As it happened, the credits of I Saw the TV Glow rolled.
Heaving chests and glassy eyes reflected the screen’s rolling names of actors and producers and casting directors. The only audible noise in the entire theatre hall was the metaphorical sound of eggs cracking.
The room held about thirty of us, most already trans, all queer. We all spoke amongst the buzz of drunk university students, sitting around the tables of the Underground, huffing cigarettes and calling arthouse films ‘passe’. In speaking to about five different men, all of whom had entered the film with a clear definition and understanding of gender, they told me their worlds had shifted. All that was left of them was a confused, dizzying, yolky mess.
‘Egg,’ in this instance, refers to a linguistic lovechild of Tumblr queers and internet slang: a term denoting the realisation that one is trans. The egg is ‘hatching’ into their new self: like when a boy thinks about what it would be like being a girl for a day, or realises that Ethel Cain is hitting a little too hard. It’s a bit of a wink and nudge in the community for when an angel gets her wings. When one’s egg is cracked, they have come to this moment of trans realisation.
So, when the egg cracks, it's just a matter of courage and safety until a girl comes into her own. My egg was fragile from the beginning.
I tackled it gingerly, watching film after film trying to figure out how to be trans - like there was a ‘right way’ to hunt for: something to discover. The initial rupture was Julie Andrews starring in 1982’s Victor/Victoria, in all of her butch/twink glory. Her, a woman, pretending to be a man, pretending to be a drag queen, made my masculine qualities twinkle and shine, disconnecting the two polarised traits of masculine and feminine. I had cracked a lot more the first time I had watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), with Tim Curry salaciously belting Sweet Transvestite.
But what really cracked it for me was the realisation that I had always known.
It was a line of thinking similar to the one that came with my realisation of bisexuality. First, a sly humorous spark; then, a panic, an influx of religious guilt; and then, finally, acceptance.
I spent my childhood being protected and looked after by strong matriarchs. My sister and mother let me frivolously wear towels around my head and stalk the house in their heels. Then, gaggles of girls in primary school were excited to have their very own fag and held me on a pedestal to protect me, my male friends leaving me to play football and grab each others asses. All this has led to now, where an Adam’s apple, broad shoulders, and a deeper voice are commonplace with the women in my life—they have taught me how to be a woman, a sister, an aunty, and a girl.
I moved into my teen years broken and wounded, not yet knowing the terminology for my gender exploration and discovery. I spent two years identifying as non-binary, two years characterised by winged eyeliner, bruised and broken toes from being crammed into a too-tall pair of Demonias. As a child of the internet, I was exposed to so many phrases, some of which were often paired up with trans women. So much so, that I traversed through these pipelines, trying on each label (and cringing retrospectively).
As a twink, I adorned frilly underwear and had a high voice. I got hot for biceps and sweat and grime—the same traits that, if I saw in the mirror, would send me into a frenzy of shaving and cleaning. I was a sissy. I was banned from Grindr and Scruff as a teen in my desperate attempts to disguise the distaste and celebrate the old body of a boy with shadowed touches and whispered shouts.
As I metamorphosised, I toyed with the idea of beginning drag. A friend’s mum had suggested the name Carol Mel to be my stage name: it would be sultry and feminine and witty. I’d be coy and bashful, eagerly confident… but fake. The issue with drag, though, is that the dress, the wig, the makeup, all comes off. The idea that I would wear it—my femininity—like a costume, seemed a fate worse than death.
If I had a playbook to see what I was, rather than gingerly trying nuanced identities on, I would have ditched the jockstraps and wigs for an Estradiol and Spiro prescription before you could say, ‘Rupaul is a climate terrorist.’
The exploration of my identity through the idea of drag, and my continued understanding of the labels I once wore, can be used to understand the differences distinct between the crossys, the sissies and the dolls.
The crossys, or crossdressers, are your girls who genderbend for the kicks, whether it's drag, discovery, or sex. The girls do it all for the illusion. This is what is important to note—generally speaking, it's a surface-level feeling. Cross-dressing, formerly called transvestitism, is when one wears the clothing of the opposite sex. It can get complicated when the crossys discover they are dolls through this exploration, but it's a natural pipeline.
The sissies are your boys who are a little too into feminine things; they are soft, maybe a bit timid and traditionally interested in things that are associated with women. From the small sample size of 'research' I've conducted myself, around 40% of people I've slept with have later come out as trans. Whether it’s a hushed whisper, asking me to call these very straight, very masculine men, or these sissies, ‘girls,’ while we are in the secrecy of my bedroom, or their wanting a slip of oestrogen from my case: I raise an eyebrow.
I chalk it down to the power of the doll, in stride.
The dolls. These are your girls! Oestrogenated, transgendered, and gorgeous. Girls like us come in all different ways, and we all come from different places. Trans girls, or the dolls are hailed as the trailblazers for the queer community, namely the Black, Indigenous trans women of colour that have been doing it for time immemorial.
The main difference between the dolls, the crossies, and the sissies is that the dolls’ trans identity is inextricable from ourselves and our spirits. It’s more than clothes and medication and movies; it's growing so close to yourself with love, to turn a magnifying glass around and reinvent yourself to survive in a world that was not built for us.
Upon exploring each facet of my gender journey, I find that I hatch into a new version of myself each day. That the ferocity of self-love and strength is found in splitting the trepidation of self-doubt and swimming in the possibility of rediscovering myself over and over and over again.
-