Before I begin, I realize that personal or subjective blogs can quickly become a livejournal or a source of therapy. I will attempt to keep “self”-marked posts as rational and “objective” (if there is such a thing) as possible. In this post, I want to explain my mindset without it being a journal. I have, through talking with other transgendered women, been told that my experiences are fairly “typical,” or, at the very least, strike a chord with them as understandable.
When I was giving my first speech to York University on transgendered issues, the subject of my internalized misogyny came up. While I was living as a man, I had a lot of misogyny, and objectified women quite a bit. I explained this to them verbatim, and made no excuses for it – I was, as I put it, a “misogynistic asshole.” I believed men were better at jobs than women, and that women were “naturally” better at being empathic and less rational. I also believed feminists were angry lesbian man-haters. Again, no excuses, I was a dick and I know it.
Upon this confession, I ended with the (para)phrase: “It might seem petty, but I hated women because they had what I could never have – that body image, seen as women, and so on.”
A girl in the class then piped up in a cheerful tone, responding to my comment. “Oh please, that's not petty. Every girl does that!”
The entire class laughed, and I did too.
--
Ultimately, from what I can see just looking back through my personal history, my misogyny sprouted from a basic sense of sour grapes. (For those unfamiliar, “sour grapes” comes from the story of the fox and the grape vine in Aesop's fables, where, after attempting to retrieve the grapes that are simply too high for the fox, the fox dismisses the grapes as probably being sour and not worth their time.)
After coming out and being effectively beaten by the psychiatric institution I was put into for Attention Deficit Disorder (a catch-all condition that can be applied to absolutely anyone who isn't on some kind of amphetamine (oh wait)), and of course with male puberty hitting me as hard as it could, I began to despise the “privilege” women had of... well, being women. I was completely aware of the sexism inherent in consumerism and economics and so on, but I still admired and therefore hated women for having what I didn't and couldn't.
When boys around me began to admire women for their “features” (breasts, butt, and so on), I noticed other things. I noticed the slender arms, the soft face, the voice, long hair, and so on. When my male sex drive developed, it was painful and disturbing to me, because I didn't want to see women as a sexual object, yet that was apparently what was expected of me. However, things began to get different: I began admiring the body shape of women as well. I found it simultaneously attractive and admired it at the same time, which was a feeling I couldn't quite understand. Again, it goes back to my old saying of “how can I be a girl if I'm attracted to girls?” I wasn't sure what was attraction and what was admiration when both my sexual orientation was towards women and my gender identity was that of a woman, even if I couldn't put it into those words.
As my body got taller, bigger, more masculine, I got more and more miserable. However, the admiration of women continued, and eventually I began to hate women by association – I saw myself as a woman, and I couldn't be one, so why should they be allowed to be women? It was essentially an attempt to direct my body dysphoria into anger and then outwards. Jealousy became my entire existence, and I revelled in it.
Out of all the transgendered girls I know, there seems to be a kind of consensus: the admiration of cisgendered women continues far into transitioning. The admiration of the female body shape from afar can cause triggering in many trans women who are just beginning transitioning, who see other women with better looks a softer features than them that they can “never have.”
----
“Transpeople nevertheless seek a new, rather than original/lost, wholeness, one that invokes this affective nostalgia for a “lost home,” the desire to actualize what should have been.”
Christopher A. Shelley, “Transpeople”
Transgendered people who begin their coming out and transition post-puberty often have a sense of phantom nostalgia of a body, an identity, and experiences that were never brought to fruition. This nostalgia can trigger many bad feelings of regret and anger, over past circumstances that prevented them from starting earlier in their lives, or simply not being recognized as their true selves (transgendered boys/girls) at the right ages.
The two main negative emotions that affect transpeople, at least from those who I have talked to, are regret and doubt. The regret of not “starting early,” even when we knew for sure that we are boys and girls. Not knowing the word “transgender,” not having access to two little pills that could have prevented “mis-sexed” trauma, and so on.
Just as a note, I will not be speaking for the experiences of transgendered boys and men. I am not a FtM trans man so I'm not going to postulate what their social, physical or emotional experiences are or were.
The biggest regret for some trans girls, is the feeling of “lost girlhood.” While we enter the re-discovery phase during our transition, we discover just how distorted our identity has become due to male socialization. It takes years before the identity that we desire coaleses. I know from my own experience, and talking to others, that even when one is “full-time,” passing, successful and known as a woman, that the rediscovery process continues on.
