Because being transsexual is often so hurtful, so filled with sadness and longing, with shame and loss and difficulty, it is easy to come to the conclusion that the whole thing is utterly a curse, perhaps inflicted by arcane and evil ancient gods.
Oh, probably.
But there is an upside too.
Most human lives are utterly mundane, devoid of any real uniqueness, the average person somnambulates through an existence devoted to filling the roles expected of them.
But to be a transsexual is a magical, wondrous thing.
Consider. We are given many gifts in compensation for the terrible loss of our childhood as ourselves, and for the pain we endure. We are by some as yet unknown mechanism statistically far more intelligent, as a class, than perhaps any other kind of people. We are almost universally more creative, and we often possess incredible levels of courage and self determination, demonstrated by our very survival, and ultimate attainment of our goal. We are rare as miracles, and in our own way, as magical, or so has been the belief of all ancient cultures on the earth.
We are given awareness that others would never experience, understanding of gender, of the human condition, of society and the roles and hidden rules unquestioned within it. We are given a window into the lives of both sexes, and cannot help but be, to some degree, beyond either. From this we have a rare opportunity: to choose our own life, outside predetermined and unquestioned definition or role. We can do new things, original things, only because our experience is so unique.
We get to be true shapeshifters, and experience the sheer wonder of melty-wax flesh and a real rebirth into the world. Our brains and bodies gain benefit from having been bathed in and altered by the hormones of both sexes. We appear to retain our visible youthfulness where others wrinkle, and for years longer. We possess neural advantages from both sexes, such as the language advantages of the feminized brain, and the spatial abilities of the masculinized brain both. We are shocked into waking up, if we allow it, to a life we create for ourselves...we are not automatically doomed to sleepwalk through life.
After our transformations, after the full-moon lycanthropic miracle that the modern age affords us, we can live lives of success and love, and genuine specialness, if we choose. If we can get past our upbringing, past the programming, the bigotry, the messages of disgust from the culture around us, if we can stand as ourselves in freedom, then our special gifts grant us a heritage of wondrous power.
We have a proud and marvelous history. In ancient days we were magic incarnate. We were Nadle, Winkte, Two-Souls, Shamans and healers and magical beings to our communities. We possessed the ability to give the blessings of the gods and spirits, and were prized as companions, lovers, and teachers.
We were the prize gift of ancient tribes, entertainers, designers and dreamers. Sometimes we were the -somewhat reluctant- rulers of empires, and the consorts of emperors. We were champions and warriors too, who were feared for our unique gifts turned to inevitable victory.
Know that it is only in recent centuries, with the rise of the single minded, monolithic and monotheistic desert religions, filled with harsh single gods and twisted, narrow morals, that our kind have become reviled, the objects of scorn. Once, we were the kin of the gods.
To be transsexual is not easy, and it is not a birth that could be envied, but neither is it a damnation. It was once considered a rare wonder, if a mixed one; a faery gift that cuts as it blesses.
And in the modern age, of hormones and surgery, we are the first generations of our kind to finally know the joy of complete transformation, of truly gaining our rightful bodies. No other transsexuals in history have been so fortunate.
I say that we are unicorns, rare and wondrous, with still a touch of ancient magic and the kinship of the gods. Though it is agony, beyond the fire we have the opportunity to become alchemic gold.
We have much to add to the world, and to give to ourselves and those who love us.
We have always been, we are still the prize of the tribe, for only the world around us has changed, the desert harshness branding us vile. We are still the same.
Our compensations are real, and our lives are special; we have but to grasp the gifts born of our sufferings.
When I look around me at the mundane lives, there are times I think that maybe I am glad I was born transsexual, for I would never have been what I have become without that curse. I cannot help but be grateful for my uniqueness.
I found this writing at a trans support site and wanted to post it here. I do not know who the author is, or I would give them proper credit!
~April~
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Saturday, September 25, 2010
My Personal Journey
Being trans for me is and has been a journey of self; self love, self awareness, self acceptance, self expression. Learning to shed all the years of learned behaviours in order to let the real inner self come through takes time. Feeling myself grow and blossom over the last six months has been incredible. The inner peace I feel is so beautiful I could weep. Never before in my life have I been able to say I liked myself, or being me, much less being able to say I LOVE myself. I can honestly say I am well on my way to liking myself very much. I see things in a new light. I am happier and more sociable. I feel free.
The girl in me was shamed into hiding at a young age. I remember being in kindergarten and finding myself drawn toward what was typically girl play. I jumped rope, played hopscotch, played with dolls, etc. My friends consisted of girls rather than boys. I simply did what I identified with instinctively. It wasn't a choice. A 6-year-old has no understanding of the difference between girls and boys. I just did what I liked. Teachers, peers, and ultimately my parents admonished, punished, and ridiculed me to the point that I felt ashamed to express myself for fear of drawing attention. I got called everything you could think of from fag, queer, sissy, homo, retard.... the list goes on.
This caused me to internalize my true nature, hiding who I really was and replacing her with the closest approximation to a male I could come up with. Not actually being male; at least not mentally or emotionally, it was a rather poor attempt as I simply did not know how to be a male. I still got ridiculed and shamed by those around me for being more girlie than manly. I learned quickly to just sit quietly in the corner and read or draw so as not to attract undue attention.
There came a time when I mostly forgot all of this and began to think instead that there was just something terribly wrong with me. I began to feel self loathing and didn't know why. I simply couldn't stand being me. It didn't feel right, and I couldn't put my finger on it. In my twenties I began cross-dressing in secret. This wasn't a sexual thing, it was actually more a comfort like a security blanket. I just felt good when dressed. I began to imagine my body a different shape, my hair thicker and longer, my face more feminine. The longing I felt was bittersweet. It was a good feeling mixed with pain at the knowledge that I would never achieve it.
