Originally published on Autostraddle and cross-posted on Everyday Feminism and BoldLatina.
I never really used to give much thought to the idea that society needs positive cultural images of minorities until I came to embrace my Hispanic heritage and come out of the closet, a set of processes which took a few years in college to do.
Having the blessing, or curse, of lighter skin is a double-edged sword. It allows a whole world of opportunity — a sort of choose-your-own adventure game with your race unfolds.
Do you want to embrace your blood or whitewash yourself?
I did the latter for a while until I went to college. (I look back at my old pictures and realize how damn Hispanic I truly look. Who was I fooling?) Hence, I never thought about why people were complaining about the lack of black, or Asian, or Hispanic persons in media.
To me, I was white.
I can’t speak Spanish, and the Hispanic side of my family tried pretty successfully to whitewash itself. But none of my father’s side, a family of Puerto Ricans, looks truly white. I used to always drop “Puerto Rican” from my race when people asked me.
It’s a wonder that nobody called me out on that in school – I’m pretty sure Joe Arpaio would deport my ass if I stepped foot in Arizona.
I had gender dysphoria and questioned my gender identity well before coming to terms with this, although I didn’t come out of the closet at this time. It was high school, after all! I figured maybe it was some phase, so I never brought it up.
I was also afraid of family backlash, having read enough stories on the Internet about trans girls getting kicked out and forced into selling drugs or their bodies to make a meager living; it was enough to scare me from taking a leap of faith until college.
That’s not to say I didn’t try to learn about it during high school. I was always curious to learn new things. Being computer savvy and a loser with no friends at the time, I had plenty of time to surf the Internet when in high school.
I ended up finding my first images of transgender women that weren’t Tim Curry in drag or women on the Maury show on the *chan websites. Pretty picture of a Southeast Asian woman or some buxom blonde. Obviously silicon – whoa, is that a cock?
Yep. Of course, on the net, it was to shock people. A trap, to use Internet vernacular. But it intrigued me. I didn’t think transgender women could look beautiful before this.
I ended up seeing plenty of images of the same thing with various transgender women all throughout high school. I was filled with emotions. Lust, jealousy, surprise, amazement.
Naturally at this time I was as horny as a Triceratops, but aside from that, envy and awe filled my brain. How did they do it? Was this all Photoshop? What kind of sorcery can do this?
I figured I had no chance in hell of looking like these women. I still know that I’ll never match some of them.
I definitely remember seeing a lot of Bailey Jay, aka Line Trap. This kid had done something that I didn’t dare to do and came out amazing. She gave plenty of cisgender women a run for their money and seemed to have shed her skin.
I never noticed anything odd though about her, or any other transgender women that I saw, and brooded over with jealousy at that time. I had yet to embrace my Hispanic heritage.
However, the truth is that a large number of them fell into two racial categories. They were either white or from somewhere in Southeast Asia. There were very few Latina/Hispanic girls, and black transgender women appeared even less.
Even so, it seemed like every Latina/Hispanic trans girl was in porn, labeled “exotic” or some other synonym. The few non-porn Latina/Hispanic girls I could name were dead.
Now, I definitely agree that I could’ve found a better way to learn about transgender women and find role models. I’m glad that more visible transgender women like Janet Mock and Jen Richards are making their way to the surface, but the images are still disproportionate — and damaging.
I hold nothing against transgender porn stars, or any porn stars for that matter. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to pay the bills. However, for me, this seemed like the only image of transgender women out there at the time. It stuck with me further when I got to college and brooded over coming out.
The old images came back as I sat in my dorm many a night. Even when I first came out to my friends last April, they were still there. The images of women with flawless, silky skin bent attentively on their knees, puckered and painted lips wrapped around a throbbing “stud’s” dick.
The Latina/Hispanic girls bothered me the most. A bit of a numbing situation when I thought about it at times.
It seemed like my future as a trans woman would either be on my knees or living in grinding poverty – just waiting for someone to come along and kill me and get away with it.
That’s a pretty scary thing to think. White trans women are somewhat visible in the mainstream media — granted, they’re commonly the butt of a joke, but it’s a step above sex work being your only form of upward mobility. (And again, I hold nothing against porn stars or sex workers, I must emphasize that point! You guys and girls make the world go around!)
That isn’t very promising as you prepare to transition. It definitely set my ambitions down a peg, and it raises an even bigger question than where I will personally go: Where the hell are the transgender Latinas/Hispanics in our society?
They do exist, that can’t be questioned. Some cultures even have traditions of third-gender groups. Transgender people are very prominent in countries such as Brazil, to the point that my Brazilian friends just understood when I told them. Meanwhile, in the United States, Latina/Hispanic trans women seem to be rare or at least hard to see.
Is it that there really aren’t very many Latina/Hispanic trans women in this country? Or are they here and just not living openly? Or is the real problem located in a media that’s not interested in showing real representations of Latina/Hispanic trans women?
Based on my own experiences, I can think of plenty of reasons why other Latina/Hispanic trans women may not feel comfortable coming out.
It’s possible that machismo culture is an issue. I know I would be in the closet today if my father were actually in my life. He might’ve white-washed himself as far as interests, but machismo was one thing he was steeped in. It dripped from his body.
Religion, possibly, is another hurdle. I might not come from a religious family, but I know for others religion has been a reason for them being forced out of their home, hurt, or even killed. While God or Gods have yet to strike a transgender person dead, many a follower has in their name.
For me, though, it was none of these things that made me reconsider the safety of the closet. I worried that this would drive me out of the culture that I had only recently come to accept and embrace.
I bit my tongue on telling the people I cared about the most for fear that any reason could drive me from something I had just come to love, tip-toed around it, and broke down in front of a few of my close Hispanic friends when I explained it, figuring that I would lose them, too.
But I didn’t. The same people I was wary of telling turned out to be the simplest to explain to. I received warm words, care, and few of the same painful and strange questions that I got prodded with by my other friends.
I didn’t have to hide out from the people I was afraid of losing. Everything went well. Strange.
It doesn’t end up that way for everyone, though. And that’s a problem that needs to be addressed.
We cannot cure all reasons for transgender discrimination, or reasons to stay in the closet, but we can make it easier and more relatable by bringing prominent transgender women of color to the forefront, and working to create an environment where it’s safe for them to be publicly visible.
We need more women of color leaders in our community. I don’t just mean activists, either. We merely need successful women of color who are transgender and open about it.
Stealth is something to admire, but it is also harmful toward the next generations of transgender people. We need to give them people to emulate, look up to, and realize that there is a possibility of success and a good life ahead for them.
Trans women (and all women) who have found success through sex work are admirable, but for young trans women who have other dreams, it’s incredibly difficult to live without role models of any other kind.
We need to leave our youth with people to aspire to be.
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