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So, I'll probably be adding and editing this as new thoughts come to me. Essentially this journal post stems from a wonderful conversation I'm having in PM that I wanted to open up to the general public. I've been putting a lot of thought into what makes us who we are. Word of warning, this might be long but it's more for me to get my thoughts pinned down so I think I'm entitled to ramble a bit. I'll try to make it worth your time.
Coming from the transsexual community, I think the answer that often want to use is that we are who we identify as. As I grow further into my transition (10 years now? Can't remember to be honest) I've grown increasing jaded to this notion. There is absolutely no doubt that who we see ourselves as and how we act (two things that are often very different) play a pivotal role in who we are. I strongly believe that we can make drastic additions to our personalities simply by visualizing ourselves in a certain light.
I say additions instead of changes because I don't believe that people can change who they are, they can only add to it, moving in a certain direction. A jerk might find religion and go through a life altering change of lifestyle but that does not wipe away his old personality, it just makes him a jerk who found religion. It's possible finding religion might make him less of a jerk, it's possible it might make him more of a jerk. People tend to have varying opinions on that kind of thing.
Anyways, I digress. I wish that our own self identification was enough. I wish that we were free to develop into people free of tampering. Truth is, very few people live in a bubble. We swim in a sea of perception, judgments, condemnations, and praise. To think we are immune to these, that we don't care what others think and that it doesn't affect us... well that's the epitome of foolishness. We may not value the opinions of others but it absolutely erodes us and warps us into the people we are.
I like to ask people whether they would be more comfortable accepting the gender of a trans man or woman who clearly appears the stereotype of their gender (I dislike the term "passes" but it would be applicable) but hasn't had SRS and someone who could never meet the societal expectations of appearance for their gender but have had SRS.
It's an ugly truth about humanity that we place so much weight on appearance, mannerisms, class, etc. It shapes our perceptions of people and through our perceptions we impact and affect their lives. I wonder how many women and men get a promotion over someone else because, in the back of their boss's mind, there is the thought "Damn, that person really looks good, is funny, etc. What luxury or lenience do we afford people based on appearance?
We game the system through people's perceptions of us... or the system games us through those same perceptions, maybe both are accurate. Talk to any low income or racial minority individual and they will have some story about how someone assumed they were a criminal or doing something nefarious. Why? Because many people associate racial minorities with lower income and they associate both with crime. Are those views justified by the fact that racial minorities make up the majority of people serving prison sentences? Or that being not white significantly ups your chances of being lower income? How much of that is our perceptions limiting opportunities of others and how much of it is that those people are not working to better their lives. That line is incredibly sensitive and hard to place.
My two step brothers live in Holland and, like much of the country, are extremely white. I mean, blue eyed and blonde haired white. I was surprised when I met their father who was a native of New Guinea, a former Dutch colony. To call him black would not do it justice. He was a incredibly attractive man but I couldn't help but notice how much he stood at odds with his sons. Genetics can be funny like that sometimes. I wondered about it, did his sons bear the freedom of being white in a white society? Would someone who had grown up living as a person of color be able to relate to them.
It occurred to me that, as far as society is concerned, genetics don't make you black any more than they make you a woman or poor. Rather, the idea of what it means to be black, a woman, etc that defines who and what we are.
Invariably, whenever I tell someone that I'm transsexual, it doesn't matter how tolerant they are or how well they know me, they will change their perception of me. Who I am will in some small or large way shift. I no longer become Allie the friend or coworker but Allie the trans friend or coworker. It becomes a scarlet T that I carry with me from that point on. I still remember when I came out to a guy who had asked me out on a date. He responded by saying "well... that's okay because you're still hot looking." I can't help but wonder if my transsexuality would have been less acceptable if he had not found me attractive. Do I become a little less of a woman in other's eyes? Maybe it's like being a soft drink and I'm woman lite. All the taste and none of the calories! Well... not really all the taste. You tell yourself the taste is the same but it never is. It's always almost but not quite.
Thing is, that scarlet T doesn't just change how others look at you, it changes how you look at yourself. I often wonder who I would be if I had to carry that T with me everywhere. If every time I met someone or shook someone's hand I wasn't Allie but Allie the transsexual. How would it impact the privileges I enjoy? Instead of the guy sitting next to me in class eyeing me because he was wondering if I was single, would he eye me because he's trying to get another glance at "the tranny"?
