Lola
In truth, I never really experienced much prejudice for the devilish hues in my hair. Even in this moment, I could never comprehend the tears that were sliding down my mother’s cheeks. Desperate and rushed as they dripped past her jaw while her voice began to fracture, trying to explain them. In truth, I knew arguing to transition earlier was fruitless, but I didn’t expect my mother to react this way. As if me “being ginger on top of being trans” would be the cherry on top for the schoolyard bullies to pull at my hair at school.
But as I began to navigate my way through my social and medical transition, in my older years, I began to realise that many men only saw me in one of two ways: I was either Jessica Rabbit, or Amanda Lepore. The redheaded vixen or the transsexual fantasy — it didn’t matter. I was now just a sexual object, placed upon a pedestal to become peered and leered at, as they reached out with hungry hands because they found a rare specimen to faun over. Mostly this is born from curiosity; some simple questions such as “what colour are your pubes?” to the more assertive demands of “I’ve never fucked a trans before.”
However not all found me to become an object of desire but, instead, of ridicule. Whether it be a fleeting moment on the street, of an older man hounding me to cut my hair because it was “going into summer” as he spat daggers. This was one of the more subtle ways to police my feminine and fiery locks. Or when a boy began to debate with me on the most academically revered of all social media platforms, Tinder. About how it isn’t discriminatory to not want to date trans women. A fair point, until he began making nonsensical comparisons between trans women and cats shitting coffee beans and prisoners of war being integrated back into society. And yes, I did say a cat shitting coffee beans. [Kopi Luwak Coffee] It was a lot but I’m getting distracted...
And indeed all of these stories are just that: distractions. While it is important that we do highlight the prejudice trans people and redheads alike face; to make us this foreign outside body that requires this sob story to be worthy of validation. There’s barely any talk of those kind words that strangers pass to me when they like the way my auburn hair shines golden in the sunlight, or the way I dress that makes them envious of my style, or the boys that want to ask me my favourite colour because they want to know more than what’s between my legs.
Tell me, do you like your hair? Does your skin fit you perfectly? Because my answer to these questions years ago would not be the same as yours. The intersectionality of trans and ginger fetishization was something I’ve had to learn to adapt to, to metamorphosize into my own confidence. My hair and gender identity now co-exist into a sexually, and socially, confident woman. Who can finally pull back at the hair of my bullies. Because why spit daggers when you can smile them instead?
My grin has always been my favourite blade, anyway.
