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bodies and narratives
Apr. 5th, 2009 05:12 pmI've got competing narratives of bodies in play, and I've got to find a way to get them to all coexist peacefully. One narrative, oriented towards the outside direction, is that beauty and visceral attractiveness comes in many, many forms, and I'm lucky enough to enjoy more than I'm supposed to; I like a lot, a lot, but feel no obligation to like everything. Unfortunately, this is me->outward only; I don't know how to turn this in such a way to be self inclusive. I don't know how to interpret my self in relation to the other body narratives in play within me.
The biggest, most inflexible, is the either/or of man/woman. I know why this is in me; because it's damned near everywhere, all the time. There's a big, solid line separating most people's worlds, and any suggestion that it isn't necessary, natural or irrefutable gets some pretty extreme reaction.* Of course, it gets tricky and complicated in my head. I make a certain kind of occasionally attractive guy, and there's a need to be found attractive, but it comes at a pretty sharp cost; I'm an occasionally attractive guy. According to the either/or narrative, all that will be thrown away if I decided to pursue being some kind of big, ungainly, roughly made facsimile of a girl. That I'm not sure I want to be a girl, but I know I'm not in any way comfortable or satisfied as a guy, fades into impossibility when this narrative is ascendant.
There's a deeply internal, almost prelinguistic narrative that I interpret as the voice of my body that makes itself pretty clear it has a vision of self-actualization, and thinks I should get off my ass and get to it. Since I don't experience it intellectually or verbally, I only get occasional glimpses, but there's something about size becoming strength, about being able to ignore or negate rigid rules applied by others. It's an active image that would require more physical confidence than I currently possess, a pretty healthy amount of working out, and a degree of plastic surgery. Unfortunately, I only get a sense of this in very localized images; I don't know how I'd fit into a larger social and economic world in which conformity is rewarded and nonconformity (of which this carries a lot) is punished or exiled.
There's a very local narrative that keeps being offered to me, one which posits that I'm just fine, if not good, exactly as I happen to be at that moment. I have a hard time making sense of that one, maybe because I don't understand lack of criteria or conditionality. If I'm always OK, then there's no effective measure, which sort of renders acceptance meaningless, doesn't it? I know that's not how it's being offered, but that's often the route it goes in my head as I try to make sense of it. Too, I don't know how I'd be able to move from the very local of being good (assuming I can find a way to accept it) to the larger social/economic in which I expect I'd have to hide or suppress self or aspects of self. While I haven't really experienced that disparity** I imagine it to be gut wrenching and agonizing.
I really get that everyone isn't always fully showing all aspects of themselves in every interaction. I really do get that. I know the check out person at Publix doesn't really care or want to know what parts of skin I like to bite as an act of appreciation, for example. I understand that. This seems different in a lot of ways, though. Part of this is that I see, or at least think I see, how others don't struggle with what I struggle with; someone may be unhappy about their hair, their complexion, their weight, for instance, but those are modifiers that hang on some noun concept of unchallenged self, either explicitly or implicitly underwritten by the larger social world. I don't have that, and am acutely aware that the compliments and accolades I do get are all attached to a noun concept that cuts or contorts as it comes to me.
Action is tricky, even though inaction, while clearly preferable to nonconformist action, pales in comparison to capitulation and acceptance. "Superficiality" is the kindest of the obstacles thrown in my own path, which while damaging and consuming time and energy to even try to confront, is way easier to deal with than the spectre of buying into the very things I hate (an accusation any member of any minority has encountered at the hands of the resistant majority). I stumble on the signifier/signified gap, and am left wondering if there's ever really a Ding an Sich, even in the most personal cases. But again, the interaction between personal/local and larger social/economic are poorly mapped, if at all; the clear message is to accept the latter and use it as a model for the former, but that obviously doesn't work for me.
And yet, the voice of the body, my body/body awareness, gets louder and more impatient. The feeling that I've got to do something, and that sooner beats later, is growing and gathering speed. I need to learn how to live as a person and a member of the social/economic world. I think I'm doing OK at the latter, but at huge cost to the former, and that's a deal I deeply regret many times a day.
As a part of this struggle to change, I'm trying diligently to be able to listen. I know in the past I've been harsh and resistant to even the most well intentioned contact, but I'm trying hard to listen and not automatically respond with "Oh yeah? Fuck you!", or possibly even worse, leak out the massive frustration I feel with myself and my situation onto those who happen to be near and at hand. I leak badly, but I'm trying to become more aware of that, and to work to redirect things since I can't easily fix the holes. I'm tired of being volatile.
*the so-called thrill of transgression that leads to the fetishization of trans bodies is fueled by this line; it's the shame, the naughtiness, the secretive breaking of the rules that can make something a private spank fantasy and a publicly disavowed aberration.