Stereotypically important dates, events, and experiences for cisgendered girls and women become lost artifacts of a life that “should have been” for transgendered girls. No more easily does this become apparent with things such as cosmetics, clothing, and so on, where the trans woman has never had the experiences of learning from her mother or friends on things considered so basic to feminine appearance. She is mostly alone in this, if she isn't lucky enough to have an experienced cis or trans woman help them.
But some things can never be “learned,” experienced, or reclaimed. The stereotypically female things of getting together with female friends for birthdays, slumber parties, having another girl braid your hair, etc. are all lost forever in the sands of time.
The things I've listed may seem (and I've mentioned) stereotypical. They may also seem idealistic and lacking in the not-so-good things associated with being female in this patriarchal society. The sexism, rigid gender roles, objectification by men, lower pay in almost every field, educational discrimination, and so on, are all apart of this “girlhood” experience. Trans women have, throughout their lives, faced repression and mis-sexed trauma. Most are wary of over-idealizing the “female state of being,” but many pine for those experiences, good and bad, that make a person a woman socially. Having those good and bad experiences would have made them a “real woman” who could relate to every other woman on the planet.
The Doubt is a big one that is the most damaging early-on in a transition, when things are still fresh, new, and terrifying. The Doubt kicks in randomly, attempting to explain away the body dysphoria as some other “mental disorder,” with phrases like “I'm not a real girl/boy” flying around in our heads. It is a form of internalized transphobia, to be sure, but it sticks very hard. When a transgirl is waiting ever-so-patiently for anti-androgens and hormones, and her body continues forward on in its masculine development. “I'll never be cute,” “I'll never pass,” “I'll never be seen as a real woman,” “maybe if I find a girlfriend/boyfriend who will make me happy as how I am right now...” and so on, are common phrases. Each one is designed around transphobia, and the mis-sexed trauma of growing up incorrectly in every sense of the word – emotionally, physically, socially, and for some, sexually.
Both cisgendered and transgendered people (cisgendered probably moreso) focus so much on the physical aspect of transition that we forget this other side to it: the reconciliation of the Lost Life, of the experiences that can never be had, of feeling like the past was a bunch of wasted time. And this, by far, is the most difficult aspect of transitioning – learning how to let go of what you can never have, to somehow construct an identity when everyone else in your life is already on their way to being sure of who they are, and to somehow function as an adult in society despite all of it.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The "Sex Change" Dichotomy
Or, “some girls have penises, and some guys don't.”
Upon talking to a non-op TS female friend of mine (who shall remain nameless), she told me of her initial experiences in transitioning, and the pressure she faced to get Sex/Gender Reassignment Surgery (SRS/GRS). When she began, her initial intention were to get GRS within two years. But eventually, she realized that all of the pressure she was feeling internally to transition her primary sex characteristics were coming from external sources. She was not doing it for herself, but rather for the sex/gender binary of the outside world, which seemed to consumer her. In the end, she decided that GRS was not in her interests, and proceeded to be non-op after an orchidectomy (removal of testes).
This story is very similar to myself, although I was much, much less directed in it. Ever since I began my coming out process a year ago, I felt as though that “physically transitioning” was the only way I could be “complete.” Upon telling my friends, and outsiders I was willingly educating (such as my speeches), I got the same phrase repeated to me upon saying that GRS wasn't very likely for me:
“Why would you only go half-way?”
That notion of being “incomplete,” “half-finished” and so on sort of struck a chord with me. I had been an “incomplete person” for so long and the feeling of being “incomplete” even after transition struck me hard. I never wanted to be incomplete again. And so, I considered the nuclear option of GRS, to make myself “complete.”
Semi-frequently, the media will do a story on how a transsexual or transgendered person “made a mistake” and went back to living in their “original gender,” even after SRS. There are many reasons for their decision. Sometimes it can be a case of a multitude of issues manifesting themselves as gender identity issues. But, what they don't report is this constant pressure to push the transition just a little bit further in terms of physical effects almost constantly, beyond their own sense of identity or body dysphoria. Especially when you consider the transgender spectrum of gender identity, in terms of Queer or alternated self-identities that either manipulate or disregard gender. (And whether either is based on “cold, hard science” is irrelevant to me.)
There is a lot of pressure, especially from the traditional and reactionary medical fields (those who will “treat” people like us, anyhow) for a person to “completely” transition. SRS/GRS are marketed as the only real way to express transsexuality. After all, in many places, it is the only way to get an M changed to F, or an F changed to M. The wrong gender label on ID can be dangerous and an auto-outing of oneself in many situations, such as dealings with the police especially if one passes well. That's not even getting into the sexual orientation aspect of it, where the main bigheads at the APA (Dr. Kenneth Zucker and Dr. Ray Blanchard) won't even consider you “really transgendered” unless you are a MtF who is stereotypically female and interested in men and getting GRS. Non-op transgendered lesbian woman? Sorry, you're just a confused straight man. (Of course, straight MtF women are simply “homosexual male transsexuals,” according to them as well.)
