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Knowing what you are and knowing what you are not

  • Posted on May 9, 2012 at 2:28 pm

There is no straight test that determines where a person lies on the gender spectrum. The only person who might give you a genuine idea of their gender position is they themselves. You really cannot examine anyone and make that conclusion without asking them. And they may not tell you the truth, they may be afraid of the truth, they may not even know what gender truth means. Or they may tell you their truth and you don’t believe them.

Despite what we were all taught in school, gender is not a simple binary thing, and that has been said so many times, and is known by clinical gender specialists and psychologists, that you would think we would have given up on it long ago. But no, it is a huge prop for a society built on gender antagonism and power. While it suits, polarisation enables predictable roles, a sense of social security and normality, but it simply is not a valid descriptor of how we are as human beings. It has become taxonomy for taxonomy’s sake, and it simply will not do.

This morning I was reading yet more on the disquiet around DSM V (the American Psychiatric Association’s definitive Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders pathologising everything that is not ‘normal’). Specifically, I was reading how everything gender was being sexualised into a male-dominated heteronormative concept. From the origins of DSM (read Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test if you want some idea of the twisted picture of humanity it gives and why), too few individuals have imposed their idea of ‘normal’ and made quite ordinary features of life into mental disorder. I raise this, because theoretical, often entirely hypothetical, observations of others with regard to gender are used with no evidential basis, and assume the observer always to be better qualified than the individual.

Yellow and blue are easy

‘I’m yellow’, says this bit of the rainbow. ‘Leastways, if you look at my middle!’

‘I’m blue’, says another.

Green stays silent, the edge of yellow blending on one side, the edge of blue blending on the other. Then:

‘I’m not red!’ In triumphant realisation, green knows what it is not.

I am no expert, but I have become quite saturated with the discussions and theories and expressions of what gender is, what it means to be a woman or a man, how it is between the ears not the thighs, how it is at least in large part innate, not socialised, and how dysphoria describes a problem with the body not with the mind. Gender identity is not personal identity, it is simply where you feel you are on the spectrum with regards to femaleness and maleness. It does not define you, it simply compares you with others in a relation of proximities.

And it is OK to be turquoise – or lime.

In all the gender conversations I’ve had, I have met more people who know what they are not, than what they are. Green knows it is not red, but cannot so easily say it isn’t a yellowy green or a bluey green, and give either a name.

This, I think in large part, is where a sense of dysphoria lies, and where discomfort can persist, whatever steps are made to put gendered physical characteristics right. I know fully transitioned (male to female) people who insist that they are not, and can never be, women in the way they would have been if born and grown up in a different hormone environment. I do not have a female pelvis, and dig me up in 100 years, and an archeologist will tell you that. But they will not know how I identified. (There was the case of the Prague trans internment, about which I wrote this poem – you might reflect or enjoy it.) But what does this mean? That I am never good enough at being what feels most right to me? Who says so? Actually, me. My mind slips back into the binary view, and suddenly I am not good enough.

Every spectrum has two ends, and people live there. I know people who were certain, early enough on to make a real difference to their outcomes, that they live right at one end of the spectrum and quite opposite to their natal physiology. And they have every right to not even identify any longer as transgender (or spectrally misplaced).

But for everyone else who occupies anywhere else that appears at odds with their body’s reproductive bits, it is perfectly OK to be there, and even not to have to talk about it. And it is most OK when we don’t feel we have to justify it to ourselves, understand it, or even describe our gender ‘colour’. In a way it is simply not relevant, providing we are authentic.

Now consider, physiology apart: what are you? Describe how you know you are a man or a woman, or queer, or androgyne. Now do it without referring to what you are not, and without reference to sexual orientation. In other words, without sexualising yourself in terms of preferred activity. Now, without speaking of their body and what they do with it, how might you set a definition of someone else’s gender? Only they can tell you, and they have every right to describe and to present as they feel most authentic. Why does that have to be confusing?

Letting go of paradigms

I try to imagine a world sometimes, where people express themselves, modify or shape or clothe their bodies, simply according to what feels most fitting to them, and where this has nothing to do with any declaration of sexual preference or contribution to the mating game. (After all that’s the easy bit.) Maybe it would be easier for some (no, not all) to live with non-congruence between body and mind. Maybe decisions to adjust physical attributes or not, would be more openly accepted and phobias would evaporate into irrelevance. Maybe we wouldn’t even need to understand how gender dysphoria arises any more than hair colour, because there is no fixing at source. Maybe we could all love trans people for the extra they bring to the party rather than confusion. But that world cannot exist while we maintain any idea of men or women being somehow better than each other, or one defining the rules for the other.

