On Being a Non-Transitioner
It is important to be aware of one's privileges and to try to maintain some awareness of what life is like for people who don't have them.
Sometimes our social situations can seem paradoxical or complicated, where one type of identity can look privileged when compared to another in one aspect, but then it looks to be the other way around when you look at a different aspect. That's not a good reason to avoid trying to expand our awareness, though.
I am not a cisgender person; my gender identity is something other than what people tend to assume it to be. To use the conventional language, it's a different value than what my mom's obstetrician scribbled down on my birth certificate, where I was assigned male at birth.
Almost nobody I interact with has seen my birth certificate, of course. They are reacting to visual cues and interpreting those as indications of a specific physical morphology, the same physical morphology that led the doctor to write "male" on my birth certificate. There are ways to modify one's visual presentation and provide different cues so that people are less likely to assign the same value that got put down on one's birth certificate -- and many transgender people make use of these techniques, to present as their real gender.
In a world that still very much regards sex and gender as the same thing, the way one presents as one's true gender is to present as the sex that causes people to assume you are that gender.
I don't do that. I identify as genderqueer, not as transgender; what I want of the world is to be regarded and accepted as sharing a gender with the girls and women, but specifically as a male person, not as a female person. This is a different attitude and a different expectation than wanting to be regarded and accepted as a woman, period, full stop. Not all transgender women are transitioners, people who transition from male to female, people who present to the world so as to be regarded and classified and treated as indistinguishable from any other women. But that's the most widely shared understanding in our society of what it means to be transgender.
There's a lot of stuff I don't have to endure that transitioning people have to deal with, and I am aware that being insulated from this constitutes a privilege for me.
a) BATHROOMS -- As an adult I hardly ever face any harassment or discomfort related to people thinking I'm in the wrong bathroom. I'm not targeted by the hostile anti-trans laws and policies that have been enacted in certain places. My presence is hardly ever perceived by anyone else in a bathroom as a potential threat or as a deviant behavior.
I'm not completely unable to relate to the situation I've heard others describe, though. I had a lot more trouble with being in the boys' bathroom as a child, as an elementary school student. Young boys can be intrusive and uninclined to respect any semblance of boundaries, the communal bathrooms were a space of relative insulation from adult behavioral monitoring, and children can be particularly intolerant of differences and inclined to label and target those they regard as weird. Or queer, you could say.
I didn't like being in there with them. They made it plain that they thought there was something wrong with me, that I wasn't normal for a boy, and I didn't feel safe there. They were also very crude, scatological, obscenely nasty in their talk about bathroom functions and body parts. They were occasionally violent or physically intrusive.
But I really don't experience any of that as an adult.
b) MEDICAL -- Not all transitioning people participate in a medical transition, one that involves hormones or surgery or hormone blockers or other physical interventions. But those that do have to contend with the vagaries of insurance coverage and the possibility of doctors acting as medical gatekeepers and creating hoops to jump through, qualifying criteria that one must meet.
Medical transitioning can also be extremely expensive, requires recovery and recuperation time, and as with all medical procedures has risk factors, the possibility of complications or unwanted side effects and so on.
My gender identity has never exposed me to any of that. It's not something I've ever had to cope with.
c) HOMOPHOBIC CIS HETERO DATING-SCENARIO HOSTILITY -- Awkwardly titled, but what I mean is the reaction of cisgender hetero people to the existence of people of the sex they're attracted to who happen to be transgender people who have transitioned, and their equation of them (and to the possibility of sexualized behavior that would involve them) to homosexuality.
This is primarily an issue for transgender women targeted for homophobic hostility by cis het men. Such men often consider female people to have engaged in a sexually provocative behavior merely by being female and daring to have4 an appearance. Instead of attributing responsibility for their attraction to their own sexuality, they will often attribute it to the women to whom they are attracted. So in a similar, parallel fashion they regard transgender women as either enticing them or attempting to do so. Add in their homophobic concern about possibly having a sexual interest in someone who was born with a physical morphology that was designated male and it takes the form of accusing transgender women of doing a perverted and invasive form of sexual aggression just for existing and presenting as female in public.