With transgender and queer theory, we separate gender identity and biological sex almost all the time. The basis of Queer theory, which admittedly many transgendered people cannot identify with, is that gender is a social construct, and that gender should not be linked to physical sex; so too should “gender” be recognized as inauthentic and worked around as much as possible. Of course, this doesn't work in the case of transgendered people who identify with the binary. But, the main tenet of queer theory, that mental gender and physical sex are not intrinsically linked, is an important aspect of transgendered identity.
Of course, this doesn't mean that there aren't transpeople who refuse to identify as trans, and only as men/women.
In order to understand this sex/gender dichotomy, you must go back to the day you were born, named, and had an “M/F” (or I) placed on your birth certificate. If you were biologically female and had female anatomy, you are placed in the female gender role, and from that day on you continue your life as a female, with the entirety of the world treating you like a “little baby girl,” “little girl,” “preteen girl,” “teenage girl,” “young woman,” and so on. Every stage of you is defined socially based on your physical sex. And so, when your entire life is based on that sex-gender identification, and you choose to reject it, the outside social world cannot reconcile that. Nearly every person in the world has been raised through this sex-gender system: thus, you have women who identify as a woman because of their reproductive system, and of course male culture which is focused almost exclusively on the implied power of the phallus/penis.
This is not to disregard the identities of cisgendered people as illegitimate. Surely if their gender identity did not fit them, then they would not embrace it so readily. But it applies to both trans and cis people: sex-gender identification and socialization affects everyone, and many people define themselves as man/woman based on their anatomy. It is a carefully constructed social role, which many people fit into very well. “I have a penis/vagina, obviously I am a man/woman, and should behave in a masculine/feminine way.” Society then prescribes masculinity/femininity to people ad nauseum, and it quickly becomes a mould for every person on the planet.
This goes back to my original point, that trans people usually have a hard time overcoming this dichotomy. If a young trans girl is treated like a boy because of her penis, she begins to think, “Oh, I guess I'm a boy, then.” It becomes internalized quite quickly, that to “be a girl,” you must have that female reproductive system. Same goes for a young trans boy, who is delegitimized and objectified by male culture as a sex object useful only for his looks and reproductive organs.
I personally rejected this dichotomy after much personal self-discovery. I would be lying if I didn't say a little part of me didn't continue to desire GRS because it would make me a “real” girl, all very much tied to external sources beyond my personal identity. Again, I feel no body dysphoria personally that makes me desire GRS, but the constant assertion that without GRS I'm “half way,” “incomplete,” “not really a transsexual,” “just a straight man who likes to crossdress,” etc., all becomes internalized. With the female form so played-up in society, it becomes idolized to extreme amounts by both cisgendered and transgendered women.
To put it very crudely, there is the idolization of the “empty crotch.”
----
Even growing up, I have never really hated my penis, not even during this transition. It's just a sexual organ to me, nothing more and nothing less. It became confusing to me because of the above-mentioned dichotomy, that I did not desire a female reproductive system yet still saw myself as a woman.
And so I end with that phrase that I mentioned at the beginning: “Some girls have penises, and some guys don't.”
Upon talking to a non-op TS female friend of mine (who shall remain nameless), she told me of her initial experiences in transitioning, and the pressure she faced to get Sex/Gender Reassignment Surgery (SRS/GRS). When she began, her initial intention were to get GRS within two years. But eventually, she realized that all of the pressure she was feeling internally to transition her primary sex characteristics were coming from external sources. She was not doing it for herself, but rather for the sex/gender binary of the outside world, which seemed to consumer her. In the end, she decided that GRS was not in her interests, and proceeded to be non-op after an orchidectomy (removal of testes).
This story is very similar to myself, although I was much, much less directed in it. Ever since I began my coming out process a year ago, I felt as though that “physically transitioning” was the only way I could be “complete.” Upon telling my friends, and outsiders I was willingly educating (such as my speeches), I got the same phrase repeated to me upon saying that GRS wasn't very likely for me:
“Why would you only go half-way?”
That notion of being “incomplete,” “half-finished” and so on sort of struck a chord with me. I had been an “incomplete person” for so long and the feeling of being “incomplete” even after transition struck me hard. I never wanted to be incomplete again. And so, I considered the nuclear option of GRS, to make myself “complete.”
