Cis people sometimes demand #trans people rigourously define what "gender" means and explain what drives us to embody a gender other than the one assigned to us at birth. If we can't do that, they say, how can they believe us?
But trans people shouldn't have to be philosophers and psychologists all wrapped up into one to have our experiences believed. 1/
Truth is I don't know. Gender seems a complicated, vague concept to me, and I don't know why I feel the need to be a woman. It wasn't intentional. I never experienced any great internal revelation or certainty.
Nonetheless, evidentially, I am happier and more well-balanced as a woman. Even despite the transphobia I experience.
2/
I don't generally "feel like a woman". I feel like me.
But, like, do you understand that for decades before I transitioned I was fantasising about, pining for, the idea of having a female body, of being recognised as a woman, going thru life as one?
I tried to stoically accept that I was a man, I tried to embrace non-traditional masculinity, I tried everything to make this need go away. It didn't.
So I have to conclude, this is something real.
3/
And then, having run out of other options, I finally tried the things I had ruled out previously as too scary, the things that would bring judgment down on me.
I tried transition. Tho at the time I hadn't even realised myself as a woman.
I was shit scared. I did it anyway.
4/
I tried painting my nails. It brought me happiness. I tried feminine accessories. They brought comfort. I tried shaving my body hair. It felt calming.
I started dressing in femme clothes, around the house. It felt exciting at first, then just... right.
And then I went on hormones. And everything accelerated. My body itself began to feel like a home, like a friend. I hadn't realised how much or how long I had been suffering, because it had just felt normal.
5/
This is fact: transitioning to be more female in body, more feminine in presentation, and taking on a female-coded social role, made me feel vastly better in myself.
I know this is true of me, and many like me. And the experiences of transmasculine people in the other direction inform me that it's not as simple as womanhood just being better for everyone. It was something about me.
6/
That's it. That's what I've got. Just my experience.
No grand theory that explains everything, no intellectual justification. I can't explain this any more than you can.
But my experience is real. And I cannot stand by if you're going to "debate" the reality of it.
I exist. I'm right here. Look at me.
Fin/
i am bookmarking this thread. This is precisely on target. Very well said!
@Tattie Thanks! I appreciate you sharing this. It's lovely. Congrats on finding ways to feel like you.
I also think it's wild that cis people are expecting you to explain gender to them. My experience asking cis people to explain this whole gender thing is that either they flop around like a fish on a riverbank or they fall back on PLUTO IS A PLANET repetition of too-simple things that they learned when they were 7 and haven't thought about since.
@Tattie
A few people already said similar, but plenty of social sciences have already done all that work of defining gender so we shouldn't have to.
It's not that transphobes can't find the information, it's that they don't care to listen to it anyway because it doesn't validate their own hateful beliefs.
It'd also help if they stopped burning our studies, books, and science centers down then pretending it's a new idea to be a transgender person.
After all this, after all your journey, your questions, your answers... Why should I as some random cis person tell you who you are?? You're clearly the expert on yourself, how much audacity would I need to conjure??
Bonus fun fact: even at the beginning of their journey, people are more the expert on themselves than we can ever be. Accept their judgement!
@Tattie I'm a cis guy. I've always been in favor of trans rights since I learned trans people were a thing, but I did spend a number of years not really getting why someone would be trans.
Then one day I just had the thought, "What if I woke up tomorrow with a female body?" And after the obvious jokes that immediately came to mind, I actually thought about being stuck in the wrong body, unable to get back, and I had to stop because I almost gave myself a panic attack.
I'm an on-again-off-again recreational author, so I frequently find myself in unusual thought experiments. Which is to say, I hadn't intended to have a moment of profound empathy for trans people, but as soon as I calmed down I thought, Oh, this must be how a lot of trans people feel all time.
All of that to say: I see you. It's real. I think most cis people, if they put just a few minutes into the activity, would be forced to admit that if they were suddenly body swapped, they'd be desperate to get back to their correct body. Most cis people just never seriously confront the thought.
@Azuaron do you know? You're the first cis person I've spoken to willing to seriously entertain this thought experiment.
