A Real Trans Person (Reprise)
(Trigger warning for (internalized) cissexism, misogynist language, suicide.)
So, this morning my ma left a note on the table telling me that she was going Christmas shopping. I stayed in bed as long as I could till I had to get up and get stuff done to go to work, of course. I found her note. She used my boy name. I, of course, snatched it up and put it in my room to keep. These things mean a lot to me. But even though I was happy she used my male name, it’s bittersweet. I know what I’m doing.
I put aside those bittersweet feelings, though. I got my breakfast and sat down at the old computer table. Yes, I probably am addicted. While making my rounds, I found a link someone had posted on Facebook to a video of trans men talking about being trans.
As I watched the video, the demons started screeching in my brain.
You hear these guys talking? They are real trans people. This is what it’s like. You don’t hurt this much. It never was this bad for you. You didn’t know when you were kid.
(Actually, I did, but the demons don’t seem to care; they just remind me of the much more numerous ways I didn’t.)
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
(Actually, some of it does, but the demons don’t seem to care; they just remind me that the worst stuff these guys say doesn’t.)
You’re just playing. You’re not serious. You can’t be. Transition? You? You’re too big of a pussy. You’ll never go through with it. You? A man? You don’t even have the “balls” to talk to people on the phone. How are you even going to call the doctors? You won’t. And that’s just more proof you’re faking. If you were on the verge of suicide and wanting to claw your skin off, your “anxiety” wouldn’t stop you. But it will. Because you’re a coward, and not a real trans man besides. Making a game out of real people’s suffering. Appropriating other people’s identities.
They need testosterone. You just think it would be a nice thing to have. That’s a want, not a need. You don’t need top surgery. You don’t need this shit. You’re just grasping for something, anything to make it seem like your life has meaning. Transition wouldn’t save you from being a loser, because being a loser has nothing to do with your gender. You just are one. You always love to talk about how people “just are what they are.” Well, you just are a loser. All the testosterone in the world ain’t going to change that.
All you’re doing is making your Mama sad.
What’s that? You’re crying? Men don’t cry.
(I know I’m making progress, though, because the demons have stopped making an appeal to the unnaturalness of transition; how it’s better to be a miserable woman with all her parts than a man (however less miserable) with scars and parts missing. I don’t even pay those ideas any attention anymore.)
But you know, I’ve only been a trans man for a year and a half. *Clears throat.* I mean, I’ve only been knowing I am a trans man for a year and a half. The guys in the video spent longer. Who knows how I will feel in five years? Who knows how the pain might have grown by then? Maybe I’ll be to that point. Maybe I’ll be one of those people. Maybe I’ll have little choice left but to transition or else. I already know it gets deeper the further you go. It’s gotten worse than it was this same time last year.
One of my trans man friends who I type to on Facebook told me that his therapist he went to for transition told him that she requires all her trans people to go to a support group while in therapy. She says that some trans people need to be around other trans people and “freak out” awhile, then run and hide if they need to. But even if they go out and get married and have kids first, “they always come back.”
I seriously doubt it’s something about making the appointment and going to therapy that makes them always come back.
One of the reasons I went ahead and didn’t fight it for very long after I realized was that I have seen enough to recognize things that don’t go away; things you can’t avoid. I surrendered. I say it was June 20th, just so that I have a “other birthday” to celebrate, but it was actually a cluster of four days around that time. That’s all the fighting I did. Four days. I knew it was no use to run from it. I knew I had found The Answer. Even if I was wrong, I had to try.
(I’ve taken serious artistic license with the demons that yell at me. They are never so articulate.)
(And to you – yes, you – other trans people do feel this way.)
Yourfriend said,
November 24, 2011 at 8:08 pm
Okay, first of all, did she use the name that begins with J? If so, DAMN, that is downright AWESOME! I know I sound like a broken record, but she is trying as best as she can.
