Gender variant and conforming transsexuality
One of the things I've been thinking about a lot recently is one of the consequences of the fact that gender and sex are not the same thing and do not have to be related. This is the fact that transsexual people do not have to start off having a gender that does not match their sex. Indeed, there should exist transsexuals who start off, in the purest meaning of the word, cisgendered, and who through the transition process end up transgendered.
When I'd first thought about it, I'd thought that these people would be very, very rare. So rare that I could discount ever meeting one. I thought this because the stories from the gender clinics I'd heard before really getting involved in the trans community seems to indicate that this was so.
In reality, it's very different. Transsexuals that transition to become transgendered are about as common as transsexuals that transition to become cisgendered, like me, and they face a whole set of different challenges and problems to people like myself.
The reason this has become important is that I seemed to have picked up a lot of friends who are transsexual and will be transgendered when they finish transitioning. This has brought down to me on the human level something that has largely remained a theoretical concept to me so far.
The first thing that's pretty obvious to me is how different the transition experience becomes for both sets of us. The presence of gender can make the same type of transition process (e.g. male to female) feel completely different. This causes lots of tension in the trans community.
One of the obvious ways I've noticed that it affects transgendered people a lot more is that they have worse access to medical care. Cisgendered people are more obviously transsexual than transgendered people and this means that medical professionals don't have to think as hard or spend as long working out whether someone should or should not be given treatment.
Another of the major problems both sets of people face is that, not only do transsexuals have to get used to changing sex, they also need to get used to switching from being transgendered to cisgendered, or vice versa.
As a person who has switched to being cisgendered, I've noticed that life has gotten a lot easier. Generally, people assume that gender matches sex, and this means that, for the first time in my life, people are assuming that gender is right first time. It makes my life inordinately simpler when dealing with the vast majority of people.
It also means my transition is just as much about reclaiming my gender as it is about reclaiming my sex. This creates a problem because I find transition just as much about adjusting to being feminine as I do to being female and this dilutes the sense that my body is wrong.
Transgendered transsexuals, on the other hand, have to experience what it's like to suddenly become non-gender conforming for the first time. One of the initial problems it creates is the fact that it is much harder to pass for them, since their behaviour already raises a lot of questions, and gets people thinking about their sex as well as their gender. This can cause whole complexes.
I've noticed that, for them, their relationship with their bodies seems far more important right from the outset than it ever has done for me. This paradoxically makes it easier for them to access care at first, even though I said, earlier, it makes it harder for them to convince the medical professionals.
Added to that, I've noticed how jarring the first reactions to suddenly being gender-variant can become and how much the transition process becomes about tearing down the gender boundaries.
Hopefully, the reason why tension exists between the two groups is obvious: cisgendered transsexuals want to confirm gender, while transgendered transsexuals want to tear it down. This leads to a lot of transphobia on both sides, usually against each other.
There's also a practical problem in the fact that, cisgendered transsexuals, like myself, have no where else to go in the queer community once we start transitioning. We start to become more and more "normal" as time passes, and less and less welcome in the queer spaces. This means that transsexual spaces become dominated by cisgender transsexuals, and become bigoted places for transgendered transsexuals to be.
However, although they may not be as welcomed into the transsexual community as they should be, the door to the gender variant community seems to open up, and the self-reinforcing nature of such places means that transgendered transsexuals become more transphobic against cisgendered transsexuals.
I don't really know what the solution is. I've noticed my friendships and openness to people not like me seems to be more uncommon in the wider transsexual and transgender communities, and the fact that I refuse to commit to either side means I'm often labelled intolerant.
Equally, I've noticed that I need to be among my own kind for me to truly rest up and heal, an intrinsic intolerance on my part I'm not sure I can do anything about. I'm not really sure how many transgendered transsexuals I can support and how good for me it is to be doing that.
Added to that, I still have some issues dealing with transgendered people, back from when I was transgendered. The problem of being around transgendered transsexuals a lot is that those are exactly the kind of problems I can't raise around them, and the repression I suffer isn't good for me. Some of what I go through, being reminded of my previous life, can be quite triggery and very uncomfortable for me.
However, I don't just want to completely sever any connection with transgendered people. After all, I spent some time as one of them, and I know a lot of the problems transgendered transsexual people will face, because I was there. I seem to be very good at helping feminine transmen.
