xoros

Sometimes I think the world is so stupid as to be utterly surreal. Just why? Why?!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year by the way

She’s amazing <3

So we were watching this programme on TV this evening, “Help Mijn Man Is Een Klusser”, which roughly translates as “Hey Some Men Do DIY And Some Of Them Don’t Finish It So Some Other Men Will And We Can all Be Sympathetic And Patronising To His Long Suffering Wife While Casting Aspertions On The Guy’s Masculinity”. Roughly! Actually I usually run in fear from the room round about scene two when the pity music comes on in the background (Flemish TV seems to think that if it involves Real People and pity music is not needed, it is probably not worth making). This time though, it was the Dutch version, from the Netherlands no less! Since the second scene came and went without pity music and a lack of horribly sterotyped gender role based humiliation I ended up seeing it all. As I did, several things struck me. In fact lots of things about it struck me, not least that I saw the whole thing, but mostly there were a couple of things that made it an utterly different viewing experience.

Firstly the presenter was black. Imagine that! A black man on television and no sport, crime or documentary on immigrants in sight! He was just a presenter, presenting! Secondly, the couple in question were a gay couple. Imagine that! A gay couple on television and not a glaring sterotype, documentary or news report to be seen! They were just a couple, one of whom was shit at finishing DIY projects! And that was what struck me.

After nearly a year back in Belgium, I have got so accustomed to non factual television being solely the preserve of white, cis, straight, ethnically Flemish people that this was so surprising that it was my main impression of a piece of televisual fluff. I’ve mentioned before how the Flemish have this massive conception gap between how they view their prejudice and how they enact it but seeing it so well highlighted in this manner really brought home how pervasive it is.

I’ve had a few conversations about anger in the last couple of months. Indeed, my last few posts have been about an event that has caused anger, that included anger in it. In fact, I read this today, on a very definitely trans ally person’s blog (not saying which because who wrote it is not something I want to make relevant to what I’m saying):

But the idea that trans people are always righteously angry, entirely respectful, and never diminish their own anger and hurt by throwing invective and insult at the people they’re arguing with… oh, that’s RICH. The trans community is notorious, at this point, for going batshit over things in a way not seen before by – well, most people.

The part that really surprised me was the word “notorious”. Is that really so? I certainly have seen statements and levels of anger from other trans people that I myself find uncomfortable. The use of personal insult and of invective, of going straight to the accusation of “you say this so you therefore are directly contributing to the physical harm of trans people”, is something I’ve seen and been left feeling deeply uncomfortable about. That isn’t justifiable anger, that’s rage in my book. Now I’ve definitely been a bit ranty lately, but angry? Not so much, I don’t see what I wrote as angry particularly. Absolutely I was writing out of frustration. Other’s have been angry and even enraged by the same thing. Equally I’ve read some very calm and well argued rebuttals. In fact, a whole range of attitude from one end of the scale to the other. So why is there is a perception of us as a notoriously angry group and where has it come from?

In any online debate, sooner or later someone “shouts”. Often others join in. The moment this happens you may as well pack up and go home as the argument from then on is going to be dominated by anger, rage and counter accusation. Listening has stopped. It’s not just trans people in trans related subjects, it’s all over the place, it’s the internet. So why are we notorious for it and no one else is singled out? Perhaps we have some louder shouters? More enraged people (justifiably or not)? Or is it because when we do it that anger is more noticeable to others because it’s trans people doing it? I’m not sure I know the answer to this at all.

Myself I try never to enter rage territory and I also try to resist anger, righteous or otherwise except in private. That’s me and my choice. But writing polemically, does that single me out as an angry trans person? It ought not, plenty of other people use the same rhetorical style at times, but does it seem like anger to other people? If so, why? I’m left feeling confused by this quote and slightly let down by the author. It seems so devoid of context yet at the same time I have seen comments and writing that personally I’d be very unhappy to be assocciated with.

It’s a conundrum and I don’t think there is an easy answer. I’m left with the suspicion that it is both true and untrue at the same time.

It’s a complicated business to unravel, transition. In short it is the period of life a trans person goes through as they change from living in the gender role they were assigned at birth to living as the gender their internal sense of self is set to. It could be from male to female, from female to male and even for some from male or female to genderqueer. It is subject to many stereotypes and misunderstandings and can be a challenge for both the trans person and the people around them.

For many cis people it can be baffling. As they have never had to be aware of their own gender as a constant presence they can wonder what all the fuss is about, wonder why you can’t achieve the same without actually transitioning. They might question why one wants to be addressed with gender appropriate pronouns, not understanding that to constantly hear ones that contradict your sense of self feels like an erasure and denial of your self and your desire to be respected as a human being. They might wonder why one wants to change habits and appearance, not seeing that their own is fundamentally gendered and that you might have been simulating old forms in order to try to deny, closet or otherwise conform to society’s expectation of you based on your body. The biggest questions by far focus on the physical aspects associated with transitioning.

The idea that transition is all about the body is very much to do with the way psychiatrists try to deal with us. Finding that there is no way to force a person to change their mind about their gender identity the medical profession instead turned to the idea of “fixing” our bodies. As the possibilities of surgery and artifical hormones increased in the twentieth century this became the norm. As a result the medical conception of us is very much rooted in physicality. Along with this came ideas of what a successful transition was and the psychiatrists produced theories and descriptions that pretty much invented the stereotypes. Not being stupid many trans people played up to these and told (and still tell) the doctors what they wanted to hear in order to gain access to assistance.

