BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Conversation >

Trans 101 2006

  
  

Page: 1(2)345

 
 
Ganesh
17:06 / 11.05.06
I guess T's going to vary in terms of its transformative effect...
 
 
Pingle!Pop
08:57 / 18.05.06
I read this thread a few days ago and wanted to reply to something, but thought "oh, by the time I can reply it'll be 200 posts and what I want to say will be redundant". Now I'm replying, and I've forgot exactly what it is I wanted to say before.

I do, however, have a new thing to say (and I also want to stop the thread from dying): in response to Mordant's what's the single most distressing thing that non-transfolk do/say around you?, as well as reiterating id entity and Mr Disco's, "Argh! Pronouns!", I'd like to add: people's sense of entitlement.

The thinking basically seems to be, "You are teh freek - therefore you are public property." As far as I can tell, it seems to resolve around a perception of choice: you *choose* to do this/look like this, therefore you are surely expecting people to treat you as a curiosity for their entertainment. I'm thinking in particular of a couple of times, once before transitioning (per se) and once early on, when I evoked the response, "Wow! You have breasts!" and immediately subsequent reaching out and grabbing. In both cases, those involved seemed to be confounded that such an action might perhaps be at all upsetting.

Actually, this seems to be a theme when anything is perceived as a choice and novelty. So, there's, "Wow, you're teh lesbian! Kiss so I can watch!" and, "Look at what you're wearing! Surely you want people to stand and stare at you!"
 
 
elene
09:31 / 18.05.06
"Wow! You have breasts!" and immediately subsequent reaching out and grabbing.
Oh yuck! Can't imagine anyone being naïve enough to try that on with me though. Which is bad I suppose, but I don't care.
 
 
Pingle!Pop
09:50 / 18.05.06
What exactly do you mean by "naive enough"?

... There are other examples of the whole entitlement thing, but those were rather the most egregious...
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
10:09 / 18.05.06
What!? Pingles, I hope you chucked your drink at hir.
 
 
Pingle!Pop
10:25 / 18.05.06
A drink-chucking was certainly deserved, but I'm not the type/too scared to do anything like that, so was passive-aggressive instead. I think the first time I glared until it went away, and the second went off in a huff, causing his friend to run after me and say he was upset and terrified he might have caused offence or something. Which presumably wasn't considered a possibility at the time of grabbing.
 
 
elene
10:30 / 18.05.06
What exactly do you mean by "naive enough"?
We are talking about adults aren't we?
 
 
Smoothly
10:33 / 18.05.06
Something I don’t really understand is how you know what gender you are. I’ve always assumed that I’ve identified as male because I have a male body. I imagine that if I had a female body, I’d identify as female. But this is clearly a terribly primitive and naïve view.

So I’m interested to know, how does one’s gender manifest itself internally? I don’t have a strong conception of what maleness feels like beyond what a male physicality feels like (I can’t see the trees for the wood, as it were). I’m guessing that the trans experience throws the qualities of gender into sharp relief against the qualities of sex. What are they? What does it feel like to be a man / woman?
 
 
Pingle!Pop
10:48 / 18.05.06
Elene, yes, I'm talking about adults. I'm just not quite sure how to interpret "naïve enough to try that on with me". The only way I can think of is in terms of "passing", but I can't quite work out exactly how naivety factors in there. Could you explain a little further? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious.
 
 
elene
11:04 / 18.05.06
Oh sorry, no I didn't mean anything to do with passing. No. Look, if anyone groped my breast I'd most likely take their hand off of me and say "don't" very pointedly if I took them seriously, or "grow up" if I didn't. They would feel foolish or possibly somewhat threatened, and rightly so, and I think anyone can tell that's what would happen. At least that's how I like to imagine my world. That doesn't apply to kids though.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
11:15 / 18.05.06
So I’m interested to know, how does one’s gender manifest itself internally?

Good question. There are all sorts of standard indicators of childhood gender dysphoria or dysmorphia -- like, for instance, a kid assigned male at birth just grows up thinking ze's a girl until actually told, or shown, that hir body does not match those of the other girls. Kids who think that eventually they will grow the right physical bits, and are hugely traumatised when it doesn't happen. FTM's who are okay until the onset of puberty, when their bodies really start to feminise, and freak out or shut down.

