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the_fantastic_ms_foxI'm trying to follow Tim's fine advice about coming out: try a bunch of different stuff, see what works for you, find parts of your identity, and then see what you think of queer "norms."
Translasses have the option of presenting as visibly queer lasses. The advantage of this is that onlookers will be more likely to confirm their identity, as they'll write off the genderfucked appearance as some Sapphist side-effect ("enough Indigo girls and you just sprout stubble - it's true - so tell your teenage son to crank up The Watershed"). The disadvantage is that you always look queer.
The big advantage is that if you are a translass who is happy being obviously dykey (::the authour waves::), then this will make you happy. Otherwise it'll make you miserable - although some might find it better than being read as transsexual.
Anyhow, I cut my hair because it was "too long." Today I remembered what "too long" means.
"Too long" means "too feminine and not queer enough." (insufficiently Dykey) [Edit: tomboi-dykey]
"Too long" also means "it frames my face in such a way that it makes me look like a man in a dress." (overly Trans) [edit: transexual]
(note the connections in my head: dykey = good; trans = bad --- mmm?)
[later edit: masculine - good / feminine = bad?]
While I'm trying out things with my appearance, there's this nest of fears and hopes that yards me to one side or the other.
I'm afraid that if I look feminine, I'll look trans. I hate looking trans. I didn't ask to be born into the wrong sex, and I'm MtF because I have little other alternative to get where I want to go. Note the resentment? Part of this is due to the unpleasant experiences that I've had in meeting some other transwomen (in rapid sequence), and these were most of the first times that I'd met transwomen (at least that I'm aware of), so those fears of awkwardness, pariah status, overt social and phisical hostility, detriorating mental health and suicide, have stuck with me I guess. Living in a society that teaches us to hate femininity in men probably has something to do with it too.
I'm also afraid of looking decreasingly feminine and increasingly... butch? Soft butch. Really soft, like squishy.
I'd hardly say that I'm a highly masculine person, but I'd also say that the more I look at queer female presentations, the more I feel drawn towards the masculine. It's comfortable. In fact it may be the first time I've felt comfortable behaving in a masculine fashion - without that grinding spirit-noise that it used to provoke, like a car with worn-through brake pads.
But to an extent, "comfortable" means "safe," and safe means "I want to hold back and turn to something familiar." And maybe some of it means "This will make me less of a man in a dress and more of a tomboi, because the latter form of gender transgression is more acceptable where I come from, and besides, it puts me one step further away from all the broken MtFs I've met."
On the other side. I'm also avoiding moving over to the masculine at all because it means that I'm breaking the norm for MtFs in two frightening ways. It could seriously undermine my attempts to justify to a psychiatric panel why I need the big switch (seriously - that's how getting genital surgery works) and so delay it. And "masculine MtF" it puts me so far outside the range of what most people, even those into queer issues, see as intelligible, and pretty much drops me outside the range of common experience. I mean, what the fuck is a squishy (i.e. really really soft) butch MtF? That's... what the fuck?
It's not as bad as this might make it seem. There is lots of time for experimentation.
It is however weird and new, and there is almost no support or reference for this kind of thing. Hence the long LJ posts, as you might have noticed.
Translasses have the option of presenting as visibly queer lasses. The advantage of this is that onlookers will be more likely to confirm their identity, as they'll write off the genderfucked appearance as some Sapphist side-effect ("enough Indigo girls and you just sprout stubble - it's true - so tell your teenage son to crank up The Watershed"). The disadvantage is that you always look queer.
The big advantage is that if you are a translass who is happy being obviously dykey (::the authour waves::), then this will make you happy. Otherwise it'll make you miserable - although some might find it better than being read as transsexual.
Anyhow, I cut my hair because it was "too long." Today I remembered what "too long" means.
"Too long" means "too feminine and not queer enough." (insufficiently Dykey) [Edit: tomboi-dykey]
"Too long" also means "it frames my face in such a way that it makes me look like a man in a dress." (overly Trans) [edit: transexual]
(note the connections in my head: dykey = good; trans = bad --- mmm?)
