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Gah, 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 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.