cigfran

Sometimes, all of it makes my head hurt. The labels, what they suggest to others, what they mean to the person labeled, who gets to make the rules, who has to follow the rules...

Someone once told me, after I got angry about her giving out a lot of my personal information, that if I didn't want everyone in the community to know my history, then I should get out of the community.

Although on one level it might make sense, the fact still remains that with trans people, or intersexed people, being "out" involves a lot more than being "out" as a homosexual involves, even within the LGBT community itself.

What is someone like me supposed to do? Walk around naked? ...and is it really the community's right to know my entire life history, including what is or is not in my pants, which surgeries I've had or haven't had, and which pronouns I once felt forced to use?

I'm not trying to argue. I'm trying to understand what you're saying here a little better.

one of my last remaining uses of occam's razor is that i keep coming back to defining trans more as a behaviour pattern rather than a soul descriptor.

not many transpeople seem happy with that though.

i guess conscious aberrant behaviour is socially less acceptable than biologically driven aberrant behaviour. which looks awfully like transphobia to me.

so, if being trans (i.e. having transitioned) is inherently acceptable, then doing it on a consciously choosen basis is automatically acceptable too.

in fact, it seems pathological to me to consider than someone would do something like transition "because they had to", rather than "because they wanted to". that would seem obsessive compulsive.

I decided early on that "transitioning" to me would mean moving my identity to a comfortable place in my life. Gender would play a part, but would not be the focus. This decision didn't come together overnight. It has changed as I have gathered information and acquired some much needed wisdom on gender identity. Which as we know is hazy for me.

Heh. I disagree. IMO, "I was born in the wrong body" is the stupidest comment in the playbook, but "i didn't transition to be trans" comes in a close second.

I wasn't born in a womans body, therefore, how could I know what it feels like to be a woman? The only thing I can say is that my gender presentation rings true for me and brings peace and unity to soul.

IMO, those that say they "aren't trans anymore" are typically some of the most insecure people on the planet. I didn't do this so I could jump from one delusion to another. If that's what they need to live, so be it.

Oh, and it would be freakin awesome if someone did a post on the top ten stupidest trans quotes. Something like
http://www.jaysennett.com/blog/2006/01/the_dumbest_thing_said_to_you.htm

you see, i kinda don't want to be trans really. i think it sucks, at least in our present social climate. and, well, hey, certain biological issues linked to the whole debacle irk me too. also, i didn't really want to transition either. sure, i wiffled about it for yonks, trying to find my reasons why i could allow 'myself' to transition. but, honestly, if i felt like i could be happy and comfortable not doing this, i'd stop.

also, and colour me transphobic, but a lot of transpeople wind me up something rotten just through being transpeople (and, you know, you just described one of the types that makes me spit nails). there's a vacuity in the culture, coming from the obsession with 'passing' and medical procedures, that i simply cannot stand. funnily, you talk about meeting somebody before you realised that you could transition. it took me until i *read* some people who wasn't all 'look at me and my journey to womanhood!' before i thought i could.

so cheers.

i don't want to be trans, but i've transitioned so i guess i am. i just want to find peace with that, both mentally and in my everyday life. and, while i'm at it, knowing some people who don't edge away from me nervously when i have a ranty day, or even just talk casually about being transsexual, would be nice too.

Have you been reading the VE message boards again? Really, gwyneth, you know better ^_~.

I'd been so good about staying clear of all things both online and trans, but had to check up on a couple of old fiends. Schadenfreude! That's the real reason I go on these benders from time to time. Somebody has got to stop letting these kids check out books from the "non-fiction" setting. Can't say I feel bad for them, even considering the rapidly approaching massive crash-and-burn.

Seriously, this is amazing writing! I think that your recent emotional and intellectual dis-ease was gesticulating genius. It has hatched, and s/he is beautiful in hir clarity. You have no need to interact with the trans-community anymore because you have boiled down its essence and described it perfectly (IMHO), not just in the following quote, but in the entirety of this and subsequent entries:

"most offensive are those that parade their complete assimilation in the non-trans world, while retaining an entire cheering squadron in the background... a kind of shadow sisterhood, whose accolades they need, but whom they effectively ghettoize."

May I quote you on this? [it would only be to a few friends and maybe my therapist].

One addition is that for every one of these privileged few that have been able to construct a simulacrum of non-temporal gender-privilege, there are forty or fifty others who claim such a status but are betrayed by their photos. This would not matter in the least and go without mentioning--even from the likes of me--if it were not for their ubiquity, the positions of influence they hold by virtue of this and their monopoly on transition related websites, their sheer vainglory, and their insensitivity to any potential reader who does not have the necessary physicality or self-delusion to achieve the narcissist's Nirvana that is advertised.

I have no compassion for these people; I can't even afford pity. They fuck people-up. They fucked me up, and despite years of effort and a fairly firm grasp of reality they still haunt my head from time to time. The irreversibility of puberty I can learn to live with [and only a transwoman can understand what this means], these Judenrat and those infected with their thought-viruses I cannot. This is why, except for you, my dear friend, I stay clear of other trans-folk.

*whew* that was good to get out, feeling much better.

~JML

Uh, just wanted to add that I do know some really cool people who I consider friends - who happen to be trans. This is not the reason for our friendship, but it is nice to have that common ground. The only other commonality these people have are that they are older and settled into post-transition life and are not trying to be the perfect (real) 'girl' - in fact none of them would ever call themselves a girl except in jest, they are women, so maybe that is the lingustic marker that distinguishes the gold from the...uh, dross.

Feeling less ranty today, hope I didn't burn any bridges with the previous vent, or britches, for that matter.

fucking hell yeah !!!!


i dont wanna start blabbing and just saying what you just said but more diferenter... but like:

yes.


i had the worst tiem with this kinna shit when i was first coming up... i wouldn't let myself transition cuz i didnt buy thast i was a woman... i understood that i was messed up and mutated and some kind of boy-with-girl-meanings but i couldnt claim to be a woman and thuss i wouldnt let myself transition for most of my 20s even tho i wanted to.

i remember going to a few therapy things that i ran out of as soon as i could, with shrinks pointing out that i looked to trans people to understand myself and my options in the world. i felt weird for years that i nneded trans peers to justify and validate myself. why couldnt i find my peers in cis-women and proceed from there.



i'm a woman when i walk arround in the world cuz i have to be to be comfortable... but in my own skin im a weird fucking one in 10000 creature and i'm fucking beautiful like this and it took 3 decades to get comfortable enuff to say that and mean it...

now that ive been a woman to the world for a few years i can judge myself against cis-female friends and thats a very important validator for me... but i have no idea how i could have done that 5 or 10 years ago. living as a woman has made me practicly a woman. in the first few years of this century i was no such thing.