As for you, you sound as if you think that just because you have not suffered for years that means you are not “legit” trans, for lack of a better expression. I call bullshit! Just because you have not had tried to committ suicide, unlike some people in this post lol, does not mean that you don’t want it “enough”. Stop comparing yourself to others! You know this is what you want, scratch that, you know this is what you ARE. Don’t be so hard on yourself!
southcarolinaboy said,
November 24, 2011 at 9:35 pm
No, she used my middle name. But that’s fine. That is likely the one I will go by. I mostly chose my first name because I needed one. Needed a polysyllabic first name to go with my monosyllabic middle and last names…
Faggot Boi said,
November 25, 2011 at 9:58 pm
Scb, there is no such thing as a real trans person. Only trans people who get picked to tell their story on television. And then there’s the rest of us. The desire to live socially as a boy is already enough to make you a trans person. The fact that you also identify as a boy now (whatever you identified as before) and want to take testosterone don’t make you any more or less trans than you already are. Hell, in the big city where I now live, I know someone who identifies not as a boy but as genderqueer – a sort of femme non-cis person – but who changed his name and pronoun and went on testosterone, and everybody takes him seriously as a trans person, even though he doesn’t pass as male and wears a dress sometimes. I also know someone who transitioned from female to male, then to female (and femme) and now is presenting androgynously and using male pronouns, and everyone (in the queer community) respects his choices and considers him a pillar of the trans community. Being here in the big city, I have largely gotten over my complexes about not being trans enough or “real” enough in my maleness. Sure, my gender dysphoria and body dypshoria were not as extreme as some people’s (maybe not even as extreme as yours), but the fact that I’m now a part of a community where no one is the slightest bit interested in playing gatekeeper or in having you “prove” that you are male in a particular way before accepting that maleness, and everyone accepts everyone else’s gender preferences, identifications, and sexualities without question has freed my up to feel that it is my right to live and identify however I like. Though I am far from traditionally trans, I am, in fact, far more traditionally trans than some people I know here. Finally, I do believe that, unless you choose to confide in them, it is no one’s business but your own what gender pronoun and name you choose and what you choose to do to your body. Why is not even their business. In an ideal world this would be respected without question.
southcarolinaboy said,
November 27, 2011 at 9:20 am
I’m not ignoring you, FaggotBoi – I’m just thinking about what I want to say back….Thanks for the reply.
southcarolinaboy said,
November 30, 2011 at 12:33 am
“The desire to live socially as a boy is already enough to make you a trans person.”
Yes. Also, I am not a girl. Which is enough to make me a trans person. It really is beside the point whether I am a man or not. This sounds like a different issue from the “not trans enough” thing in the post above. But really, it’s not. I am tired of worrying if I am really a man or not. I know I’m not a woman. So, that means I am a trans person of some kind. I also do want the T and probably the top surgery, too. And I will look like a (cis) man, and go by male pronouns, and function socially as a man. So…that will make me a man – much like a cis man’s functioning in society as a man makes him a man. I am myself, and will always be; and don’t need the T to be what I am – I am not saying that, but as far as other people constructing me as a man – my T, when I get it, will work the same way as a cis man’s T to cause them to see a man.
“I also know someone who transitioned from female to male, then to female (and femme) and now is presenting androgynously and using male pronouns, and everyone (in the queer community) respects his choices and considers him a pillar of the trans community.”
I think it’s great that there are people who are FTMTF and MTFTM. Not “detransitioners,” though people might dismiss them that way. I want to be very careful here, because I don’t want to use other people’s lives to prop up my theories like so many cis people have done. So with that disclaimer phrase – it seems like this shows that trans bodies, as we typically think of them, make just as valid templates for what a man/woman is as cis bodies – as in, some FAAB trans female people have to take testosterone and have top surgery in order to feel right as women. Some MAAB trans male people have to take E and wear a binder in order to feel right as men.
When I first started coming out to myself as trans, I didn’t desire to have a cis male body. I desired to have a trans male body like the ones I was seeing on the Internet. (I had never really seen trans male bodies before and could only speculate what they were like.) I felt like something had to be wrong with this, and part of that was just internalized trans-hate. “But a trans man is a female who wants to be male, and I’m a female who wants to trans male, so…?” On the one hand, I felt like I was certainly in luck, because I have the type of body that can be modified to reach the outcome I want, whereas some men don’t have that. Then again, it shouldn’t be that easy or perfect, should it? I also was attracted to the trans men, and that made me wonder if I was just fetishizing people and being gross.
