I Sing Myself: The Transgender Love Song

Until very recently, songs that referenced transgender lives have been horrendous and dehumanizing as a rule. “Dude Looks Like a Lady”, “Lola,” and “Sex Changes” all rank higher than “Wagon Wheel” on my list of songs I never want to hear again. Like most films about trans characters created by cis people, these songs are sources of dysphoria and shame rather than confidence and validity.

So, in the grand LGBT+ tradition, we look for ourselves in subtext. Like previous generations searching for queer-coded characters in film before same-sex relationships could be portrayed positively, trans people appropriate messages of empowerment for our own survival and self-validation. I know several popular examples for trans women. The ones that stood out in my younger days were “Man, I Feel Like a Woman” by Shania Twain and “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World. These were anthemic, the soundtrack to acceptance and encouragement. I imagine the generation before me had similar uses for “Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves” by Eurythmics or Whitney’s cover of “I’m Every Woman.”

There’s another genre of recontextualization though, less ego-boost and more dialectical. The transgender self-love song isn’t necessarily about pride or expressing our ideal selves. When adult transitioners in particular move toward acceptance of our needs and identity, we don’t always know what to do with our past or how to talk about this old self that was both fictional and real. We can experience the dissonance like a dialogue.