Every so often I would purge, and completely change my manner of dress, hairstyle and color, and try to find some happiness as a male. However, just as with the secret dressing, the satisfaction was short-lived and I was left feeling empty raw and dead inside. My self hatred grew, and I felt a boiling rage filling me, snuffing out any kind of real love or acceptance of self and replacing it with hate. Even then I wasn't aware of anything other than I wished I was born female and there must be something terribly wrong with me for feeling that way. I often referred to myself as a troll or creature, rather than a human or a man. I eventually began wanting to die. Wishing to simply die in my sleep so as not to be forced to continue to live the life I had grown to hate.
Discovering I was trans was a real turning point. I had finally broken down and given in to my desire to be more feminine and bought breast forms, pocket bras, gaffs, wigs and clothing. I began toying with the idea of being a drag performer thinking it would ease the dysphoria and allow me to continue living with some sense of peace. Simply dressing however, only satisfied the dysphoria for a short time. I found that having to take the "girl" off just made me feel even worse. I really hated that it felt more like a costume or disguise than anything else and I knew that it wasn't just about looking the part. I really wanted to BE woman, not just emulate one. A friend told me to look into the terms transgender and transsexual.
As I researched and learned I saw so many startling parallels between myself and other trans women that it was almost as if they were telling MY story. My past and childhood memories came back to me and things started to fit together. The confusing jig-saw puzzle of my life fell together and for the first time in my life everything made sense. I continued to research, learn, and talk to others for the next year or so as I began to plan my own transition. I "came out" to my closest friends and began dressing more often, going out in public and spending more time en femme.
A little more than six months ago it all came to a head when I began to seriously worry and stress over whether or not I would ever be able to afford insurance, a doctor, or a therapist; let alone the expenses of hair removal, FFS, and GCS. I decided to take matters into my own hands rather than wait any longer. I found an online pharmacy that was able to ship to the us and began taking low doses of Estrofem and Spirotone. After a month I increased the doses, and after another month I increased them again. Around the third month I added Finasteride to aid in hair regrowth, and to help the Spiro to fight the masculinizing effects of T. At my age, I need the extra assistance for feminizing.
It's too late now to go and write a month-by-month summary of the changes I have seen, but I will give a short overview here. There are other trans women out there that have kept very detailed logs of their progress.
The first real difference I noticed was around the second week when I began to feel a definite sense of calm and well-being setting in. All the negative emotions and self-hate quickly began to dissipate and was replaced by an overall warmth and peace. Around the third week I began to notice a definite softening of my skin, and nodules had begun to form under my nipples. They also became incredibly sore, and it took just the lightest bump to cause severe sharp pain. My appetite didn't change, but I did slowly begin to gain weight. My jeans began to get tighter around my ass and thighs while tops began to fit better and not feel so tight. I had been epilating leg and body hair since before HRT and I noticed a huge difference there too. I had been epilating approximately twice a week. Now, I can go two to three weeks in between, and most of the body hair is either completely gone now or so fine and light in color as to be nearly invisible.
As time went on I began to notice a difference in the smell of my skin and urine. My sex-drive dropped like a stone, and I no longer got spontaneous erections. I feel I can think more clearly now without a high sex-drive getting in the way and clouding things. I am more sociable and friendly and open. My breasts continued to slowly grow in small spurts, the pain in the nipples subsiding in between. My chest measurement went down from 36 to 34 and my hips went from 35 to 36. My legs and thighs have continued to fill out as well, while my arms and upper torso have slowly lost muscle mass. Body hair is still continuing to diminish. My skin has gotten progressively softer, as has the hair on my head. My sense of smell seems to have been heightened, and certain men suddenly smell GOOD. I also found that I pee more often, and sweat much less. Even when I do sweat, I don't have that "guy" smell anymore. I feel more tired now and seem to have less energy than before. My breasts are getting close to being a full A cup and I definitely fill out my clothing much better than before. My emotions, while evening out and being much more calm and easygoing, have changed in another way too. I'm much more likely now to confront someone when I feel they have wronged me. My temper will flare and soon after will dissipate instead of leaving me feeling angry for days or weeks. I'm much happier and more prone to singing and giggling for no apparent reason.
My dysphoria, while not completely gone, is definitely on it's way out. It still flares now and then, especially when I see the younger, prettier trans women and wish I had started this journey long ago. Mostly, however, I am happy with life. I'm happy with myself. I finally understand myself and who I am and I am slowly learning to let her shine.
My birthday was yesterday. I turned 42. It was also within a few days of my 6th month on HRT and also marks the day when I finally got health insurance coverage. I am now in touch with a gender therapist, and have chosen a PCP that has specific expertise in the health of trans women.
I feel so much better about life and about myself than I ever have. I'm happy and at peace. I understand myself. I like myself. I look to the future now, and it is bright and full of promise.
~April Dawne~
The girl in me was shamed into hiding at a young age. I remember being in kindergarten and finding myself drawn toward what was typically girl play. I jumped rope, played hopscotch, played with dolls, etc. My friends consisted of girls rather than boys. I simply did what I identified with instinctively. It wasn't a choice. A 6-year-old has no understanding of the difference between girls and boys. I just did what I liked. Teachers, peers, and ultimately my parents admonished, punished, and ridiculed me to the point that I felt ashamed to express myself for fear of drawing attention. I got called everything you could think of from fag, queer, sissy, homo, retard.... the list goes on.
