Paris is Burning and Me
April 16th, 2024
My relationship with gender and identity is... quite complicated to say the least. I have identified as not cis since the 7th grade, but I didn't fully come to the conclusion that I was a trans man until my sophmore year of high school.
Throughout that time, there were two major things I always worried about: transitioning, and doing so with family. My family isn't the most accepting, but not outright transphobic either, and while my relationship with my parents is better than what it used to be, it's not the most comfortable.
For a long time, I let these kinds of things control me and how I went about my identity, and even though I was in a comfort zone being essentially one-fourth-closeted, it started to eat away at me, especially as I got older. The older I got, the sicker I got of not actually being myself, constantly pretending for the sake of others, and being in a constant worried state in general.
But last summer, there was something that (partially) kicked me into taking control and finally starting my transition: Paris is Burning, a documentary by Jennie Livingston about ballroom culture in 80s/90s Harlem, New York.
I have seen many documentaries and media in my life, but there was something about Paris is Burning that struck me. The themes of community and resisting the pressure to conform to a cisheteronormative world, was something that I never really saw before. Seeing people in my community come together and create a way to not only express themselves, but build a sense of togetherness that is so essential to have today, impacted me a lot. I felt like I was empowered to persevere through my toxic, unstable environment and carve out a world for myself. In a way, I was given confidence to reject how I was living at the time.
Several months later, I wrote a letter, half-coming-out-statement, half-vent. The next day, I handed it to my family and they read it. However, things didn't pan out the way I expected. While my dad essentially gave me a "I figured, I can't control what you do, so do what you want" type of response, he didn't exactly understand what I was trying to say. With my mother, she didn't really say anything at all, except for saying that we should have a "debriefing" (which, she eventually forgot about.)
Since then, I have taken steps to transition/pass despite those reactions, such as buying a binder, starting testosterone (it'll be 2 months next week!) and using my preferred name at college, but my parents still see me as their daughter, and so does the rest of my family. Granted, I never told the rest of my family about my identity. It's almost like nothing even happened.
I've had quite some trouble dealing with this kind of feeling... on one hand, I'm taking steps I've wanted to take for years, but on the other, I've had realizations that maybe no matter what I do, I'll always be someone's daughter, sister, niece, granddaughter, etc... and while I know that how people view me doesn't matter, it does get to me at times. I always wonder if, not when, I will ever be enough to be considered a man, or if I'll be able to be completely secure in my identity... the list goes on.
But recently, I had the opportunity to see Paris is Burning again, this time through a free film-screening program at my college.
The host of the event held a mini Q&A session after the screening where people could share their thoughts or anything in particular that struck them, and I decided to dive into what Paris is Burning means to me, which was really nervewracking... but it was much better received than I thought. I even had some people come up to me and talk to me more about it and queer history in general, which I don't exactly experience very much outside from discussions in friend circles and the Internet. Having that experience again almost felt like a breath of fresh air, like I was alive again.
Truthfully, I think one of the most important things that I gained from this was how important it is to foster community and discussions not just around films and other media that cover different communities and subcultures, but how crucial it is to keep that history alive, and not just a thing of the past. Even decades after the film's release, the impact of ballroom culture, its community, and its history is still very much alive and well, and being able to go back and remember that we have always been here and persevered time and time again is something that will always be special to me.