As my first word in this blog beyond my introduction, I’d like to invite anyone reading this blog with beyond a passing interest in transgenderism to take a look at Families In Transition, a resource guide developed by the Central Toronto Youth Services (CTYS) in an attempt to help people become informed about transgendered issues relating to people they’d know. It also doubles as a guide for anyone interested in information relating to transgendered issues.
http://www.ctys.org/about_CTYS/FamiliesInTransition.htm
When I was younger I knew I was a girl. By younger, I mean around the ages of ten or eleven; I’m not too sure. It came in waves, until finally setting in and causing a great deal of anxiety, depression and angst. What caused this was a sense of “body dysphoria”, where I was unhappy about my appearance. But I was unhappy not because I was fat, or too short, or any of that. I was unhappy because I wasn’t cute, like the “other girls.” It became increasingly painful, to the point I attempted to crush that identity in any way I could.
But my personal history aside, I’d like to talk about the assumptions that prevented me from pursuing my transgendered identity throughout my adolescent and teenage years.
Keep in mind that all points I make are under the assumption that transgenderism is a natural part of humanity and in no way a “disorder” as the psychiatric industry so condescendingly puts it.
1. “Not Normal” vs social expectations
The number one thing that got to me was the educational institution of my school system and the psychiatric industry. So much emphasis was placed on me as a kid who was “different” to conform and be complacent. I knew I was different from an early age, and saw any attempt to curb my “abnormal” tendencies as an attack on my fledging identity. And so I acted up and resisted authority.
This quickly brought the psychiatric industry down on me. The schools no longer wished to deal with me so they moved me to “special care.” The rule of the child psychologists and psychiatrists was one thing: teach me the rules, teach me the norms, and curb anything that could hurt conformity. And so I was taught repeatedly that anything that isn’t “socially acceptable” isn’t tolerated. Eventually I internalized this “normality” and decided that I was somehow broken.
“I'm not a freak, I'm normal. I'm not a behavioural kid, I'm normal. I'm not a girl with a penis, I'm normal.”
2. I’m not a girl.
According to much of society then and now, I am a boy. My mother was proud of her boy, I was always broken up into groups with the other boys, boys don’t wear girls clothing or act like girls. Society so strictly emphasized the gender dichotomy of boy/girl at such an early age. It is almost half of the entire child socialization process: girls play with Barbies and dolls, and boys play with trucks and army tanks (not so stereotypically in actual practice, but…) So when a transgendered child has BOY BOY BOY or GIRL GIRL GIRL driven into their heads, they begin to wonder if they’re the ones who are broken, and it isn’t societies’ fault for having such rigid views. The current system of gender socialization essentially expects transgendered children to become full-fledged sociologists by the age of nine just so they can understand who they are and where they want to go.
3. “Transgendered people are all emotionally broken prostitutes.”
This one is one I have had difficulty discussing in the past because it is such a controversial, and sometimes deeply personal topic. I am in no way advocating that transgendered people who engage in street work are “emotionally damaged” (whatever that means in this context), nor am I saying that sex work should be stigmatized, or that a transgendered person is any less legitimate in their status as an oppressed minority because of their identity and personal choices. I also understand that many transpeople go this way because society and their social situation leaves them no choice and forces them between a rock and a hard place. I do not believe sex work is “wrong, freakish and disgusting.” Many people do, and this entry is about mainstream oppression's view, not those such as myself who at least attempt in some way to be anti-oppressive.
But none the less, this is a common misconception that is popularized through much of the mass media. Shows like Jerry Springer parade transgendered people around and engage in healthy schadenfreude at their expense, all for the purpose of allowing people go point, laugh, and say “ha ha, look at that freak.” On the opposite side, sex work is also the first thing that is presented in much of the literature out there for transgendered people, especially that which relates to health care. Entire sections of “trans health” manuals, usually near the front, consist entirely on information on sex work.
Again, there should not be such an extreme stigma on sex work, yet there is. When a prospective transgendered person looks at this situation – where both the antagonizers and supporters essentially reinforce the notion of “sex work is the only job for a transgendered person” - it becomes next to impossible for someone to see themselves in that position, and often scares them out of pursuing that identity.
Add onto that “the internet's” obsession with non-op transgendered men and women (girls who have penises and boys who don't) as a form of “shock comedy”, where the only function transgendered people perform is the ability to be “freakish”, it again becomes another reinforcement of “transgenderism is wrong, freakish, and disgusting.”
4. “How am I a girl if I like girls?”
The number one thing that got to me was my attraction to other girls. I have always been attracted to women, and I have never considered men for sexual partnership. The stereotype of transgendered women is that transgendered women transition and have a sex change so they can be straight women. And so, myself as a transgendered girl growing up, as someone who didn't particularly hate my genitals and was attracted to other girls, I simply thought I was “messed up” in some sort of way. Penises are for boys, vaginas are for girls. You can't be a girl with a penis. Obviously that's shortsighted and wrong, but it is the way I thought of it. Girls like guys, guys like girls, obviously I am a guy, QED.
5. “I wore a mask, and my face grew to fit it.” (-George Orwell, 'Shooting an Elephant')
When you live in society as a gender and everyone respects you for that gender, it becomes difficult to simply throw that away and say that the glove that fits really doesn't even when all of society tells you it does. When you're socialized as that gender, treated as that gender, and essentially shoehorned into that gender role in every way from sport to school subjects to social meetings to the way you dress, it is next to impossible to throw away that constructed identity until you land at some sort of emotional ground zero where you have nothing left except the rest of your life. For me, it was being unemployed, recently dumped by my ex-girlfriend, with no friends or acquaintances, out of school without a diploma, steeped in depression and with a motorbike I wouldn't be able to afford in a few months when I realized the only thing I could do was attempt to start from nothing and see what would happen. As soon as I laid the ground work to get back into school, I realized that my body dysphoria hadn't gone away despite my success – and finally it clicked that I was, in fact, a girl, and it wasn't simply a “phase” I was going through.
Causes and results obviously vary, but that is my experience.
And so this is mostly my own subjective opinion, and I'm not sure what exactly someone will learn from this, but I hope it sheds just a little bit of light on where I'm coming from. Again, I do not represent even a quarter of transgendered people and their experiences. If you have anything to add or dispute, please leave a comment and kindly tell me where I went wrong.
--Alice
