I Have Heard The Voice of Trans

So you don't have to.

Voice of Trans/Brand Advance, 2019

If Trans Day of Remembrance functions as a funeral, Trans Day of Visibility functions as a sort of birthday party. In 2009, Rachel Crandall-Crocker decided to create a holiday distinct from Trans Day of Remembrance, our day to mourn our dead, because people kept trying to cram happier, less reverent sentiments into TDOR. After so much grieving, our community was eager to remember the good stuff. So, on Trans Day of Visibility, the Internet is flooded (well, showered) with trans people posting about their transitions so far, or simply outing themselves. FTM brandsgenders everywhere post shirtless selfies and write short memoirs in the captions. I’m not big on parties, but I did post a selfie on Twitter the first time Trans Day of Visibility applied to me. I had told a couple friends I wanted to go by ‘they’ pronouns, which was ignored, but beyond this, I’d done nothing to tell the world I had abandoned cis womanhood. It was low-stakes, and, ironically, barely-visible language (I had <100 followers), but posting that picture was cathartic. A tiny corner of the Internet now knew I was trans. To be fair, I’ve never needed a blowout for my birthday to feel special.

That was 2015, and as TDOV gets older, the party gets bigger. For trans shitposters everywhere, presents seemed to come early this year when Amazon announced that, in honor of Trans Day of Visibility, residents of the UK would soon be able to ask Alexa to “open the voice of trans.” Then, you’d hear the voice of Felix Shepherd as he tells you “his story.” The very trans part of Twitter I have curled up and died in erupted with glee. Open the voice of trans? A disembodied FTM voice, on Trans Day of Visibility? It was the objectively funniest thing that had happened since that gender reveal party burst into flames.

Most trans shitposters were happy enough to make fun of the phrase “open the voice of trans” and move on with their lives. But not me, dear reader, for I am an entertainer, and thus a glutton for pain. I have since heard the Voice of Trans, so you never, ever have to.

Aside from Amazon, the #VoiceofTrans is brought to you by Global Butterflies and Brand Advance. Global Butterflies, “created to bring awareness of trans issues to the business sector,” seems to be run by trans people-- one of the four staffmembers is named ‘Octavian’-- but Brand Advance is a creative marketing company that “works with Agencies and Brands - to engage influential demographics across all Diversity Strands.” Despite not knowing what this means, I can tell from their website they’ve worked on marketing campaigns for Pride and Black History Month. If you visit their website today, though, the first thing you’ll see is the trailer.

Did you know that the Voice of Trans has its own trailer? I first saw a clip of it when I was wrist-deep in Twitter search results: a rubbery, glittery pink barrier, like the wall of a cocoon, but more flexible. Something presses against the pink from the other side. Is it a face? Mouthing something? Screaming? When you watch the full trailer on Brand Advance, you realize it’s screaming. Yes, this is supposed to be our “fun” holiday.

The aesthetics of the Voice of Trans trailer remind me of anytime you’re walking underground in Skyrim. The camera rotates around several dark cisgender rooms: a nuclear family watching TV, a teacher diagramming a uterus on a whiteboard, people in ties walking around an office. In each of these rooms sits a large doorway, but instead of a door, there’s that pink (or blue) rubber wall again. The closeted trans people claw and scream against the rubber as the voices of dozens of angry British people blur together, all of them yelling predictable transphobic insults. It is undeniably ridiculous— you literally can’t see or hear the trans people— but to be honest, the trailer upset me. I have only mild to moderate trans-related trauma, but I had to mute the video after a few seconds, and physically walk away from my computer in order to calm down. Hey, talk about a party!

Now confident that the Voice of Trans was even more misguided than assumed, I dug deeper to experience the trainwreck for myself. I couldn’t figure out how to access it at first, because I don’t have an Alexa machine. Luckily, on Trans Day of Visibility, VoiceofTrans.com was finally up and running. I scrolled down until a start button floated in the middle of the homepage. Above it appeared the words “USE THE POWER OF YOUR VOICE TO LISTEN.” Someone must tell cis people, once and for all, this is not how listening works.

I pressed start, and my microphone turned on. “Hello. Thank you for listening to my voice. Do you want to hear my story?” I told him yes, in spite of everything.

“Awesome. I won’t be the only one doing the talking though. You’ll be able to use the power of your voice all the way through, as you decide the parts of my story you want to hear. For instance, now you have a choice. If you want me to start from the beginning of my life, say: start at the beginning. If you want to get straight to after my transition, say: I want to start after you transitioned.”

Part of why Bandersnatch was so compelling is because it forced the viewer to make violent choices. You choose Stefan’s breakfast cereal, then you choose how to dispose of his father’s body. This is also the generation who liked to make all our Sims fuck in a house with no doors, then set that house on fire. In a controlled, imaginary setting, most of us are willing or even excited to enact cruelty on fictional characters. As I asked the Voice of Trans to start at the beginning, I thought of Stefan, as I made him hurl himself off a balcony.

You know what the Voice of Trans told me. He hated dresses, he was bullied in school, his parents sucked, he tried to kill himself. When he gets to the suicide part, the Voice of Trans announces, “We’ve arrived at the darkest part of my story. It may be upsetting to some people. Do you want to hear it?” His voice doesn’t just dare you; it beckons. It is also somehow the voice of a man asking to skip the condom this time. A listener would be forgiven for blushing. Of course, I said yes again.

“Okay,” says the Voice of Trans. “I hope my voice won’t break.”

I tuned out for most of the suicide attempt. That story isn’t for me. The narrative cheers up later: the Voice of Trans escapes to SoHo, starts working for a production company, gets married. The last section begins, “Today, I’m happy man.” But it appears that the Voice of Trans is not telling the Voice of Trans’s story. Felix Shepherd is trans, but he doesn’t work in film or have a wife named Ailyah. He’s a 20 year old pop singer who was on the X Factor last year. According to one press release, the Voice of Trans was created from a compilation of stories from trans people all over the world, and Felix Shepherd is the voice actor. So when the Voice of Trans goes into detail about the alcoholic mom, the pills, the hospital room, his voice is steady as ever.

But back to today, when the Voice of Trans is a happy man. He tells you about his wedding and how “most of” his coworkers get his pronouns right, then wraps up by trying to get you to sign a petition for Change.org. The story is, mercifully, over, and The Voice of Trans closes. The cis listener is free to go on talking and talking and talking for the rest of their relatively longer lives.

Trans Day of Visibility is now ten years old, and just had its shittiest birthday party. First of all, too many people crashed. Who invited these marketing guys? But worse than that, the biggest presents are all for someone else. The Voice of Trans is for cis people; specifically, it gives cis people the power to pick and choose the parts of the trans experience they want to hear about, and then makes cis people feel better about themselves through the exploitation of trans suffering. This is absolutely, hysterically funny to me, but it also sucks. When you’re 10, the last thing you want to see on your birthday is your bully, having fun.