This caused me to internalize my true nature, hiding who I really was and replacing her with the closest approximation to a male I could come up with. Not actually being male; at least not mentally or emotionally, it was a rather poor attempt as I simply did not know how to be a male. I still got ridiculed and shamed by those around me for being more girlie than manly. I learned quickly to just sit quietly in the corner and read or draw so as not to attract undue attention.
There came a time when I mostly forgot all of this and began to think instead that there was just something terribly wrong with me. I began to feel self loathing and didn't know why. I simply couldn't stand being me. It didn't feel right, and I couldn't put my finger on it. In my twenties I began cross-dressing in secret. This wasn't a sexual thing, it was actually more a comfort like a security blanket. I just felt good when dressed. I began to imagine my body a different shape, my hair thicker and longer, my face more feminine. The longing I felt was bittersweet. It was a good feeling mixed with pain at the knowledge that I would never achieve it.
Every so often I would purge, and completely change my manner of dress, hairstyle and color, and try to find some happiness as a male. However, just as with the secret dressing, the satisfaction was short-lived and I was left feeling empty raw and dead inside. My self hatred grew, and I felt a boiling rage filling me, snuffing out any kind of real love or acceptance of self and replacing it with hate. Even then I wasn't aware of anything other than I wished I was born female and there must be something terribly wrong with me for feeling that way. I often referred to myself as a troll or creature, rather than a human or a man. I eventually began wanting to die. Wishing to simply die in my sleep so as not to be forced to continue to live the life I had grown to hate.
Discovering I was trans was a real turning point. I had finally broken down and given in to my desire to be more feminine and bought breast forms, pocket bras, gaffs, wigs and clothing. I began toying with the idea of being a drag performer thinking it would ease the dysphoria and allow me to continue living with some sense of peace. Simply dressing however, only satisfied the dysphoria for a short time. I found that having to take the "girl" off just made me feel even worse. I really hated that it felt more like a costume or disguise than anything else and I knew that it wasn't just about looking the part. I really wanted to BE woman, not just emulate one. A friend told me to look into the terms transgender and transsexual.
As I researched and learned I saw so many startling parallels between myself and other trans women that it was almost as if they were telling MY story. My past and childhood memories came back to me and things started to fit together. The confusing jig-saw puzzle of my life fell together and for the first time in my life everything made sense. I continued to research, learn, and talk to others for the next year or so as I began to plan my own transition. I "came out" to my closest friends and began dressing more often, going out in public and spending more time en femme.
A little more than six months ago it all came to a head when I began to seriously worry and stress over whether or not I would ever be able to afford insurance, a doctor, or a therapist; let alone the expenses of hair removal, FFS, and GCS. I decided to take matters into my own hands rather than wait any longer. I found an online pharmacy that was able to ship to the us and began taking low doses of Estrofem and Spirotone. After a month I increased the doses, and after another month I increased them again. Around the third month I added Finasteride to aid in hair regrowth, and to help the Spiro to fight the masculinizing effects of T. At my age, I need the extra assistance for feminizing.
It's too late now to go and write a month-by-month summary of the changes I have seen, but I will give a short overview here. There are other trans women out there that have kept very detailed logs of their progress.
The first real difference I noticed was around the second week when I began to feel a definite sense of calm and well-being setting in. All the negative emotions and self-hate quickly began to dissipate and was replaced by an overall warmth and peace. Around the third week I began to notice a definite softening of my skin, and nodules had begun to form under my nipples. They also became incredibly sore, and it took just the lightest bump to cause severe sharp pain. My appetite didn't change, but I did slowly begin to gain weight. My jeans began to get tighter around my ass and thighs while tops began to fit better and not feel so tight. I had been epilating leg and body hair since before HRT and I noticed a huge difference there too. I had been epilating approximately twice a week. Now, I can go two to three weeks in between, and most of the body hair is either completely gone now or so fine and light in color as to be nearly invisible.
As time went on I began to notice a difference in the smell of my skin and urine. My sex-drive dropped like a stone, and I no longer got spontaneous erections. I feel I can think more clearly now without a high sex-drive getting in the way and clouding things. I am more sociable and friendly and open. My breasts continued to slowly grow in small spurts, the pain in the nipples subsiding in between. My chest measurement went down from 36 to 34 and my hips went from 35 to 36. My legs and thighs have continued to fill out as well, while my arms and upper torso have slowly lost muscle mass. Body hair is still continuing to diminish. My skin has gotten progressively softer, as has the hair on my head. My sense of smell seems to have been heightened, and certain men suddenly smell GOOD. I also found that I pee more often, and sweat much less. Even when I do sweat, I don't have that "guy" smell anymore. I feel more tired now and seem to have less energy than before. My breasts are getting close to being a full A cup and I definitely fill out my clothing much better than before. My emotions, while evening out and being much more calm and easygoing, have changed in another way too. I'm much more likely now to confront someone when I feel they have wronged me. My temper will flare and soon after will dissipate instead of leaving me feeling angry for days or weeks. I'm much happier and more prone to singing and giggling for no apparent reason.
My dysphoria, while not completely gone, is definitely on it's way out. It still flares now and then, especially when I see the younger, prettier trans women and wish I had started this journey long ago. Mostly, however, I am happy with life. I'm happy with myself. I finally understand myself and who I am and I am slowly learning to let her shine.
My birthday was yesterday. I turned 42. It was also within a few days of my 6th month on HRT and also marks the day when I finally got health insurance coverage. I am now in touch with a gender therapist, and have chosen a PCP that has specific expertise in the health of trans women.
I feel so much better about life and about myself than I ever have. I'm happy and at peace. I understand myself. I like myself. I look to the future now, and it is bright and full of promise.
