Maybe the problem is I don't love me.
Apr. 3rd, 2008 02:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raybearGah, it's after 2 am, why is my brain still going full throttle?
After I made my last post, I was reading more discussions at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ftm about the whole Thomas Beattie debacle, and I felt sort of overwhelmed by the intensity and vehemence of discussion. I mean, the frustration was palpable to me. But it also felt so misdirected.
[For those who don't know, Thomas Beattie is a transman who is currently pregnant and due to give birth this summer. He and his wife are legally married, he is legally male, they live in Oregon. Many FTMs are upset about the media circus surrounding this, not just for the usual "media gets it wrong" reasons, but because they believe he is exposing loopholes that will get closed for other FTM, that it right-wing machine will use this to make it harder for FTMs to change driver's licenses and birth certificates. You can read more at the community, or you know, that thing called google.]
If some transman goes on television and shows off his scars and says, this is what chest surgery looks like, and I go to the gym the next day and some one spots me and calls me an androgynous freakshow he-she and punches me in the face, it is not the transman's fault. It is also not my fault. It is the fault of the person who punched me.
If a transman goes on television and talks about his struggle in a fcked up oppressive system and how he found a path through loopholes to make some semblance of peace with it, and as a result the system closes up those loopholes, and we get mad at the transman? The system is just working how its supposed -- keep us locked into it, and supporting it, at the expense of our own community. The system is just fine with us blaming each other.
Don't get me wrong -- I get survival. I get coping. I get needing to get by and find a way to live in this world, for everyone, but especially for those of us who are perhaps marginalized in really intense and pervasive ways. But sometimes this skirts dangerously close to perpetuating the hate inside of ourselves. I totally get wanting to be 'stealth'. I totally get needing a fcking break from being trans. I totally get wanting to walk through the transition steps, then never looking back on the past medical condition with which you suffered through all of childhood and possibly part of adulthood. But I'm not sure we can ever completely walk away from it, not while living in a system that forces us justify our existence, punishes us for being visible, and forces us into hiding at times (whether the definition of 'times' is decades of your life, or whether that time is ten minutes during an awkward conversation with co-workers). But I believe this forced silence which keeps up sane and safe one moment can push us into dangerous space, internally or externally, the very next breath.
When I first came out as trans, literally in the first few months of wobbly declaration to only her and my therapist, my girlfriend at the time said to me, how is sex-change surgery any different from breast implants? It was a wounding inquiry, because it is another moment of needing to justify my existence, of my experience, of my needs, and of my rights to all of these things, especially since I was so new to this whole existence of being out anyway. But it also confounded me. I had no clear philosophical answer. It just felt very, very wrong, deep in my gut, the way other incorrect assumptions felt before I have the theory or knowledge to correct them.
A pithy response is that I doubt many 5 year old girls pray at night to wake up the next morning with big, firm breasts. And what I mean specifically by this is that surgery, as it relates to trans identity and a whole trans person, is just one component of something pervasive and definitive of a person -- even more so, I would argue, than the complicated body image issues that compel cosmetic surgery in general, breast implants or otherwise. Or what if we reframe the question: how is sex-change surgery different from cleft lip surgery? How is cleft lip surgery different from breast implants? There can be a lot of correlating conversations about bodies and medical establishment and surgeries (and how we vary our reaction to them when they are or aren't related to sexual organs).
Another piece is that I have never met a man-identified transperson who got chest surgery done and absolutely nothing else. Because if you want to compare the two, well, let's set up the thought experiment using the proper scientific method and so all other variables must be removed. No name change, no hormones, no nothing. Instead, in reality, there has usually been all of those things, as well as years of therapy, and explanatory conversations with the phone company and your boss, and internal work on the issues, as well as external conversations with every single person you have every met, including our parents and every person you've ever fcked (or were trying to fck), all about our 'issues'. Can you think of a topic in your life that you've had to be vulnerable about with such a range of people? Hell, maybe 6 months of a therapy and a letter should be required for EVERY cosmetic surgery, just like for us. Except, since predominantly rich people are doing it, that will obviously never happen; or even if it did, they would buy their way around the regulations, which even rich FTMs can't always do.
But the point I realized for me is not just that surgery is one small piece of a larger puzzle of identity -- its also not the goal. Again, I've never met a man-identified transperson who wanted a chest with big-ass scars and reduced nerve function. Or one who dreams at night of having someone cut the tissue near their package and inserting saline implants. And this is perhaps, for me - all discussions of the psychological state of people wanting cosmetic surgery put aside - the main difference between any of my surgeries and breast implants: when someone has implants put in, they have achieved how they want to look. The procedure is designed to meet the end result. When I had my surgery done, I just looked less like I didn't want to look. It is an imperfect solution to the problem of fundamentally not belonging in my body.