But then I got over that and started to acknowledge that wanting to be embodied like a post-transition trans man did count, because trans men are men, after all. And if they can be male throughout their lives, including prior to when they went to the doctors or even realized for themselves, then so could I. (“Oh…so *that’s* the thing that was always lurking beneath everything…”)
“Being here in the big city, I have largely gotten over my complexes about not being trans enough or “real” enough in my maleness.”
I am about opposite of that. Well, I don’t believe opposites, so I am at the other end of that spectrum. I am in a small city, but there is no trans presence here. Well, an individual here or there, but we don’t really talk to each other. What I get, I get off the Internet. I would love to live somewhere and see many people being trans in their different ways In Real Life. Because we are so invisible, even to each other, I think it’s easier to be influenced by The Narrative out here.
“…I’m now a part of a community where no one is the slightest bit interested in playing gatekeeper or in having you “prove” that you are male in a particular way before accepting that maleness, and everyone accepts everyone else’s gender preferences, identifications, and sexualities without question has freed my up to feel that it is my right to live and identify however I like.”
Yes, I remember your posts back in the day about how transition shouldn’t be the “last resort”. I don’t live near you, haven’t met you, but you helped me give myself permission to consider transition, even if I didn’t “have to”, which, I’m not even sure that’s accurate for me anymore. I am pretty sure I do have to, I just haven’t reached the point where it’s critical. I don’t have years (plural) yet that I’ve been consciously thinking about this. But yes, people give each other permission to develop trans identities just by letting each other be and not being gatekeeper.
“Finally, I do believe that, unless you choose to confide in them, it is no one’s business but your own what gender pronoun and name you choose and what you choose to do to your body. Why is not even their business.”
This is why it does not matter if I am “really a man” or not. When I say “really a man” – I don’t mean it the way the cis world means it. I am not talking about the body, but the gender inside. And again, it’s not a separate issue from whether my pain is bad enough, though it might seem that way at first. I worry if I’m not a man, then I shouldn’t/don’t deserve to transition. That’s binarism. I need to transition and to occupy a space that the world calls “man” – so my maleness comes from there. Whether my need to transition also comes from my maleness, or whether I even possess authentic, essential maleness – whatever that is – I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. No one will know all that stuff inside me, anyway, unless I tell. They will see me with a beard and call me he, and they will know all they need to.
NOW………..(this is why I waited so long to comment back, because I knew it would be like this,) since I wrote the post, I have rewatched that YouTube video that I linked. This is the difference a day makes in my feelings as a trans person – the day after I watched that video and got upset that I couldn’t relate to what they were saying, I watched it again, and felt like I could relate to most of it. Their words didn’t change. Just my frame of mind at the time, and what things I was able to hear and not. It seemed silly to me upon rewatching it that I had felt like I couldn’t be a real trans person, like these real trans people, because what they are is what I am. What they talk about, I have felt. Especially Patrick; everything that Patrick says, I could have said myself, (except talking about starting T in the past tense.)
Faggot Boi said,
December 3, 2011 at 1:30 pm
These are some really honest and thoughtful reflections, scb. I would agree that you shouldn’t be worrying right now about whether your true “essence” is male or man or not. These are interesting questions to think about, but ultimately, they don’t really matter. As you said, the important thing is figuring out the practical stuff: how you want to live your life, how you want to function in the social world, what you want to do with your body. And it sounds like you’ve taken your time and thought about this, and you know what to you need/want (the distinction is unimportant) to do. So I congratulate you for this and encourage you not to worry.
I love this, “Also, I am not a girl. Which is enough to make me a trans person. It really is beside the point whether I am a man or not.” This is true and well put. Many trans people are not binary (man or woman) identified. And some trans people start out binary identified then, after some degree of physical transition, reach a place of comfort where they no longer are, even if they may be living comfortably as a man or woman. I think the amount of trans people who transition in some way but don’t identify 100% as a man or woman are much greater than we realize. And “transgender” should be a valid name for this. In fact, in some circles, these people are the only ones called “transgender,” whereas those who desire a more “complete” physical transition and identify completely as male or as female are called “transsexual.”
“When I first started coming out to myself as trans, I didn’t desire to have a cis male body. I desired to have a trans male body like the ones I was seeing on the Internet.” This is an interesting thing to admit as well, since “the narrative” is about wanting to have a cis male body. On the one hand, it’s “practical” to want the body that you can actually attain. On the other hand, it seems like it should be absolutely valid to want to be male in the way that trans men are male. Or even to want to be trans male rather than male.
And the geography/community thing is no small factor in this. One thing that really impresses me is your ability to be honest with yourself about who you really are and what you really want in a situation in which the typical transsexual narrative is really dominant, and it would be easier, if less honest, to tell yourself that you are trans in the exact same way as those who promote the dominant trans narrative. I really think that all your doubts would evaporate if you lived, as I do, somewhere with an active and not always binary-identified trans community.
Transition Stock-Taking | Transfaggotry said,
December 3, 2011 at 2:50 pm
[...] reading and commenting on SCB’s recent post, I thought it was time for an update. I haven’t been writing that much, because I’m [...]
southcarolinaboy said,
December 3, 2011 at 8:50 pm
I feel you on the need/want distinction. I thought about this quite a lot last year; right about this time last year. The general way we tell the difference is, “Will you die without it?” (Must have water, food, shelter, clothes, love, and so on and so forth; everything closer to the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid…which…I would place transition on there, anyway, and closer to the bottom than the top.) And what I ultimately realized out of that “Will you die without it?” test, when applied to my transition, is that the choice ain’t, “Transition or die,” it’s more like, “Transition and die. Or, don’t transition, and still die just as dead.” When I thought about it that way, it was obvious. I’m mortal and going to die anyway, so if I live my whole life not doing it, just because I’m not on the verge of death over it, then die without having done it…I can’t stand that thought. After I had been come out to myself only a week, I had a good crying spell and said to myself, “This will be the disappointment of my life if I don’t do this.” My parents were going to know, and they would not be happy. Everyone was going to know. But it didn’t matter.
Man/boy/male is the most familiar language for me to mean not-woman. I suspect that informs my decision to call myself male more than anything else.
Those definitions for transgender/transsexual are a lot easier to grasp than…well…whichever the ones are I have been using, which I don’t fully understand and could not explain. I’m not transsexual, but if I lived in the ’70′s, I would be. I read Kessler and McKenna, and even wrote in the margins of my copy comments about how the text needed the word “transgender,” and it had just not been invented yet.
I wonder what kind of cis boy I would have been, though. Maybe a lot different; maybe not so much.
I don’t know that I would be where I am without the Internet. I would not simply be a girl forever, though a weird one, if I had kept believing that trans people were the way the talk freak shows presented them. I believe now that I would find my way to being a trans man somehow. It would have taken longer, and I would not have known there were so many options, but I have come to believe now that this was unavoidable. How it would have looked if I’d lived in the same geography without the information I had access to, I don’t know.
Schala said,
December 21, 2011 at 12:48 am
My opinion over time has changed, partly out of being more confident, partly out of caring less and becoming accustomed to being seen as cis by people.
I’m not beyond having occasional doubts, but it just wouldn’t mean anything to me, at least regarding my being trans. My father talks to me as if I was my old legal name behind my back? Just makes me not want to see him, same as before.
And if someone I don’t care about (a stranger) stumbles on pronouns, I’m likely to laugh it off inwardly rather than be upset (it rarely happens in person). I’m making them confused because they can’t be bothered to ask. It’s fun in a way. I can laugh it off, because it’s relatively rare. If it happened often, I would probably be very upset.
southcarolinaboy said,
December 25, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Sorry your dad is still using the old name behind your back.
It is comforting to know that the further you get into transition, the harder it is for those doubts to pull at you.
I don’t know why it’s such a big deal for people to ask if they don’t know, but it is. And since most don’t know respectful ways to ask, maybe it’s better sometimes that they don’t….