“This poem came about, in large part, due to my frustration with the rhetoric surrounding this present wave of legislation designed to target transgender people. The cultural imagery that surrounds trans womanhood is so disconnected from my everyday life, and what it means for someone like me to navigate the world, that it feels like something entirely separate from my identity—yet, it is something that identifies itself as me. This poem is a product of my attempt to identify with the way in which a transphobic culture misidentifies me and so many other transgender people.”
—Ava Hofmann