Andie’s Place observations of gender dysphoria and beyond

A strange realisation came to me soon after my gender surgery. I realise this comes to few people, so I hope the unique perspective is helpful!

Take a look at this classical statuesque representation (many paintings are similar): the male naked, visible, and the female with her invisible bits (only) clothed.

Prehistoric representations of fertility show statues and carvings of large-breasted women or gods, with stylised dotted triangles representing pubic hair, and maybe not even legs or feet. Boticelli’s Venus stands in her shell, with her hair covered by – her hair.

Prehistoric male fertility and power is simply phallic, even isolated. David, not particularly well-endowed by Michaelangelo, stands brazen.

An epiphany

It was the day after, when my dressings were checked and the nurses were making sure everything was alright. I was prone, and it was before I could have anything more than two pillows to prop me up. I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but it was worth a check on my state of mind as well as body, to peer down. Exciting! Except it wasn’t. All I could see was a very normal looking female belly, close-cropped mons, thighs, and tubes held in place with sticky tape and thread. Never mind, I thought, so long as everyone’s happy, I can see more later.

I joked to the nurses, ‘This must be so strange to you!’

‘Not at all’, they replied. ‘You just look like us.’

They had seen me in a way I shall never see myself. I can see a reverse view in a mirror by spreading and curling up, lying on the floor, peering through my legs – or I can take a vag-selfie if I like, but that’s all. I realised something important was going here, and knew I’d have to stretch this thought a little further.

A few days later, I was introduced properly to my new vagina, my vulva, my labia, my clitoris. (I feel so greedy: mine, mine, mine! But wow, they really are!) And I realised that for many women, there has been no such introduction. Some have never used mirrors, don’t like being looked at closely, and think that a photo of a vagina is disgusting. Not my feminist workshop friends, who make fabric or clay (or cup-cake) vaginas in all sizes – but many ordinary women. And me? Well, I did have the experience from the other side over many years, and my vulva-worship was met with some bemusement and disbelief.

And now here I was, being handed a stent (clear acrylic dildo to all intents and purposes, let’s not be prudish), to insert into my vagina, to learn the gentle art of dilation. A nurse held a mirror and invited me to find the opening with my finger, to guide the heavily lubricated stent in. I was largely going by feel. I had never had to search for my anus to clean it or medicate it because it’s a really simple structure, and it has a sphincter you can feel. But this was novel. My most important and female-essential parts were hidden from view, and I was going delicately by feel, squinting into a mirror.

I’ll spare you the rest, but there’s nothing really to say that you don’t know or can’t imagine, all very ordinary and everyday – and by now, I can feel what’s what, and don’t need a mirror other than to check my sutures and progress.

Significance

As any post-op trans woman, I now know from personal experience what it is to have both forms of genitalia. It’s all the same tissue, give or take a bit in volume, the same nerve endings, just configured differently. We aren’t talking reproductive capacity or gonads here, just what’s visible, reachable, sensate, apparent. And in a way it’s terribly obvious. I wonder whether it actually has a lot more significance than we think?

Anyone born with male genitalia will have handled their bits since before they were born. They are at arm’s length, hang out in front, get in the way of everything from a nappy/diaper onwards, get handled many times a day in order to urinate, be washed (please, gentlemen, because not everyone is good at this) and of course, enjoyed. And if you don’t get them right in your trousers, they can hurt! I know, and I suffered from varicoceles too.

And you don’t make yourself vulnerable to fuck: your weight is behind it all, with arms and legs available, and much of the time you do the pushing. You can be enclosed, but you do not receive. And even if you are gay and don’t like to ‘put’, the rest remains true. Oral is always ‘in your face’, except as a female recipient. However equitable the sex, if you have male bits, you get to see a lot more. (OK smartie, so you got a mirror on the ceiling? I never did!) Just stand in front of a mirror, and it’s all there to see. That’s what anyone else would see without trying too.

For a woman, it’s much more touch and feel. Mirror contortions aren’t that hard, but you need a reason, so examining yourself, even just seeing yourself, is not a many-times-a-day (or week, or year?) experience – and when you present yourself sexually, it is with a far greater degree of trust that you will be treated properly and competently, by whatever means. On your own, between you and your fingers or toys, there is feedback, in a way that another’s touch requires guidance and experience, and dialogue. Yes, men know this as well, but they can see what they, or you, are doing.

