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disordered
tranny: emits nonconformant behavior
cissy: "you freak"
tranny: "i'm not a freak, i'm a cripple."
cissy: "oh, well that's all right then."
the problem with the idea of GID is that it authorizes "objective" assessment over subjective experience.
recently, i tried to get someone to see the difference. consider for a moment the possibility that the "classic narrative" is true in a sense... not to the degree that we really are "women trapped in men's bodies" (or men in women's) but simply that we are what we are, and not delusional or maladaptive. is the disorder that we think we're something we're not? or is there a subjective disorder... that internal sense of disconnect or disharmony which becomes our negative compass? "this isn't right... go that way."
she didn't get it. she replied with a laundry list of kinks, quirks and frustrations and conceded that, yes indeed, she must be disordered and they may as well toss her in the nearest rubber room. she had capitulated to the objective, to the objectifying.
i let it go. i've had too many of these conversations with too many people - most of whom are comparatively intelligent - who cling to their boundaries and their language.
in any case, the objective sense is the sense that is so easily (mis)communicated when trying to tell others who we are. the distinction is subtle, the common sense facile, and it's easier to be pathetic than, well, strange.
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what gets me though, and it's something that turns me off communicating with trans-people online, is how often those subjective narratives are repeated by people. i've done it myself, but so often discussions wind up being subjective navel gazing about why people chose to make their descisions (or how they follow a objective model), when really it should be the other way around. we're human, we can't escape the need to model and describe things, but our understanding should grow out of those objective realities; we should use them as a base. when, rather, people seem to figure them to be some goal to be attained; they try and fit themselves inside the objective reasoning.
i've got a metaphor that involves one of those playdoh machines. you know, the ones that make little people with holes in their heads grow hair. we should be like them, rather than just try and cram the playdoh into a sealed egg. because, hell, if you do that you're *bald*.
do that make *any* sense?
but if it weren't a disorder,
insurance wouldn't cover it at all,
and if you gotta have a disorder,
i can't think of a better one...