Don't get me wrong: I had fallen madly and deeply in love with my imperfect chest. I make it fcking work for me and I soldier on and I manage to even enjoy myself along the way. But don't get it twisted either -- no problem has been solved by a surgeon's knife. And I would argue that even if we had the most perfect surgery for all trans people, to make perfectly working, perfectly looking, all body parts, we would still always carry the experience of growing up and being trans people. And sometimes....often....frequently, that experience fcking sucks. And sometimes its transformative. And sometimes it just is.
After I made my last post, I was reading more discussions at
ftm about the whole Thomas Beattie debacle, and I felt sort of overwhelmed by the intensity and vehemence of discussion. I mean, the frustration was palpable to me. But it also felt so misdirected. [For those who don't know, Thomas Beattie is a transman who is currently pregnant and due to give birth this summer. He and his wife are legally married, he is legally male, they live in Oregon. Many FTMs are upset about the media circus surrounding this, not just for the usual "media gets it wrong" reasons, but because they believe he is exposing loopholes that will get closed for other FTM, that it right-wing machine will use this to make it harder for FTMs to change driver's licenses and birth certificates. You can read more at the community, or you know, that thing called google.]
If some transman goes on television and shows off his scars and says, this is what chest surgery looks like, and I go to the gym the next day and some one spots me and calls me an androgynous freakshow he-she and punches me in the face, it is not the transman's fault. It is also not my fault. It is the fault of the person who punched me.
If a transman goes on television and talks about his struggle in a fcked up oppressive system and how he found a path through loopholes to make some semblance of peace with it, and as a result the system closes up those loopholes, and we get mad at the transman? The system is just working how its supposed -- keep us locked into it, and supporting it, at the expense of our own community. The system is just fine with us blaming each other.
Don't get me wrong -- I get survival. I get coping. I get needing to get by and find a way to live in this world, for everyone, but especially for those of us who are perhaps marginalized in really intense and pervasive ways. But sometimes this skirts dangerously close to perpetuating the hate inside of ourselves. I totally get wanting to be 'stealth'. I totally get needing a fcking break from being trans. I totally get wanting to walk through the transition steps, then never looking back on the past medical condition with which you suffered through all of childhood and possibly part of adulthood. But I'm not sure we can ever completely walk away from it, not while living in a system that forces us justify our existence, punishes us for being visible, and forces us into hiding at times (whether the definition of 'times' is decades of your life, or whether that time is ten minutes during an awkward conversation with co-workers). But I believe this forced silence which keeps up sane and safe one moment can push us into dangerous space, internally or externally, the very next breath.
When I first came out as trans, literally in the first few months of wobbly declaration to only her and my therapist, my girlfriend at the time said to me, how is sex-change surgery any different from breast implants? It was a wounding inquiry, because it is another moment of needing to justify my existence, of my experience, of my needs, and of my rights to all of these things, especially since I was so new to this whole existence of being out anyway. But it also confounded me. I had no clear philosophical answer. It just felt very, very wrong, deep in my gut, the way other incorrect assumptions felt before I have the theory or knowledge to correct them.
A pithy response is that I doubt many 5 year old girls pray at night to wake up the next morning with big, firm breasts. And what I mean specifically by this is that surgery, as it relates to trans identity and a whole trans person, is just one component of something pervasive and definitive of a person -- even more so, I would argue, than the complicated body image issues that compel cosmetic surgery in general, breast implants or otherwise. Or what if we reframe the question: how is sex-change surgery different from cleft lip surgery? How is cleft lip surgery different from breast implants? There can be a lot of correlating conversations about bodies and medical establishment and surgeries (and how we vary our reaction to them when they are or aren't related to sexual organs).
Another piece is that I have never met a man-identified transperson who got chest surgery done and absolutely nothing else. Because if you want to compare the two, well, let's set up the thought experiment using the proper scientific method and so all other variables must be removed. No name change, no hormones, no nothing. Instead, in reality, there has usually been all of those things, as well as years of therapy, and explanatory conversations with the phone company and your boss, and internal work on the issues, as well as external conversations with every single person you have every met, including our parents and every person you've ever fcked (or were trying to fck), all about our 'issues'. Can you think of a topic in your life that you've had to be vulnerable about with such a range of people? Hell, maybe 6 months of a therapy and a letter should be required for EVERY cosmetic surgery, just like for us. Except, since predominantly rich people are doing it, that will obviously never happen; or even if it did, they would buy their way around the regulations, which even rich FTMs can't always do.