Since I don't present to the world as female, you'd think I'd be completely immune to this. I actually haven't been -- my behaviors have often been treated and regarded as the equivalent of presenting as female, with the same attribution of attempted enticement, and I've had the furious anger expressed to me, and on some occasions violence as well.
But I don't tend to experience much of it as an adult interacting with strangers and casual acquaintances. When it has occurred, it has mostly been a reaction from people who have had opportunity to perceive me over time and form an opinion or belief about me. And, as with the bathroom hostility, it was far more of an issue when I was younger, although more from the older end of primary school years, puberty and adolescence rather than elementary school.
d) MISGENDERING / WRONG PRONOUNS, ETC -- I'm constantly misgendered and I'm so used to it I can scarcely imagine a life in which people correctly gendered me. I'm not, however, constantly seeking to be altercast by other people as an identity that that they already know and recognize (and altercast other people into on a regular basis), and I think that's relevant. There's an investment in the possibility of acceptance that creates a vulnerability.
I'm not sure my situation is safer from microaggressions or less fraught with daily emotional wear and tear, but at a minimum it is different.
We've all been in an occasional social situation where any kind of acceptance as "one of us" was completely out of the question, and we've all had at least a few occasions where it was not beyond the bounds of hope that people would. Rejection and hostility and mockery tend to hurt more sharply in the latter situation.
The main reciprocal side of all this is that transgender people who are transitioners occupy an identity that, at this point in our culture, is known and recognized. Some of the people who know or recognize it are hostile to it and don't regard it as authentic or legitimate, but they've been exposed to the concept.
I don't have that. There is still almost zero social awareness of people who seek to be recognized as having a gender that doesn't match their sex, and to have that hybrid mismatched combination authenticated. This means that the loud social voices that promote understanding and acceptance do not include people like me. It means that allies and thoughtful conscientious people remain unaware of our experiences and have no idea how to accommodate our feelings. It means that structured organizations to promote the equality and social well-being of gender-atypical people are not "us" to people like me -- they are, at best, potential allies, hypothetical groups to which we would logically belong if we could make them aware of us and get them to move over and make room.
I do often feel more marginalized (rather than more oppressed) than conventional transitioning trangender people. But I have societal advantages, too.
I pledge to be the best ally to my transgender brothers and sisters that I can be.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves. Hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
Sometimes our social situations can seem paradoxical or complicated, where one type of identity can look privileged when compared to another in one aspect, but then it looks to be the other way around when you look at a different aspect. That's not a good reason to avoid trying to expand our awareness, though.
I am not a cisgender person; my gender identity is something other than what people tend to assume it to be. To use the conventional language, it's a different value than what my mom's obstetrician scribbled down on my birth certificate, where I was assigned male at birth.
Almost nobody I interact with has seen my birth certificate, of course. They are reacting to visual cues and interpreting those as indications of a specific physical morphology, the same physical morphology that led the doctor to write "male" on my birth certificate. There are ways to modify one's visual presentation and provide different cues so that people are less likely to assign the same value that got put down on one's birth certificate -- and many transgender people make use of these techniques, to present as their real gender.
In a world that still very much regards sex and gender as the same thing, the way one presents as one's true gender is to present as the sex that causes people to assume you are that gender.
I don't do that. I identify as genderqueer, not as transgender; what I want of the world is to be regarded and accepted as sharing a gender with the girls and women, but specifically as a male person, not as a female person. This is a different attitude and a different expectation than wanting to be regarded and accepted as a woman, period, full stop. Not all transgender women are transitioners, people who transition from male to female, people who present to the world so as to be regarded and classified and treated as indistinguishable from any other women. But that's the most widely shared understanding in our society of what it means to be transgender.
There's a lot of stuff I don't have to endure that transitioning people have to deal with, and I am aware that being insulated from this constitutes a privilege for me.
a) BATHROOMS -- As an adult I hardly ever face any harassment or discomfort related to people thinking I'm in the wrong bathroom. I'm not targeted by the hostile anti-trans laws and policies that have been enacted in certain places. My presence is hardly ever perceived by anyone else in a bathroom as a potential threat or as a deviant behavior.
I'm not completely unable to relate to the situation I've heard others describe, though. I had a lot more trouble with being in the boys' bathroom as a child, as an elementary school student. Young boys can be intrusive and uninclined to respect any semblance of boundaries, the communal bathrooms were a space of relative insulation from adult behavioral monitoring, and children can be particularly intolerant of differences and inclined to label and target those they regard as weird. Or queer, you could say.
