A Valentine’s Day Comic Strip by Nia King

Notes from Nia:

I’m a mixed-race queer cisgender woman. My partner is a white transgender man. We’ve been together three years.

He is the most amazing partner I could ever ask for. And despite his being white and male, he seems to “get me” better than anyone else in my life. I never have to explain to him why racism makes me angry, or why invalidation sends me into a tailspin of self-doubt.

I have a theory that part of the reason we get each other so well is because I’m mixed and he’s trans. I’m not trying to say “Being mixed is just like being trans. I’m mixed, so I totally get what being trans is like.”

I don’t, but I do think he and I are in a unique position to understand each other’s experience. I walk through the world knowing I’m black, but being seen by others as white. He walks through the world knowing he’s a man, but being read by others as a woman. These are unique experiences, and they are in some ways parallel.

He doesn’t experience racism the way I do, and transphobia doesn’t shape my life the way it does his.

But our relationship is one place that I always know I’ll be seen as a person of color, and he knows he’ll always be seen as a man. It’s a special and beautiful thing we can offer each other, and I believe that’s in part because the similarities of what we experience in the outside world.