But the point I realized for me is not just that surgery is one small piece of a larger puzzle of identity -- its also not the goal. Again, I've never met a man-identified transperson who wanted a chest with big-ass scars and reduced nerve function. Or one who dreams at night of having someone cut the tissue near their package and inserting saline implants. And this is perhaps, for me - all discussions of the psychological state of people wanting cosmetic surgery put aside - the main difference between any of my surgeries and breast implants: when someone has implants put in, they have achieved how they want to look. The procedure is designed to meet the end result. When I had my surgery done, I just looked less like I didn't want to look. It is an imperfect solution to the problem of fundamentally not belonging in my body.
Don't get me wrong: I had fallen madly and deeply in love with my imperfect chest. I make it fcking work for me and I soldier on and I manage to even enjoy myself along the way. But don't get it twisted either -- no problem has been solved by a surgeon's knife. And I would argue that even if we had the most perfect surgery for all trans people, to make perfectly working, perfectly looking, all body parts, we would still always carry the experience of growing up and being trans people. And sometimes....often....frequently, that experience fcking sucks. And sometimes its transformative. And sometimes it just is.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-03 09:22 pm (UTC)As a person with body disphoria, I have experienced the ways in which the emotional and the physiological are all too often related.
But that aside, I've known a few women-identified women who got breast reduction surgery for "emotional" or "psychosexual" reasons. Some of them were butch lesbians for whom large breasts was incongruent with their sense of self emotionally and psychosexually. I've know heterosexual women who had breast reduction surgery for social reasons...they didn't like being treated like some large breasted women are treated.
Certainly, quite a few women get breast reduction surgery because of back pain...but there are other lurking factors there. For example, before transition, I had very large breasts. I wanted to get breast reduction surgery and I wanted insurance to cover it. So I looked up the insurance coverage criteria for breast reduction surgery. One of the requirements is back pain. Did I have back pain? Nope. Not at all. But I said I did. Because if I didn't, insurance wouldn't cover it. In the end, I couldn't afford the reduction at the time, even with insurance coverage...so I ended up waiting until later and paying for it all out of pocket when I had access to awesome graduate student loans. But, if I had gone through with it back in the day, I would have been another one of those statistics of breast reduction for back pain...and I'd be a false statistic...how many others are also saying what they need to say in order to get what they need?
I feel uncomfortable with the ease that we judge and dismiss some women's choices just because we have decided that wanting smaller boobs are more feminist than wanting bigger boobs.
Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-03 11:01 pm (UTC)Since I don't really know how you feel, I can't really engage with you on the topic of gender.
However, I'll engage in some of the generic feminist complaints against transfolk...which you may or may not believe. So what I'm about to say now is not directed towards you, since I don't know your belief system.
But there are assumptions that feminist anti-trans arguments make that I'd like to address. One is that trans-people have dysphoria because they manifest behavior in opposition to patriarchal concepts of masculine/feminine for their assigned roles. So rather than fight the oppressive roles themselves, they embrace the opposite role and transition, thereby propping up patriarchal ideas of gender. The problem with this narrative (which I do not know if you support or not), is that it assumes that trans folk transition in order to become normative and get the social rewards that come along with being normative. There are many non-normatively gendered transfolk--many nelly transmen and butch transwomen. There are also many transfolk (especially late transitioning transwomen) who never get social rewards no matter how normative their behavior might be because they don't pass and tend to get treated like crap.
But, I would like to put forward the way I tend to explain gender when I do educational lectures. This is based on a number of different scholars, and my personal experience. Some gender theorists tend to make two categories: sex/gender. They argue that sex is physical and gender is a social construct. With this understanding of sex/gender, it is easy to argue that transfolk by trying to change gender are caving to social pressure (since gender is social). However, I do not argue this. I argue that gender needs to be divided into two different concepts: Gender Identity and Gender Presentation. Gender Presentation is the social construct (masculinity/femininity, pants, dolls, make-up, trucks, dresses, etc)--it is also not one thing...there are multiple masculinities and femininities (gender presentations) recognized by society based on historical period, age, race, class, profession, various sexual identity, etc...and many more not recognized/understood by society. Gender Identity is a different matter. Gender Identity, also referred to as body ego, is the sense one has of their body. Body Ego first started being studied around WWI, with the phenomenon of amputees having sensations of phantom limbs. Gender Identity...ie the internal sense of your body, is not a social construct.
For me, there was a disconnect between my body ego and physical body (between my internal sense of my body and the outward corporeal manifestation). I do not identify as male because I liked trucks, wearing pants, was hegemonically masculine, or anything as silly like that. My gender presentation has not changed before and after transition. My commitment to feminism and gender equality has not changed before or after transition. I do not have a normative, hegemonic gender presentation now, nor did I previously. As a side note, while I may be non-normative, I do not believe that makes me better than people who are normative either. I try to fight for people to be able to inhabit which ever gender presentation they feel most comfortable with...and I fight for people to be able to have congruency between a person's body and their body ego.