For me, it's not that I experience myself as a man and have always done so, but that I didn't ever properly experience myself as a woman. It did not feel right to have wide hips and a large bottom and a pair of bouncy bits of flesh attached to my chest. They felt weird and odd and stultifying. When I was a teenager I didn't think much about it, I just dissociated a lot. Then I became conscious of what was causing me to dissociate, and for a while in my early 20's I thought it was because I had 'body image issues' in the conventional liberal feminine sense, or that I was overweight. But I lost my babyfat and the feelings didn't go away. I had a really different internal kineasthetic and visual 'picture' of myself to the reality, and was always shocked to look in the real mirror and see the reality of my feminine body. When I figured out that this was an experience of a far more masculine body than I had, everything began to make a lot more sense.

I'm not sure that drawing a distinction between 'internal' and 'external' experience of oneself can adequately account for what transness is like. The feelings are very physical, like a variety of 'phantom limb' syndrome, but where the spectral 'missing bits' are primary and secondary sexual characteristics: genitals, breasts or none, smooth or stubbly skin, etc. It's a bit like having two bodies: one is material and one is sort of waiting to be material. The material one feels wrong and weird. At the same time, I reckon everyone experiences a different combination of those feelings: as diverse a combination as non-transpeople manifest in terms of 'gendered' physical attributes.
 
 
Pingle!Pop
11:26 / 18.05.06
Elene,

Ahh - I think I understand. You mean that it's too obvious that you're serious and not just "fooling around" or something for anyone to think that it might conceivably be okay?

I'm not generally clothed in a way that most people would consider "serious" (particularly at clubs, where both incidents occurred), and was only 19 or 20 at the time, so yes, it perhaps makes more sense that some would think I was "doing it for show".
 
 
Disco is My Class War
11:32 / 18.05.06
In both cases, those involved seemed to be confounded that such an action might perhaps be at all upsetting.

It's so strange, that. If you grabbed a person's dick and squeezed it, in a "What's this then?" manner, they'd be totally offended and freaked out. Yet non-transpeople think they can and should 'test' how masculine or feminine you're becoming without asking. Rubbing your cheek to see if you're stubbly or smooth yet; grabbing or "goosing" you just to see what it's like under there, etc. Everyone becomes the purveyor of how well you're passing (if they know about it) and feels entitled to give free advice or comments. I think it's because some non-trans people think that, in comparison with transpeople, they are 'experts' about gender roles and should therefore confer their wisdom on the poor gender-confused trannies.

I hate being asked, "So, have you had the operation?" Last time I got asked that I was doing a radio interview on a gay and lesbian radio station. I was in polite informative friendly mode and happily chirped, "Oh yes, blah blah." Then I saw her eyes glaze over and she cut me off -- evidently I was grossing her out. (She wasn't really asking to inform her listeners on what the process is, it was just the only question she could think to ask.) I realised that I'd found the question pretty rude and inappropriate, but my chance for a snide riposte had passed.
 
 
elene
11:59 / 18.05.06
I think age is the difference, Pingle.
 
 
Pingle!Pop
11:59 / 18.05.06
Everyone becomes the purveyor of how well you're passing (if they know about it) and feels entitled to give free advice or comments.

And, of course, to judge whether or not you're the Real Article (TM), or just, y'know, gay and confused or something.
 
 
elene
12:06 / 18.05.06
I don't think I have a gender identity, Steve. I mean nowadays I have a more or less female body and I feel the expectation to behave accordingly, but I didn't change because I was really a woman. I just wanted to. I always copied my mother when I was a child. I really wanted to be like her, and eventually I was free to do so. Well, I suppose I've an idea of a woman being like my mum, and me being like that. Maybe that's my gender identity. Maybe I somehow feel I can only be sensible and together like my mum if I'm a woman, otherwise I've got to be wild and trouble like my dad and out of self-interest I don't want to.

It's like years ago when I used to sleep with older men because they smelled like my dad. I had terrible trouble with him and it was comforting and perhaps normalized things between us for me. Anyway, I never felt that this was my identity, a gay man, it was just something I liked or needed to do. I guess there's something missing that would hold it all together and really make sense of it. Maybe I need someone else to pin me down. Hard.

Sorry, this is very unsatisfactory but I do want to respond. This is really, really just me. I think most trans people feel different.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
12:08 / 18.05.06
I'm just gobsmacked that people would actually DO that stuff. The fuck?
 