Semi-frequently, the media will do a story on how a transsexual or transgendered person “made a mistake” and went back to living in their “original gender,” even after SRS. There are many reasons for their decision. Sometimes it can be a case of a multitude of issues manifesting themselves as gender identity issues. But, what they don't report is this constant pressure to push the transition just a little bit further in terms of physical effects almost constantly, beyond their own sense of identity or body dysphoria. Especially when you consider the transgender spectrum of gender identity, in terms of Queer or alternated self-identities that either manipulate or disregard gender. (And whether either is based on “cold, hard science” is irrelevant to me.)
There is a lot of pressure, especially from the traditional and reactionary medical fields (those who will “treat” people like us, anyhow) for a person to “completely” transition. SRS/GRS are marketed as the only real way to express transsexuality. After all, in many places, it is the only way to get an M changed to F, or an F changed to M. The wrong gender label on ID can be dangerous and an auto-outing of oneself in many situations, such as dealings with the police especially if one passes well. That's not even getting into the sexual orientation aspect of it, where the main bigheads at the APA (Dr. Kenneth Zucker and Dr. Ray Blanchard) won't even consider you “really transgendered” unless you are a MtF who is stereotypically female and interested in men and getting GRS. Non-op transgendered lesbian woman? Sorry, you're just a confused straight man. (Of course, straight MtF women are simply “homosexual male transsexuals,” according to them as well.)
With transgender and queer theory, we separate gender identity and biological sex almost all the time. The basis of Queer theory, which admittedly many transgendered people cannot identify with, is that gender is a social construct, and that gender should not be linked to physical sex; so too should “gender” be recognized as inauthentic and worked around as much as possible. Of course, this doesn't work in the case of transgendered people who identify with the binary. But, the main tenet of queer theory, that mental gender and physical sex are not intrinsically linked, is an important aspect of transgendered identity.
Of course, this doesn't mean that there aren't transpeople who refuse to identify as trans, and only as men/women.
In order to understand this sex/gender dichotomy, you must go back to the day you were born, named, and had an “M/F” (or I) placed on your birth certificate. If you were biologically female and had female anatomy, you are placed in the female gender role, and from that day on you continue your life as a female, with the entirety of the world treating you like a “little baby girl,” “little girl,” “preteen girl,” “teenage girl,” “young woman,” and so on. Every stage of you is defined socially based on your physical sex. And so, when your entire life is based on that sex-gender identification, and you choose to reject it, the outside social world cannot reconcile that. Nearly every person in the world has been raised through this sex-gender system: thus, you have women who identify as a woman because of their reproductive system, and of course male culture which is focused almost exclusively on the implied power of the phallus/penis.
This is not to disregard the identities of cisgendered people as illegitimate. Surely if their gender identity did not fit them, then they would not embrace it so readily. But it applies to both trans and cis people: sex-gender identification and socialization affects everyone, and many people define themselves as man/woman based on their anatomy. It is a carefully constructed social role, which many people fit into very well. “I have a penis/vagina, obviously I am a man/woman, and should behave in a masculine/feminine way.” Society then prescribes masculinity/femininity to people ad nauseum, and it quickly becomes a mould for every person on the planet.
This goes back to my original point, that trans people usually have a hard time overcoming this dichotomy. If a young trans girl is treated like a boy because of her penis, she begins to think, “Oh, I guess I'm a boy, then.” It becomes internalized quite quickly, that to “be a girl,” you must have that female reproductive system. Same goes for a young trans boy, who is delegitimized and objectified by male culture as a sex object useful only for his looks and reproductive organs.
I personally rejected this dichotomy after much personal self-discovery. I would be lying if I didn't say a little part of me didn't continue to desire GRS because it would make me a “real” girl, all very much tied to external sources beyond my personal identity. Again, I feel no body dysphoria personally that makes me desire GRS, but the constant assertion that without GRS I'm “half way,” “incomplete,” “not really a transsexual,” “just a straight man who likes to crossdress,” etc., all becomes internalized. With the female form so played-up in society, it becomes idolized to extreme amounts by both cisgendered and transgendered women.
To put it very crudely, there is the idolization of the “empty crotch.”
----
Even growing up, I have never really hated my penis, not even during this transition. It's just a sexual organ to me, nothing more and nothing less. It became confusing to me because of the above-mentioned dichotomy, that I did not desire a female reproductive system yet still saw myself as a woman.
And so I end with that phrase that I mentioned at the beginning: “Some girls have penises, and some guys don't.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)