~April Dawne~
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Transphobic Words and Deeds
Transphobia (or less commonly, transprejudice and trans-misogyny, referring to transphobia directed toward transwomen, or trans-misandry, referring to transphobia directed toward transmen) refers to discrimination against transsexualism and transsexual or transgender people, based on the expression of their internal gender identity (see Phobia – terms indicating prejudice or class discrimination). Whether intentional or not, transphobia can have severe consequences for the target of the negative attitude. Many transpeople also experience homophobia from people who incorrectly associate their gender identity with homosexuality.[1] Attacking someone on the basis of a perception of their gender identity rather the perception of their sexual orientation is known as "trans-bashing", as opposed to "gay bashing".
Transphobic Words and Deeds
http://questioningtransphobia.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/transphobic-words-and-deeds/I linked to a post by Monica Helms about trans anger the other day, which was really me dodging writing a full post – however, Helen G pointed out that its focus is quite narrow and doesn’t really cover the reasons trans people have to be angry. And, I agree with her. I do not yet feel up to writing that full post yet, so I want to cover something that should help provide context:
I haven’t really done this before, but I wanted to go over what transphobia is and what transphobia is not. Quite a few cis people feel qualified to tell trans people what qualifies as transphobia, which always conveniently excludes whatever transphobic behavior they’re exhibiting at that particular time. It’s not unlike what I said to Uppity Brown Woman the other day about white people defining racism:
Also, read Uppity Brown Woman’s full post I linked, because it is all about privilege:
And that’s privilege, or rather what privilege does to those who do not have it.
Nothing listed past this point is meant to be definitive, the sum total, the limits of the ways that cissexual privilege or transphobic actions manifest. They are examples, and are only the tip of the iceberg.
Cissexual privilege is the privilege of having a body that matches the sex your brain expects. Cissexual privilege is the privilege of having a body that matches what society expects. Cissexual privilege is the assumption that your sex, your gender are superior and more valid than trans people’s sex and gender, that you have the right to tell trans people who and what they really are, what their motives are for transitioning, to deny that their most basic realities are false because you cannot imagine how they can be true. Cissexual privilege is the sense of entitlement that tells you that you have the right to discuss my genitals at any time and then claim I’m the one bringing genitals up all the time. Cissexual privilege is the belief that you can declare what “being a transsexual” really is because you’ve thought about it a lot after rejecting what actual transsexual people and the entire medical profession have said about being a transsexual person. Cissexual privilege is the insistence that you have the right to shift the meaning of what trans people say about ourselves so that you can then use the reinterpreted arguments as easily destroyed straw men. Cissexual privilege is the attitude that you can interrogate and criticize everything a trans person does even though it’s no different from what a cis person does simply because the person is trans, and thus her sex and gender are not as valid as yours. Cissexual privilege is what makes you think that you can berate trans people for reifying gender roles and reinforcing the gender binary while at the same time remaining comfortably ensconced in your life as a man or a woman. A trans person claiming to be a man or a woman is doing it wrong but you claiming to be a man or a woman is only natural.
Cissexual privilege is the insistence that being called cissexual is othering and demeaning and implies that trans people are trying to make ourselves the norm and you the other, when it is simply a matter of equalizing cis and trans, defining both as normal and neither as other. It is no more othering and demeaning than distinguishing straight people from gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.
Cissexual privilege is the fact that you do not have to pay thousands of dollars for hormones, electrolysis, surgery, a new wardrobe, you do not have to risk losing your job, your family, or your friends. Cissexual privilege means that you don’t have to take hormones or undergo surgery to be comfortable – to be able to live with - your body’s sex.
Transphobia is the exercise of that privilege. It is not restricted to violence. It is not restricted to men. When you refer to a trans woman as a man, or a trans man as a woman, you said something transphobic. When you say that all trans people are fetishists, you said something transphobic. When you say that trans people are mentally ill, that is not only transphobic but also ableist. When you say that trans women should be excluded from domestic violence shelters, you not only said something transphobic, you also said that trans women should suffer emotional abuse, battering, or even die instead of possibly inconveniencing a shelter.
When you say that trans women should be placed in a men’s prison because their male history means they might rape someone, you have not only said something transphobic, but you have also said that the trans woman should be placed into a situation where she will be raped repeatedly. You have profiled all trans women as dangerous to cis women. When you say that trans women reify the gender binary, you absolve yourself of your own responsibility for reifying that same binary by simply existing and hold trans people to a standard that you simply do not demand of cis people. Plus, you said something transphobic. When you make a blog called “breathing is transphobic,” you did something transphobic, and you did it in a way that allows you to blame trans people for being too angry and bullying when we point out that you said or did something transphobic. That positions you in such a way as to dismiss everything that trans people say to you when they criticize your words and actions.
When you say that trans people should be denied access to hormones, surgery, and social transition and insist that we should instead seek therapy to help us stop being trans, you’re ignoring our voices and telling us what our real lives are like. You’re ignoring all the medical literature to date that says that the best treatment for trans people is to allow transition. You also said something transphobic. When you say that trans people are walking stereotypes of masculinity or femininity, you’re applying a double-standard to trans gender expression vs. cis gender expression – where a feminine trans woman is seen as a caricature of femininity while a feminine cis woman who presents exactly the same way is seen as natural and normal. You also said something transphobic.
When you claim that you have trans friends and that they agree with you, you said something transphobic. You also tried to claim that your friends’ voices and opinions should be more important than the voices and opinions of trans people who call you out on your cissexual privileged shit. You’re trying to establish that there are good trans people and bad trans people.