Here’s an exam question for you:

Shania Twain sang Man, I feel like a woman (link with lyrics). Discuss.

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De facto, defect or, defector?

  • Posted on April 15, 2012 at 12:11 pm

It’s not right.

Is it?

Men are men and women are women and I am . . . well, I thought I was, and now you’re saying . . . what?

Look, maybe it isn’t any harder to handle than a software upgrade. You know, when the drop-down menus, the toolbar choices, the sheer logic of saving files (what type is that? Compatible?) is just a bit unfamiliar, and ‘but surely – I must still be able to to do that!’

This is the week that I am meeting rather a lot of friends and colleagues for the first time not dressed as a man. For me it is perfectly normal, since I’ve been living this way increasingly for over a year, but I do recognise that it will be difficult for some.

‘Do I go and talk to him (woops! her!), or will he/she (I’m getting stuck already!) feel awkward if I do? What do I say?’

‘Actually I think it’s just the person I used to know, dressed up and I don’t understand why, and I feel stupid talking to him like that!’

It is true that I have felt much safer and more embraced through this change by women than by men. Women have immediately offered tips and help, men have praised my courage. And I think I know why. I’m becoming a feminist.

So this post is not for those who have already shown their support (thank you, all) but for those who find the whole thing a bit uncomfortable.

De facto

Because of the way I live, the way my mind, my personality, my heart and soul work, because I have changed my title and my name with legal force, I am a woman. Anything else would be a pretence, and I am, de facto, not a man. I have a deed poll certificate that has allowed me to become ‘Ms’ in almost every aspect of life. It doesn’t entitle me to legally declare my gender as corrected, but as a matter of fact, I am Ms, and that is how, in law, I must be addressed. In fact I am no longer allowed to present myself under my old title or name.

So what can I say? This is how I am; get over it.

Defect, or …

Some people will not easily get over it. Some women will think I am a bit presumptuous aligning myself with them, especially since I still have some significant interventions even to begin. Some men will feel obliged to regard me as a faulty example, a man where something went wrong. In both cases, I understand the challenge: how can it be so easy to suddenly say you are not something that seems to have been blindingly obvious for so long? To have lived in a male body all these years … there must be a serious defect here! Maybe it is a mental disorder that should be put right. Some people think they are Napoleon – or an orange! Or curtains: just pull yourself together!

I am not mentally unwell, my body is healthy, but something has never quite been right. It all makes sense to me at last, and the reason it looks like a defect is that we were all taught, all our lives, that men are men and women are women, and you can tell. Well, can’t you?

Not so. It simply is not as easy or straightforward as that. In the same way that a space probe to Mercury can’t be placed accurately using Newton’s laws of motion, and those GPS satellites we depend on require laws of relativity to speak the truth back at us. Newton was OK for the ordinary stuff, but was too simplistic a view of how things really are. So it is with matters of sex and gender. The only way to know someone’s gender is to ask them.

This is not a defect, it’s just a difference.

Defector

And then there are the gender politics. Am I an intruder, as far as women are concerned? To some I certainly am. Why are you in the ladies’ loo?! Well, it’s because I am not a man, and I am not disabled. And I am not a spy either. I am who I am, and I know where I fit easily and best. I do not think about you like a man does.

More to the point, for some men I am a threat. I am a defector from a place of privilege and power, who is undermining the solidarity of the male realm. Goodness! What would happen to male authority if too many people like me started to climb down and join the other side? If that is you, and you need reassurance, I was never on your side, never a part of your tribe, even though I made a decent presentation of it most of the time. I don’t hate men, I just never did man stuff very well and I never liked the idea of male privilege. Some people were most persuaded by my ‘male skills’ – that I was taught in school just because it was a boys’ school.

I am not defecting; I was just never legitimately in the right team. And I’m not taking sides now either. I am just being myself.

Summary for the newly puzzled

I understand that I have changed you without your permission. You are now the person who knows a transsexual, or a transgender person (please just don’t say tranny), and the closer you are the more difficult that may feel. I got over it, so can you.

De facto: this is how I am, so get used to it.

There is no defect or illness about me, and I am happier to be as I am now, than ever before in my life.

I am not a defector from a place I never belonged, so please don’t be afraid that I am an intruder either.