These stereotypes then are what the wider public think they know about us. They are almost all about trans women, since the doctors have shown remarkably little interest in theorising about the trans men they treat. In the public eye we are all very (read overly) feminine, we all wear dresses, we all fancy men and we all want hormones and surgery and we’ll die if we don’t get them! The strongest stereotypes revolve around the physical aspects of transition. The idea that every single transsexual wants hormones, needs sex reassignment surgery, needs them to “feel complete” is very, very strong. So strong it even permeates our own conceptions of ourselves. So exposed are we to these stereotypes of us that if you don’t fit them exactly you can end up questioning yourself and wondering if you measure up, wondering if you really are what you know you are. More, within trans culture there are strong elements that will reject other trans women if they don’t live up to the physical needs stereotype. They will deny that they too are transsexuals, that they are women. Partly this is born of fear. Fear that if the medical professions finds out that some of us don’t want surgeries then no one will be allowed access to it. I can’t blame them for that fear given the way we are generally treated by medicine even if I deplore the divisiveness and the excluding one receives if you don’t fit.

So yes you guessed it, shock horror, the stereotype fails to describe us accurately. Hands up who wasn’t expecting that? For all of those things, yes there will be some trans people for whom they are true.  For every one there are trans people for whom they are not. But we are all still trans*, we are still transsexuals. Our transitions are as varied and as nuanced as we are, as humans are. How can there be a one size fits all solution for every single person? Surely that makes no sense if you stop to think about it?

So what is transition then? If it isn’t entirely about the body, or behaviour, or clothes? Perhaps if we simplify it back down to where I started, back to “the period of life a trans person goes through as they change from living in the gender role they were assigned at birth to living as the gender their internal sense of self is set to”. It’s about growing into and taking on the role one feels comfy in, learning how to express who one truly is. It’s about working out what physical aid one needs, or can achieve in order to feel comfy with one’s physicality. To me it is a process of becoming. Of growth and change, of living after spending years hiding from life. To me it is as much about that mental journey as it is anything else.

Transition is complex, I don’t feel that there can be one simple answer. For every trans person there will be a different path, a different balance and a different set of needs and options. It’s a period of life, of living, not a process or a checklist.

I’ve been thinking about “passing” again, it came up in a comment conversation I had recently and is an issue of some kind in every trans person’s life. It is, in short, the attempt to be seen as, to pass as, the gender that you identify as without anyone questioning or doubting it. It’s a tricky business. Not all cis people even “pass” as their gender all the time. It’s a very slippery concept as it raises questions for a trans person of  whether to pursue it or not, and if so how much does that entail conforming to ideas of gender that might not actually be a true reflection of one’s personality. It’s complicated by being completely relative – it relies on the stereotypes and gender expectations of hetero cis culture which vary in time and in place. The problem is that sterotypes tend to be mass generalisations that often reflect conservative opinion as well as being a one size fits all solution that fits very few people very well. Above all the hardest thing about passing is that in reality one has no control over what others perceive. They see what they see and interpret it according to their own opinions.

So what is it about the attempt to pass that is so attractive? Quite simply it’s the lure of just being a face in the crowd. Not being obviously trans, not being someone people stare at and get confused by. Not being visible. It’s something that hetero cis people take completely for granted all the time. It is their judgement that passing appeals to, their approval that yes, you look “normal” that is being sought. It’s also the desire to be accorded the courtesy of being addressed as the gender you are, like they are.

Society is so very keyed on gender. Many people will claim otherwise but when one obviously steps out of the categories set up and policed around what body sex you have you really see just how much this is true. One can be dressed, behaving and seeming very much like one gender, but if you noticeably “fail” physically in a way that people pick up on to meet their gender expectations they will usually make a judgement based on what physical sex they think you are and more likely than not revert to seeing you as gendered to match that over any other signals you are giving. They withdraw the courtesy of allowing you to define who you are and impose their interpretation on you instead. There are many reasons for this, to do with sexism, homophobia and transphobia that are outside the subject I want to talk about right now.

So, passing is about trying to meet the expectations of cis people in order that they agree with your definition of yourself. To me it feels like giving control of who you are to them. It’s can be a thankless business too. Fail to meet the expectations of enough people, enough of the time and it falls apart. So why chase that? To just be one of the crowd. To not have to live your life constantly coming out. Constantly having to justify and explain yourself to people who might be hostile to you doing so.

Sometimes I think their must be another way. Neither living in such a way as to be visibly out all the time nor spending one’s life constantly worrying if one is doing it right. I want to be the person that decides if I am being myself “correctly”. I want to be the one who decides how being me looks, sounds, seems. Is that too much to hope for? Isn’t that just like everyone else too? In the absence of societies that allow everyone to define who they are I’m still working on how to do this. I try not to worry too much about whether I look “right”, I try and resist behaving in ways that are not natural to me, even if it might mean I don’t pass. Like many things about being trans* it’s annoying that something that cis people take for granted becomes a tightrope walk of trying to just be, of trying not to police oneself both in terms of matching other’s expectations and in allowing oneself to do things that do match, because that’s me and it just happens to fit some stereotype or other.

So fuck passing. I just want to pass as myself. If others agree then good, and on the whole they mostly seem to, where I live at any rate. If they don’t, then they don’t. I’ll take mostly as a trade off for getting to be who I want to be in the way I want to be, I’ll take that in return for not living with fear of failing to live up to their expectations.

I’ll do my best to anyway.