If you’re a trans person, and you participate in the bashing of other trans people, you have done something transphobic. Being trans does not make you immune to playing into cissexist normativity. It does not make you immune to saying hateful things about other trans people.
If you try to raise the spectre of men pretending to be trans women to gain access to restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters, or any other space set aside for women, you have not only said something transphobic, you are trying to hold trans people responsible for what other people may attempt to do (and something other people have not yet attempted to do).
If you try to raise the spectre of trans women triggering cis women survivors because of their assumed masculine appearance or penises, you are not only saying something transphobic, you are appropriating survivor voices to justify your transphobic statements. You are also holding trans women – and trans women only – responsible for managing triggers that are not theirs. You are also defining trans women by their appearance, as if what a woman looks like somehow reflects on her womanhood, as if it’s something she can control.
When you grab for a trans person’s genitals to find out what they are, you have committed sexual assault. When you attack a trans person because he or she is trans, you have committed battery. When you kill a trans person because he or she is trans, you have committed murder. These are all transphobic acts, but they are not the sum total of transphobic acts. They do not define transphobia. You do not get a free pass out of saying and doing transphobic acts because you are not out there personally running trans women over four times in a row, or shooting them, or stabbing them, or suffocating them, or bashing their heads in. The fact is that people who commit these atrocities upon trans people believe that they can get away with it because of all of the insults, the denial of trans people’s agency, the belief that trans people are really their birth sex and gender, the belief that trans people aren’t really men or women at all, the belief that trans people are so different from cis people that the accommodations made for cis people cannot be extended to trans people, the belief that what a trans person looks like discredits his or her sex or gender, justifying ridicule and abuse on that trans person.
When you say or do the things I have described here, you are supporting a cissexist society that justifies killing trans people, that justifies slapping our murderers, abusers, rapists, on the wrist. That justifies the idea that we’re not really human. And if you insist that your own words and deeds have no importance because you are not personally out there raping, beating, stabbing, shooting, strangling trans people, then you are part of the same problem that creates Andrade, Oates, Hyatt, Blake, and men who have murdered numerous other women and men just because those men believed that transphobic words and deeds that so much of the world accepts as reasonable justified their decision to erase women and men from the world simply because they existed.
This is the system you support – a spectrum of words and deeds that ranges from “You’re really a man/really a woman” to “Man is charged with manslaughter for deliberately hunting down and killing a trans woman.”
You reify and reinforce the oppression that affects me and all other trans people.
You can’t really help it, mostly. You’re born and raised in a cissexual society, a society that programs you to believe that people who change their sex are less than you. However, once you realize that this is the case – once it is brought to your attention, once your privilege is pointed out to you, once the fact that you – like all other cis people – are complicit in oppressing trans people, if you choose to deny that such privilege exists, deny that you are doing and saying transphobic things, while deliberately increasing the intensity and frequency of these actions? You are no longer at the point where you are simply complicit due to privilege. You are now an active participant.
You can always choose to stop.
Edit: I forgot to write about what transphobia is not: Just having cissexual privilege does not mean that everything a cis person does comes from that privilege or is transphobic. For example, treating trans people with respect, treating trans people as normal human beings? That’s not transphobic, and I see cis people do it all the time.
Transcribed from the web, the preceding was not written by myself, but was too powerful not to post here!
~April~
I haven’t really done this before, but I wanted to go over what transphobia is and what transphobia is not. Quite a few cis people feel qualified to tell trans people what qualifies as transphobia, which always conveniently excludes whatever transphobic behavior they’re exhibiting at that particular time. It’s not unlike what I said to Uppity Brown Woman the other day about white people defining racism:
. . . white people shouldn’t be the ones to define when a racist act has occurred, because the answer will nearly always be “never,” . . .What I mean by that is that without any reason for white people to check our privilege, we’re just going to do what we do and refuse to acknowledge that we’re hurting someone else. Part of privilege is that the pain we cause is either invisible to us, or we believe that the target of that pain somehow brought it upon herself or deserved it. Another part of privilege is interpreting events in our favor whenever possible, and expecting the dominant social forces to support that interpretation.
Also, read Uppity Brown Woman’s full post I linked, because it is all about privilege:
A dramatic metaphor:This is what happens when conversations about issues surrounding disability, race, trans people, and other oppressed classes of people start: Privileged people walk in and demand to make the conversation about them. They ask to be educated, they demand justifications, they insist that they can’t be good allies if they don’t understand what’s going on. In the three threads I linked, one is about a girl with cerebral palsy whose family denied her life support machines that would improve her quality of life, and also arranged for a “do not resuscitate” order; one is about how white people often make use of work done by people of color without crediting them; one is about how a feminist made a pointed jab at the Transgender Day of Remembrance. In each case, able-bodied, white, or cis people came into the discussion and made it about them. In each case, this was highly inappropriate because the topic matter was itself sensitive to the people it directly affected: The perception of people with disabilities living incomplete lives that leads able-bodied people to think it’s reasonable to let them die; the fact that people of color do so much work and white people feel entitled to claim it; the fact that trans people cannot even talk about the fact that we have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered, at least in America – the victims predominantly women of color. The average person has a 1 in 18,000 chance of being murdered. That we cannot talk about this fact that this is happening, and that we remember our dead once a year, and how we cannot even do this without a cis person begrudging the fact that we do remember our dead – and we cannot have this conversation without cis people blasting into the discussion and demanding that we justify our lives and our decisions and the medical procedures we’ve undergone before they’ll consent to both mourn and express sympathy that our mourning is begrudged.