As I said, I don't really know the answers yet and I hope if I give it time and just go along with the flow, it'll all become clearer.
When I'd first thought about it, I'd thought that these people would be very, very rare. So rare that I could discount ever meeting one. I thought this because the stories from the gender clinics I'd heard before really getting involved in the trans community seems to indicate that this was so.
In reality, it's very different. Transsexuals that transition to become transgendered are about as common as transsexuals that transition to become cisgendered, like me, and they face a whole set of different challenges and problems to people like myself.
The reason this has become important is that I seemed to have picked up a lot of friends who are transsexual and will be transgendered when they finish transitioning. This has brought down to me on the human level something that has largely remained a theoretical concept to me so far.
The first thing that's pretty obvious to me is how different the transition experience becomes for both sets of us. The presence of gender can make the same type of transition process (e.g. male to female) feel completely different. This causes lots of tension in the trans community.
One of the obvious ways I've noticed that it affects transgendered people a lot more is that they have worse access to medical care. Cisgendered people are more obviously transsexual than transgendered people and this means that medical professionals don't have to think as hard or spend as long working out whether someone should or should not be given treatment.
Another of the major problems both sets of people face is that, not only do transsexuals have to get used to changing sex, they also need to get used to switching from being transgendered to cisgendered, or vice versa.
As a person who has switched to being cisgendered, I've noticed that life has gotten a lot easier. Generally, people assume that gender matches sex, and this means that, for the first time in my life, people are assuming that gender is right first time. It makes my life inordinately simpler when dealing with the vast majority of people.
It also means my transition is just as much about reclaiming my gender as it is about reclaiming my sex. This creates a problem because I find transition just as much about adjusting to being feminine as I do to being female and this dilutes the sense that my body is wrong.
Transgendered transsexuals, on the other hand, have to experience what it's like to suddenly become non-gender conforming for the first time. One of the initial problems it creates is the fact that it is much harder to pass for them, since their behaviour already raises a lot of questions, and gets people thinking about their sex as well as their gender. This can cause whole complexes.
I've noticed that, for them, their relationship with their bodies seems far more important right from the outset than it ever has done for me. This paradoxically makes it easier for them to access care at first, even though I said, earlier, it makes it harder for them to convince the medical professionals.
Added to that, I've noticed how jarring the first reactions to suddenly being gender-variant can become and how much the transition process becomes about tearing down the gender boundaries.
Hopefully, the reason why tension exists between the two groups is obvious: cisgendered transsexuals want to confirm gender, while transgendered transsexuals want to tear it down. This leads to a lot of transphobia on both sides, usually against each other.
There's also a practical problem in the fact that, cisgendered transsexuals, like myself, have no where else to go in the queer community once we start transitioning. We start to become more and more "normal" as time passes, and less and less welcome in the queer spaces. This means that transsexual spaces become dominated by cisgender transsexuals, and become bigoted places for transgendered transsexuals to be.
However, although they may not be as welcomed into the transsexual community as they should be, the door to the gender variant community seems to open up, and the self-reinforcing nature of such places means that transgendered transsexuals become more transphobic against cisgendered transsexuals.
I don't really know what the solution is. I've noticed my friendships and openness to people not like me seems to be more uncommon in the wider transsexual and transgender communities, and the fact that I refuse to commit to either side means I'm often labelled intolerant.
Equally, I've noticed that I need to be among my own kind for me to truly rest up and heal, an intrinsic intolerance on my part I'm not sure I can do anything about. I'm not really sure how many transgendered transsexuals I can support and how good for me it is to be doing that.
Added to that, I still have some issues dealing with transgendered people, back from when I was transgendered. The problem of being around transgendered transsexuals a lot is that those are exactly the kind of problems I can't raise around them, and the repression I suffer isn't good for me. Some of what I go through, being reminded of my previous life, can be quite triggery and very uncomfortable for me.
However, I don't just want to completely sever any connection with transgendered people. After all, I spent some time as one of them, and I know a lot of the problems transgendered transsexual people will face, because I was there. I seem to be very good at helping feminine transmen.
As I said, I don't really know the answers yet and I hope if I give it time and just go along with the flow, it'll all become clearer.