On Being Visible

A Transgender Day of Visibility post

Hi, I’m Miranda. I’m a trans woman and a poet.

That’s how I begin every poetry recording I do for this little website, whether I’m reading an original poem or one I’ve selected from the public domain.

Sure, people can figure out that I’m trans without me starting my videos announcing it. My transness shows up in a fair number of my own poems, and I know that I’m clockable by looks or voice (not that I subscribe to that passing culture bullshit).

Not just today—March 31, International Transgender Day of Visibility—but every day, trans people have to face how visible we want to (or have to) be. Sometimes that choice is driven by comfort, other times by safety.

The safety calculus about how out and open a trans person should/could be is complicated and multi-faceted, and it is becoming more difficult as Trump, Musk, and the GOP come after our rights. Their anti-trans EOs, laws, and bills being considered are bad enough on the surface, but the worst part is the constant barrage of lies about trans people coming from every right wing bullhorn—from the political class and their talking heads to church pulpits across the country.

Being Visible is Less Safe

People like me are demonized every day in every form of media, and social media exacerbates this problem. Most of the social media networks are run by anti-trans people, and their networks reflect it with algorithms that lift anti-trans voices while burying trans voices and with moderation (or lack of moderation) that places cis comfort above trans safety.

I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve reported threatening comments on Facebook or TikTok that have come back as not violating community standards. The stuff that runs rampant online doesn’t stay online, though. It’s not “just bots or trolls.”

We moved red state to blue state last year. Part of that was the political landscape in my home state becoming worse and worse for trans people and our general existence in the public square, but the big part was safety. Our children were being relentlessly bullied at school for their queer identities, and the school district refused to act (they said the state wouldn’t let them do anything about bias-based bullying). I stopped going grocery shopping with my partner after being threatened in-store multiple times.

The Other Trans Holiday

I know that my race and socioeconomic position afford me a lot more safety than many of my trans siblings, but as I think about trans visibility, I can’t help but also think about the other trans holiday: Transgender Day of Remembrance. I invite you to sit with the knowledge that the social position of trans people requires us to have an annual day for remembering our dead.

My Choice—Being Visible as a Trans Woman

The life of a writer requires some amount of public-facing persona, so here I am—being visible. Every day, I log in to Substack and my social accounts to see how my latest writing is being received, but the first thing I have to do is check the comment filters and DMs. As many days as not, I have anti-trans comments waiting for me. Sometimes they’re just intentional misgendering or making fun of my looks (the most clever recent one was someone calling me Temu Howard Stern because of my curly hair lol); other times, I have threats waiting for me.

I wish, hope, and am doing what I can to bring about a world where I don’t have to sort my messages for threats every time I get online, but until then or until my end, I’ll be Miranda, a trans woman and a poet.

💜thepoetmiranda📚

p.s. Want to support this particular transgender woman? Read my poems, share them with your friends and family and on your social media pages, and subscribe. And you can donate a cup of coffee to the poet at ko-fi.com/thepoetmiranda