If this visual, reachable self-awareness is so much greater for men than for women, does it make a significant difference?

Presence and permission

Behind this thought is also that of the role of testosterone, the drive it creates and the auto-responses it engenders. If a man thinks of sex many times a day and gets an erection close to a pretty girl, it is a psycho-biological response. Control is up to him, what he does next is a decision, but (especially when young!) it can be hard to hide the response from himself or someone else. A woman’s response is much more subtle, less driven, more drawn, revealed perhaps by nothing more than dilated pupils and a flushed neck; whatever genital response she has, is hidden. A woman expects more dialogue to be necessary. A man with an erection and horny with a possible conquest (including a wife) isn’t going to say ‘do you want me to spell it out?’

Whether I carry a clipboard, a spanner, a weapon or a shopping bag, an assessment is made on my intent. We look out for what it might be: good/bad, immediate/delayed, active/passive, to do/to get, and balance it with facial expression. We also know that by carrying or presenting something, even a bodily attitude, we are preparing another person. Smiling before you open the boss’s door (confident, positive), carrying your notepad (prepared, active), clipping your toolbelt (equipped, fixing), sitting down first at the meeting table (fair, non-coercive). Some of this is very deliberate, some instinctive and some learned, and it’s an essential part of our non-verbal communication.

Maybe you’ve had a boob-job to give you confidence; same thing.

I think men assume a lot more (though maybe understand less) in non-verbal communication. They think they are obvious (even to themselves), as demonstrated in shorter phrases, less explanation, less enquiry in their dialogue. It isn’t male stupidity, it’s just an assumption that they are in charge of each encounter, or at least in control of their part of it. Men play great little games among each other to maintain their approval ratings and status, fearing looking weak or ignorant or less-than. Maybe it’s simply an evolutionary throwback to herd instinct with alpha males, even if there can be several in one place, so long as you’re not the beta-male, or even the apha-minus.

Men assume presence and validity in a way women don’t, and it underlies unconscious sexism. Men invite less enquiry than women, in their encounters and roles. Like the bog-wall scrawl: ‘your future is in your hands’.

Oh, come on! Not that Venus-Mars stuff again!

It might seem that way, but I’m just teasing out this one newly-obvious thing. I am not leaving out queer and non-binary folk here, nor women who have learned social gaming in order to assert and succeed in a male-engineered world. No, I’m just looking at this one fact: when your sex is right there in your hands, in the mirror, in front of you, constantly, and responding to some situations involuntarily, it gives a sense of unquestioned agency (not just urgency) and unequivocal equippedness that requires no prior permission to be like that. And this is not about gender identity, and it is not about sexuality. It is a consequence, whether or not you consciously take advantage of it, or others assume the advantage of it. This, I think, also lies behind the sense of betrayal men feel when one of their number comes out as transgender (see De facto, defect or, defector?).

I really don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush, but it was a realisation that the way you encounter your body, especially in the uniquely interactive parts, the often-driven parts, sets the agenda of how you encounter other people and make social assumptions of who is dominant. Nor is it an attempt to sexualise everything, or over-generalise for non-binary people. It’s just that there is a great sense of self attached to your body and what it gives you. Pretty face? You know the impact. Muscular and tall? You know the impact too. In a wheelchair? Yes, that as well. Self-awareness dictates social awareness, and body-awareness informs self-awareness. There’s a reason men don’t look sideways at the urinals, and why women chat through the stalls. It isn’t, I don’t think, about privacy. It’s about vulnerability and the unavoidable, what you have to work at to hide and what you have to work at to show.

Maybe this is where male privilege originates, because it can be protected by physical strength and aggression, and is given drive through testosterone. Without it, would the world be the same place? Maybe I’m only just learning feminism properly, not as inequality put right, but in essence. And this transition experience is a powerful one. If I have privilege, it is this, not an upbringing with stuff up front. And if I feel sexism in the raw now, the only counter I can imagine is to examine the origins, like this, recognising that there is no superiority just because your sexual power is up-front.

Am I confident on this tightrope? Well, I’m just not looking down.