Phenix on transsexuality and gender: “It doesn’t feel good not to be taken into account”

At school, Phenix Kühnert, who was then called differently, was considered a gay man. “But it wasn’t really right,” she says. The relationship with her homosexual partner came to an end, Phenix changed and left the old behind, swapped her hometown on the Baltic Sea for the enlightened Berlin. In an interview with the star, Phenix talks about her very own path, about everyday life as a trans woman and the importance of gender-sensitive language.

Disclaimer: In the following conversation there may be a few words that you do not know yet. Transsexual are people who do not identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. That is why the term Transidentität used. as Cis on the other hand, people are referred to who identify with the gender that has been assigned to them. Binary Genders are the two “typical” genders male and female.

Phenix has been your new name for a couple of years. How did you come up with it

A kebab man at Kottbusser Tor in Berlin gave it to me. Back then I was working in a PR agency and during the lunch break I ordered vegetable kebabs for several colleagues. It was really busy and the man just wrote some names on the aluminum foil. Phenix at my booth. Since then, the name has somehow always followed me, I actually didn’t choose it, it happened.

When did you start feeling uncomfortable with the gender you were assigned?

For me, a lot only happened in retrospect. I hated swimming lessons at school, I had to take part until I graduated from high school and would have given anything to get a sick leave. It wasn’t until years later that I actually understood why I felt so uncomfortable. It was the assignment of the male changing room, the clothes in the form of swimming trunks that I should wear, the changing situation itself.

Does that mean the process of understanding only started in your twenties?

Yes, about five years ago. For a long time I haven’t dealt with these feelings or even allowed them to exist in the first place. There are so many people out there who – consciously or unconsciously – express themselves transphobic, there is so much social pressure and so much hatred towards queer people. These are all things that have restricted my querness. I didn’t want to let it. As a “gay man”, which I actually never was, I was at least halfway accepted and accepted in society.But to be trans? Then the carousel starts again and everything in me shouts “Nooo, I don’t want to!”

And yet you dared.

At the time, it helped me to let go and to accept that as a person one kept developing. From gender identity, to sexuality and all sorts of things in life – we are all allowed to develop ourselves further and to question things.

Let’s define what we are talking about when we talk about transsexuality. What does transsexual mean to you?

In fact, I hate to use the term transsexual – I say trans instead. I find it misleading because it suggests it’s about a sexuality – like homosexual or straight – but that’s not right. It’s about a person’s gender identity. The term is intended to describe people who are not of the gender assigned to them at birth. As in my case, this can happen quite binary, so I was assigned the gender male, today I know that I am female. There are also people who identify as neither female nor male – they too can be trans.

You grew up with your parents with a sister and a brother. How did your family deal with your development?

With regard to my family, I guess I was right to let them be part of my process from the start. It’s been a few years since I sat with everyone at the Italian restaurant and said: “Folks, it’s not my sexuality that is different for me, it’s my gender identity. And that’s just what I’ll find out”. I always took those around me with me and so people grew together with me.

Your appearance has changed a lot in recent years – you show that on some posts on Instagram. Did you have surgery to achieve this look?

I have to say that I am extremely lucky and never had to be sliced ​​to look like this. I had filler injected into my lips, chin, cheekbones and nose. And I’ve been taking hormones for about a year.

How does such a hormone therapy work?

I had to see a psychotherapist to get the diagnosis that I was trans and to go into therapy. Not so long ago, transsexuality was even considered a disease. In principle, the psychotherapist has to certify that I have nothing else that leads to my wanting to perform hormone therapy. This step was important to me because estrogen and its male counterpart testosterone have many effects on the body; it’s about breast growth, but also about fat shifting, muscle distribution and hair growth. Hormones can also affect how soft or hard a face looks.

Your voice sounds much more feminine to me than I expected. Has that to do with the hormones too?