Most cis men make jokes about boobs, and most cis women focus on the privilege aspect. But almost everyone seems to falter at the deep imaginative act of their body being wrong for them.
I'm really glad you commented, because it's heartening to know that this sort of empathy is in fact possible— and that it plays out exactly as I would imagine, panic and all.
Thank you.
@Tattie @Azuaron He's not the only one. Another occasional author here, and another who has pondered waking up as/being polymorphed into a different body. Talking to friends (I also do TTRPG) I hear that the depth of dysmorphia people would experience would vary, but it is real body horror stuff.
Also useful for understanding and building empathy now I have a non-binary child.
Thank you for putting it so well. :-)
@Tattie Yeah, that doesn't entirely surprise me. The problem of the privileged is that they're very rarely confronted with this kind of thing--hell, as I said, I stumbled into it accidentally.
But, when I'm not being too nihilistic for my own good, it gives me a bit of hope. I am, generally, a somewhat unusual person, but I don't think I'm particularly "special" or "good" in this regard, and that means other people could get there.
I feel like I could speed run most guys. Not that I could necessarily turn guys all the way around, but, so much of man culture is, "Look how not-feminine I am! I am not weak and feminine!" (Unhealthy, yes, wrong in so many ways, yes, but that's what it is.) I could be aggressive enough walking them through the scenario that we'd quickly get past, "Haha, boobs," to, "Oh no, my body's wrong and I'm not myself," just by leaning on their existing fears.
@Azuaron @Tattie "same self, différent body" is a trope in #sciencefiction . Have you read "Call me Joe"? by Poul Anderson (1957!).
In sci-fi that can go in different way. In Anderson's story, having an alien body suits the protagonist just fine. Either way, if you read a lot of it you are almost bound to come across though thought experiments like yours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life?wprov=sfla1
@alberto_cottica @Tattie But that's just it, isn't it? I didn't try to imagine what it would be like to be a woman, and I think that's the wrong imagining for the purposes of this conversation.
I imagined what it would be like if I, suddenly and inexplicably, woke up in a female body. I was not a woman, and did not imagine myself as such. I didn't even "imagine myself as trans". I imagined what would happen if I just woke up in a female body, and the need to transition arose out of that situation all on its own.
This is so beautiful, so good, and so true.
I'm also a CIS man, and I was on hormone therapy as part of cancer treatment. I got meds that reduced my natural testosterone to close to zero. Had to get radiation in order not to develop breasts at 55 yo. My mental state changed considerably, enhancing all the traits generally associated as female. Physically, I went through menopause - hot flashes, joint pains, the works. A most interesting experience. After the treatment ended, I drifted back as my own hormones picked up again and had many experiences I recognized from puberty.
All this to say that I certainly can't explain this either, but I know from experience that gender is fluid. I lived it, if only for a very short time. Being stuck at the wrong end of that spectrum must be super hard, and I'm happy to hear you seem to have found your way "home" now.
@Tattie when I was 18 I read the Dune books. The face dancers led me to think seriously about how it would feel to have a female body instead of a male one.
I thought it would be awesome to be able to change my body type. I was vaguely aware of trans people, but had no interest in being a woman. I just wanted to be able to have a female body sometimes.
Thirty years later, I realised I'm non-binary. It would have saved me a lot of grief if I'd realised as a teenager, but the concept was unheard of (at least in my world) in the late 1980s.
All of which is to agree with you, and add that representation is important.
Thank you for expressing this, it describes (more clearly than I could) a lot of my own experiences..
I'm happier as a girl and the evidence suggests it has to do with my brain but that's all I can conclusively say
@burnoutqueen @Tattie “It has to do with the brain” is the only thing I could remember after listening to Robert Sapolsky talk about the topic
I love that talk.
Yep, funny that 😅
I'm CIS and have never been able to explain why I am CIS, why I am happy with my gender matching my biological sex. I just am. And I don't believe any CIS person really could. So why on earth should any trans person be expected to?
I knew that, so don't know why I capitalise it 🤔 Thanks for the reminder :)
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