The false dichotomy of I/O in my own mind

[adrienmundi]

Internalization is something with which I have a great deal of difficulty. I don't just mean it in the conventional sense (though I do feel, at times, that there must be something wrong with me); I think I also mean it in the theoretical/political sense. Let me see if I can get that to make more sense.

Back in my teens and even into my early twenties, I was certain that I was transsexual, that if/once I got all of that out of the way, life would unfold in satisfying ways for me. Who knows; it might have, but my path diverged from that sure shot to certainty and assimilation.

For all of my complaints about graduate school, it was probably the first time my intellect was really engaged, on a regular basis, with things I cared about, and in a language I could understand, and speak with some degree of success. It was damned exciting for me, the idea that I wasn't necessarily the only one who hadn't outgrown the "Why?" of the terrible twos, and that many people had taken that much further, and built entire theoretical constructions out of the idea that nothing was a given, everything was contingent, etc..

Unsurprisingly for me, this began to affect my thoughts on gender as well, though more from a theoretical than experiential perspective (I suspect I'm all too good at the former, and pretty damned awful at the latter approach). The "but why are things this way, and why doesn't it seem to bother anyone else?" really began about this time, though it took a long time to really bear fruit, for a variety of reasons that aren't necessarily applicable to the topic at hand. I began to see desperation and conformity in the prototypical trans bio-narrative. Sure, some of it was probably transphobia externalized to give me a feeling of some distance from issues with which I couldn't deal, but I don't think that was true across the board. I began to have strong structural issues with gender construction, conformity, expectation, etc., and all of this seemed magnified in the microcosm of trans issues.

I think at a certain point, I swallowed a load of semiotics that took in a less than good way; just because I think I know/knew what message certain behaviours, articles of dress, etc., meant, did that necessarily remove the value of Ding an Sich? I think physics (specifically, vector analysis) + semiotics led me to a position in which the media was impoverished, serving only as a delivery system for some structural meaning, and I too easily focused on the "meaning" to the exclusion of all else (this is a problem still with me today).

I think, looking back, that the worst was that desire became caught in this trap-in-the-making. Nothing meant anything in itself, particularly desire; it became the lens through which I came to feel compelled, if not controlled, by what I perceived to be dominant society. And so, if I ever knew, I began to lose sight of what I wanted, seeing only the meanings available behind that. And this brings me up to the present.

There are a lot of things I might want that I feel guilty about even possibly wanting (I have trouble even saying I want things, such is the guilt). I don't externalize much, in regards to gender, because I'm afraid of the issue of passing, all the while believing that "passing" is a trap, a symbol of binarism and the enforcement system by which it is sustained. If I pass, or want to pass, does that make me a sell out? Would I only reinforce that which troubles me, and presumably some others? And yet, maybe that's what I want, at least some of the time.

I seem to have run out of steam, or gone much more tangential than my original intent, so more later, maybe.

Comments

dragonslayer

[splishy.livejournal.com]

The movie Dragonslayer was on TV last night and we watched it again. I haven't seen it since I was pretty little, but it reminded me of the thrill I got from seeing that the boy was a girl and that I hadn't known until she went skinny dipping. From then on I fantasied about pretending to be a boy. On and off for years I thought about it. But, haven't thought about it since I was in college.

Re: dragonslayer

[adrienmundi]

I'm curious, if you can remember, what part of pretending to be a boy you were interested in? I remember not being all that surprised at the revelation in the movie, but pretty surprised at how open they were with the skinny dipping shot.

Re: dragonslayer

[splishy.livejournal.com]

