Now I’ve caught up somewhat after the conference, so I can do what several people requested and make guest posts of some of the comments from the Discomfort with the more social aspects of gender discussion last week.
I’ll start with one by AMM:
There’s something that a lot of trans people report and I’m becoming aware of in myself that doesn’t get mentioned in feminist discussions of gender.
It’s that feeling that at some fundamental level, you just don’t belong with the people you share a birth gender with, and in many cases you don’t feel right in your body. That something just doesn’t fit, no matter how perfectly you may seem to fit. And when you transition, medically and/or socially, you just feel right for once.
I haven’t transitioned yet, so I can’t say for sure how I’ll feel, but I know that I have _never_ felt at home with being a man or having a male body, and I’ve tried every way I can think of for 60 years. It’s like when my father convinced me (for an afternoon) that I could sell stuff door-to-door. I went out and canvased the neighborhood. And I realized: it’s just not me. I am not cut out to be a salesman. It’s the same thing with being male. I have yet to find anything about being a man (as opposed to a generic human being) that I can relate to. I can intellectualize it, but I can’t feel it. Whereas when I read about or hear women’s experiences, it fits.
Julia Serano describes this a lot better than I can in her book (Whipping Girl), and besides, she’s transitioned, so she can compare before and after.
I get the impression that cis people don’t experience the same sort of not-rightness. Maybe there’s something deep inside, independent of all the social constructions, that just works right for cis people and doesn’t for trans people, and, for lack of any better language, we call it gender.
I think it does get mentioned in feminist discussions of gender here, because it’s the very thing I’m interested in and somewhat puzzled about. (Or one of two or three such things.)
Because I’ve always had that feeling to some extent, sometimes to a very considerable extent. Then again I also have a feeling I just don’t belong with people in general to some extent.
And the thing is, I just can’t tell how similar it is or isn’t to what trans people feel – and neither can trans people tell. None of us can tell, because none of us can visit other people’s minds to find out what it’s like there. It’s like color – nobody knows if we all see color the same way, color-blind people aside. It’s like pain: nobody knows if we all feel pain the same way.
What I’ve always felt seems to be milder than gender dysphoria, and the fact that I’ve never considered myself trans seems to back that up…but on the other hand if I were a child now, when being trans is so much more available and discussable – would I want to be trans? I don’t know. I doubt it, but I don’t know.
And I don’t know that about everyone else, either – and neither do you. Trans or cis, neither do you. None of us do. We have no way of knowing.
So I’m de facto cis, for sure, but am I really cis? I don’t know.
It occurs to me that the above comment will probably piss people off all over again, and this time with some justification, because it sounds like telling trans people how they get to define themselves. I don’t mean to say that. But I have a longstanding interest in how we know things, and what we can and can’t know, and how common it is to think we know things that we can’t possibly know. That’s what I’m talking about here. I’m not talking about the politics. Trans people can define themselves any way they want to. But none of us can know for sure what’s in anyone else’s mind. “Cis” is basically a label for what’s in our minds, so I don’t think it should be a mandatory label for people who don’t identify as trans – any more than trans should be a mandatory label for people who don’t identify as cis. I get the part about privilege, but not the part about accepting a label that I’m not sure really fits.
Maybe there is a continuum of how well one fits with their assigned gender (yesterday I had the thought that perhaps it would be better if we thought of it as ‘tentative gender’). For some people it is very smooth, for others less so and for yet others not at all, with many intermediate degrees. So for each person there is the question of whether the distance is significant enough to want to transition. And then there is the question of whether to transition to the other major gender or to one of the less common ones – again depending on a degree of fit.
Not quite as first-hand, but our experience with our youngest son, now age 6, echos this exactly. From the time he could communicate, as various aspects of life became perceived as gendered, he fully rejected all things “girly” (and, once he got/invented the vocabulary to do so, loudly demanded he be given the “boyly” counterpart).
