My fat body empowers people to erase my gender. I am a woman, but they do not see me as a woman. I am often mistaken for a man. I am called “Sir,” because people look at the bulk of me and ignore my face, my styled hair, my very ample breasts and other curves. It bothers me to have my gender erased, to be unseen in plain sight. I am a woman. I am large, but I am a woman. I deserve to be seen as such.
We have such narrow ideas about femininity. When you are very tall and wide and, well, I guess the tattoos don’t help, you all too often present as “not woman.” Race plays a part in this too. Black women are rarely allowed their femininity.
There is also a truth that runs deeper. For a very long time, I only wore men’s clothes. I very much wanted to butch myself up because I understood that to look or present myself like a woman was to invite trouble and danger and hurt. I inhabited a butch identity because it felt safe. It afforded me a semblance of control over my body and how my body was perceived. It was easier to move through the world. It was easier to be invisible.
In relationships with women, presenting as butch meant that I didn’t have to be touched. I could pretend I didn’t want to be touched and I could stay safe. I could have more of the control I constantly crave.
It was a safe haven until I realized that I was playing a role rather than inhabiting an identity that felt true to me. People were seeing me but they weren’t seeing me.
I started to shed that identity, but people continued to see only what they wanted to see. Today, the people who misgender me aren’t doing so because they perceive a queer aesthetic. They’re doing so because they don’t see me, my body, as something that should be treated or considered with care.