 
Pingle!Pop
12:33 / 18.05.06
Erm, the feeling that someone else perceives you as public property is kind of hard to explain, but do you not have at least lesser examples in your own life? I don't know enough about you to think of anything else, but as far as I can gather, you Wear Blaque; do you not find that certain people think it's fair to take your Wearing Blaque as meaning that you intend yourself to be public property, and that you're therefore fair game for staring at or worse?
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
12:56 / 18.05.06
Werl, sort of. I get women's standard-issue ownershippyness as a sort of background noise. If I'm in my goon rags I get shouted at, yeah; I get stupid questions like "do you dye your minge that colour" or "do you shave anywhere else?" and I get stuff like people wanting to kiss or stroke or scritch the shaved bits on my head. But that's just shouting, and it's just my head, not my chest or groin.

The only people who've ever grabbed me like that have been tube-train frottuers, and when challenged they've slunk away. Not people in a social setting, not anyone I was talking to. That's just... urgh.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
12:58 / 18.05.06
Oh, and I guess the period of harrassment I described over in the Feminism 101 thread is kind of similar in the sense of being a target, being fair game.
 
 
Smoothly
13:03 / 18.05.06
I had a really different internal kineasthetic and visual 'picture' of myself to the reality, and was always shocked to look in the real mirror and see the reality of my feminine body.

Ahh, that’s really useful. As is:

I'm not sure that drawing a distinction between 'internal' and 'external' experience of oneself can adequately account for what transness is like.

I think I’ve been a bit hung up on the idea of your gender being something you are rather than something you present (perform?). This has probably been reinforced by the “I’m a man trapped in a woman’s body” short-hand. So I couldn’t bridge the gap between ‘I want to be like x’ and ‘I am x’. But, if I understand you, ‘I am x’ is kinda misleading when x = gender; because being male (or female) isn’t like being tall or rich or black or something.

On the subject of the use of pronouns etc, isn’t it a bit of a pain in the arse that the same adjectives are used for sex and gender?
 
 
Pingle!Pop
13:21 / 18.05.06
Mordant, yes, I think those are all examples of kind-of the same thing (except probably the tube-frottage; ick). Specifically, any of those that you perceive not to be about emnity/viciousness/etc. about your Otherness, but stemming partly from a cluelessness that it could be considered offensive; I think the closest is probably the wanting to kiss or stroke or scritch the shaved bits on my head, as I suspect many of the people doing so would probably justify themselves in terms of genuinely believing that you were inviting it, and I didn't mean to offend you or make you feel violated etc. etc.

Specifically in the cases I mention, I think there's also an idea that the parts in question are "not real", so of course I wouldn't mind. Gahhh...
 
 
Disco is My Class War
15:05 / 18.05.06
So I couldn’t bridge the gap between ‘I want to be like x’ and ‘I am x’. But, if I understand you, ‘I am x’ is kinda misleading when x = gender; because being male (or female) isn’t like being tall or rich or black or something.

Yeah (although I don't know that I would put 'black' in there. 'Blackness', indeed any racial category, is just as relative as gender, in completely different ways.)

Like elene, I feel that this is just me. I don't think anyone is really 'just' male or female; gender presentation changes all the time. But if it was only about gender presentation (in a 'surface' manner) I wouldn't have changed my body. Sometimes I think that I can better tolerate being regarded as something more woman-ish and less male because I have the body I have now, which probably prevents me from being read as a woman a lot of the time, anyhow.
 
 
Smoothly
15:20 / 18.05.06
Yeah (although I don't know that I would put 'black' in there. 'Blackness', indeed any racial category, is just as relative as gender, in completely different ways.)

Well, tallness and richness are relative too. I just meant that wanting to be one of those things doesn’t have anything to do with whether you are one of those things.

I’m risking using up my quota of patience here, but does changing your body change your gender? Or is it that you feel more comfortable with your gender (and your body) when they ‘match’ better? (Still, in case it’s not obvious, not entirely clear what gender is.)
 
 
*
15:40 / 18.05.06
I think I’ve been a bit hung up on the idea of your gender being something you are rather than something you present (perform?). This has probably been reinforced by the “I’m a man trapped in a woman’s body” short-hand. So I couldn’t bridge the gap between ‘I want to be like x’ and ‘I am x’. But, if I understand you, ‘I am x’ is kinda misleading when x = gender; because being male (or female) isn’t like being tall or rich or black or something.

Yeah, the "X trapped in a Y body" thing. I hope that anyone who uses it to describe their experience is damn sure that's the absolutely most accurate way they can possibly describe their experience, or the only way of approaching it at all. It's too problematic otherwise.

