The Transsexual Narrative
I just read a powerful blog about trans women and our pre-transition experiences. She raises a profound point I have been thinking about in the back of my mind for a long time. It gnaws at me lazily but I can't put my finger on it. This finally woke me up.
She points out transsexuals are silenced through the classic "Transsexual Narrative" most cissexuals understand: The woman trapped in a man's body. "I felt like a girl ever since I was born. I played house and barbies and hated trucks and rough-housing. I would dress in my mother's/sister's/cousin's/neighbor's clothes and wish I was a girl. I was miserable as a boy, then one day I couldn't take it anymore and I changed sex and became a girl."
It's clean, it's simple and it continues to segregate the sexes even while acknowledging that some of us defy it's boundaries. And to some extent, parts of it are true for most trans women. Most of it is true for my childhood. But it denies two fundamental parts of transsexual experience:
1. We have always been women, even before we transitioned.
2. We have always been people, with hopes and happiness, even before we transitioned.
This does not fit into the Narrative. "If you were happy why did you transition?" Someone might say. "If you were a woman why did you act like a boy?" They deny our experience and turn it back on ourselves as something we should be ashamed about and keep silent. If I tell them I used to play House and Legos it breaks The Narrative. If I tell them I would lay on my bed at night and pray for God to make me a boy it breaks The Narrative. If I acknowledge my tomboyish tendencies of reading comics, playing X-men with my male friends and spending hours in front of the TV with my Nintendo growing up it breaks The Narrative. If you break The Narrative you risk alienating yourself and having your womanhood called into question.
What of the "male privilege" so many radical feminists brandish over trans women as proof we're not "real women". Who claim we haven't experienced a lifetime of discrimination, misogyny and sexualization? Bullshit. Was I perceived as a male for 20 years of my life? Yes, but I was not a genuine, cissexual, masculine male and therefore could not reap the privileges. I was beaten for my femininity, mocked for my feminism and sexualized by every magazine, movie and commercial who said, "This is a woman, not you. This sex-object created by marketing executives, eating disorders and air-brush artists is a woman, not you." And I believed them, like so many of my sisters, trans and cis. And in my adolescence I created a sex-object out of myself because I believed them. I hated the sex-object I forced myself to become just to feel like a woman and I hated myself for doing it.
Regardless of any particular treatment I may or may not have experienced, the internalized sexualization and self-hatred is worse than any "privilege". It has taken me years to separate sexuality from sexualization. To realize I can be a sexual being without being a sexual object. But I keep this part of my past silent because, on some level, I still fear being called out for not being a "real woman". I refuse to admit I ever gave in to misogyny for fear that feminism will reject me. No matter what a cissexual woman might experience, she never has to fear being denied as a woman, but trans women are denied by some for their assumed experience. Even as their punished for going outside of that assumed experience. It's a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't policy. Some radical feminists say, "This is what you are and don't tell me otherwise because I'm too smart for that, you man-made-woman." And that hurts more than they'll ever know because they've always experienced cissexual privilege.
Finally, I'll end this entry with a position my mother and I disagree on. She's wonderfully supportive and loving and the best mom I could ever ask for, but whenever I mention being open about my transsexuality she disagrees with my actions. She says eventually when I get older I won't feel the need to talk about my transsexual experience, that I'll just let it go. And maybe she's right. Maybe when I'm 40 I won't even think about it any more but somehow, I doubt it. Because, for better of worse, being transsexual is part of who I am. When I was growing up I believed the only way to experience womanhood was to be cissexual. But when I finally transitioned I had the self-realization that I'm not a cissexual woman and I never will be. I'm a transsexual woman and there's nothing wrong or less genuine about that existence, it's just simply less common, less heard of. But I could change that. I could make a difference by embracing my birth status, by acknowledging my experience as another unique female perspective in a world full of them. I do not speak for Transsexuals and I do not speak for Women, but I do speak for this one.
She points out transsexuals are silenced through the classic "Transsexual Narrative" most cissexuals understand: The woman trapped in a man's body. "I felt like a girl ever since I was born. I played house and barbies and hated trucks and rough-housing. I would dress in my mother's/sister's/cousin's/neighbor's clothes and wish I was a girl. I was miserable as a boy, then one day I couldn't take it anymore and I changed sex and became a girl."
It's clean, it's simple and it continues to segregate the sexes even while acknowledging that some of us defy it's boundaries. And to some extent, parts of it are true for most trans women. Most of it is true for my childhood. But it denies two fundamental parts of transsexual experience:
1. We have always been women, even before we transitioned.
2. We have always been people, with hopes and happiness, even before we transitioned.
This does not fit into the Narrative. "If you were happy why did you transition?" Someone might say. "If you were a woman why did you act like a boy?" They deny our experience and turn it back on ourselves as something we should be ashamed about and keep silent. If I tell them I used to play House and Legos it breaks The Narrative. If I tell them I would lay on my bed at night and pray for God to make me a boy it breaks The Narrative. If I acknowledge my tomboyish tendencies of reading comics, playing X-men with my male friends and spending hours in front of the TV with my Nintendo growing up it breaks The Narrative. If you break The Narrative you risk alienating yourself and having your womanhood called into question.
What of the "male privilege" so many radical feminists brandish over trans women as proof we're not "real women". Who claim we haven't experienced a lifetime of discrimination, misogyny and sexualization? Bullshit. Was I perceived as a male for 20 years of my life? Yes, but I was not a genuine, cissexual, masculine male and therefore could not reap the privileges. I was beaten for my femininity, mocked for my feminism and sexualized by every magazine, movie and commercial who said, "This is a woman, not you. This sex-object created by marketing executives, eating disorders and air-brush artists is a woman, not you." And I believed them, like so many of my sisters, trans and cis. And in my adolescence I created a sex-object out of myself because I believed them. I hated the sex-object I forced myself to become just to feel like a woman and I hated myself for doing it.
Regardless of any particular treatment I may or may not have experienced, the internalized sexualization and self-hatred is worse than any "privilege". It has taken me years to separate sexuality from sexualization. To realize I can be a sexual being without being a sexual object. But I keep this part of my past silent because, on some level, I still fear being called out for not being a "real woman". I refuse to admit I ever gave in to misogyny for fear that feminism will reject me. No matter what a cissexual woman might experience, she never has to fear being denied as a woman, but trans women are denied by some for their assumed experience. Even as their punished for going outside of that assumed experience. It's a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't policy. Some radical feminists say, "This is what you are and don't tell me otherwise because I'm too smart for that, you man-made-woman." And that hurts more than they'll ever know because they've always experienced cissexual privilege.
Finally, I'll end this entry with a position my mother and I disagree on. She's wonderfully supportive and loving and the best mom I could ever ask for, but whenever I mention being open about my transsexuality she disagrees with my actions. She says eventually when I get older I won't feel the need to talk about my transsexual experience, that I'll just let it go. And maybe she's right. Maybe when I'm 40 I won't even think about it any more but somehow, I doubt it. Because, for better of worse, being transsexual is part of who I am. When I was growing up I believed the only way to experience womanhood was to be cissexual. But when I finally transitioned I had the self-realization that I'm not a cissexual woman and I never will be. I'm a transsexual woman and there's nothing wrong or less genuine about that existence, it's just simply less common, less heard of. But I could change that. I could make a difference by embracing my birth status, by acknowledging my experience as another unique female perspective in a world full of them. I do not speak for Transsexuals and I do not speak for Women, but I do speak for this one.