on bravery on my own terms

ignoring the rules and expectations of cis men and being brave for me

I do want to be more brave. But I want my bravery to be more about things I choose to do for myself than things I do to simply to exist.

I don’t want to have to feel brave to go out without putting on makeup every day or to feel brave for not shaving for a day or for wearing a dress someone gave me for Christmas. It is a shitty feeling to have to feel brave because of the crappiness of other people instead of because you are doing super fun things you have always wanted to challenge yourself with.

By no means is this style of bravery unique to trans people. It is pretty much a style of bravery needed for the non-Cis, non-straight, non-white, non-male people, non-Christian, non-rich and to varying degrees it gets more and more complicated and harder to simply interact with the world depending on how many of these things you carry with you regularly.

Of course, the cis, straight, white, male, Christian will tell you—cry to you, yell to you that they face every challenge that you do and to stop crying about it. Nevertheless, I understand what being brave means and do know that there is bravery on my terms and for my sake, and bravery that does not prioritize the rules and feelings of straight cis men.

I don’t even have a list of the brave things I might like to try. I think I would like to try and speak at conferences again about masculinity and femininity and how they tie into parenting. Speaking in front of groups about things I am passionate about has always brought me joy. It feels silly to write because I understand it is not something that is as simple as writing down and accomplishing, but I would love to explore what modeling looks like. I would like to get back into sports in a way my body can at 45.

These things make me scared because I could certainly fail. But I would like to fail because I tried something and it didn’t work out for me because of something I have tried instead of me getting up every day and being too exhausted of little acts of bravery to do anything I would like to do for me.

That is the kind of bravery I am looking for from myself right now.