What is it to be a T ?
In one of the comments in a previous workshop, Peter wrote:
But I can't 'get' being transexual. Mind you, I will defend your right to be so, and would, had I the power, allow you and everyone else, the right to marry whomever they wished (as long as the other person wished) and have whatever treatments, surgeries they wished, and wear whatever clothes they wish.
But what is it to be T ? I don't know. I've been reading along and commenting on all these diaries, and I still don't know. It may not be possible for me to know. But I am willing to try to learn as long as people are willing to try to teach.
I cannot speak for any other human being but myself. I have my observations of myself to rely on. I have my observations of others. I have my own thoughts and beliefs. I have what others have told me and what I have read. The synthesis I make of all this information is my own alone.
You ask a question that is essentially the basis of human philosophy. "Who am I?" The question cannot be separated from, "What am I?" Depending on where I have been along my process, I have had different answers for that. I have used a metaphor of train travel. The train travels the road and different people get on and off at different stops along the way. Sometimes they stay forever where they disembark, sometimes they only visit to try it out, getting back on the train at a later date to continue to see where the road goes. And sometimes they change trains, to follow a different happentrack. I have written something analagous to what I am writing now several times during my travels. I amuse myself at the thought of publishing a book of introductions some day.
The stories I tell are my stories. What I can tell represents my interpretation from where I am now of memories I have of my life then. In some case, there are memories I care not to discuss...or even think about, because they are painful. It was a painful life and not all of the scars have healed. (If I were more industrious, there would be links to essays I have written entitled Pain and Scars).
My childhood is fragmented in my mind, speckled with events clearly relevant and events whose relevance is more obscure. My friends were mostly girls. I hung out with Kathy and Lisa, Carol and Sharon, Lloyce and Teri. Sure, I had other friends, boy friends, because somehow I was made to feel guilty for wanting to play with the girls. I was divided from them often in school, and it hurt when that happened. And I cried. Some of us gain the painful names: "sissy", "cry-baby". We are taught that sensitivity breeds contempt. We withdraw inward a vital part of ourselves. And we learn fear.
I remember one time getting the idea of trying on my mother's clothes. I did. Long story short, I was caught by my mother. My father was downstairs...probably in an alcoholic rage or stupor (his normal state). My mother said what her culture taught her to say, "Straighten up and fly right." I had no words to explain how I felt, because I had never been taught that I existed. But I knew fear. From that day I lived in fear that my mother had told or would tell my father. I withdrew further inward...and into my books. As well I withdrew into my dreams of living my life as a girl. I enjoyed my dreamtime more than my life. "Which one of us is the dreamer?" asked the butterfly/Chuang-Tse.
One day I went into a local drugstore and noticed a men's magazine that contained the shocking story of Christine Jorgenson, the Danish transsexual woman who underwent the first modern sex-change surgery. It took my breathe away. I pride myself on being honest, but I admit now that I stole that magazine. I read that story until the magazine decomposed. I had proof that my dream could happen, but it seemed a false hope, for it would never happen to me. We were poor, and I was supposed to "fly right".
I should mention that I have what is usually called a photographic memory. Having read a page of something, under the right circumstances I can recall the entire page in my mind, pictures and all, knowing where every word is located. It's a handy skill sometimes, like when my knowledge was examined to determine if I had learned facts from the reading I had done. There is a down side though: much of the time I don't know if the words I form are my own, or just something I remember reading from somewhere. Am I creative or merely a playback of a recording?
I mention this because there is a "transsexual narrative," which has existed since Jorgenson's time. In order to get treatment, one had to (and in some cases still has to) learn the narrative, to be able to report it to the therapist and the surgeon when the time comes, fearful that saying the wrong thing will mean that transition and surgery will be denied. Separating real occurrences and emotions from the narrative is sometimes a touchy issue. We get accused of being liars because we use words to describe feelings that we interpret as being similar to the feelings Jorgenson reported having. The really awful thing is that we shouldn't have bothered, it turns out, because Jorgenson lied (according to a common friend). She admitted to my friend that she told the doctors and therapists what they wanted to hear and anything that they needed to hear in order to insure that she would be able to get the surgery.
The fixation about matters hormonal and surgical is part of who we are. How much a part is dependent on the individual. Our mileage may vary. Becoming who we are is a negotiation with a system, the Benjamin Standards of Care. Not all of the people who contributed to the construction of that system have had benign motives. Transsexual people have only recently been allowed to contribute to the discussion of the standards, the discussion of who we are. Maybe someday, say 50 years from now, long after I am deceased, we will have decided what defines the essence of a transsexual person. But not today.
I will, however, be continuing this story in the days ahead, as I remember it and decide how it should be written down. But know that even then, all I can possibly be writing is an introduction. I have not yet even reached my teenage years.
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