Imagine you’re riding your motorcycle down the street. The car in front of you slams on their breaks to meet a stop light, and you swerve to avoid smashing into them, only to end up hitting a telephone pole. It’s your bike that’s a goner, but thankfully the other vehicles have no significant damage. You’re also the one bleeding internally from faceplanting. Only one ambulance has arrived so far. The paramedics are trying to help you in whatever way they can. The other person involved in the accident walks over and demands medical attention because they could be bleeding internally as well. They stopped really suddenly! Their airbag went off!
No doubt, they could be injured. Although it is a possibility, the biker is visibly in pain. The driver makes the point, “but sie must have known the hazards of motorcycles!” In this metaphor, the paramedics stop paying attention to the biker and start looking after the driver. The biker uses up a ton of energy just trying to say, “hey, wait a fucking minute! This is supposed to be about me!” and is only met with “when we’re done here, we’ll get to you. Just calm down and quit being so angry.”
And that’s privilege, or rather what privilege does to those who do not have it.
Nothing listed past this point is meant to be definitive, the sum total, the limits of the ways that cissexual privilege or transphobic actions manifest. They are examples, and are only the tip of the iceberg.
Cissexual privilege is the privilege of having a body that matches the sex your brain expects. Cissexual privilege is the privilege of having a body that matches what society expects. Cissexual privilege is the assumption that your sex, your gender are superior and more valid than trans people’s sex and gender, that you have the right to tell trans people who and what they really are, what their motives are for transitioning, to deny that their most basic realities are false because you cannot imagine how they can be true. Cissexual privilege is the sense of entitlement that tells you that you have the right to discuss my genitals at any time and then claim I’m the one bringing genitals up all the time. Cissexual privilege is the belief that you can declare what “being a transsexual” really is because you’ve thought about it a lot after rejecting what actual transsexual people and the entire medical profession have said about being a transsexual person. Cissexual privilege is the insistence that you have the right to shift the meaning of what trans people say about ourselves so that you can then use the reinterpreted arguments as easily destroyed straw men. Cissexual privilege is the attitude that you can interrogate and criticize everything a trans person does even though it’s no different from what a cis person does simply because the person is trans, and thus her sex and gender are not as valid as yours. Cissexual privilege is what makes you think that you can berate trans people for reifying gender roles and reinforcing the gender binary while at the same time remaining comfortably ensconced in your life as a man or a woman. A trans person claiming to be a man or a woman is doing it wrong but you claiming to be a man or a woman is only natural.
Cissexual privilege is the insistence that being called cissexual is othering and demeaning and implies that trans people are trying to make ourselves the norm and you the other, when it is simply a matter of equalizing cis and trans, defining both as normal and neither as other. It is no more othering and demeaning than distinguishing straight people from gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.
Cissexual privilege is the fact that you do not have to pay thousands of dollars for hormones, electrolysis, surgery, a new wardrobe, you do not have to risk losing your job, your family, or your friends. Cissexual privilege means that you don’t have to take hormones or undergo surgery to be comfortable – to be able to live with - your body’s sex.
Transphobia is the exercise of that privilege. It is not restricted to violence. It is not restricted to men. When you refer to a trans woman as a man, or a trans man as a woman, you said something transphobic. When you say that all trans people are fetishists, you said something transphobic. When you say that trans people are mentally ill, that is not only transphobic but also ableist. When you say that trans women should be excluded from domestic violence shelters, you not only said something transphobic, you also said that trans women should suffer emotional abuse, battering, or even die instead of possibly inconveniencing a shelter.
When you say that trans women should be placed in a men’s prison because their male history means they might rape someone, you have not only said something transphobic, but you have also said that the trans woman should be placed into a situation where she will be raped repeatedly. You have profiled all trans women as dangerous to cis women. When you say that trans women reify the gender binary, you absolve yourself of your own responsibility for reifying that same binary by simply existing and hold trans people to a standard that you simply do not demand of cis people. Plus, you said something transphobic. When you make a blog called “breathing is transphobic,” you did something transphobic, and you did it in a way that allows you to blame trans people for being too angry and bullying when we point out that you said or did something transphobic. That positions you in such a way as to dismiss everything that trans people say to you when they criticize your words and actions.
When you say that trans people should be denied access to hormones, surgery, and social transition and insist that we should instead seek therapy to help us stop being trans, you’re ignoring our voices and telling us what our real lives are like. You’re ignoring all the medical literature to date that says that the best treatment for trans people is to allow transition. You also said something transphobic. When you say that trans people are walking stereotypes of masculinity or femininity, you’re applying a double-standard to trans gender expression vs. cis gender expression – where a feminine trans woman is seen as a caricature of femininity while a feminine cis woman who presents exactly the same way is seen as natural and normal. You also said something transphobic.
When you claim that you have trans friends and that they agree with you, you said something transphobic. You also tried to claim that your friends’ voices and opinions should be more important than the voices and opinions of trans people who call you out on your cissexual privileged shit. You’re trying to establish that there are good trans people and bad trans people.
If you’re a trans person, and you participate in the bashing of other trans people, you have done something transphobic. Being trans does not make you immune to playing into cissexist normativity. It does not make you immune to saying hateful things about other trans people.
If you try to raise the spectre of men pretending to be trans women to gain access to restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters, or any other space set aside for women, you have not only said something transphobic, you are trying to hold trans people responsible for what other people may attempt to do (and something other people have not yet attempted to do).
If you try to raise the spectre of trans women triggering cis women survivors because of their assumed masculine appearance or penises, you are not only saying something transphobic, you are appropriating survivor voices to justify your transphobic statements. You are also holding trans women – and trans women only – responsible for managing triggers that are not theirs. You are also defining trans women by their appearance, as if what a woman looks like somehow reflects on her womanhood, as if it’s something she can control.
