I have deep veins –
pure white, crystal veins
held in a hardness
that was mud, that is stone.
I have been grains –
crushed in dark fire
melted in vastness
made layers, made folds.
I am refined –
yet broken again
ground from a roughness
by oceans, by cold.
I have returned –
a fragment, a stone
somehow a wholeness
a new thing, an old.
I am defined –
through all I have lost
shaped into roundness
for your hand, for your hold.
2012 © Andie Davidson
This week I am deferring the next episode of ‘letting go’, which is due, and not writing about me at all. High time.
Last weekend, I am glad I wrote early, because everything went wild by Sunday. It had been a week in which Dr Curtis, the only private consultant on gender dysphoria, came under examination by the GMC as a result of a handful of complaints. The one lifeline for so many – and why? Because if the NHS in your neck of the woods is represented by blocking, ignorance or worse, you cannot find satisfactory diagnosis, let alone treatment for gender dysphoria. You don’t even get close to talking about it properly with a clinician.
The most positive outcome as that story circulated was a Twitter stream with the hashtag #TransDocFail representing personal accounts of treatment by, shall we say, ‘unsympathetic’ doctors or consultants. Thousands of accounts came through of not merely rejection but abuse, verbal and otherwise. And none of those complaints would be formally reported against GPs or even the Gender Identity Clinics across the land.
Why not? Well, if you have no other lifeline, no funds, and no desire to skip across to Thailand, you risk alienating yourself so far from the NHS that your hopes of receiving diagnosis and treatment are effectively ended. It’s almost an required attitude to keep your hood up and shuffle along silently in the queue so no-one notices you.
Then there was the offending remark in an otherwise excellent feminist article in The New Statesman by Suzanne Moore, regarding Brazilian transsexuals. We try not to offend minorities these days, and Suzanne I guess/hope didn’t mean to, or at best was thoughtless. She was picked up on it quite objectively, but quickly compounded the matter herself. And anger flared, because transgendered people have had enough.
We have managed to dispense with jokes that negatively stereotype races, disabilities, sexual orientation and much else, but, it seems, transgendered people are still fair game. Suzanne could have apologised straight away, but by digging her heels in a bit and becoming abusive, ended up being Tweeted back with some nasty comments, and making some more pretty nasty ones herself. And flounced off, ‘hounded out by a trans cabal’.
Good may yet come of it. Her journalist friend Julie Burchill wrote what must be the most hideous piece ever published, in The Observer, Sunday 13 January. I can’t link directly because a tsunami of protest from the early hours and lasting all day led to its removal online. Yes, that bad. PCC complaints, I don’t know how many letters to editors, countless Facebook comments and Tweets, and quite a few very good blogs from trans people, feminists and sane others. Basically, if Burchill had written a similar piece relating to Jews, gay people, black people, or even women, using such insulting, threatening and inaccurate terms, she might well have been arrested.
What better way to resolve this flashpoint then, than for The Daily Telegraph to republish the same article?!
This is not about an article any more though, it is about complex institutional and cultural transphobia, and it is now very plain to see, so a lot more people have encountered it than otherwise would. There is more to come, I am sure. A lot more.
You see, referring to Brazilian transsexuals means referring not just to beautiful people as a ridiculous ideal, but to beautiful people who are murdered there in hundreds simply for being trans. This is what cultural transphobia does. This is what respected journalists insulting and abusing trans people achieves: bolstering the opinions of the ignorant and resulting in abuse, discrimination and violence against trans people. This used to happen daily to gay and lesbian people, and sometimes still does, except in this country it is no longer commonly acceptable. We climbed out of the ‘no Irish, no blacks’ landlady culture a long time ago. But ‘no trans’ may just as well be posted by landlords, neighbours and employers (and some social groups) today.
This week I questioned the constant references to the ‘transgender community’ by asking why we don’t have a ‘red-haired community’ who we insult with ‘gingers’ or ‘carrot-tops’. (It used to happen in some places.) Community is unity in togetherness, and we cluster most tightly when in defence. There is a trans community because we are not widely accepted. Some like me, are very lucky, but very many more are not. This is why our abusers feel attacked by ‘the trans community’: it is because they abuse us. Criticise one person with red hair for daring to have red hair, and a community will not rise against you on Twitter or anywhere. Criticise one trans person for daring to be born with gender dysphoria, and you criticise us all.
It also occurred to me as the argument of ‘how dare you call me cis’ went on along the sidelines, that there was a time when people said ‘how dare you call me heterosexual’? The implication always being that ‘no, I am just normal. And that anyone not like me, gay, lesbian, red-haired or trans etc. is a freak.’ Well, all cis means is people whose gender and physiology are aligned – is that insulting? Maybe anyone in doubt should reflect on why they don’t like labels whilst applying them to others.
It is time to stop the othering of trans people, recognise that gender dysphoria is not about drag, fetish or sexual behaviour, and applaud the Dr Curtises of this world. On balance his benefit to the trans community is probably a lot better than that of the NHS as a whole. And it’s time to end the acceptability of editors and journalists to degrade a vulnerable sector of society, who are in part vulnerable because of them.
