Discursive Saturation and Other Fun Topics
So, the Samaritans didn't accept me, which is not really surprising after everything. I have to admit, I feel happy and relieved not to be going forwards with it, even as I feel pretty angry about how I was treated. But, I can't really do anything about it, so time to move on.
There was TransLondon on Tuesday and in an interesting twist, there was an ex-teacher there talking about her research into transpeople and trans youth. It was really good listening to it, because I hadn't realise how much of what she was talking about I'd been forced into thinking about just by being in that school. It helped to have someone giving language to a lot of things. One of the things I liked was the idea of Discursive Saturation (DS for short), where it's a topic that either has lots of words to describe its language (DS+) or it has very few and cannot be talked about (DS-). Similarly, activities can be both DS+ and DS-, for example, football is not a DS+ activity, but a DS- one.
The idea of DS is very good because it helps speak to the problems transpeople face when they're growing up simply because they have no idea of the language with which to describe their problems. Lots of transyouth seem to have issues when young of finding the words to describe how they're feeling and I can certainly say my own experiences mirror that. A large part of my own transition was finding the words to be able to describe how I felt and basically reclaim being trans for myself. It certainly ties in with the way I didn't feel trans at the beginning because the narrative of my transness came from other people.
Attached to those ideas was the ideas of cisnormativity, which is basically the social and cultural ways in which transpeople get taught that being trans is bad. DS+ levels include social pressure while DS- ways include social ostracisation.
One of the really interesting things that really helped settle something for me was the description of the hig correlation of Aspergers with gender dysphoria in trans youth. As someone who has that correlation themselves, I found it really interesting, and there was a great proposal that people with Aspergers are blind to a lot of the social norms. As a result, Aspergers is a definite and sensible adaption for most young transpeople, since it helps them avoid a lot of pain. This certainly works for me and ties in a lot with some of the things I've been saying while I was working in the school.
Another interesting and slightly amusing thing was the idea of how people perceive and respond to threats in DS+/- environments. So if a threat is perceived to be DS+, transpeople will either respond in a DS+ way, by learning to argue back and respond to criticism. There was an example of someone who studied philosophy simply so they could learn to argue back to Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs). I could not help feeling wry amusement at being described so accurately there.
The DS- approach to DS+ threats is, of course, stealth, or being in the closet beforehand. This was really helpful to me because it helped me to understand why I have problems with work situations and why I respond to them in certain ways, since they do not allow a DS+ approach, but force on me a DS- one. I hate DS- approaches, but I'm not sure what I can do about them and the wisdom of being stealth at work is definitely winning out.
For DS- threats, I can't quite remember the approaches, but DS- is to relocate and run away. Many transyouth will do this, moving to larger cities where they feel safer and the move to University also tends to mark a point at which trans youth can be free to express themselves. Applying it to my work situation, it's interesting because I started to feel the situation was deteriorating into DS- territory (i.e. the ways in which I felt uncomfortable and unhappy and threatened were not things I could articulate) and with a DS- approach, running away was the only legitimate way to deal with it.
There was TransLondon on Tuesday and in an interesting twist, there was an ex-teacher there talking about her research into transpeople and trans youth. It was really good listening to it, because I hadn't realise how much of what she was talking about I'd been forced into thinking about just by being in that school. It helped to have someone giving language to a lot of things. One of the things I liked was the idea of Discursive Saturation (DS for short), where it's a topic that either has lots of words to describe its language (DS+) or it has very few and cannot be talked about (DS-). Similarly, activities can be both DS+ and DS-, for example, football is not a DS+ activity, but a DS- one.
The idea of DS is very good because it helps speak to the problems transpeople face when they're growing up simply because they have no idea of the language with which to describe their problems. Lots of transyouth seem to have issues when young of finding the words to describe how they're feeling and I can certainly say my own experiences mirror that. A large part of my own transition was finding the words to be able to describe how I felt and basically reclaim being trans for myself. It certainly ties in with the way I didn't feel trans at the beginning because the narrative of my transness came from other people.
Attached to those ideas was the ideas of cisnormativity, which is basically the social and cultural ways in which transpeople get taught that being trans is bad. DS+ levels include social pressure while DS- ways include social ostracisation.
One of the really interesting things that really helped settle something for me was the description of the hig correlation of Aspergers with gender dysphoria in trans youth. As someone who has that correlation themselves, I found it really interesting, and there was a great proposal that people with Aspergers are blind to a lot of the social norms. As a result, Aspergers is a definite and sensible adaption for most young transpeople, since it helps them avoid a lot of pain. This certainly works for me and ties in a lot with some of the things I've been saying while I was working in the school.
Another interesting and slightly amusing thing was the idea of how people perceive and respond to threats in DS+/- environments. So if a threat is perceived to be DS+, transpeople will either respond in a DS+ way, by learning to argue back and respond to criticism. There was an example of someone who studied philosophy simply so they could learn to argue back to Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs). I could not help feeling wry amusement at being described so accurately there.
The DS- approach to DS+ threats is, of course, stealth, or being in the closet beforehand. This was really helpful to me because it helped me to understand why I have problems with work situations and why I respond to them in certain ways, since they do not allow a DS+ approach, but force on me a DS- one. I hate DS- approaches, but I'm not sure what I can do about them and the wisdom of being stealth at work is definitely winning out.
For DS- threats, I can't quite remember the approaches, but DS- is to relocate and run away. Many transyouth will do this, moving to larger cities where they feel safer and the move to University also tends to mark a point at which trans youth can be free to express themselves. Applying it to my work situation, it's interesting because I started to feel the situation was deteriorating into DS- territory (i.e. the ways in which I felt uncomfortable and unhappy and threatened were not things I could articulate) and with a DS- approach, running away was the only legitimate way to deal with it.