[Blog/Commentary] [USA] The Mutability of Transness

[Stephanie Stevens]

Dyssonance, USA


May 5th, 2012 by Dyssonance

The Mutability of Transness


It was slightly more than a couple years ago that I started avoiding
the use of the phrase “gender identity dysphoria” and its concomitant
parallels. I did this for a simple reason: there is no objective
evidence that there is such a thing, despite social considerations for
its presence. And those social considerations only became prevalent
when people who did not understand transness and are not trans
decided that since it was different enough from the general
commonality of other people to be distinct, they would make it an
illness.

An illness is, in our culture (and, for reference, again, that
generally means the US culture) something that needs to be corrected.
An illness is something which is wrong with a person, a flaw, a
problem like a red and violet mark of difference, of failure to be, of
such things as this. An illness is like a cold, or broken limb,
impermanent, temporary, remedied through the intervention of persons
in positions of social power.

To clarify the above in brief, and then get to details after the jump,
let me say it this way: “gender identity dysphoria” and the model
around it is a transphobic concept that furthers internalized shame
and does harm to the community.

This creation of an illness is not a trans centric concept. It
postulates, fundamentally, a variance that is undesired in the greater
population, and, in this case, this variance is considered harmful in
and of itself. In my seeking to work and promote a trans centric
understanding of things, this fell under my sights that long ago time
and I did my usual thing of sitting on a rock like stool and assuming
a famous pose of an elbow on a leg, head resting on a fist, and
peering forward into the vagaries of that which lies behind my eyes.

In other words, I sat and thought about it. Thunk on it, in the vernacular.

This is not as easy as it sounds, I will point out. When I think
about things, I generally try to think about them from multiple
perspectives, and with a mind to all the other stuff that I have
thought about, in order to make it all work together, so I don’t
wander around thinking of an essentialist concept while arguing for a
non essentialist ideal in a terribly self contradictory way.

Ok, yeah, big ideas and complicated, convoluted things, but eh. It is
my skull, after all, and I can abuse it in a fashion that pleases me.

It was shortly after I began this process that I became aware of the
insidious nature of this problem. One sees, for example, many efforts
dedicated to the “depathologization” of transness, but instead of
saying transness, they say the very thing that they are seeking to
end. Kelley Winters, who’s work towards changing substantive aspects
about the listing, is well aware of this.

I am aware that systemically, there are issues that require a massive
restructuring of our present health care system, and I am not talking
about the stuff that goes on in politics. I refer primarily to
tmethods by which healthcare is documented and recorded and broken
down into discrete units for the purpose of arranging risk and profit
in a way that substantially benefits shareholders.

It is because of this that I oppose delisting — I favor instead
reclassification to make transness something akin to the horrifically
controlled and subjegated concept of pregnancy as an illness that
isn’t really an illness, just something that *absolutely, positively,
must involve medical intervention*.

Yeah, I went there. Call it a major problem for me since I strongly
feel that the legal requirement of sterility to transition is onerous
and directly parallel due to both correlation and causation to the
fight over personal bodily autonomy. That, however, is a subject for
another post one day.

I do not oppose delisting on the basis of it being wrong, I oppose it
on the basis of ”hey, we better be careful how we go about doing this
because the population is economically challenged and doing so
unwisely will kill people, defeating the whole point of this”.
Indeed, I rather obviously am aware that the practice of assigning a
code that defines trans individuals as flawed is negative, ciscentric
(it postulates cis lives as better than trans lives, and it adds a
layer of stigma to transness), and harmful to the population both
specific and wide.

Strategy and why, then, matter more to me that the much more nebulous
idea, because I am concerned not as much with the theoretical
implications, but with the practical applications. This informs many
of my actions and efforts, but those, in turn, are informed by the
theoretical and evidenced ideations around the whole topic. (That is,
I test theory by putting it to practical use, in a daily life
setting).

If there is something wrong with transness, in and of itself, then it
is something that is wrong about trans people — and this, I will note,
is the fundamental issue of shame, of self recrimination, of stigma,
and of harm both external and internal. As I assert there is nothing
wrong with transness — it is a part of normal and normative human
variation, and it is not bad, or flawed or something wrong — for me to
assert that transnessitself is some sort of medical problem would be
hypocritical and counter productive.