But there are a lot of things between "I want to be like x" and "I am x." I experience myself as a certain kind of man. I create myself as a man, and so following from that I am a man. Being male or female is not like being alive or dead, or human or non-human, or solid or ethereal; it is more like being Mexican American. There is a community identity of being Mexican American and a community sense of what that means. People who are Mexican American create that identity by living it every day, and people who are not Mexican American create that identity by the way they treat people they perceive as Mexican American. I would say that the part of being Mexican American that is created by the way others treat you is analogous to gender role, and the part of being Mexican American that is created by the way you live your life is analogous to gender identity, but it's not that straightforward a comparison and I'm doing violence to a lot of the complexity, so I'll stop.

On the subject of the use of pronouns etc, isn’t it a bit of a pain in the arse that the same adjectives are used for sex and gender?

What adjectives do you mean?

On the face of it, I'm actually going to say no. Gender is social, and sex is erotic. People have no business referring to my sex in casual conversation unless we're fucking or trying to negotiate fucking. Language should refer to my gender. What's a pain in the arse is that people think they know better than I do what my gender is, or they "forget" because they rely more on visual cues about what they think a man or a woman is than on my consent to be labeled that way. When people refer to me as a man, they aren't being accurate to my gender and inaccurate to my sex, they are being accurate, period. Sex too is culturally negotiated to some degree.

I may have misunderstood you. Please clarify if so. I'll try to say more, and more clearly, later.
 
 
*
15:54 / 18.05.06
Sorry, I've realized I'm going all 202.

Here's one model that works for me:

What we call "gender" is a complex entity made up of several parts. One part is gender role. These are the social expectations of one based on other people's perception of your gender. Another is gender assignment, which is what you're labeled at birth based on cues like apparent genital configuration. Sexual orientation can be considered part of gender as well, but it forms its own complex entity. Another part is gender expression, which refers to how one expresses gender through one's outward choices, like dress, speech, gesture, etc. Then there's gender identity, which has to do with one's internal experiences and (for some) choices about gender.

For me, as a trans man, I have a somewhat fluid but more male gender identity. I have a somewhat androgynous gender expression. I have a sexual orientation as a primarily submissive bifag gay man, attracted to men, women, and trans people but preferring relationships with men both trans and non-trans. I was assigned female. I grew up in a female gender role, and now I am transitioning to a male one.

Gender transition, as it is visible to others, occurs at the level of role and not identity. Identity can also shift over time, but this shifting may or may not be visible to others, and it is not dependent on what one wears or what others call one. When it rubs up against these things, though, it can create uncomfortable friction.

Was all that too much?
 
 
Smoothly
15:57 / 18.05.06
Thanks (id)entity.

I would say that the part of being Mexican American that is created by the way others treat you is analogous to gender role, and the part of being Mexican American that is created by the way you live your life is analogous to gender identity

That analogy makes a lot of sense to me. And you could, I presume, identify meaningfully as Mexican American even if you weren’t an American citizen, or come from Mexican stock.

What adjectives do you mean?

Male and female.

People have no business referring to my sex in casual conversation unless we're fucking or trying to negotiate fucking. Language should refer to my gender

But we do talk about sex. No one would ask what the gender of someone’s baby is, for example. But to answer that question you have to speak as if they were (because sex uses gender’s adjectives). That’s all I meant. Considering the amount of redundancy in language, it seems strange that we still double up in an area where more precision would be particularly useful.
 
 
Quantum
15:58 / 18.05.06
Rubbing your cheek to see if you're stubbly or smooth yet

Echoing Mordant, 'kinhell! The fuck? People often do that? I'm amazed. I work in Kemptown and I frequently meet trans people, and I can honestly say it would never, ever occur to me to reach over and grab bits of them. Blimey.

I've been thinking about these issues over the last few days because one of our regular customers just had reassignment surgery and came in cheerful as a schoolgirl, saying in her Irish accent 'It's me face next!' which made me smile. So happy.
Just wanted to say I'm interestedly following the replies to Weaving as I am full of the same questions. This is the 101 thread after all, people (i.e. me) need educating on the ins and outs of it all. Thank you.
 
 
Smoothly
15:59 / 18.05.06
Sorry, x-posted. I'm stuffed for time now. I'll get back to you on the next bit later, (id).
 
 
elene
16:03 / 18.05.06
does changing your body change your gender?

I think that changing one's body changes everything, Steve. I haven't had genital surgery, so I can't talk about the changes that induces, but hormones change the balance and shape of one's emotions and perceptions, which feeds back into most aspects of one’s interaction with society, they change one's scent - it makes a very large, if largely unconscious difference whether someone smells like a man or like a woman - they alter one's strength and obviously several of the secondary sexual characteristics. They basically turn one into a member of the appropriate sex in all but the most fundamental ways. People respond quite differently to women and to men, so having made these changes one lives with everyone else's and one's own expectations of a person of one's new sex.

