I've been called different things since coming out, but 'trap' is a new one. I was in the mall, walking from one store to another. As I passed one store, outside of which were two young African-American men, I distinctly overheard the phrase 'it's a trap' and saw one of the men glance at me. I heard another say the word 'girl.' I didn't stay to overhear or ask for more, for obvious reasons. I don't know with 100% certainty they were referring to me, but the mall was not crowded, and I was within a foot of them as I walked by.
The incident stung me deeply. I had already had a salesgirl in a store, earlier, callously look at me twice as if trying to figure out whether I was female or male; she seemed a bit crude anyway, going by her interactions with other customers, but it had irked me because I was told by my father only two days ago that I obviously 'look like a man trying to look like a woman' and that I 'don't look much' like a female, and when I heard the word 'trap' later today it triggered me.
I know I do not pass all the time; sometimes I can visually, but clearly there is something missing, something that identifies me as a 'trap.'
It's the term itself that makes what could otherwise be casual transphobia worse. Why are we called by that term? Why the assumption that we are, firstly, trying to trick males into 'believing' we are cis-, and why, secondly, the assumption we are attracted to males at all? Why is it walking into a 'trap' to be with one of us? Why the reduction of our being into walking areas of sexual danger and humiliation for straight males?
My mother already does not believe anyone will ever love me if I transition, since she cannot conceive of someone loving a transwoman; when I hear words like 'trap,' I hear, too, an echo of her words, a repetition of this pernicious idea of difference between me and 'a woman.'
Sorry for the perhaps incoherent post--that term just hit me at a particularly vulnerable moment after a difficult meeting with my family, and I feel pretty depressed.
