flip a switch, cut your hair, change your name, and suddenly be safe. As if I am suddenly respected. Erasing my trauma from living as a girl as if it doesn’t stick to me. My second skin. Even after the world starts seeing you differently, it doesn’t mean it treats you right. If you don’t “pass” all the time. Especially when you live in small-town maga country .
Now, I get called “sir” until certain people get told, because no they can’t tell. The people that claim they “are my friends” say “she” behind my back as soon as they get mad at me. However, the flip side is worse for me. Now these people assume I’m one of them. Racist comments. Sexist jokes. Homophobia. Trans baby conspiracies.Assuming I’m a good ol’ boy. I was never meant to become the enemy. When I out myself they stop treating like the man I am. The privilege stops when I defend someone. I won’t close my mouth to save my neck.
Remember
Remember not all men started the same. Some of us became men on purpose. With intention. With pain. With joy, too. But it wasn’t simple. And it wasn’t fast.
In my late teens and early twenty’s, I thought I was a lesbian. I wasn’t pretending. I wasn’t confused. That label made sense for a while. I liked girls. I never felt like one, I tried to. I didn’t have the words to explain, but I was a man. Not a phase, I just hadn’t fully found the truth. I have lesbian memories. I have lesbian trauma. I have lesbian experiences. That doesn’t go away just because I’m a man. Identity isn’t always a clean line. I’m a transgender man, and I lived as a lesbian. I survived as a girl. I became someone else and stayed alive.
Yearn
I yearn to be read. I want my work to move people who’ve never been seen. People that never had a place at the table. I’m not wasting time trying to win over systems that ignore us. I’m going to carve us something new. Each project I curate is rooted in the belief that all minority stories deserve to be told in our own voices.
I want people to remember and know that minorities don’t just die. We live. We laugh. We have favorite songs. We have poetry in our blood and grief in our bones.
I write because I won’t be erased. I write because I’m still here. I want to make sure no one else feels like they have to disappear just to be seen.
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