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Selfish. Self(ish). Self.

  • Posted on April 2, 2012 at 11:47 pm

As my wife reaches for the cheese and asks for the grater, my mind switches into immediate lowest-level punning: ‘Grater love has no man …’ Nobody laughs, it isn’t funny, just a vain attempt to lighten things up. But it’s a reminder that St Paul did say that there is no greater love shown than to lay your life down for a friend. Great in battle. But would you (other than instinctively) jump under a bus to push someone out of the way? How good a friend would they have to be? So good you hope they might survive but, if not, at least you’d go together?

The worst choice I can imagine is when a lifelong partnership is switched from equality and easy unconditionality into self-preservation. One partner is struck down through no fault or misdeed of their own. What should the other do?

My dread question about being transgender, married and with a family, is why anyone should ever have to decide between self-authenticity and the greatest love in their life. How can anyone possibly decide that? Gender is so incredibly powerful that it defines who and what you are. Once you realise that you do not have the heart and soul of a man, you really, truly, cannot go on in mimicry of being a man. To do so would be so diminishing of self that you would not truly be able to love freely and unconditionally yourself. Whether it is the Christian ‘love you neighbour as yourself’, or the Buddhist Metta Bhavana that begins with your own happiness and well-being, we know that loving people now and love themselves and that bitter, angry people do not.

So what do you do? Jump under the bus so the loved one doesn’t have to face the consequences, or stand on the kerb while your gender bus runs them over? I don’t honestly think anyone who hasn’t faced such an identity crisis can imagine how such a situation can arise.

And it is all about self.

Self

Have you ever even needed to think about self, about what and who you are and perhaps why? Or do you live an altrusitic life, saving little for yourself – giving, thoughtless of return? Or like most of us, do you invest, with friends, with family, with certain material things – just so you feel physically and emotionally equipped to give generously to others and find enough space to replenish and do it again? How much sense of self do you have – not just things you can do, your personality, how you get along – but in the long dark reaches of the night, or in the ecstasy of a peak achievement? Being transgender forces you to find truths most people never even know to look for. We see differently because we have to.

I don’t think many of us believe to a great extent in self-denial. After all, we are precious beings, whether or not we sense a place in anything greater or numinous or spiritual. We need enough of self in order to be giving, in order to empathise, in order to understand what it is like to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. We need self simply to love at all.

I need a sense of self, a bit of self-actualisation if you like, if I am to fulfill any purpose in being human.

Self(ish)

Anything less is to fall into a grey zone of being self(ish) – never quite realising what it’s all about, just making headway, doing enough, staying alive, keeping out of trouble. Am I being self(ish)? I hope not! It is neither as noble as being a self-denialist, nor as ruthless as being selfish, but it surely isn’t what we are here in this life for. If we all do nothing but put ourselves behind everyone else, the queue or front line, whatever, simply recedes forever in a false etiquette of ‘after you; no, after you!’

So if I stand ahead of another to pay for my milk (OK, or beer) is that an act of selfishness? Again, I don’t think so. It is in my interests to pay when it’s my turn, but it is also in my family’s interests that I arrive home before letting everyone else (presumably happy to be selfish) go first. It would be selfish to jump the queue as if I was more privileged or important a person.

Selfish?

OK, you know what I’m getting at. I realised – I finally gave in and stopped fighting – I am transgender. I do not fit the picture or the presumption always given about the nature of my self. For me, it is an awareness in episodes, an understanding in retrospect, from over 40 years. That is a long time to be only self(ish), and I’m not exactly jumping the queue out of a sense of self-importance now. I am gradually emerging, asserting who and what I am, trying to find the kindest way to become whole.

And yet I am not the first to be thought of as selfish: how dare I think I can be transgender and upset so many lives by being myself? How could I have lived so long out of my true self that I couldn’t continue in self-denial? It’s so selfish to have a self! Yes: I should jump under the bus so the bus is stopped.

As if, just because self is at our centre, we are therefore self-centred.

It’s all about life choices, and things you do not have a choice about. After that it’s about other people’s choices; personal and moral. It’s about their self, their self(ish) compromises, and selfishness. We can all, in anger, misunderstanding, loss and grieving, think of each other as selfish as we face a new perspective on our own self, realised for what it is, hardened from self(ish)ness into true self.