**brief bouts of miserable depression as a teen as I tried to make sense of myself as something between a transsexual and transvestite, moving between the very local acceptance of an SO and the larger world of school/family/world.
The biggest, most inflexible, is the either/or of man/woman. I know why this is in me; because it's damned near everywhere, all the time. There's a big, solid line separating most people's worlds, and any suggestion that it isn't necessary, natural or irrefutable gets some pretty extreme reaction.* Of course, it gets tricky and complicated in my head. I make a certain kind of occasionally attractive guy, and there's a need to be found attractive, but it comes at a pretty sharp cost; I'm an occasionally attractive guy. According to the either/or narrative, all that will be thrown away if I decided to pursue being some kind of big, ungainly, roughly made facsimile of a girl. That I'm not sure I want to be a girl, but I know I'm not in any way comfortable or satisfied as a guy, fades into impossibility when this narrative is ascendant.
There's a deeply internal, almost prelinguistic narrative that I interpret as the voice of my body that makes itself pretty clear it has a vision of self-actualization, and thinks I should get off my ass and get to it. Since I don't experience it intellectually or verbally, I only get occasional glimpses, but there's something about size becoming strength, about being able to ignore or negate rigid rules applied by others. It's an active image that would require more physical confidence than I currently possess, a pretty healthy amount of working out, and a degree of plastic surgery. Unfortunately, I only get a sense of this in very localized images; I don't know how I'd fit into a larger social and economic world in which conformity is rewarded and nonconformity (of which this carries a lot) is punished or exiled.
There's a very local narrative that keeps being offered to me, one which posits that I'm just fine, if not good, exactly as I happen to be at that moment. I have a hard time making sense of that one, maybe because I don't understand lack of criteria or conditionality. If I'm always OK, then there's no effective measure, which sort of renders acceptance meaningless, doesn't it? I know that's not how it's being offered, but that's often the route it goes in my head as I try to make sense of it. Too, I don't know how I'd be able to move from the very local of being good (assuming I can find a way to accept it) to the larger social/economic in which I expect I'd have to hide or suppress self or aspects of self. While I haven't really experienced that disparity** I imagine it to be gut wrenching and agonizing.
I really get that everyone isn't always fully showing all aspects of themselves in every interaction. I really do get that. I know the check out person at Publix doesn't really care or want to know what parts of skin I like to bite as an act of appreciation, for example. I understand that. This seems different in a lot of ways, though. Part of this is that I see, or at least think I see, how others don't struggle with what I struggle with; someone may be unhappy about their hair, their complexion, their weight, for instance, but those are modifiers that hang on some noun concept of unchallenged self, either explicitly or implicitly underwritten by the larger social world. I don't have that, and am acutely aware that the compliments and accolades I do get are all attached to a noun concept that cuts or contorts as it comes to me.
Action is tricky, even though inaction, while clearly preferable to nonconformist action, pales in comparison to capitulation and acceptance. "Superficiality" is the kindest of the obstacles thrown in my own path, which while damaging and consuming time and energy to even try to confront, is way easier to deal with than the spectre of buying into the very things I hate (an accusation any member of any minority has encountered at the hands of the resistant majority). I stumble on the signifier/signified gap, and am left wondering if there's ever really a Ding an Sich, even in the most personal cases. But again, the interaction between personal/local and larger social/economic are poorly mapped, if at all; the clear message is to accept the latter and use it as a model for the former, but that obviously doesn't work for me.
And yet, the voice of the body, my body/body awareness, gets louder and more impatient. The feeling that I've got to do something, and that sooner beats later, is growing and gathering speed. I need to learn how to live as a person and a member of the social/economic world. I think I'm doing OK at the latter, but at huge cost to the former, and that's a deal I deeply regret many times a day.
As a part of this struggle to change, I'm trying diligently to be able to listen. I know in the past I've been harsh and resistant to even the most well intentioned contact, but I'm trying hard to listen and not automatically respond with "Oh yeah? Fuck you!", or possibly even worse, leak out the massive frustration I feel with myself and my situation onto those who happen to be near and at hand. I leak badly, but I'm trying to become more aware of that, and to work to redirect things since I can't easily fix the holes. I'm tired of being volatile.
*the so-called thrill of transgression that leads to the fetishization of trans bodies is fueled by this line; it's the shame, the naughtiness, the secretive breaking of the rules that can make something a private spank fantasy and a publicly disavowed aberration.
**brief bouts of miserable depression as a teen as I tried to make sense of myself as something between a transsexual and transvestite, moving between the very local acceptance of an SO and the larger world of school/family/world.