When you grab for a trans person’s genitals to find out what they are, you have committed sexual assault. When you attack a trans person because he or she is trans, you have committed battery. When you kill a trans person because he or she is trans, you have committed murder. These are all transphobic acts, but they are not the sum total of transphobic acts. They do not define transphobia. You do not get a free pass out of saying and doing transphobic acts because you are not out there personally running trans women over four times in a row, or shooting them, or stabbing them, or suffocating them, or bashing their heads in. The fact is that people who commit these atrocities upon trans people believe that they can get away with it because of all of the insults, the denial of trans people’s agency, the belief that trans people are really their birth sex and gender, the belief that trans people aren’t really men or women at all, the belief that trans people are so different from cis people that the accommodations made for cis people cannot be extended to trans people, the belief that what a trans person looks like discredits his or her sex or gender, justifying ridicule and abuse on that trans person.
When you say or do the things I have described here, you are supporting a cissexist society that justifies killing trans people, that justifies slapping our murderers, abusers, rapists, on the wrist. That justifies the idea that we’re not really human. And if you insist that your own words and deeds have no importance because you are not personally out there raping, beating, stabbing, shooting, strangling trans people, then you are part of the same problem that creates Andrade, Oates, Hyatt, Blake, and men who have murdered numerous other women and men just because those men believed that transphobic words and deeds that so much of the world accepts as reasonable justified their decision to erase women and men from the world simply because they existed.
This is the system you support – a spectrum of words and deeds that ranges from “You’re really a man/really a woman” to “Man is charged with manslaughter for deliberately hunting down and killing a trans woman.”
You reify and reinforce the oppression that affects me and all other trans people.
You can’t really help it, mostly. You’re born and raised in a cissexual society, a society that programs you to believe that people who change their sex are less than you. However, once you realize that this is the case – once it is brought to your attention, once your privilege is pointed out to you, once the fact that you – like all other cis people – are complicit in oppressing trans people, if you choose to deny that such privilege exists, deny that you are doing and saying transphobic things, while deliberately increasing the intensity and frequency of these actions? You are no longer at the point where you are simply complicit due to privilege. You are now an active participant.
You can always choose to stop.
Edit: I forgot to write about what transphobia is not: Just having cissexual privilege does not mean that everything a cis person does comes from that privilege or is transphobic. For example, treating trans people with respect, treating trans people as normal human beings? That’s not transphobic, and I see cis people do it all the time.
Transcribed from the web, the preceding was not written by myself, but was too powerful not to post here!
~April~
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Welcome to the Crossroads
My name is April. I am a 41 year old single bisexual MtF Transsexual in the midst of transition.
A few weeks ago I admitted publicly being transgender, and amazingly the world did NOT implode as I had feared. Funny how a revelation that you fear so much in sharing can almost seem to mean nothing to everyone else. I don't mean that in a bad way; rather I am expressing what a big deal it was to me, and how to others it didn't seem like any big deal at all. I was so scared, beforehand, and thought my whole universe was going to crash to a screeching halt.
Discovering that you are transgender is at once the most freeing, liberating, and yet terrifying and confusing revelation I can think of. I can't even describe how it is I really KNEW. It just hit me one day. Everything that never made sense about me and my life suddenly fell together and DID make sense. It was like the world's biggest light bulb popped on over my head. It was my "Eureka!" moment. It seemed that the whole world opened up before me; I saw the possibilities and the promise. I finally understood why I had felt the way I had all my life, and I started to learn what I needed to do. Then, I started seeing the boobytraps and pitfalls. I began to really LEARN what being transgender would mean, if I were to continue and go through with it.
Admitting that you are transgender, and of course beginning transition, changes everything. If you are M2F like me, you have to give up a lot of the 'male privilege', that is if you ever had it to begin with, especially when it concerns jobs and financial security. Living as a woman, you learn quickly how bad women really have it in the working world. You aren't taken seriously, you aren't as well respected (at least not when you aren't in earshot) and you don't earn as much. You also get overlooked for raises and promotions. Then there's the harassment, which would be an entire post in itself.
This is all provided that you finish transitioning, and then begin to live full time in your true gender. During transition, it can be nearly impossible to find or keep a job, especially a decent one. The only real solution there that I can see is to hide the transition for as long as possible (at least in the workplace) until the majority of the work is done, then if possible, transition within the company. If not, you leave (worst case scenario you get fired) and find a job in your new gender.
Gender is a strange and ambiguous thing. Ask someone what makes a man a man and their first response will likely be "they have a penis". What if the penis is destroyed by some horrible accident and the "man" no longer has it? Is he no longer a man? The next response might be hormones. Men have testosterone, women have estrogen. This is true, but what some don't know is that we all (for the most part) have a certain level of each, produced by both our testes/ovaries and pituitary glands. Remove either the testes or ovaries, and the person's hormone levels are generally about even. The next answer might be that women have two X chromosomes, men have XY. While this is true, it is not an across-the-board answer. Other combination's include XXY, XYY, and XO. Each of these carry their own specific "gender" traits that do not follow the norm, and these anomalies happen far more often than most people are aware. If a natal female has a hysterectomy whereby her ovaries and womb are lost, is she then no longer a woman? She can no longer reproduce, has no menstrual cycle, and often has to take estrogen the rest of her life... much like a trans woman such as myself. I may or may not have the "correct" chromosomes, I may have a penis (for now), but those things alone do not prove gender. There is also rather new research that shows that TS people have at least a partially female-wired brain (if MtF) that responds positively to the lack of Testosterone and the increase in Estrogen.