Choice

I do not feel I have a choice if I am to be true to my self. It is no more choice than a disability or an injury that was completely not my fault. The problem is that in the case of the latter, loyalty and commitment kick in and override everything else. It isn’t a kind thing that a partner or relative ends up as a carer, but we sort of expect both might find some fulfilment in making the most of circumstances. And yet it isn’t necessarily reprehensible that some potential carers simply know they cannot cope, and third party accommodation and care is found instead. We might say ‘for better, for worse, for richer for poorer’ but do we really feel bound by that any more? No. Some caring is just too much. For all the love we want to show, it just isn’t adaptable enough. This is fact, not bitterness; many cared-for do not wish to be a burden, because they know how it would feel the other way round. But the person with MS in the wheelchair, the soldier with no legs, or the child with cerebral palsy – they are not being selfish. A little help, a lot of love, and their lives can still be rich, self can still be actualised as far as possible. Their greatest fear is to be only self(ish) and not to be loved. So what does it mean to love them while still retaining a clear sense of self? What does it mean to love a transgender person, when you know they are simply finding themselves, and your own assumptions about love, sex and gender are dropped into the melting pot?

That is one question that I cannot answer.

But I hope all my friends and family and colleagues will think more deeply about self, about being self(ish) and realise that I am not being selfish by understanding a little too late that I am really not the man they thought I was. I made a good enough job of it, I think. But I have resigned. And I cannot imagine any act of selfishness that could give rise to so many hurdles and such loss of entitlement, and grief, despite the relief and joy of finding myself. No-one would choose, in the context of this gender-binary society, ever to be transgender, except to be true to self.

Those of you who venture into Realisations can now read ‘Not like a bone’ in context.

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What is a sense of gender?

  • Posted on March 28, 2012 at 5:29 pm

A section in my book Realisations is called ‘A Sense of Gender’, and it is a really curious thing. What is it to be self-aware of being a man or being a woman? Is it just a feeling of consonance with others who have bodies like yours? Or perhaps dissonance with those who don’t? That seems a bit thin somehow. I am sure that with a bit of research I could unearth psychological studies that would dip into the gendered mind, the ways we think, that place us more comfortably in one camp or the other. Except that drags us kicking into the binary conflict that simply doesn’t suit everyone.

Early in realising who I really was, I used to play this mind game: if it was a ‘Manday’ rather than a ‘Chooseday᾿ and I closed my eyes against what I was wearing, how did I feel? Hmm. Nothing really. And to begin with in my female clothes I looked as different to myself as I would to any friend. Not bad, but certainly different. Did that make me feel more like a woman and less like a man underneath? Well, it helped.

Close the eyes. Ask: what does it mean for anyone to feel like a man / woman?

There is a physical awareness, perhaps a bra wire is digging in or trousers feel tight, or maybe the lightness of a dress brushes the skin differently, and parts of your body feel the particular familiarity or unfamiliarity of something. But that doesn’t make me feel like a man or like a woman. It doesn’t make me feel gendered or placed in a role or a persona at all. I just feel like me. How do you feel?

Now put me in a party. There are the women clustered in one place, and there are the men in another. Where do I head to feel most congruent? Off to join the men and share the latest sport / cars / job news? Or to the women to find out what’s really going on, how they are feeling, what’s going on in their families? Join the first group and I don’t really know what to talk about, unless we turn to a passion like the environment, or poetry. Join the others and I am an outsider; perhaps the conversation changes because a man is present.

A man? What man? I look around and then realise it must be something about me. I have a sense of gender from the inside, everyone else has a perception that is different. My gender is visibly in the wrong kind of body. It isn’t even ambiguous enough, because I got to wear the grey trousers and the striped shirt.

There have been too many days when I have been obliged to present as a man when wanting to write about being female. What happens if someone comes up on Skype, I have the cam on, and Andie, the strongly female friend is sitting there in the wrong trousers, perhaps even unshaven, with man specs? Is that a betrayal of my sense of gender? I judge not, because I am already uncomfortable, not even looking at myself.

What do you feel when you wake up in a morning. OK, certain things can happen to a man that remind him of his gender at that time of day. But aside from that, are we aware? Does it matter? No, so long as we are content with what happens next and get on with the day, doing what we do naturally.

Kate Bornstein is producing a new edition of her Gender Workbook, and has been Tweeting regularly to gain a contemporary view of how people feel about aspects of transgender. Central is the question ‘how do you identify?’. I was not alone in a very assertive, ‘I know what I am not!’ Interesting, because I hear it more and more. I am not a man. I’m quite happy to be called transgender, but do not call me a man! It isn’t that I disown what I have lived as, and I don’t hate men. I just know I do not belong to that tribe.

