I interrupt this unannounced hiatus to bring you: New Thoughts On Gender! Part one of two.
One of the things that I realised last time I saw my practically-nonexistent therapist was that I do not particularly care to explain my gender identity to other people. I may have attempted it occasionally on this blog, and that time I came out to my parents, but as of recent months I have taken to just saying “These are my pronouns okay have fun.” I check too many boxes on the list of genders in too many complicated ways, and in a world that barely accepts the existence of trans people at all, it’s not worth it to elaborate.
Problems arise in the combination of wanting my gender to be respected but also being nonbinary; if I explain that I am neither a girl nor a boy, then I get people thinking they can keep calling me “she,” if I tell them I am a BOY OKAY A FREAKING HE-MAN until they remember to call me “he” then I am not being true to my gender either. So I solve this dilemma by being really, really loud about being Transgender.
Gender seems like a private thing to me, or at least, it can be. I’ll tell you what pronouns to use, but you don’t need to know the intimate details of what my gender is. I’m not even sure I could tell them it if someone asked. How I want to be treated, what I would like my body to be like, these things I can answer. “What are you,” as I was asked (or rather, shouted at) today in the hallway, not so much.
But I worry about it, too. One of the core messages of most binary trans activists is, “I am a woman/man. Not a transwoman/transman.” That’s the desire: for the gender, not the transness to be seen. And I wonder if I am hurting their efforts by being so loud about my transness and silent about my gender. Except they’re hurting me with their methods, too. The trans community, inasmuch as one can be said to exist, in a lot of ways unintentionally sabotages other members who have a different experience, because it’s so huge and encompassing. Eddie Izzard describes himself as transgender, same as I do. Yet our experiences haven’t got a whole lot in common (except for liking to wear pretty dresses and speaking French).
Sadly I don’t think society is going to reach a level of understanding that can handle the idea of many kinds of trans people existing in the near future.
I guess the message of this is, “Being that we exist outside episodes of Oprah, trans people are a varied lot, not one-dimensional copies of each other!” *throws about rainbow glitter*
Probably isn’t helpful, but my view is that if the party line isn’t wide enough to accept who you are, then it’s not a party line worth following. You should be actively saying that it’s not right, rather than worrying that you’re in the wrong.
Ok, it’s obvious I know little about the nuances of trans issues. I mostly came for the rainbow sparkles.
*ohh, twinkly*
In a lot of ways, the issue I mention here is similar to the asexual conundrum, that there is just not enough visibility. All though trans people have a bit more than aces, by and large we’re still in the stage of presenting individual doses of transness in easy-to-comprehend-for-cisfolks. It’s not exactly the only party line, but the tricky part, for me at least, is trying to broaden cis people’s understanding of trans people without breaking whatever bit of understanding they may have gleaned of other trans people. Or something like that.
I am happy to provide rainbow sparkles for everyone!
I’m gender neutral; I don’t identify as either male or female. I have a female body and a mainly male style of dress.
My roommate is Transgender female.
I see room for both of us in the world of public visibility. Gavi wants to be thought of as female because she IS female, but she doesn’t think it’s somehow wrong for anyone to admit they are trans. In fact, she does so regularly on her blog, as part of her activism activities and so forth. She just doesn’t want the men she’s interested in dating (or other people) to consider her a man, or a sex object, or a cross-dresser, or someone who pretends to be a woman to turn himself on.
Even if she wanted to just be known as a woman 100% of the time, that doesn’t make my experience LESS meaningful. Just different.
Transgender people who want to be known just as their target gender are not the only people who reject the gender binary, and eliminating the word “Transgender” from our vocabulary is not the goal of the transgender acceptance movement as far as I’ve ever heard. Some individuals may not want to use the label transgender…what does that have to do with what I identify as or what you identify as?
We need a new word for people who aren’t men or women. I guess we have genderqueer, but I’ve never liked it.
I agree with that problem with transgender. I get angry when people say “man, woman, transgender”. That’s not right- it’s “man, woman, [other genders]- trans, cis, or otherwise”. When you come out, if you explain that there are trans men and women- who should be treated as and seen as their gender, not their assigned sex (just like you should be)- but that doesn’t fit you, it might help.
It’s not technically your responsibility to do that- but I never like misrepresenting things. Like if I’m openly asexual, I’m also repulsed but I don’t want people getting the idea that ALL asexuals are disgusted by sex.
“These are my pronouns okay have fun.”
Pretty much how I feel about coming out with my gender situation. Just wanted to share my appreciation, I don’t have anything new to add.