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Jun. 5th, 2005 12:25 amIt's one of those nights where, in spite of being tired and a little sick, the moment I laid down I was wide awake, my mind a whirl. So, this is me trying to clear my mental queue.
There was a segment I recall from an otherwise forgettable SF book I read many years ago in which someone was trying to recreate a possible stained glass window pattern from the number and color of fragments left. As the story progressed, the restoration specialist began to come up with more and more bizarre, contextually impossible designs. Once the possibility of clear panes entered into the equation, the whole undertaking rapidly dissolved; the clearer and clearer virtual window was meant to reflect the the crumbling of the restoration specialist's sanity. I feel sometimes that I do that with identity, identity politics, gender, etc.
I don't mean that I'm crazy, per se, but that as more and more dissolves in my head, the less and less possible connection I feel to most people with whom I come into contact. It's like I've removed what has turned out to be a fundamental rib of social interaction, of known terrain, and replaced it with nothing, or at least, nothing that can be communicated easily unless one hasn't already turned one's attention to the possibility of open terrain. I whine here a lot about alienation, about feeling cut off, a mute subject, constantly overwritten in most social dealings, and I think this is the source.
But internally, I feel the inclusion of more and more clear glass. While I don't believe in absolute certainty, particularly where I am concerned, I miss the days in which I was absolutely certain I knew who and what I was. In retrospect, I was strong, if inarticulate, in the face of the tidal wave identity assault of culture, because I knew who I was... or, thought I did. My ignorance only made me stronger in my resistance, or so it seems to me now. But as time went on, I began to shed labels; some with great relief, others with incredible reluctance and fear. Every aspect of LGBT has been tried on, held for varying lengths of time, and discarded as too limiting, as nowhere near flexible enough to contain my (possibly inflated) sense of self.
This leads to lots of self doubt, in weird ways that play out clumsily. I feel trapped by logic when people don't honor my pronouns of choice ('she/her', for the record) because I have stated publicly that while I'm certain I'm no kind of man, I'm also certain I'm no kind of woman. In the past, when I asserted an unequivocal transsexual identity, pronouns were less problematic; it was seen, I think, as a kind of support for my sad, but understandable, struggle to fit myself into the world as it exists, and had the potential bonus of letting folks feel good about themselves in the process while not fundamentally addressing the assumptions of binary gender. Now, though, I suspect people feel more... authorized? to fall back on the "masculine", since it's more comfortable for them, and since I don't bend over backwards to overdo the signs of "femininity" that would signal my allowable transgression. I don't try to make myself into some mainstream archetype of "girl" (or "guy", for that matter); what I'm after is to make myself in to me. Unfortunately, there aren't any movements, labels, or support groups for me-ism. Since I reject the trans narrative, the language and definition, no one knows what to do with me, and so they default to their comfort over mine, more often than not.
I accuse myself ruthlessly, most of the time, of all sorts of potential sins, neuroses, and failings. It troubles me that I don't identify with most mtf folks, particularly when they're supposed to be "my people", according to the identity rules. I have felt particularly oppressed, rigidly policed by this community, as though somehow the desire for freedom and self actualization has become rigid, an instrument of fear. I try on self hatred and internalized transphobia for size often, but it's never been a good fit, no matter how many different ways I try to apply it. I am stubbornly diligent, but unsuccessful. I usually respond to myself with psuedo-Foucaultian constructivism, and hurl back that I refuse to be afraid, to erase my own history, to intentionally mislead, to live in fear of discovery, of not passing. I insist on my right to be a whole person, to not have to spindle, fold and mutilate myself to fit into society (not that others are necessarily doing that, but that that's the only way it could go down for me). All of that rings true, or at least sincere; at worst, it seems more true and sincere than self hatred and transphobia. Strangely, though, despite seeming right, it doesn't seem to help me all that much. I'm still invisible in the world, as myself; knowing that I can't be seen as myself because others likely don't have a construction for that doesn't help, either.
Passing: this needs to be addressed, to get it out of my head, if nothing else. I don't care about passing in the way I think I'm meant to, I don't think. I don't pine for people to look at me and say to themselves, "there goes someone whom I believe was born with a vagina". I've got a penis, and strangely, I don't really have a problem with that. Sure, vaginas are neat and all, and if I had one, I imagine I'd love it and use it frequently, but I don't equate the signifier with the signified. The rub is, much of what I want, and in some cases alredy have, is only officially authorized for vagina bearers. It feels like an inescapable trap, that even though I don't care at all about passing, it's always very heavily present in my mind, in my awareness of the world, and that whether I want it or not, this is how the rules work.
My fear is that the rules are rigged, that unless one is clearly readable as either some kind of "man" or "woman", it's impossible to connect with the world of people, both on the macro and micro level. I worry a lot of the time that I am squandering myself because I can't align myself to the world without resistance, without an immense amount of work and filtering. I worry that it limits the number, depth, and reciprococity of my relationships, and keeps most of my endeavours from ever beginning.
Really, really I believe that a world without boundaries, without labels and definitions that only divide and harm people is possible, or should be, and in some easy ways, I think I'm starting to see that (attraction, what I always thought was hard), but that's leaping ahead of the first, and possibly most important social question, "Are you a boy or a girl?". I don't know how to make, "No, thank you" stick as a response to that.
