i just posted something on tumblr that made me remember

remembering

(fucking, i hate how easy it is to forget)

that i need to be very, very, very careful and conscious about not allowing the ways I think about my gender

to be subsumed underneath the more practical concessions i am currently making for my safety in a white supremacist, cissexist world

i don’t often talk about my experiences when i was under the impression that a i was just a super femme Asian gay boy

don’t talk about it because i don’t want people misgendering me or assuming shit about my life and how i’ve lived it and my gender

except: must remember

being bakla. and I was bakla back then. and now.

must remember

transition narratives are not mine.

i was bakla then. i was bakla during my long winter of internalizing transmisogyny. i am bakla now.

i may be working, currently, to inhabit a different manner of being bakla

but it is not a revolution, but an evolution

i have never stopped being bakla. i was always transpinay. i am a ladyboy.

my experiences do not need to be reflected in whiteness for my gender to be valid.

i must remember to keep my head high, maintain my dignity

and allow the buoyancy of my biyuti to keep me afloat.