Pencil drawing by Living Smile Vidya, theatre actress and activist based in Chennai.This is a thank you note. It is also a statement of purpose.
Let’s start, not in media res, but at the beginning.
I have been “online” – in as many senses of the word as is possible – since 1997-98. I created my first webmail account then, and within two days of it, created another one, for the “other” me. And then two more, for good measure, to act as a sink for all the sites, services I needed to use and the resultant junk and spam that I knew was going to come.
I learnt HTML, and later CSS, to create my own pages on Angelfire, Geocities, Hypermart, and their ilk, which morphed, in the 2000s, to Livejournal, Pyra Lab’s Blogger, Blog-City and later my own domain and a Moveable Type blog. I’ve been on Yahoo Chat, IRC, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Google Chat, talking to people, building friendships and networks online with people I’ve never met in the “real” world.
I’ve also been on the other internet. The one which is seen only through carefully and strategically placed cubicles in internet parlours; just out of sight of the café manager, and most of the other customers looking to print their hall-tickets for the next competitive exams. The internet whose day begins when most other people’s day ends. Of one 50kb JPG file which enticed us with interlaced strips of unclothed human flesh, so we wouldn’t mind the two hours and change needed to download it over a 14.4 baud modem.
Being online, being online and actively creating, doing, saved me. The amateur web pages I created, stealing code from other sites, and then changing them to suit my needs; learning code and making mistakes; creating “fake” profiles and “true” profiles to use in chatroom after chatroom; taking photos and talking about taking photos; staying up late at night to surf porn and imagine a life where I could be the person I was seeing on the screen, and then writing the erotica where indeed, I am the glamourous woman who is happy to be photographed nude for the pleasure of others; writing, writing – all of these absorbed the depression that was just beneath the surface, channeling my frustration and pain out and away from me.
As internet technologies and tools changed, developed and died out to be replaced by slicker versions of the same, I too have changed and developed.
From believing that my “other” side was a shameful secret, a product of that other internet and therefore to be only let out in the dark, at night, I’ve come to believe that the “other” me is also me, and we both deserve to have our voices heard in clear daylight.
And so I say thanks to the internet. I say thanks for letting me survive my childhood and the conditioning.
I say this because of one word. Impostor. The word Impostor keeps coming up every time a trans woman writes about herself. It is there, just below the surface, despite all the estrogen and progesterone, under all the skin-colour foundation and pink lipstick and shiny earrings. It is behind the pads on our breast, cushioning the tender nipples. The feeling, and the word – impostor. It is there when we attempt to occupy women-only spaces, and it is there when we cast away all the outer appearances, cross-dress in approved clothing in order to present ourselves the way the world sees us. We are impostors when we try to be us, and when we try to be what you think we are.
Read the full article in GenderIT.org .