It would, in the most literal sense, be a form of cognitive
dyssonance, since the two concepts are oppositional to each other
unless one exists strictly in an essentialist sphere that postulates
the flesh rules the whole, as opposed to the self rules the whole.

And this is all raised by the recent revelations on a couple of
Facebook pages where trans persons spoke about things like passing and
how once they have their surgeries, they are no longer trans.

Both assertions, in the end, are transphobic. Worse, both assertions
are based in the internalized shame and stigma that is applied to
trans people throughout their lives, and in both cases the use of such
is to indicate that they seek to avoid transness as a thing, and that
transness is something wrong with one.

One writer harped about how “unpassable” people are really doing this
to themselves, all they have to do is spend a shitload of money on
surgeries and work on their voice and all the rest. That particular
commenter is far and away the more obviously transphobic of the two
distinct individuals. They are also significantly idiotic, since the
response was to a change in profile picture to a subjectively pretty
woman in a bikini, and they immediately thought that it was reflective
of the individual. They apparently don’t know enough about the the
person, and, as a result, I seriously doubt they will read this
article because that would require them to do something more than be
the vapid servant of an oppressive and harmful system.

For some folks, that is where they are most suited. Thinking is a
challenge for them, made all the more difficult since they would have
to actually improve their ability to understand things. It seriously
bothers me. Then again, I am admittedly prejudiced against stupid
fuckwits, so That’s a cross I shall bear.

The other one, however, was offended by the idea that transness is
immutable. That their surgery will “fix” or “cure” this “problem” —
an idea and mindset that requires that they see transness as something
wrong about them. If you see transness as something wrong about
yourself, you see it as something wrong about other people who are
trans. Seeing it as somethign that is wrong about you but not about
others, when the thing you see is wrong is the thing you have in
common with them, is, itself, an indictment of the thing — in this
case, transness, which is what makes a person trans.

Now, granted, we live in a world where people will do a great deal to
not be trans in any way. That, in and of itself, is anxiety and
aversion, so the behavior is fundamentally transphobic. I am not so
unrealistic in my worldview as to expect people to want to be trans
right now, or even in the foreseeable future, but in practical terms,
that doesn’t mean it isn’t transphobic, just that it is a culturally
acceptable form of transphobia and socially sanctioned oppression at
present.

Think about that for a moment. Seriously. Then recall my post here
about What is Trans? and the general definition of such.

The dichotomy that exists, then, in this situation where these two
examples are oppositional in outlook to my own outlook, is an example
of the mutability of Transness. Although I speak about hypocrisy and
cogntive dissonance above, the sad truth is that most trans people —
and I daresay the overwhelming majority — really do think like that.

This mutability is based in the shame and stigma associated with being
trans in a world that is hostile to transness. So we develop, over
the years, a desire to find a way to cease being trans, to end our
transness, because we are told that is a bad thing and often that
telling us such digs down inside us and we think, often only in our
private thoughts and in a way that we would never declare openly and
outloud, that there is something wrong with us.

The problem, though, is that there is not something wrong with us. In
general, I meet the standards of pretty much any group that claims
some sort of essentialist and culturally approved way of escaping
transness. I have the privilege of meeting people’s general
expectations of how a woman is supposed to look and behave and dress
and all the rest. The only thing they can, typically speaking, hold
against me is that I disagree with them on fundamental things (notably
that there is anything wrong with being trans, and that their words
harm other trans people, and that transness is considerably bigger
than their asinine attempts at reduction based on projection).

When I talk about ridding one’s self of shame, this is the deepest,
most substantially difficult part of that internalized transphobia to
rid one’s self of, because the system by which we generally seek to
live authentically as ourselves reinforces and requires us to adhere
to this rigid and inflexible assertion that there is something wrong
with us.

Surgery does not “fix” anything that is wrong. It makes things
possible that were not possible before in the effort for us to live
authentically. The kind of surgery doesn’t matter — FFS, Breast augs
or removals, the various assorted genital surgeries. That isn’t
“fixing” something wrong, that’s creating an opportunity, that’s
asserting a sense of self and ownership over one’s own body — that is
exercising your will to decide what you are going to do about your
body. Personally, bodily autonomy is a pretty important right to me.