I think I was only 9 or 10 when the movie came out and was beginning to feel that there were a lot of things I couldn't do. It probably had less to do with my gender, and more with the fact that I got frustrated easily and gave up on anything that took effort and practice. I was not "smart" in school, I couldn't play sports, I gave up on dance lessons because I couldn't memorize the routines, I gave up on piano lessons because I couldn't memorize the notes, I gave up on swimming practice because I didn't have strength or speed. Everything was so hard that it wasn't worth trying and failing.
But, on TV everyone was good at something. On a lot of the TV shows, each member of the cast had a different specialty. I am thinking of silly shows like Hogans Heros and the A Team.
Those shows had all (or mostly) male casts. i would pretend that I was part of the cast, but no one knew I was really a girl. The people on the show would appreciate me and like me. (it sounds stupid writing it now, but I really needed that affirmation, and rarely got it until much later) I would be able to do a lot of the things I thought at the time I couldn't do. I would beat up the bully's that teased me at school. Or I would be able to do things I thought at the time would make me smart. So many shows in the early 80's had women that were just there to have big boobs and look pretty. So, I thought I would have to be a boy to be able to do the things the men on TV were doing.
But, more than that, there was something physical about it. I started developing early, and was so uncomfortable and vulnerable. I would imagine how different it would be to not have boobs that could be hurt so easily. I equated power and strength with being male. And I felt so powerless and weak so much of the time.
Also, I liked the idea of being in hiding, of those around me not knowing who I really was. I haven't thought about this since I was pretty young, so I am not sure where all of it came from. I just know that I cycled through appreciating being a girl and wanting to be a boy. It tended to corespond to who I was hanging out with. When all my friends were guys, I wanted to be a guy. When all my friends were girls, i wanted to be a girl.

[fourounces.livejournal.com]

For many years I struggled with a similar question in the context of Nietzsche's response to nihilism. The absence of meaning in things or at the surface of things results from the deep idea that things require legitimation from below or beyond - from a benevolent Creator, from a wilful Ubermensch, whatever. We still live in a dead God's shadow, as Nietzsche puts it. Nietzsche, or one of his faces, tried to replace that god with the Ubermensch, seeing no other alternative. Marx makes similar distinctions between crass corrupt ideological (bourgeois) desire/meaning and true, authentic, expressive (proletarian) desire. Most of life and things in a capitalistic context exhibit corruption, therefore. Postmodernism in contrast is largely about surfaces and play (especially obvious in art), usually eschewing the distinction between ideology and authenticity. That's one reason Marxian political activists often criticize postmodernists for their inertia, a criticism perhaps well founded, depending on what kind of postmodernism we mean. This is not to say that alienation is not real, however.

My postmodern Zen take is that there are no corrupt desires because there are no authentic desires. All egonic desire is just as fake as it is true b/c the ego doesn't exist in the way we think it does. It is like a wave on a sea of compassion. Some desires increase suffering (in the Buddhist sense, as a result of "grasping") more than others; all desires are suffering, however. The Mother is the only truth, one so obvious as to make you laugh out loud when you see it. Asking "what matters?" in life may work like a koan, but to someone who has broken through it, it is a mildly offensive question, like asking a mother "what matters in your child?" "what is it that makes your child worthy of your love?" How do you think most mothers would respond to that question?

So the answer is that you're already a sell-out because there is no other alternative. :) I am not, however, advocating a kind of quietism, which at this point is a mistaken path many Buddhists might take. On the contrary, if the world is frustrated and suffering because of how a system shapes its agents, then we should work to change that structure, and part of that work will be through having its agents question and reexamine and perhaps resist their desires. Indeed, that will probably be a component of any social change. I believe it is probably a component of social change for us. We share in the same gender polarized dreams and fantasies as the wider culture, and this gender polarization is violent when repressive, as it currently is. The gender system itself makes it more difficult for a large minority, perhaps even a silent majority, of us to be joyful and creative in life. As I have written elsewhere, we must work to transform gender from a repressive dilemma to an expressive opportunity. And it's a group project. (I always hated those!) :)

(Another looooonng post. Damn, I should be putting these on my stupid LJ, but I suppose I have trouble sending my thoughts to a generalized audience.)

[adrienmundi]

I think my problems with postmodernism most in recent years is that it's descriptive, but not at all proscriptive, and there's no authority figure to which I can turn in the midst of my dissassembled landscape to which I can turn and ask, "OK, now what?" (though I'd probably only break down, or try to, the authority; I'm a madly effective idiot savant sometimes). It'd be easier to cast off pomo if it wasn't both so terribly accurately descriptive, and so dangerously resonant to me (the latter of which let me appear to be philosophical and well rounded in certain circles simply because I spoke the language currently in vogue).

Personally, I don't care if you comment here or post on your own; I get to read it either way, and that's really what it's all about, isn't it? ;)