It's a harsh word, "tranny", but it embodies the contempt society bears for those who commit the audacious crime of not meeting those social expectations, the outsider, the one who would corrupt a way of life. The crimes of the foreigner, the anarchist, and the activist are all the same. The crime of being the minority. The crime of standing out. The crime of going against the grain. We become a freak of sorts. The bearded woman standing next to the tattooed man and the conjoined twins. People get to stare with morbid curiosity without even the cost of admission. How would that change me? Would I have the strength to bear the crushing weight of that letter?
The truth is that the trans community is sharply divided down this line, the ones who "pass' and the ones that don't, the haves and the have-nots. The latter always wondering how to join the former while the former tries to distance itself from those who don't meet that standard of appearance. They try to disappear into the swarm of bodies, to scrub that T off their skin by lack of association. Do they also gawk at "the tranny" riding the bus to work? Do they wince at the sight, the thought that it could be them making their insides squirm? Conversely, is it not their right to go stealth? Why should they, or anyone, be forced into that spotlight?
I often smirk at the cruel irony of transitioning. On one hand we are castigated for being parodies of womanhood, for embodying every stereotype that has every blighted womanhood. On the other hand, the very legitimacy of our lives gets called in questioned if we don't live up to those same sexist notions of gender. We get to either be men in dresses or sexist caricatures of womanhood.
And so we obsess over appearance. We slice, stitch and burn our flesh, all in the hopes of fulfilling that perfect form. That body that is always just out of reach, just one operation away. That perfect pixie chin, that velvety skin void of hair, those supple breasts. Of course I suspect many FtMs would harbor slightly different obsessions. They develop rules on how to be a real trans person, rules on how to wash away the tranny. They feel like fault lies not in society's perception of them but with their own flesh. The mistake of their existence. That something is wrong with their body and not society. Since when were women Legos? When were they composed of little bits and pieces that had to be shaped just so?
Of course, some take a different route. They wield that T like it was a flaming sword. They give the finger to anyone who would so much as glance their way. Many of them will come to form their own rules on how to be transsexual. How to be the proper social anarchist. They'll castigate and police those who would blend in and hide their scarlet letters. A perfect counterbalance. Two completely different views and yet very much the same.
I have one parting thought, and of this I am sure. life holds no concrete definitions. The notion of a shared female experience leaves my eyes rolling in my head. I sincerely doubt that a white girl from Greenwich Village would have much female experience to share with a Sunni Pashtun girl. What it means to be a woman or man is fluid and intersects heavily with race, class, nationality, culture, etcetera and ad nauseam. The list never ends because womanhood is not a definition we apply to ourselves, it's a perception others apply to us. And so, I wonder, what value does it really have then?
Coming from the transsexual community, I think the answer that often want to use is that we are who we identify as. As I grow further into my transition (10 years now? Can't remember to be honest) I've grown increasing jaded to this notion. There is absolutely no doubt that who we see ourselves as and how we act (two things that are often very different) play a pivotal role in who we are. I strongly believe that we can make drastic additions to our personalities simply by visualizing ourselves in a certain light.
I say additions instead of changes because I don't believe that people can change who they are, they can only add to it, moving in a certain direction. A jerk might find religion and go through a life altering change of lifestyle but that does not wipe away his old personality, it just makes him a jerk who found religion. It's possible finding religion might make him less of a jerk, it's possible it might make him more of a jerk. People tend to have varying opinions on that kind of thing.
Anyways, I digress. I wish that our own self identification was enough. I wish that we were free to develop into people free of tampering. Truth is, very few people live in a bubble. We swim in a sea of perception, judgments, condemnations, and praise. To think we are immune to these, that we don't care what others think and that it doesn't affect us... well that's the epitome of foolishness. We may not value the opinions of others but it absolutely erodes us and warps us into the people we are.
I like to ask people whether they would be more comfortable accepting the gender of a trans man or woman who clearly appears the stereotype of their gender (I dislike the term "passes" but it would be applicable) but hasn't had SRS and someone who could never meet the societal expectations of appearance for their gender but have had SRS.
It's an ugly truth about humanity that we place so much weight on appearance, mannerisms, class, etc. It shapes our perceptions of people and through our perceptions we impact and affect their lives. I wonder how many women and men get a promotion over someone else because, in the back of their boss's mind, there is the thought "Damn, that person really looks good, is funny, etc. What luxury or lenience do we afford people based on appearance?
We game the system through people's perceptions of us... or the system games us through those same perceptions, maybe both are accurate. Talk to any low income or racial minority individual and they will have some story about how someone assumed they were a criminal or doing something nefarious. Why? Because many people associate racial minorities with lower income and they associate both with crime. Are those views justified by the fact that racial minorities make up the majority of people serving prison sentences? Or that being not white significantly ups your chances of being lower income? How much of that is our perceptions limiting opportunities of others and how much of it is that those people are not working to better their lives. That line is incredibly sensitive and hard to place.