So much has been written, and much of it eloquently, in the last ten days, that surely the time has come. Because we have had enough.
I’m cooking with onions.
Beneath its brown tissue,
unwrapping, smoothness, naked.
The inner skin is moist, and firm,
its curves reassuring to hold
around, down to the soft root mat.
The raw peeling is a tearing,
unlayering making its acid
reaction to my quick undressing—
or to the intimacy of the edge
that pares and parts and spaces,
destroying dignity for its strong taste.
But the pieces slide in hot virgin
as I ravish the soft sweet heart
pungent and raw and persistent.
I lost those smooth round curves,
the naked skin, moist root mat—
it all lies in pieces, after tears.
And since there are no tissues to hand
and there are no kisses to blend,
I’m cooking with onions. But eating the heart.
2013 © Andie Davidson
My greatest delight over the Christmas break was to visit my hairdresser. I knew the old grey stuff was showing too much, so I wanted the straggly ends trimming, and the rest coloured to match the wig style I’d been wearing the past nine months. It had actually been a hard down-to-earth decision a year ago, that if I was to transition, it might well mean a wig for life, with the constraints that brings. I had to accept my hair would probably never be good enough, that the receding hairline had gone too far. In fact that is my biggest grouse about delays in being seen, clinically, and further delay in being prescribed anti-androgens. It’s the opposite of trans youngsters having puberty delayed in time. Sometimes it feels every second counts.
On New Year’s eve I emerged quite overwhelmed, with just my own hair, looking very different but lovely, styled to cover the worst bits and full enough to stop wearing the wigs. I can’t say for the rest of my life, since my mother has just started wearing one due to natural hair loss in older age. But for now, returning to work with the new style, ‘all me’ and no prosthetics except my glasses, is a big thing.
I have taken part in recent discussions with some heat, about how prosthetic breasts and wigs are perceived. For trans* people starting out their transition at least, they are a godsend. We go out into the world with no formal assistance, to undergo what is tactfully called ‘Real Life Experience’ with all the capitals. Voice? Gait? Mannersisms? Make-up? Clothing co-ordination? Hair?? Facial Hair?? Body Shape (including the infamous ‘tuck’)??? Who in their right mind would go about in public making such a change without getting it all perfect from the word go. Yes, it is a very tough challenge, and it can’t be assumed that all of us have practised well enough already. Are we going about in some disguise – we are, after all, disguising parts of ourselves, present or missing.
Many people use prosthetics, some undergo extensive cosmetic surgery, but underneath we are as real as you. And yet I came out of the hairdresser’s feeling more real, in a back to normal way. The props had served their purpose for now, and I felt relieved.
I have written several blog pages on perception and reality, because it seems to matter so much to everyone else. Do I look more genuine or real now? Am I becoming less ‘the woman who used to be man’? Strangely, I wonder whether returning to social circles where I was known pre-transition, I look more like I used to, especially since I had grown my hair longer to disguise the pierced ears! But surely, more naturally curvy and feminine in all my ways. Or was I already more feminine before? The two states are blending, which is fine by me, since I don’t disown what I was.
But here I am, caught in the middle again. If I am so naturally this, without any props and prosthetics, what is so different from ‘who’ I used to be? I caught myself at work this week thinking how I am doing all the same things in the same way as I have before, dealing with technology, communication and people, sitting at much the same desk and computer as always, just outwardly being the woman I always was inside. I am not pretending anything.
There were times in the beginning (thankfully only a few) when I would hear people saying ‘my god! It’s a man!’ and I felt I was covering something up; people were able to see through some artifice and perceive the ‘real’ person underneath. Well, there is nothing to see through now, so in some ways it’s back to square one: no second glances, I am just me. Being real. Obvious, isn’t it?
But this square one is a long way from the previous square one. And questions remain. I go on trips with bands, playing my trumpet and having a lovely time away, often in Europe. We share rooms, of course. What is Andie? Can she share with a ‘real’ woman? And the truth is, there are some who would not be comfortable sharing with me, and some for whom it is no problem at all. Is Andie real enough – or yet – to share a bedroom with another(?) woman? Is it all down to what surgery I may or may not yet have had, or whether my breasts have developed enough? Which side is Andie really on? Does she really behave as a woman? Is sexuality and privacy still an issue?
I went through the ‘I shall always be the not-woman-not-man’ crisis a while ago. It’s a big one. Who will ever see your sexual integrity again? Are you forever a sexual intruder? A pretender? Ultimately the questions another may ask are: can you be trusted with my body? Do you make me ambiguous too, by association? How can I connect love and sex after this?
This is where my reality is comprehensively trounced by perception.
With this much socio-sexual conditioning, can anyone ever desire me again? Can anyone really see that this is the real (and now unchanging) me, and that I am still romantic at heart, loving, kind, gentle, hugely committing and loyal, and very giving? And worth being more than just a friend? Or is it safer not to let me get too close?
Yes, the old doubt and fear is very much still there, and the more real I feel, the more bizarre it becomes that I may have seen the last of being trusted to love another completely.