Ashton Blyth
Perceptions of Me
My close friends would probably say I can be quite feminine, I tend to end up falling into the ‘gay best friend’ category with people I get close to. However, in the public eye I can’t help but try my best to appear as a straight cisgender man, kind of the opposite of a bisexual (with a preference for men) transgender man – the thought of leaving the house without my chest bound and flat terrifies me, because I don’t want anybody to see me as anything other than male.
Before starting my medical transition nearly four years ago, I had been verbally and physically abused by strangers in public spaces, and according to Stonewall four in five trans people who experience hate crime don’t report it to the police – myself becoming one of those four. 375 transgender and gender non-conforming people were murdered in 2021, the highest recorded number since records began and one in four of those people were killed in their own home (according to the Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide project by Transgender Europe).
Within my practice I advocate for the social change of breaking the binary of gender and sexuality; yet personally I strive to comply to the binary for fear of being seen as less of a male because I’m transgender and possibly face more abuse for it. I identify as male and as masculine, but because I know all the lyrics to every One Direction song, can compliment someone on their nails because I appreciate the effort that has gone into the artwork and have a soft-spot for romance novels, that somehow makes me less of a man to a society that believes that gender is not a spectrum and that how someone presents, how they act, their likes and dislikes define their gender identity.
The aim of this artwork is to highlight not only my own internal struggle with my perceived gender identity and sexuality versus how I actually identify, but the struggle of many other people. Certainly, a lot of trans and gender non-conforming people but not solely, as I believe this is a universal feeling. I want to bring to light the difference between gender expression and gender identity and the conflict between them that is caused by a society that does not want to acknowledge beyond the binary stereotypes and thus assumes gender and sexuality, using my personal challenges to do so.
The first image portrays me binding, creating a male aesthetic to my chest and the attempts I make to get it flat enough and tight enough in the right places to create pectoral muscles, but not tight in a way that it causes me any pain or difficulty breathing.
The second image is my self-conscious thoughts as to how my chest then looks with a shirt on. When I get ready to go out, I look at how a shirt falls on my chest and consider whether it looks flat enough – if people can see the outline of the tape, will they realise that I’m binding and why? Plain white shirts on their own certainly aren’t an option.
The third image is of me fussing with my hair. I feel like my receding hair line ‘proves’ my maleness, yet I’m also very self-conscious about it because my dad started losing a lot of his hair at my age and I don’t want the same to happen to me. Currently my hair’s the longest I’ve had it since transitioning, and I like the way it flicks out from behind my ears, and that I can comb my hands through it – on the flip side, I feel like people will think it’s too long and will look at my hair as feminine.
The fourth image is of what I want and hope to do, to say: “Who cares? I’m me and that’s enough.” I won’t be the only male-identifying person who feels this way, that they must act like the stereotypical straight-white-male to be referred to and considered as male, even if it contradicts their own unique and valid gender expression.
