Maddox K. Pennington

Transitioning complicates the simplest of questions. “Have I seen you here before?” 

You have, and you haven’t. When I was here before, I was someone else—though of course she’s still here, and also, I was already there. It’s a wonder more trans and genderqueer people aren’t just walking around like Lewis Carroll characters, smiling enigmatically before vanishing from the branch of a tree. 

So much of gender is made up of the interaction between what we perform and how that performance is received. It’s where presentation meets perception that we feel either affirmed or misread. This is why, if you have trans and genderqueer friends, it’s important that you practice their name and pronouns to yourself when they’re not in front of you. “Oh hey, it’s Mir—I mean, Maddox, can you make room for her—I mean them” means relying on your residual knowledge of who we have been. Which is what we all do! It’s why I imagine being face-blind to be so inconvenient. But the same way your computer updates new software and deletes or archives the old, you’ve got to rewrite that code for yourself. It’s not that easy, but it’s not that hard. You do it every day when a friend changes their name because of marriage, or adoption, or celebrity. Sometimes a trans “coming out” follows a period of physical, medical or stylistic transformation, but sometimes it comes first, or there’s no transition at all. Just a revision, which requires you to re-see your friend with fresh, accepting eyes. All you really need to do is remember what people in your life would like to be called. You don’t need to worry about “how far” or “how soon” they’re transitioning. It’s none of your business, and the answer may not be fixed anyway. 

When I defend my right to emerge as Maddox from my old forehead, I’m also defending everyone’s right to transition, or not transition. To reinvent, rebrand, rediscover themselves. I’m arguing for less gender-targeted marketing, for an end to boy and girl toys, for one big clothing section at Target despite people’s outrage at having to go down aisles with things they don’t need. What is it you think you’re doing at Target the rest of the time? You probably already know this, but we have to go of this insistence that male and female are two free-floating kingdoms that only the deviant travel between. Embrace the idea that there’s a whole garden of behaviors, some we have coded as masculine and others as feminine, all of which are equally accessible to all. Leveling those distinctions will help undermine the patriarchy and save the lives of those who feel they are so out of place can’t stay here. This Ask Polly question about dealing with an adult nonbinary kid as a parent, was hard to read, but Polly’s answer was soothing, and thorough. 

For many queer and trans folks, when we began to express ourselves, and realized some people would allow it and some people wouldn’t, we retreated from one kind of self-expression and attempted another. Later, some of these explorations and retreats are used against us, to question or challenge our assertions about ourselves. And beyond citing Whitman and the multitudes we contain, or launching into a Butler Gender Trouble 101 lecture, there’s not much we can say. Inconsistency is human; so is evolution. Authenticity is a work in progress, but I can say for certain that what I figured out at 8 was true. If I had been a child in 2019 instead of in 1993, I might have gotten to be Maddox a lot sooner. 

Like any millennial, I planned a real “roll out” for Maddox. I went away for the summer, so before I left, I planted the idea that transition was happening with “MK”. I emailed my summer boss to say I’d be going by Maddox. The “…if that’s ok” was implied. She immediately replied to me, addressing me as Maddox, and got the program email accounts squared away within 24 hours. Administrators and leadership at my full time job leapt into action as well, smoothing the way with IT and online display elements.  It’s amazing how much online real estate Maddox can take ownership of with minimal effort on my part. Gmail, Amazon, Hulu, Apple—all of these are amenable to a quick username update, and then I feel affirmed when I sign on to the devices or streaming services Maddox enjoys. If only the rest of the process was as easy. Paypal is an asshole about it. Banks and HR departments require letters, which require courts, which require fees and paperwork and it’s easier to bottle up that discomfort rather than confront it over and over. Food trucks that take your name from your card and call that out when your sandwich is ready are a social problem. Having one ID (thank you, School That Employs Me) with my correct name and recent face and two others don’t match gets me weird treatment at airports. 

It can be hard to discern if someone’s misnaming you through habit, or forgetfulness, or malice, or indifference (which feels a lot like malice even if it isn’t). Sometimes I sharply correct people who love me, or let total strangers off the hook. Sometimes they are gracious and sometimes they are not.