Getting dressed has become such joyful torture lately. Since I found the courage to denounce everyday “menswear” as the most unimaginative, creatively stunted output to grace the fashion universe, dressing comes with a responsibility. In deciding what to wear, I have to consider my own emotional capacity for handling a myriad of potential reactions my appearance could evoke. 

Undressing danger

I was assigned male at birth, and raised as a boy who later became a man. Though being gay muddied the waters of gender, I was mostly comfortable with dressing as I was expected to. In fact, clothing was one of the ways I could assure society that I abided by the rules of gender despite being a walking contradiction to them in most other ways. As I grew out of gender, I grew further into femininity, again through clothing. This time as a non-binary person, the choice has different consequences — very different to the obscurity of normative gender expression. 

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Men and other pandemics

2020 was a wild year for obvious reasons, but more so for my reckoning with the simultaneous danger and wonder of transgressing the barbed boundaries of the gender binary. At the start of the South African winter of 2020, I had moved into a new apartment and committed myself to getting more physical exercise by walking around in my new neighbourhood. It only made sense that I wore items like jumpers, joggers and hoodies as the temperature kept dropping by the day. Although walking anywhere in Johannesburg requires a level of fear-based vigilance, I enjoyed my walks to the mall relatively undisturbed.

By the time the spring came and I could shed some of the layers, I took my walk in a pair of high-waisted booty shorts and multi-coloured calf-high socks. To the ungendered eye, this should raise no alarm, but as I passed the same group of street vendors who previously did not notice me walking by, I was followed by one, harassing and trying to coerce me into giving him something I could not hear through my earphones. My newfound fitness routine ended there. 

My trips to the mall became an added expense with two-way Uber trips, accompanied by the realisation that femmeness comes with a literal tax. We have no choice but to buy ourselves out of the danger that comes with the disdain society has for the feminine. The price, however, does not guarantee safety in the least. Of the hundreds of Uber tips I have taken, I have been driven by a woman twice. One of my last Uber trips involved the driver refusing to pick me up because my appearance (wearing a dress) “insulted” him. The experience of being a femme in a misogynistic, homophobic country like South Africa is one that reminds you constantly that your existence is likened to insult. Yet, on occasion, the response can completely flip that script.

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Surprises make it easier

In my caution to try and make myself as small and invisible when entering spaces controlled by cis men, I have been competely disorientated by men who received me with absolute reverence and an overcompensatory sense of courtesy. Some may say, that is just customer service or human decency, but as someone who has experienced the violence of homophobia and misogyny, I know better. When you have been taught to expect violence for daring to express your femininity, you know when someone is elevating you for the very same reason. I have not yet been able to make sense of this with the same certainty I have done with the violence, but I can only suspect that these are men who respect and fear the divine connotations attached to gender fluidity in indigenous folklore. 

Although I welcome the reprieve it offers me from moving through the world with an ever-present bone-chilling neurosis, it gives me no lasting comfort. It is but a brief moment in time that I am able to feel a part of the world, respected and even admired for who I am. This is the paradox of gender transgression in a normative society afflicted by the paranoia of power. 

Freedom is safety and optimism

In spite of this constellation of violence and reverence, my transitions through gender spark in me a radical optimism for a world that might yet turn its cheek to me and invite a kiss. As I journey through gender with the skill of a child, occasionally crashing into a puddle on the way home to escape the rain, I do take a moment to observe the sky opening to give me a chance to make it there safely. With every passing day, my audacity grows — to step into myself and express a transgressive femininity through fashion which has been cordoned off by the body politics of gender fantasies that create men and women. Though there is fear, there is also freedom, which is an ideal worth risking my life for. To me freedom is safety from persecution and ridicule and the acceptance that I am who I say I am — even if that translates into being nobody by the current frameworks of understanding.

 They are small and uncommon, but there are pockets of the world which open up to receive me in my authenticity and the beauty of my daring. I find those places overflowing with my hopes and dreams for the world I want to see. In my righteous indignation for the violence so many will still endure, I am able to take a breath and enjoy the idea that there may be an end in sight. I hope to show these possibilities to others who find it worthwhile to co-create this world with me.The freedom I feel, however, is also entangled with the dread that comes from making peace with the fact that my audacity could also cost me my life. There are no single issue lives, as Audre Lord said, so while I am still here, I will eat joy with the same fervour as I fight the chokehold of gender violence.