I won’t argue that it was the healthiest/most honest approach to parenting, but prior to his transitioning, we often sought to diminish his anxiety by de-genderifying as much as humanly possible: in our household, pink was deemed an “awesome” color (not “pretty”) and earrings were “bad-ass”*. But the difference in his life – one filled with anxiety and resentment at how everyone just kept getting it wrong and calling him a girl’s name – that came with transitioning was nothing short of spectacular. In a sentence, everything just snapped into place for him.
*Interesting sub-plot: the music teacher at his day-care/pre-school was a male who wore earrings, which contributed greatly him being open to getting earrings himself at age 3 (he loves artistic expression and has always been into body art). He loved having earrings, but by the time he transitioned (4-going-on-5), he was well aware that earrings on white children were culturally feminine indicators. However, he stunned us with the fully cognizant and mature decision to continue wearing his earrings (though trading in the pink donuts for silver balls) despite the fact that they were the number one cause of people to mis-gender him after transitioning.
The only model of reality that makes sense of his experience, and that of so many other trans* individuals, is that there is an innate gendered component of the brain. This is not incompatible with the fact that nearly all cultural stereotypes associated with gender are almost certainly utter bullshit.
This is something I’ve thought a lot about, and I think that if I were who I was when I was 17 or 18, and probably even who I was as a pre-teen, I would be wanting to transition, because the restrictions that come with having this particular body, with its uterus and breasts, are so incredibly overwhelming. I have hated and hurt my female body and experienced it as a vehicle for being hurt by others. Why wouldn’t one wish to be rid of it? And I’ve heard enough penis-equipped people talk about the shame and guilt they feel about societal expectations of aggression and about their wish to do “feminine” stuff that I would not be remotely surprised if having a penis felt ego-dystonic.
Now, though, I think that the reason for this hurt and feeling not-right in this particular body is that this is a body that comes with a lot of expectations and limitations that are not actually related to the facts of this arrangement of genitalia. It makes me enraged that I would have considered transition and surgery to rid myself of what is, fundamentally, a problem with the demands of culture.
Liking soft things, being quiet, liking the gaze of others, and wanting to nurture are not inherently female. Liking tools, aggression (or assertiveness), moving freely, and voicing one’s opinions are not a male things. The only female gendered things I have actually done in my adult life is gestate kids, lactate, and have sex with these particular genital organs. Everything else, from knitting to wiping snotty kids’ noses to being a Boy Scout scoutmaster to getting a ham radio license is just part of being who I am.
Ophelia you said, ““Cis” is basically a label for what’s in our minds, so I don’t think it should be a mandatory label for people who don’t identify as trans – any more than trans should be a mandatory label for people who don’t identify as cis.”
The alternative you might be looking for here is “non-binary.” Since gender, like sexuality, exists on a spectrum, there are multiple ways a person might identify. Non-binary people can be, but are not necessarily, trans. NB can also be used to denote genderqueer. Dysphoria is a cluster of symptoms, and if you don’t experience that cluster, but still feel some disconnection, you might look into other NB identities to learn more and gain a broader perspective. I think you’d find it interesting.
Read more: http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2015/06/guest-post-that-something-just-doesnt-fit/#ixzz3dRrqybiu
‘I get the impression that cis people don’t experience the same sort of not-rightness. ‘
I don’t think there’s any way to really know. I’m certainly ‘cis’ and ‘male.’ But the social and sexual expectations I’ve lived with have been blatantly ‘not right’ for as long as I can remember.
I think this should be read as a confirmation of the reality of trans experience. The discomfort and ‘not rightness’ that lots of non-trans people feel underlines the fact that gender-specific ‘not rightness’ is genuine, and should not be confused with issues of attraction or opposition to social norms for gender.
Modifying what I said before (already) – I think we can’t know for certain, but narrative and description can help. What AMM describes in “This is the point that cis people miss” is way more intense than anything I’ve ever experienced (that I recall, at least).
I was thinking about it (some more) on the way home from an errand, and thinking I’m used to being in this body, so it’s comfortable in that way – sort of the way one’s own bed is comfortable. A friend was talking about missing his own bed one afternoon at the conference, and it’s kind of like that. Clearly trans people don’t have that while still in the wrong body.