My two step brothers live in Holland and, like much of the country, are extremely white. I mean, blue eyed and blonde haired white. I was surprised when I met their father who was a native of New Guinea, a former Dutch colony. To call him black would not do it justice. He was a incredibly attractive man but I couldn't help but notice how much he stood at odds with his sons. Genetics can be funny like that sometimes. I wondered about it, did his sons bear the freedom of being white in a white society? Would someone who had grown up living as a person of color be able to relate to them.
It occurred to me that, as far as society is concerned, genetics don't make you black any more than they make you a woman or poor. Rather, the idea of what it means to be black, a woman, etc that defines who and what we are.
Invariably, whenever I tell someone that I'm transsexual, it doesn't matter how tolerant they are or how well they know me, they will change their perception of me. Who I am will in some small or large way shift. I no longer become Allie the friend or coworker but Allie the trans friend or coworker. It becomes a scarlet T that I carry with me from that point on. I still remember when I came out to a guy who had asked me out on a date. He responded by saying "well... that's okay because you're still hot looking." I can't help but wonder if my transsexuality would have been less acceptable if he had not found me attractive. Do I become a little less of a woman in other's eyes? Maybe it's like being a soft drink and I'm woman lite. All the taste and none of the calories! Well... not really all the taste. You tell yourself the taste is the same but it never is. It's always almost but not quite.
Thing is, that scarlet T doesn't just change how others look at you, it changes how you look at yourself. I often wonder who I would be if I had to carry that T with me everywhere. If every time I met someone or shook someone's hand I wasn't Allie but Allie the transsexual. How would it impact the privileges I enjoy? Instead of the guy sitting next to me in class eyeing me because he was wondering if I was single, would he eye me because he's trying to get another glance at "the tranny"?
It's a harsh word, "tranny", but it embodies the contempt society bears for those who commit the audacious crime of not meeting those social expectations, the outsider, the one who would corrupt a way of life. The crimes of the foreigner, the anarchist, and the activist are all the same. The crime of being the minority. The crime of standing out. The crime of going against the grain. We become a freak of sorts. The bearded woman standing next to the tattooed man and the conjoined twins. People get to stare with morbid curiosity without even the cost of admission. How would that change me? Would I have the strength to bear the crushing weight of that letter?
The truth is that the trans community is sharply divided down this line, the ones who "pass' and the ones that don't, the haves and the have-nots. The latter always wondering how to join the former while the former tries to distance itself from those who don't meet that standard of appearance. They try to disappear into the swarm of bodies, to scrub that T off their skin by lack of association. Do they also gawk at "the tranny" riding the bus to work? Do they wince at the sight, the thought that it could be them making their insides squirm? Conversely, is it not their right to go stealth? Why should they, or anyone, be forced into that spotlight?
I often smirk at the cruel irony of transitioning. On one hand we are castigated for being parodies of womanhood, for embodying every stereotype that has every blighted womanhood. On the other hand, the very legitimacy of our lives gets called in questioned if we don't live up to those same sexist notions of gender. We get to either be men in dresses or sexist caricatures of womanhood.
And so we obsess over appearance. We slice, stitch and burn our flesh, all in the hopes of fulfilling that perfect form. That body that is always just out of reach, just one operation away. That perfect pixie chin, that velvety skin void of hair, those supple breasts. Of course I suspect many FtMs would harbor slightly different obsessions. They develop rules on how to be a real trans person, rules on how to wash away the tranny. They feel like fault lies not in society's perception of them but with their own flesh. The mistake of their existence. That something is wrong with their body and not society. Since when were women Legos? When were they composed of little bits and pieces that had to be shaped just so?
Of course, some take a different route. They wield that T like it was a flaming sword. They give the finger to anyone who would so much as glance their way. Many of them will come to form their own rules on how to be transsexual. How to be the proper social anarchist. They'll castigate and police those who would blend in and hide their scarlet letters. A perfect counterbalance. Two completely different views and yet very much the same.
I have one parting thought, and of this I am sure. life holds no concrete definitions. The notion of a shared female experience leaves my eyes rolling in my head. I sincerely doubt that a white girl from Greenwich Village would have much female experience to share with a Sunni Pashtun girl. What it means to be a woman or man is fluid and intersects heavily with race, class, nationality, culture, etcetera and ad nauseam. The list never ends because womanhood is not a definition we apply to ourselves, it's a perception others apply to us. And so, I wonder, what value does it really have then?