There are plenty of experts who theorize how a person might become trans-gender. It is true that signs of gender variance often begin to occur at a young age in a trans person. What some have begun to theorize in many cases is as follows.
During early stages of fetal development, we are not male or female. We actually have the beginnings of either gender inside our bodies. During a specific stage, the fetus is flooded with either testosterone or estrogen. This hormone flood "maps" the brain of the fetus with a gender identity imprint . It is then determined which gender the new human being will identify with. Later, at another crucial stage in development, the fetus is again flooded with hormones. In "normal" cases, the flood is the same hormone as before, and the fetus's body develops to match the brain. The male bits inside develop, and the female bits are dissolved and reabsorbed into the fetus, or vice versa. The gonads either descend and become testes, or they stay within the body and become ovaries.
What some people believe is that trans people are "mapped" with one gender, then the body develops as the opposite because the flood of hormones at those two crucial stages was different.
Ignorant people who either lack or refuse to accept these things, think that we "decide" or "choose" to be trans. That is not the case. It is simply what we are. We are born with it. We are not freaks. We are not less human. We have rights. We have hearts, minds, souls, feelings, and beliefs. We exist. We deserve equal and fair treatment; whether in the working world, or in medical care. We don't deserve to be ridiculed. We deserve to be respected. We deserve to be loved. We deserve to live.
~April Dawne~
A few weeks ago I admitted publicly being transgender, and amazingly the world did NOT implode as I had feared. Funny how a revelation that you fear so much in sharing can almost seem to mean nothing to everyone else. I don't mean that in a bad way; rather I am expressing what a big deal it was to me, and how to others it didn't seem like any big deal at all. I was so scared, beforehand, and thought my whole universe was going to crash to a screeching halt.
Discovering that you are transgender is at once the most freeing, liberating, and yet terrifying and confusing revelation I can think of. I can't even describe how it is I really KNEW. It just hit me one day. Everything that never made sense about me and my life suddenly fell together and DID make sense. It was like the world's biggest light bulb popped on over my head. It was my "Eureka!" moment. It seemed that the whole world opened up before me; I saw the possibilities and the promise. I finally understood why I had felt the way I had all my life, and I started to learn what I needed to do. Then, I started seeing the boobytraps and pitfalls. I began to really LEARN what being transgender would mean, if I were to continue and go through with it.
Admitting that you are transgender, and of course beginning transition, changes everything. If you are M2F like me, you have to give up a lot of the 'male privilege', that is if you ever had it to begin with, especially when it concerns jobs and financial security. Living as a woman, you learn quickly how bad women really have it in the working world. You aren't taken seriously, you aren't as well respected (at least not when you aren't in earshot) and you don't earn as much. You also get overlooked for raises and promotions. Then there's the harassment, which would be an entire post in itself.
This is all provided that you finish transitioning, and then begin to live full time in your true gender. During transition, it can be nearly impossible to find or keep a job, especially a decent one. The only real solution there that I can see is to hide the transition for as long as possible (at least in the workplace) until the majority of the work is done, then if possible, transition within the company. If not, you leave (worst case scenario you get fired) and find a job in your new gender.
Gender is a strange and ambiguous thing. Ask someone what makes a man a man and their first response will likely be "they have a penis". What if the penis is destroyed by some horrible accident and the "man" no longer has it? Is he no longer a man? The next response might be hormones. Men have testosterone, women have estrogen. This is true, but what some don't know is that we all (for the most part) have a certain level of each, produced by both our testes/ovaries and pituitary glands. Remove either the testes or ovaries, and the person's hormone levels are generally about even. The next answer might be that women have two X chromosomes, men have XY. While this is true, it is not an across-the-board answer. Other combination's include XXY, XYY, and XO. Each of these carry their own specific "gender" traits that do not follow the norm, and these anomalies happen far more often than most people are aware. If a natal female has a hysterectomy whereby her ovaries and womb are lost, is she then no longer a woman? She can no longer reproduce, has no menstrual cycle, and often has to take estrogen the rest of her life... much like a trans woman such as myself. I may or may not have the "correct" chromosomes, I may have a penis (for now), but those things alone do not prove gender. There is also rather new research that shows that TS people have at least a partially female-wired brain (if MtF) that responds positively to the lack of Testosterone and the increase in Estrogen.
There are plenty of experts who theorize how a person might become trans-gender. It is true that signs of gender variance often begin to occur at a young age in a trans person. What some have begun to theorize in many cases is as follows.
During early stages of fetal development, we are not male or female. We actually have the beginnings of either gender inside our bodies. During a specific stage, the fetus is flooded with either testosterone or estrogen. This hormone flood "maps" the brain of the fetus with a gender identity imprint . It is then determined which gender the new human being will identify with. Later, at another crucial stage in development, the fetus is again flooded with hormones. In "normal" cases, the flood is the same hormone as before, and the fetus's body develops to match the brain. The male bits inside develop, and the female bits are dissolved and reabsorbed into the fetus, or vice versa. The gonads either descend and become testes, or they stay within the body and become ovaries.
What some people believe is that trans people are "mapped" with one gender, then the body develops as the opposite because the flood of hormones at those two crucial stages was different.
Ignorant people who either lack or refuse to accept these things, think that we "decide" or "choose" to be trans. That is not the case. It is simply what we are. We are born with it. We are not freaks. We are not less human. We have rights. We have hearts, minds, souls, feelings, and beliefs. We exist. We deserve equal and fair treatment; whether in the working world, or in medical care. We don't deserve to be ridiculed. We deserve to be respected. We deserve to be loved. We deserve to live.
~April Dawne~
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