Your opinion of whether or not that is a right may vary. If it is
inside me, or a part of me, and it will take someone else to make it
not a part of me, then by fucking all that is holy, I will be the one
who determines what I do about it, and those who think otherwise can
go fuck themselves and/or experience a bit of my history of violent
metaphor. And, given my temerity and personality, I may even forget
about the metaphor part (as those opposing bodily autonomy currently
in our culture readily do on a constant basis).

The community does not own my flesh.

It would not be unreasonable to say that I assert that Transness in
inherent in a being. That it is a state of existence, in and of
itself, and that I assert it is immutable and unchanging.

And I have taken that position, but here’s the problem with looking at
it that way: it is still an essentialist view. It still has, within
it, the notion that existence is tied wholly to a physiological aspect
of one’s being. Now, there is indeed good evidence that shows this is
precisely the case. Objectively and factually, then, I would be an
idiot to deny the use of such things in an essentialist argument.
Like say, for example, in front of the courts where in law
immutability often plays an important role (despite the use of mutable
characteristics for the same thing).

I do say that transition is a choice, really — but it is a Hobson’s
choice to me, because my expereince is pretty basic, in that for me,
personally, it was transition or end this fucked up thing I was
calling a life. That I fucked it up is relevant, but I didn’t think
about that at the time. THe reason I fucked it up was directly due to
the fact that I spent a lot of time allowing my internalized
transphobia stop me from transitioning and that pissed me off even if
I couldn’t figure out why.

And I couldn’t figure out why because I was ashamed. I felt there was
something wrong with me. Even my very first statement to another
person in the world on this subject posited that there was something
wrong with me, although it wasn’t immediately visible from the
language I used. I am aware of it.

My first action to do something about this thing that was wrong with
me was to say I didn’t think I could do this if I couldn’t pass or
couldn’t go stealth. Again, both reflections of my internalized
transphobia, my deeply felt shame and pure anxiety and aversion to the
whole thing. My first entry into a support group was heavily laced
with anxiety and aversion.

I am not unique in that, although often people will take a while
before they are willing to speak about that openly, because the shame
of being shameful kicks in, and then tere are also aspects of guilt
about it as we move forward and begin to see the ways in which we
contribute or contributed to our own oppression.

This makes approaching this subject challenging, and creates high
levels of anger, denial, evasion, avoidance, and similar self
defensive reactions in people when the subject is broached. Yet it is
critical that trans folk stop to look into themselves and end this
idea that being trans is bad, within themselves, for until they do,
there will be no greater social change.

It won’t matter how many laws are changed, or how many policies are
corrected — the harm that is done daily will continue to exist, and it
is this harm tat we must seek to end. We have to teach the wider
world that we are not “wrong”, and the best way to do that is not just
to say it, but to know it, to let the strength of one’s conviction
carry you forward.

It makes us immune to the attacks of people who use that shame of our
existence to deny others the rights, as well as ourselves. The recent
commercials in Alaska that so successfully killed an equal rights
effort are not the tip of an iceberg, they are the sign of a growing
shift that is going to put us front and center, and they know it is
successful because we say the very things they used visual cues
ourselves, and we sek to hide so that we aren’t the one’s who are like
those in the commercials.

THere was no massive effort of trans people to remove those ads like
there was for the DJ’s that attacked trans kids. We allow such things
to happen because we are, in fact, ashamed of our own existence as a
community, and that has to stop. We will never end the bathroom
debate until we tackle the issue internally, and prove its failures
not on the logical, reasonable grounds we tend to use, but on the
emotional and practical grounds as as long as our emotions are based
in a sense of wrongness, it will dogwhistle itself in to the minds of
those around us.

It cannot just be our “leaders” who do this. All too often they have
the same sense of shame and wrongness themselves. We talk about
“wanting to be normal” instead of being normal. And that disconnect
is what places us into a bind that slows our efforts and undermines
our work and our lives and makes for a bunch of people who fight
against the very thing they help to create.

The mutability of Transness is part of the Master’s tools.

Time to stop using it.


http://www.dyssonance.com/?p=11459