I didn't like being in there with them. They made it plain that they thought there was something wrong with me, that I wasn't normal for a boy, and I didn't feel safe there. They were also very crude, scatological, obscenely nasty in their talk about bathroom functions and body parts. They were occasionally violent or physically intrusive.
But I really don't experience any of that as an adult.
b) MEDICAL -- Not all transitioning people participate in a medical transition, one that involves hormones or surgery or hormone blockers or other physical interventions. But those that do have to contend with the vagaries of insurance coverage and the possibility of doctors acting as medical gatekeepers and creating hoops to jump through, qualifying criteria that one must meet.
Medical transitioning can also be extremely expensive, requires recovery and recuperation time, and as with all medical procedures has risk factors, the possibility of complications or unwanted side effects and so on.
My gender identity has never exposed me to any of that. It's not something I've ever had to cope with.
c) HOMOPHOBIC CIS HETERO DATING-SCENARIO HOSTILITY -- Awkwardly titled, but what I mean is the reaction of cisgender hetero people to the existence of people of the sex they're attracted to who happen to be transgender people who have transitioned, and their equation of them (and to the possibility of sexualized behavior that would involve them) to homosexuality.
This is primarily an issue for transgender women targeted for homophobic hostility by cis het men. Such men often consider female people to have engaged in a sexually provocative behavior merely by being female and daring to have4 an appearance. Instead of attributing responsibility for their attraction to their own sexuality, they will often attribute it to the women to whom they are attracted. So in a similar, parallel fashion they regard transgender women as either enticing them or attempting to do so. Add in their homophobic concern about possibly having a sexual interest in someone who was born with a physical morphology that was designated male and it takes the form of accusing transgender women of doing a perverted and invasive form of sexual aggression just for existing and presenting as female in public.
Since I don't present to the world as female, you'd think I'd be completely immune to this. I actually haven't been -- my behaviors have often been treated and regarded as the equivalent of presenting as female, with the same attribution of attempted enticement, and I've had the furious anger expressed to me, and on some occasions violence as well.
But I don't tend to experience much of it as an adult interacting with strangers and casual acquaintances. When it has occurred, it has mostly been a reaction from people who have had opportunity to perceive me over time and form an opinion or belief about me. And, as with the bathroom hostility, it was far more of an issue when I was younger, although more from the older end of primary school years, puberty and adolescence rather than elementary school.
d) MISGENDERING / WRONG PRONOUNS, ETC -- I'm constantly misgendered and I'm so used to it I can scarcely imagine a life in which people correctly gendered me. I'm not, however, constantly seeking to be altercast by other people as an identity that that they already know and recognize (and altercast other people into on a regular basis), and I think that's relevant. There's an investment in the possibility of acceptance that creates a vulnerability.
I'm not sure my situation is safer from microaggressions or less fraught with daily emotional wear and tear, but at a minimum it is different.
We've all been in an occasional social situation where any kind of acceptance as "one of us" was completely out of the question, and we've all had at least a few occasions where it was not beyond the bounds of hope that people would. Rejection and hostility and mockery tend to hurt more sharply in the latter situation.
The main reciprocal side of all this is that transgender people who are transitioners occupy an identity that, at this point in our culture, is known and recognized. Some of the people who know or recognize it are hostile to it and don't regard it as authentic or legitimate, but they've been exposed to the concept.
I don't have that. There is still almost zero social awareness of people who seek to be recognized as having a gender that doesn't match their sex, and to have that hybrid mismatched combination authenticated. This means that the loud social voices that promote understanding and acceptance do not include people like me. It means that allies and thoughtful conscientious people remain unaware of our experiences and have no idea how to accommodate our feelings. It means that structured organizations to promote the equality and social well-being of gender-atypical people are not "us" to people like me -- they are, at best, potential allies, hypothetical groups to which we would logically belong if we could make them aware of us and get them to move over and make room.
I do often feel more marginalized (rather than more oppressed) than conventional transitioning trangender people. But I have societal advantages, too.
I pledge to be the best ally to my transgender brothers and sisters that I can be.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves. Hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts