[I never even heard the term 'cisgender' until I started following Gendermom's blog. I'm pretty sure the term was coined by doctors/therapists to communicate with their transgender clients, to distinguish between folks who align with their gender and those who are afflicted by their gender.
I thought the "cis" stood for something--"cool in skin" perhaps.
But no, it's just a dumb word that somehow leaked past enclosed doctor/patient circles. It has now permeated our homes and high school hallways and Facebook pages like a unicorn fart.
I absolutely believe that people who *are* aligned with their gender should be allowed to choose their own label.]
FRIENDS,
I write this blog in response to an essay titled The Sacred Androgen*, published in the Antioch Review earlier this year by one Daniel Harris.
The only thing Harris and I might agree on is how stupid the word "cisgender" is. Otherwise I found his essay pretty disturbing and lacking in focus, fact, or tact.
He makes the statement that he supports peoples' decisions to be or become whatever they choose. But in the same paragraph states that he sees the "transgender phenomenon" as a "mass delusion."
This is a public opinion that I, as a closeted transgender person for almost 4 decades, have always feared facing. I know I was deemed delusional when I told my mom at age 3 that I was a boy and I would not be putting on any dresses or behaving like a sugar-frosted princess.
Ohhhh, I was so delusional in 1973. I was shamed and punished and sent to psychiatrists who forced dolls into my arms. I was forced into dresses and made to smile in photographs when I really wanted to scream "I am not a fucking girl!!!"
Being seen as delusional is something I have fought against in my personal life, and now that Transgender is everywhere, I feel like I must fight on behalf of all transgender people.
But hey!!! I can see why Mr. Harris might be critical of this neo-exodus of OUT, LOUD, PROUD trans people making demands (gasp!) about pronouns & bathrooms. I am still shaking in my boots about revealing myself as trans. I am trying to be as confident and positive about it as possible, because that is the tone the "trans community" has asked me to use re: "my journey."
The media practically demands that we ALL embrace trans-ness. How brave we are! How happy we all must be for the person who has finally made this "decision" to become his/herself! Get on board or risk being on the wrong side of history!
And while I heave a sigh of relief that I am at last allowed to speak the words "I am transgender" I am not really feeling the "OUT & PROUD." I still carry a lot of guilt and shame; I still feel like I don't deserve to be the boy/man I always felt I was because my soul is covered in female body parts.
I still struggle to find the exact words to describe the transgender predicament. Because, people, what is missing from the public discourse on transgender visibility & civil rights is---
the sad stuff!! The acute mental agony of having to exist in a body that defines you as something you are not. The fact that this mental agony is strong enough to make one harm one's self and possibly others. That it is strong enough to cause permanent mental illness if not treated properly.
I'm not exactly sure who is responsible for this current slant in the media, but I feel a mix of triumph and hesitation.
I don't feel entitled to demand people suddenly use masculine pronouns when talking to/about me. Would I love for that to happen immediately, overnight? Sure. But do I realize that I still look like "she" and that my friends of 20+ years will have a tough time adjusting to the New Me? Sure.
One thing Mr. Harris really got wrong in his essay is the pathological understanding of gender dysphoria. He speaks of transitioning more as a "decision" or a trend. He writes about children "starting hormone treatment as young as age 4" and parents who pressure children to transition at the first sign of effeminate or tomboyish leanings.
I call BULLSHIT on that. No one starts hormone treatment at 4 years old. Why would they? Puberty starts at 10 or 12. At that age, MAYBE children will begin hormone blockers, and at 16 they may begin hormone therapy.
I have been following Gendermom's blog (which Mr. Harris uses as a source for his claims that mothers are pushing their children to be trans) since 2013. Gendermom's daughter was 5 then; she is now 8. This woman is not "forcing" anything on her daughter. She is a mother who is carefully, painstakingly navigating the uncharted waters of raising a severely dysphoric child as the gender she identifies with--female. The child is NOT on hormone blockers yet.
Mr. Harris cited one single blog post & then cried "parental enabling!"
Another disturbing twist in this essay is Mr. Harris's assessment that trans women are self-loathing gay men who just want to be heterosexuals. While this may be true of a small percentage of trans women, particularly those who exist within the drag culture (where Harris himself spent some time), I'm going to have to call bullshit on this too.
Trans women and drag queens are not synonymous. Does this really need to be explained again? Not all trans women are models of the "dystopian pre-feminist temptress or gold-digger" as Harris describes. I might suggest he follow Jennifer Finney Boylan on Facebook and learn a thing or two about educated, feminist, self-supporting trans women.
Harris also cites (improperly) a study done at the University of Toronto that claims a large percentage of effeminate boys who chose to live as girls for awhile eventually came to their senses and returned to living as males.
More bullshit. While many people do experiment with gender, especially at the adolescent, college-y age, a truly gender dysphoric child does not "change his or her mind" about his/her identity.
I never did. Even in the years I was trying, trying, trying so damn hard to "accept" being female, to take the body I was given and do the very best with it, to be thankful for my health and physical abilities despite my femaleness--even in that time I was bursting at the seams with gender dysphoria.**
And that gender dysphoria played out in many demonic forms throughout my life even as I tried desperately to keep it hidden. I had ANGER*** issues that were at least "unbecoming & unfeminine," at most dangerous and incendiary. I was a raging alcoholic for many years. I sliced my flesh up because I could barely tolerate looking at it. I was Baker Acted at 18 for self mutilation. And when I was 19 I drank Drano and spent 2 weeks in the hospital + an additional week in the mental hospital.
All because I could not simply go to a doctor and say Hey listen, I have a really bad case of gender dysphoria, can you give me a shot?
All because I couldn't go to my mother and say Hey listen, I need you to understand this about me…
 |
| Me at age 2. With my anger management pal, Huckleberry Hound |
There was no understanding or accepting that the gender your genes & chromosomes churned out was not the correct one. It was a monstrous burden & it was up to me to keep it hidden, secret, and unspoken. Better to be an angry alcoholic psychopathic bitch than be a man trapped in a woman's body.
One thing I really want people to understand -- and I'm talkin' to you Mr. Daniel Harris --is that gender dysphoria is NOT this casual, frivolous thing the media has been painting for you. It is not just about pronouns or genitalia. It is life threatening. It is NOT a first world problem.
I'm willing to bet that there are five or ten Syrian refugees who have gender dysphoria. And that gender dysphoria does not go away just because "oh, something much worse has happened--I've been bombed out of my home & my country, so who cares about gender anymore?" No. They have been bombed out of their homes & countries AND they still have gender dysphoria. That's how it works, folks. The gender dysphoria is ALWAYS there, sitting like a cherry on top of whatever else comes out of life's soda fountain.
When I officially came out as trans last year, I felt I was up to the task of calmly educating the public about the whole transgender experience. I really want for the world to understand this. But all I have is my own story to tell.
And I have hesitated telling my own story to this younger generation of trans kids, not just because they are young & cute & I want them to be happy & protected from all the things I had to go through, but because I know if I tell my story I am going to OFFEND someone.
My story will definitely offend feminists, and possibly women in general, including trans women, because I describe my femaleness as a deformity.
I will seem "ableist" if I tell my story, because I describe my femaleness as an amputation.
I may seem too white & privileged because I am able to get the medical care I need. Trans people of color are often so marginalized & living in such poverty that they have no option to medically transition.
But I also feel the need to tell my TRUTH. It may not be the sanitized OUT & PROUD narrative we've all been asked to tell. But I'm done hiding yet more things about "my journey" because they don't conform to the media's slant. Or because I don't use the current terminology to describe things that happened to me in the 1970's or 80s.
Gender dysphoria is not some glamorous game of dress-up. Instagram & Tumblr may make it look that way, but you know what the memes say-- "A picture hides a thousand lies."
If you want to know how debilitating gender dysphoria can be--ask my mother. Ask my husband. Ask the loved ones of other transgender people.
Well…I'm tired & don't know if i've hit on all the facets of transgender/dysphoria because there are so goddamn many, but hopefully this all made sense, and maybe Daniel Harris will Google his name & stumble upon this and find answers to some of the questions he posed in his article. He is apparently a gay man who struggles with traces of his own self-loathing; I draw the conclusion that he grew up around the same time I did.
Daniel, my friend, people don't resort to surgeries, needles, scrutiny from the medical community and ridicule from the public because they are delusional--they do it because they'd rather die than live another minute in the wrong body.
FOOTNOTES--
[HEY!!!!!!! I don't know any other trans guys who, like me, are married to a male partner. Are there any gay trans guys in the 941 area code??? Hit me up, GTGs. I'm lonely in my demographic here.]
*Did he mean Androgyne? Androgen is just a male hormone. But maybe that IS what he was referring to as sacred? Who knows?
**Gender is everywhere in our society. Try being gender neutral for a day. It won't happen, even if you force the issue. Gender is something even bigger than a body part or a biological fact. It is like God, an invisible yet ubiquitous force that controls so much of our lives we can't conceive of it unless we break it into bits & parts of our physical beings.
***ANGER is enough of a reason to seek help for anything. When you are humiliated by your gender (or race or size or shape) it is easy to become very ANGRY. It always made me so damn sad to be so angry. I didn't want to be angry. I have since learned to manage my anger but I still do not own a firearm, or drive a motor vehicle, or spend too much time out & about among people.
(I'm happy to say though, all of this has been improving since starting T -- I do drive a little bit now, and have been spending more time out of my house.)
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