He used to be a woman. Born in Lagos Nigeria. Now living
in the US as Rizi Xavier Timane, a man. In an interview
with Ebony, he reflects on his journey to living his truth, and
the burden that comes with doing it in a country (US) that
doesn't value 'Black men'.
I was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and I was assigned the
female gender at birth. Both of these facts amounted
to one thing: I had no power, no respect, and no
privilege, nor would I have much of any of these
throughout my life. Add in that I came from a less
than wealthy family and was, for all intents and
purposes, a lesbian, and I became a truly invisible
human being; when I wasn’t being ridiculed or
abused, I basically did not exist.
I say "for all intents and purposes" because for as long as I
can remember, I never thought of myself as a girl. Though I
didn’t know what to call it as a young child—I had no idea
there even was a name for what I felt until I was eight years
old, when two friends saw a transgender person on an
American talk show and told me about it—I knew I was
different. I felt how the boys I knew looked: masculine and
tough, not feminine and delicate like my girl friends. I
preferred pants to dresses, speaking my mind over being
quiet and demure, and roughhousing in the dirt was
infinitely more compelling playing dress-up with my
mother’s clothes.
Still, this gave me no status in the male-driven, patriarchal
Nigerian society. And I grew up thinking this was my
station in life: to be misunderstood and miserable, trapped
in a body I did not feel was my own and stuck in a country
that was homophobic, transphobic, sexist, and hyper-
religious. When I told my family about how I felt, they told
me to keep quiet. My mother and her church friends
repeatedly performed exorcisms on me, trying to rid me of
the demons that had made me what I was.
Every day between the ages of eight and twelve, I got down
on my knees and prayed that God would change me into the
boy I knew I was inside. When that didn’t work, I tried
running away from how I felt, turning later in life to drugs
and alcohol and battling severe depression along with my
gender dysphoria. I resigned myself to identifying as a
Black lesbian for the rest of my life and to all the cultural
bias and discrimination that comes with it, particularly in my
country of origin, where being gay or lesbian can lead to
imprisonment.
Eventually, through a long and difficult process of self-
realization, I came to see that I did have some choice in the
matter of how I presented my gender identity to the world.
That I wasn’t tied to that female body and its attendant
dearth of cultural value. Today, after twenty surgical
procedures plus ongoing hormonal treatments, I can
proudly say that I am completely male inside and out. No
longer am I the scared child living in an oppressive nation
or the adult going through the motions in a life that was not
my own. I am now a heterosexual man living in the United
States and enjoying all the societal respect and privilege I’d
missed out on for so long, when I was not able to express
my authentic self.
As a man, I enjoy a higher status than I did when I lived as
a woman —people listen to me when I speak and
automatically value my opinions; I no longer feel meek and
subservient, as I believed I was supposed to be. Of course,
there are other challenges now that I am living in my
truth. As a Black man, however, I constantly feel like I have
a target on my back--like I am the focal point of America’s
most vehement hatred right now. I know that I could lose
this life I’ve worked so hard to build in an instant—another
Michael Brown, another John Crawford, another Eric
Garner. Black teen boys are twenty-one times more likely
than their White peers to be killed by police and the stats
aren't much better when you turn 21. One in three of us can
expect to go to prison in our lifetime. Whenever I leave my
house now, my wife reminds me to keep both hands on the
steering wheel if a cop pulls me over, so he doesn’t think
I’m reaching for a gun. While I don't dismiss the tragic
cases of police violence against Black women, it's not lost
on me that she didn't say this when I presented as a
woman.
Overall I feel that much of my struggle as a transgender
individual is behind me. But as a Black man, my journey
has just begun. This is not exactly the life I signed up for.
Not that I thought living as a man would be one nonstop
party, but I guess we don’t realize how serious a situation
can be until we live through it. Still, I'm grateful; despite the
trials of being a Black male in America, I am finally
comfortable in my skin, and that alone brings me a sense of
personal power. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL AND TOUCHING NIGERIAN CELEBRITIES BIOGRAPHY AND SCANDALS
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