You can’t change your voice with hormones, only with voice training, but I’ve never done that. My voice is higher than it was a few years ago, but social pressure always plays a role. When people don’t see and only hear me, they often categorize me as male. For example, when I call a doctor’s office, I feel a lot of pressure to have a voice as high as possible in order to avoid an unpleasant outing scenario.

Are there many such stumbling blocks in everyday life?

There are always outing scenarios. I never know how the other person will react. I never know if the other person has a problem with queer people. In fact, the Covid situation and wearing a mask make me feel safer because my chin area – which many people read about my transsiveness – is covered. When I go into a shop with a mask on, I often think to myself, “Oh, how relaxed. Nobody looks at me strangely, everyone thinks I’m just a Cis woman who is out here a bit.”

That sounds like you have to leave your comfort zone a lot.

I can’t limit that to being transsured. I’ve been leaving my comfort zone for most of my life – that’s the only way, in my opinion, to grow. My life is only fulfilled when I leave my comfort zone. Only then do I feel alive.

In the pictures I see of you in the media, you usually wear a lot of makeup. How important are makeup and styling to you?

Trans or not, I’m just a person who loves makeup and styling. This is my form of art. Nevertheless, my makeup and styling are also a certain protective wall that I build up for myself when I need them – for example when I want to make sure that I am perceived as a woman.

You are currently single and looking for a partnership. What is dating as a trans woman like?

Exhausting, really exhausting. Some fetishize me because they want to date a trans woman, others are insecure – and that’s okay too – but I don’t feel like educating people in a dating context. It’s just too exhausting for me. I am asked questions of some kind in my private life every day – many of them are completely overbearing. I think it’s difficult to imagine that as a cis-person. I often lose my desire to date because of these experiences. You have to think about how many trans people there are and how many cis people there are. We can’t explain them all, you can find out more on the Internet and that’s why there is also my Instagram account, but in the dating context that’s just too much.

When I asked you before our interview what you do for a living, you described yourself – among other assignments – as an activist. You just emphasized how exhausting it is to educate people over and over again. Why are you doing it anyway?

I’m just a person who is very self-confident, open and strong – it doesn’t make me better or worse that I am like this, but I want to make it easier for other people. If I can achieve that only one person changes their mindset and, for example, is more queer-friendly with their own children, I’ve already achieved something. It is important to me that people like me are represented. I know myself what it feels like to grow up and nowhere to see trans women.

But surely there was a first role model at some point?

Yes, that was and is definitely Kim Petras. I still remember how she sat on a talk show about ten years ago as the “youngest trans woman in the world”. I follow her to this day – she is now an international pop star.

What role does gender-sensitive language play for you?

It just doesn’t feel good to be ignored by language. Language shapes us – how much, there are always studies. In an experiment that keeps going into my head, teenagers were introduced to various professions and then asked whether they would feel comfortable doing these professions later. In one group the professions were presented as gendered, in the other with the female or male classifications that are perceived as more typical in our society; So policeman, lawyer, educator, cleaning lady and so on. One can imagine the result: in the non-gendered group, most of the students stuck to the occupations that supposedly match their gender, in the gendered group they thought they could do significantly more.

Do you understand people who find gender discussions exhausting or who think that gendering would destroy our language?

No. I find it selfish and incredibly unreflective – almost naive.

And apart from the language; are there things you would want from cis people?

It would be nice if more people become aware of social structures and not just assume that they always already know everything, but rather to accept that everything is multi-layered – which is something wonderful. You don’t need to be afraid that everything is multidimensional and big and one cosmos, you just have to let it happen. And then everything is completely free and really great and I sound insanely esoteric, but what the heck. You have to let go of things and then it’s fun, then it’s relaxed. I think there is still a bit more slumbering in many heterosexual cis people, we are not one hundred percent, we are not machines.

Smarch in the video: For a long time, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals were not allowed to donate blood. Since 2017, there has been a period of twelve months during which they are not allowed to have sex with another man. The controversial directive could now be overturned. Activist Lucas Hawrylak about this in an interview with stern.