Which is interesting.

For some time, mainly because it was so easy to do so, I went to the Brighton Buddhist Centre to practice meditation. Mindfulness. Being present, in the moment. Just sitting, being aware of how things are. And in that state of mind, I am aware of a physical state of being a woman. Funny that.

Over a year ago, a friend did some therapy with me in similar vein, and my first comment afterwards, reviewing the inner experience, was that throughout I had visualised myself as a woman in a white dress. I don’t know why. It wasn’t suggested, it wasn’t in the commentary. It wasn’t supposed to be there at all. The only guidance I had was to gain a sense of belonging, and to listen to myself. And there I was.

Now, having just presented myself and my intentions, in the space of a week, to well over 100 musicians, and in public as it were, I had another unexpected experience. My previous blog post covered the matter of whether it was courage or not. No, this was an awareness that somehow, enough people were just recognising what I was saying, and more than just respecting that, were welcoming me as a woman. I am perfectly aware that when I appear for the first time in that last bastion of my male life, many may find it hard to adjust. I will be a novelty, a curiosity, a not-quite-sure and what do I say to – her? But as the pronouns started to be used already, and people were writing my new name, I was so deeply at home with myself, it felt like I had been dragging an anchor and now it held.

Yes, I know what a sense of gender means – though I’m not sure I’m a whole lot better at describing it.

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Check your baggage …

  • Posted on March 4, 2012 at 4:45 pm

I had this vision of meeting someone the other day … They were walking along, but struggling under the weight of two holdalls, one in each hand.

They seemed happy enough: I would be, if I had two heavy bags full of something valuable! I offered to carry one, because we were going the same way. But no, they insisted they carried both (my mother used to say this when I offered with the shopping) – because they were ‘balanced’. Well, maybe that makes sense; it saves a bad back.

But the trouble was, they couldn’t get on very quickly, and opening doors was a bit difficult. I asked how long had they been carrying the bags? ‘Oh, as along as I can remember’, they said. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’ I replied that they must be very inconvenient, but no: ‘they’re mine!’

‘When did you last open them, and need what’s inside them? And how do you know which is which, when you pick them up?’ I inquired.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ they replied. ‘I’m so used to carrying them, it hardly matters! It’s just what I have to carry.’

‘Maybe you don’t need them any more?’ I suggested. ‘Why don’t you put them down and look inside? Perhaps they aren’t as important or useful as you think?’

Well, it took a great deal of persuasion, but as we talked, the weight of the bags seemed to become questionable, and finally the bags were lowered and let go – not without some relief. Together we worked the zippers that hadn’t been pulled for a very long time, until they dragged their teeth apart to reveal the contents.

Each bag seemed to contain pretty much the same thing: bricks. Just bricks. A little dusty from rubbing together so long, but still – just bricks. They probably fitted together quite well, and who knows, something useful might be built with them. Maybe those from one bag and those from the other, put together, might be even better, but deciding which came from which bag, to put them back again afterwards, would be really quite difficult. Maybe it didn’t matter.

‘Oh.’ my companion said, ‘I really didn’t know what was in the bags. They’re so heavy and they seemed so important. But they’re just bricks!’

‘Then perhaps you can leave them behind now?’ I ventured, looking up at them. Then, glancing down at these impeccably balanced burdens, I noticed there were tired, old labels tied to the handles. I rubbed the dust off the fading ink, and when I’d worked out which way was up, saw that one read ‘male’ and the other ‘female’.

We took a couple of bricks out and examined them more closely. Yes, there were slight differences in shape, where they would fit together for strength, but otherwise they were all very much alike.

‘What are you going to do now?’ I asked.

‘Dunno. But I’m not carrying these bags around any more; no point. I’ll just take a couple – could be useful. Here, any two will do.’

‘Don’t you want one from each bag?’

‘No. It doesn’t matter. I only want them to keep doors open.’

Learning points

  • check your baggage: did you pack it yourself?
  • question the contents: are they important?
  • just because you have a balanced burden doesn’t mean you can’t put it down
  • whatever your burdens, keep your doors open
  • never stretch a metaphor too far; just see if it helps!
We all carry around far too much baggage about the useless gender binary of male and female, and in doing so fail to see others as they really are. Instead we constrain them and us, so we can’t even shake hands or hold doors open for each other. Put these bags down. Walk away.

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