There was a segment I recall from an otherwise forgettable SF book I read many years ago in which someone was trying to recreate a possible stained glass window pattern from the number and color of fragments left. As the story progressed, the restoration specialist began to come up with more and more bizarre, contextually impossible designs. Once the possibility of clear panes entered into the equation, the whole undertaking rapidly dissolved; the clearer and clearer virtual window was meant to reflect the the crumbling of the restoration specialist's sanity. I feel sometimes that I do that with identity, identity politics, gender, etc.
I don't mean that I'm crazy, per se, but that as more and more dissolves in my head, the less and less possible connection I feel to most people with whom I come into contact. It's like I've removed what has turned out to be a fundamental rib of social interaction, of known terrain, and replaced it with nothing, or at least, nothing that can be communicated easily unless one hasn't already turned one's attention to the possibility of open terrain. I whine here a lot about alienation, about feeling cut off, a mute subject, constantly overwritten in most social dealings, and I think this is the source.
But internally, I feel the inclusion of more and more clear glass. While I don't believe in absolute certainty, particularly where I am concerned, I miss the days in which I was absolutely certain I knew who and what I was. In retrospect, I was strong, if inarticulate, in the face of the tidal wave identity assault of culture, because I knew who I was... or, thought I did. My ignorance only made me stronger in my resistance, or so it seems to me now. But as time went on, I began to shed labels; some with great relief, others with incredible reluctance and fear. Every aspect of LGBT has been tried on, held for varying lengths of time, and discarded as too limiting, as nowhere near flexible enough to contain my (possibly inflated) sense of self.
This leads to lots of self doubt, in weird ways that play out clumsily. I feel trapped by logic when people don't honor my pronouns of choice ('she/her', for the record) because I have stated publicly that while I'm certain I'm no kind of man, I'm also certain I'm no kind of woman. In the past, when I asserted an unequivocal transsexual identity, pronouns were less problematic; it was seen, I think, as a kind of support for my sad, but understandable, struggle to fit myself into the world as it exists, and had the potential bonus of letting folks feel good about themselves in the process while not fundamentally addressing the assumptions of binary gender. Now, though, I suspect people feel more... authorized? to fall back on the "masculine", since it's more comfortable for them, and since I don't bend over backwards to overdo the signs of "femininity" that would signal my allowable transgression. I don't try to make myself into some mainstream archetype of "girl" (or "guy", for that matter); what I'm after is to make myself in to me. Unfortunately, there aren't any movements, labels, or support groups for me-ism. Since I reject the trans narrative, the language and definition, no one knows what to do with me, and so they default to their comfort over mine, more often than not.
I accuse myself ruthlessly, most of the time, of all sorts of potential sins, neuroses, and failings. It troubles me that I don't identify with most mtf folks, particularly when they're supposed to be "my people", according to the identity rules. I have felt particularly oppressed, rigidly policed by this community, as though somehow the desire for freedom and self actualization has become rigid, an instrument of fear. I try on self hatred and internalized transphobia for size often, but it's never been a good fit, no matter how many different ways I try to apply it. I am stubbornly diligent, but unsuccessful. I usually respond to myself with psuedo-Foucaultian constructivism, and hurl back that I refuse to be afraid, to erase my own history, to intentionally mislead, to live in fear of discovery, of not passing. I insist on my right to be a whole person, to not have to spindle, fold and mutilate myself to fit into society (not that others are necessarily doing that, but that that's the only way it could go down for me). All of that rings true, or at least sincere; at worst, it seems more true and sincere than self hatred and transphobia. Strangely, though, despite seeming right, it doesn't seem to help me all that much. I'm still invisible in the world, as myself; knowing that I can't be seen as myself because others likely don't have a construction for that doesn't help, either.
Passing: this needs to be addressed, to get it out of my head, if nothing else. I don't care about passing in the way I think I'm meant to, I don't think. I don't pine for people to look at me and say to themselves, "there goes someone whom I believe was born with a vagina". I've got a penis, and strangely, I don't really have a problem with that. Sure, vaginas are neat and all, and if I had one, I imagine I'd love it and use it frequently, but I don't equate the signifier with the signified. The rub is, much of what I want, and in some cases alredy have, is only officially authorized for vagina bearers. It feels like an inescapable trap, that even though I don't care at all about passing, it's always very heavily present in my mind, in my awareness of the world, and that whether I want it or not, this is how the rules work.
My fear is that the rules are rigged, that unless one is clearly readable as either some kind of "man" or "woman", it's impossible to connect with the world of people, both on the macro and micro level. I worry a lot of the time that I am squandering myself because I can't align myself to the world without resistance, without an immense amount of work and filtering. I worry that it limits the number, depth, and reciprococity of my relationships, and keeps most of my endeavours from ever beginning.
Really, really I believe that a world without boundaries, without labels and definitions that only divide and harm people is possible, or should be, and in some easy ways, I think I'm starting to see that (attraction, what I always thought was hard), but that's leaping ahead of the first, and possibly most important social question, "Are you a boy or a girl?". I don't know how to make, "No, thank you" stick as a response to that.