As I experience all of this a part of anything we might call gender identity must be external to us. For example, I feel a much greater need for surgery now that I really identify and am identified as a woman. I think that second identity is crucial for me, but on the other hand that doesn't seem to be true of everyone.
 
 
elene
16:16 / 18.05.06
Sorry, just catching up with id entity's posts. I probably ought to have used the word "gender" when I wrote "sex" in at least some cases in my previous post. I'm not 100% sure which ones really must be "sex" though so I'm not going to change it. I'm really not sure, sorry.
 
 
alas
16:21 / 18.05.06
And you could, I presume, identify meaningfully as Mexican American even if you weren’t an American citizen, or come from Mexican stock.

Weeeeeelll. I don't know about that. I DO think these comparisons are quite dicey. I'm really uncomfortable with this turn in the discussion.

The thing is: Most of what we're going to experience in a space like this, determined by literacy in English and access to computers, is going to be pretty determined by a highly individualistic approach to identity. But in many cultures, some things ARE determined by community, not by individuals who have had, say, the privilege of being identified as white (I'm thinking especially of a US context) up and deciding "I'm going to give up my privilege and become X."

It's not just a matter of you deciding anything; you have to be accepted and recognized by the community, in that case, and they are under no obligation to "honor" your belief that you really "are" Latino/a just because you've made a decision to "identify" with them. There's a history of appropriation and colonization, and Western consumerism, to be reckoned with here and this kind of easy movement is likely to be viewed with a great deal of understandable suspicion as a result.
 
 
*
16:53 / 18.05.06
Thanks, alas. It was really dicey, and I knew it, and knowing that I shouldn't have gone there. I withdraw the comparison completely and apologize for it. I also acknowledge that in certain respects there is a community identity of "man" and "woman," and it is necessary in order for one's identity as a man or a woman to be socially meaningful that it be intelligible to others within those communities. I think one can equally validly have a gender identity which is not currently accepted as meaningful in our society by virtue of not being intelligible to others as "man" or "woman," but then it's more difficult to assert the right to a particular role. With this comes all kinds of problems and challenges.

None of this has anything to do with ethnicity or national origin.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
18:21 / 18.05.06
Quantum -- people haven't done it so often to me, but occasionally, yes. It could have been explained as a friendly interest in how my facial hair was developing, but it was just a bit too familiar for comfort.
 
 
alas
20:05 / 18.05.06
Thanks to you, too, id--this is hard stuff, and it bears repeating that you originally indicated that the analogy was shakey; the challenge of trying to make sense of things across differing frames of reference makes this kind of stumbling virtually inevitable.

I'm very interested in this part of your response--

I also acknowledge that in certain respects there is a community identity of "man" and "woman," and it is necessary in order for one's identity as a man or a woman to be socially meaningful that it be intelligible to others within those communities. I think one can equally validly have a gender identity which is not currently accepted as meaningful in our society by virtue of not being intelligible to others as "man" or "woman," but then it's more difficult to assert the right to a particular role. With this comes all kinds of problems and challenges.

This strikes me as, first, eloquent, and second, as a very difficult but interesting and rich area of discussion. Because of my own suspicion of individualism as an ideology and the way consumer culture shapes our concepts of identity, I'm struggling with exactly these issues. I will try to speak more fully later (I wrote a response that just seemed to stumble all over), and would of course be interested to hear more from you and/or other people's thoughts.

I'm especially thinking about it being "more difficult to assert the right to a particular role," that word "right" stands out to me. I definitely believe we all have the "right" to be treated with a kind of, well, dignity, for example. That's a basic expectation that each person should be able to make of hir society.

So, for instance, the actions of touching people inappropriately discussed above is a breach of dignity. (and, BTW, my friends who have become pregnant also often describe having their bodies similarly viewed as public property and therefore open to touching by others without their being asked). It's also a breach of communal standards of appropriateness--standards which can vary from culture to culture, age group to age group, and within certain contexts, but which people can still be expected to be aware of. The breach of appropriate physical boundaries can certainly signfy a lack of full humanity being accorded to the one being touched.

But...I am not sure if I would say we do have the "right" to any particular social role....I'm genuinely not sure. I need to think that one through.
 
  

Page: 1(2)345

 
  
Add Your Reply