[later edit: masculine - good / feminine = bad?]
While I'm trying out things with my appearance, there's this nest of fears and hopes that yards me to one side or the other.
I'm afraid that if I look feminine, I'll look trans. I hate looking trans. I didn't ask to be born into the wrong sex, and I'm MtF because I have little other alternative to get where I want to go. Note the resentment? Part of this is due to the unpleasant experiences that I've had in meeting some other transwomen (in rapid sequence), and these were most of the first times that I'd met transwomen (at least that I'm aware of), so those fears of awkwardness, pariah status, overt social and phisical hostility, detriorating mental health and suicide, have stuck with me I guess. Living in a society that teaches us to hate femininity in men probably has something to do with it too.
I'm also afraid of looking decreasingly feminine and increasingly... butch? Soft butch. Really soft, like squishy.
I'd hardly say that I'm a highly masculine person, but I'd also say that the more I look at queer female presentations, the more I feel drawn towards the masculine. It's comfortable. In fact it may be the first time I've felt comfortable behaving in a masculine fashion - without that grinding spirit-noise that it used to provoke, like a car with worn-through brake pads.
But to an extent, "comfortable" means "safe," and safe means "I want to hold back and turn to something familiar." And maybe some of it means "This will make me less of a man in a dress and more of a tomboi, because the latter form of gender transgression is more acceptable where I come from, and besides, it puts me one step further away from all the broken MtFs I've met."
On the other side. I'm also avoiding moving over to the masculine at all because it means that I'm breaking the norm for MtFs in two frightening ways. It could seriously undermine my attempts to justify to a psychiatric panel why I need the big switch (seriously - that's how getting genital surgery works) and so delay it. And "masculine MtF" it puts me so far outside the range of what most people, even those into queer issues, see as intelligible, and pretty much drops me outside the range of common experience. I mean, what the fuck is a squishy (i.e. really really soft) butch MtF? That's... what the fuck?
It's not as bad as this might make it seem. There is lots of time for experimentation.
It is however weird and new, and there is almost no support or reference for this kind of thing. Hence the long LJ posts, as you might have noticed.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-08 05:26 pm (UTC)This doesn't just apply to MtFs. Anyone, of any class or gender or creed, who grabs a label and says, "I'm an XYZ - therefore I must be/do/talk/walk/dress exactly like an XYZ," isn't looking for an identity; they're looking for a cult. And it shows.
Women who are born and grow up without gender dysphoria tend (once they're through being teenagers) to approach such matters rather automatically: "I think I'll be like this; do such-and-such a thing; talk like so; walk thus; wear these clothes today. Well, yes, of course I'm a woman, why would you bother asking? Because women don't do things this way? Watch me." It's a descriptive attitude towards gender: "women" do whatever women, out in the world, do.
Teenagers and MtFs, however, have something to prove, and this tends to lead them into a prescriptive attitude: "Women do LMNOP; I need to prove I'm a woman now; therefore I must do LMNOP." The big trouble here for transfolk -- apart from the obvious fact that everyone expects this kind of attitude from teenagers, but very few transfolk actually transition that young -- is that no other group spends a whole lifetime questioning their gender. It feels normal. Doing whatever the other boys do because otherwise everyone will realize you're a girl? I bet there are a lot of cisgirls who've tried it for a week, but keeping it up for twelve years is kind of a trans-unique experience. By the time transition happens, doing whatever the other women do isn't a pure expression of adolescent angst, but a lifelong habit which needs conscious breaking.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-08 06:40 pm (UTC)I just think it's sad that many MtFs are denied during transition and even afterwards by social/psychiatric/emotional forces the same right that I've been blessed with, to question what "female" and "woman" are and decide what they mean for me without having to prove that they apply to me - and it's really wonderful to see those who do have that courage. All women - everybody, in fact - should be able to do so, I think.