mxbookworm's Book Journey

"As if I've never thought about how I don't want that, how every cell in my body recoils at the thought of being a man, and yet harrowing it is that the only way I can get out of my bed and make it through the day is by wearing masculinity on my body. As if I've never held my dear feminist rage, never thought about how I feel so politically aligned with womanhood and yet hate inhabiting it, hate it when my body is read as such. As if the only way to be trans is to transition to a binary gender, as if I can't exist as I have been, in some docs in between or beyond, using she or they pronouns and seething when people call me a woman and laughing when people tell me I should transition."

lamya h's every word in this section dedicated to allah and gender burrow inside my bones. i did have a moment where i outwardly experimented with my interest in possible trans-manhood, but kept coming back the conclusion of the loyalty to feminity with a indistinguishable reverence for masculinity. i want to emulate without assimilation, not for gain but my own personal comfort in it. i glean a satisfaction from confusion of "oh sir! i mean maam!" but never feel too deep a discomfort for being assumed. the discomfort mainly stems from when i'm expected to pick one or the other. the beautiful middle ground of neither and both is so vital to me. and seemingly, to lamya. i think lamya h writes a really similar but distinct experience, and i love reading and learning about individual queer experiences. we are unified by our beautiful differences, that always run deep with our broader similarities. another side to all of this, of course, is religion. i wasn't raised muslim, rather under the strict doctrine of a male god, the singular father, and of jesus, his only child a son. but i was always wandering after the holy spirit. what are you? faith? a feeling? love? not a woman or a man? like me? lamya's own struggles within the oblique picture of allah arose something in me that i was always too ashamed to ask my elders. the holy spirit is something often left out of discussion, for mysticism in owns religion is frowned upon. similar it feels to how allah's own gender is left out of discussion, but male pronouns and language bleeds through every mention of the deity
im not religious anymore and hope this doesn't come off too journal-entry style, i just tend to pull a lot of memories of my own while reading memoirs 😅