I did not transition for society. I transitioned for me. If I made my life choices based on social pressures, I would not have transitioned, but remained in my separatist lesbian-feminist community.
Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-04 04:31 am (UTC)I do believe in the innateness of a lot of impulses...but I don't think things are so cut and dried as genes or hormones or something so simple...I mean...our physical selves change based on all sorts of things...diet, etc.
Someone I really respect once pointed out that the whole nature vs. nurture debate is a bit dumb. We will never have nature in the absence of nurture, and we'll never have nurturing without nature. So we might as well stop worrying about a debate that can never be resolved and work more on civil rights.
More philosophically...sure you being a gay man is probably innate...or at least innate enough that people should stop trying to convert you...but the concept that our society has of a gay man is quite socially constructed...if you know what I mean.
And then there's another thing...specific religious denomination is not genetic...people aren't genetically catholic or scientologist or what not...yet we still protect religious faith under the law and let people do their religious thing...even if it does involve Xenu. So in many ways what it is that makes you gay or me trans or some random woman want a D cup---doesn't really matter to me in the end...as long as we are all treated with dignity and our inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not impeded.
Now I give you an internet hug. :)
Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-04 04:38 am (UTC)Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-04 05:31 am (UTC)Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-04 02:23 pm (UTC)Of course, should you ever decide you need to visit Chicago, please let me know and I can reserve you a guest bed in my house.
Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-04 05:57 pm (UTC)...now I have to...really, really have to finish my dissertation...gulp
Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-04 02:34 pm (UTC)And while your utopic vision might sound appealing, my realist says it will never happen. We can't even get equal pay together. We can't even feed everyone on the planet. And even the spiritualist in me says it will also never happen, because it is human nature to categorize and parse out things in our brain, and to judge and fear them. Even if every single person took up the same cause to eliminate this behavior in the quest for enlightenment, we would still be stumbling along the way and making errors against each other. And maybe that is not the worse thing in the world. I think it is much healthier and useful to learn to live with imperfection, than it is to spend all your time wishing for perfection that will never come about.
Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-04 04:43 pm (UTC)I was saying even in your utopia of no gender roles, etc. etc., transsexuality would probably still exist and be treated like any other medical condition, say, for example diabetes.
Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-04 09:26 pm (UTC)Also let me clarify what 'accepting imperfection'. It means accepting that I am a human being who will sometimes make mistakes and make wrong choices and hurt myself and hurt other people. It means I have to pick myself up and keep going when this happens, forgiving myself and trying to do better. It means I have to have the same understanding and kindness for other people. It means I need to forgive people for being prejudicial towards me, if there is any hope of having it end, because I believe we need to fully understand it in order to get rid of it, and understand that as humans, we are all capable of pain and darkness and it making certain people in monsters won't make bad things go away. But forgiveness does NOT mean sitting back and letting them discriminate against me. That is not what accepting imperfection means.
I think the reason I brought it up is because I'm personally kind of wary about people who talk about utopias, because I feel like, ok, it well and good to have a vision for what we're working towards, but what are we doing about it in the meantime? What steps are being taken to work towards that vision? Kind of like what
I'm also a bit confused as to why you are assuming I would think that you should 'move on with your life'. I know I write a lot about movies and music and rants about everyday bullshit in my blog, but I also think its probably pretty clear that I view most things through a lens of wanting social justice and equality. I feel that my life is constantly calling out things for being sexist, racist, classist, and just generally unjust and fcked up. Maybe it doesn't translate in my posts lately though, if you are assuming that I somehow believe you should just suck up the fact that gay people can get fired. Frankly, I'm a little hurt that you think that about me.
And I know this is going to sound harsh, but I think it is very important to say: it is not my job to educate your ignorance (or anyone else's). Educating yourself is a decision everyone has to make for themselves, and its a process they have to undertake on their own volition, and with their own work and effort. I can choose to help you with it, if I am capable of exerting the energy in the moment, but it is not my duty. And if something I say in the moment gets misunderstood or hurts their feelings and turns them off from wanting to learn, that is really them choosing to turn their back on wanting to learn.
Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-04 03:27 pm (UTC)The gender roles that are currently predominant are predominant because they work for most people. They don't come from nowhere...they come from people who are expressing what things work best for them...then who somehow imagine if it works for them it should work for everyone...and that's where we get the problem. I don't think the answer to someone feeling comfortable with their predominant gender role is to erase gender roles...but to honor and value diversity in gender roles.
Just as we alternative-type folks respect a man who says, I like pink, and accept that as being legitimate and his true self, he need to accept there are some guys who like football legitimately.
Re: Just a question
Date: 2008-04-03 11:08 pm (UTC)I honor you as a person and honor your right to have whatever belief system you want. Just want to put it out there. My expression of my belief system is no attack on you...just an articulation of my reality.