There is a joke in my culture
that we never smile in family photographs
You see, there is no need to smile because
‘a photo is merely a ritual that we do in public’
As if family is some sort of timeline that we are creating together

Today my grandmother is turning somewhere between 84 and 86 years old
We do not know her actual age because
when she was born
her father made up a date and put it on her birth certificate
so that shed be more eligible for marriage

So today we celebrate the fact that my grandmother was born - 2
and still managed to survive

We spend hours deciding what to wear for the family photo
My grandma puts on an elegant black sari
And I put on a pair of jeans & shirt,
sit up a little bit straighter as the camera flashes
Take record of this moment

Sometimes I think not smiling is an act of resistance
It’s a way of acknowledging and documenting the silence that glues my culture together Like

Do not mention that he prayed for a son and got her instead
Do not mention that he could no longer tell the difference
between ‘bottle’ and ‘woman’
These routine acts of violence, rendered invisible,
that allow family to develop on the other side

I come out to my grandmother when I am 18
There are no photos to document this event because you must understand,
in my culture coming out is a smile smudged on a family photograph,
It is an ocean swallowing us back
It is all of our portraits tearing at the seams
It’s not so much that we never speak about it
Rather, it’s that the silence speaks for us

You see, in my culture, we learned from an early age that that there is no difference between ‘silence’ and ‘violence’

We inherit both from our men

My grandmother starts painting in her late 70s
When I watch her make art I remember that this
This the first time that she is using her hands to make something for herself

Eventually a pen and paper turns into painting and canvas
Turns into paintings scattered across the apartment floor like a silent protest
Turns into the person she sacrificed for ‘woman’
Turns into “what if”
Turns into “too late”

Sometimes she brings me next to her when she is naming her paintings
Today she holds up one she made from a sponge in the kitchen
says,”This is my rage”

You have to understand,
my culture requires an underground economy of rage
How we hate our men so much that sometimes
we hate ourselves for them: call it ‘gender’ for short

You see, in my family, a child turns into a gender
Turns into a marriage
Turns into a mother
Turns into regret
Turns into repeat

I start wearing women's clothing when I’m 21 years old
and it’s the first time in my life I can look in the mirror
and not see the man I grew terrified of looking back

Can I tell you what it means to wear an entire body as a wound?
Can I show you what it means to watch a gender rewind itself?

I put on a dress and turn into that photo of my grandmother in her 20s
Turns into what if I tell her who I am
Turns into leaving the house
Turns into getting on a train
Turns into a man pointing
Turns into his question, turns into his disgust
Turns into him spitting on me
Turns into an entire train laughing and doing nothing
Turns into there is nowhere to escape in a moving train
Turns into a beating heart, turns into running out at the next stop
Turns into running to my grandmother's apartment
Turns into her telling me I dress this way to draw attention to myself
Turns into her blaming me for my own violence
Turns into me sometimes believing her
Turns into gifting her man for her birthday

Look how carefully we document all of the violence that has been done to us in the name of gender

Today, my grandmother calls me the biggest disappointment in her life
I recognize this not as a form of my own gender oppression, it is hers

You see, I come from a long legacy of women punished by men,
that continue to push the man inside me

How good it feels to hurt to hurt someone else
I understand, in my culture, transgender is not just an identity,
It is a tactic of survival

It is a journey to reclaim our hands from the men who steal them from us to do their work for them
It is a journey to reclaim our bodies from the genders who stole them from us
It is my grandmother’s paintings
It is the first time in her life that her worth is not evaluated by a man or a meal
It is me doing this for myself
It is the first time in my life that my worth is not created from all of the rage

So, I refuse to call my grandmother transphobic
I will not blame her for her own violence
Instead, I will join her in not smiling in this family photograph
And there is solidarity in this silence, and there is resistance
And a refusal to pretend
we are both
something
we are not

– Alok Vaid-Menon