Transgender…but Seriously, to Hell with Boxes
March 31st marked Transgender Day of Visibility but I’m still angry because Blake Brockington really seemed to have his shit together. He was a young trans man and bright and an advocate, and he took his life last week. He hasn’t trended like Leelah Alcorn because it wasn’t as sensational and he’s black, but at 18 years old he seemed to possess a kind of self-assurance and strength of identity that, straight or gay, trans or cis, we all strive to achieve. And it wasn’t enough to save him.
To say suicidal behavior is an epidemic in the transgender community is to put it mildly. About 4.6% of the general US population will attempt suicide at some point in their lives, for trans men and women and other gender non-conformers that number is 41%. (This according to the Williams Institute’s excellent, comprehensive 2014 survey.) There’s a marginally increased likelihood for people of color, the poor and less educated, and especially those who have experienced abuse or been rejected by their families/friends/workplace…but generally the numbers are sky-high regardless. In Leelah Alcorn’s suicide note she asked us to tackle this epidemic by “fixing society” — so, as a trans woman of color, I have a few ideas.
YES, it is monumentally screwed up how American and global culture at large use gender roles and sexuality to polarize, isolate, diminish, and oppress. But fundamentally, this epidemic of suicide is an epidemic of how the trans community feels about itself. It’s time to get our heads right.
The Problem with “Pretty”
Before anything, YOU as an individual have to make and live the decision that no one sets expectations for YOUR life aside from you. A close friend of Leelah’s said she would fall into depression because she thought she’d never be a “pretty” enough woman. But ask yourself, do you need to be the most drop dead gorgeous woman or man to ever grace the cover of Vogue (or CANDY speaking of unattainable binary gender representation!), or do you just need to BE a woman or a man — flawed and unique and wonderful as all women and men are and have the potential to be?
The pressure to be “pretty” is the same pressure all women in our society feel everyday, where for tens of centuries and across nearly every culture the value of a woman has been determined by her appearance. As trans women, we’re hyper aware of this pressure because we feel like we have so much further to go to achieve that (imaginary, constructed, false) ideal. To my thinking, that bestows a choice either of constant existential panic — wherein we’re nitpicky, self-critical, and yes, superficial — or of turning that awareness to our advantage, where our being hyper aware of that pressure means we’re hyper aware of the ways in which that pressure has been wielded for thousands of years to oppress women. In short, we can be hyper feminists. We are no longer powerless, we are fighters in the cause.
The Cosmic Screw-Up
One of the most pernicious ways that trans people tend to self-identify is as “being born in the wrong body”. For me, this sentiment is toxic and inaccurate. (And yet it, and its Jerry Springer-inspired brethren, “a man trapped in a woman’s body” and “a woman trapped in a man’s body”, are used again and again.) As if, by some cosmic screw-up, God meant to deliver your soul into the kid two doors down the maternity ward. News flash, lovely readers, you are your body. And to go further, there is no soul. But that seems controversial so let me rephrase: the perceived divide between an internal and an external self is just an illusion created by consciousness, which itself is just the result of all your body’s systems firing together in marvelous harmonic cacophony. The mind and the body are one and the same. (But isn’t that fact, in itself, kind of miraculous, kind of Godly?)
What really happens is that some bodies get their gender switch flipped “wrong”. (Current science cites hormonal levels in utero as a probable culprit.) And suddenly you’re wide-eyed out into our fiercely gendered world, looking for behavioral and social cues from the women around you despite the penis between your legs. (Her penis.) In indigenous American cultures we were called “two-spirits”, and often had an elevated position in tribal structure. (Not to turn this into a “Native Americans were right all along” narrative, but — local organic farming, communion with as opposed to dominion over nature — come on, they totally were.) When I rediscovered the term two-spirit it was like an epiphany. It felt obvious. A simple but profound verbal assertion that a dual or counter gender identification does not necessitate that one or the other set of gender characteristics (whether biological, behavioral, or emotional) be squashed from existence.
But I worry that most trans people — and the general narrative of the transgender community — see our bodies as mistakes that should be corrected. That’s a lot of pressure; that’s starting each and every one of us out on very shaky footing. What if, instead, the narrative said, “We are remarkable for having a gender identity that runs counter to our birth biology.” “We are special.” “We have a unique insight into how the world works because of this duality that we live everyday.”
Every Shade of Grey / The South Gets One Right
The truth is it’s a duality that no amount of state-of-the-art invasive medical effort can make disappear, and each trans person needs to make the choice of what degree of that effort they need in order to be at peace with themselves. But to be very clear, these procedures are not a mandatory part of a trans identity. As the existence of concepts like two-spirits globally across cultures evidences, people have been living with something like gender dysphoria for thousands of years. These “corrective” treatments (ugh, another phrase that makes me cringe) have been around for a few decades. (I may not believe in a soul, but I still believe that there’s something eternal in our biologically-fabricated consciousness, and whatever that is gives me the power to rise above the trends of this hot minute.) I am a proud non-op trans woman. (As opposed to pre-op or post-op. Again, her penis.) TMI, I know, but I disclose it here only because too few people know that “non-op” is even a thing, and it’s time to expand how we characterize ourselves and others. I do not state it to advocate for any one path. We may identify as trans men or women, trans masculine or feminine, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, bigender, or agender (or any of the 42 facebook categories I missed), but no person’s journey or mode of expression is, can, or should be the same.
That flipped switch I mentioned? It’s a neat metaphor but really it’s a dial. If we’re talking about relative hormone levels affecting brain chemistry, then by definition every shade of grey on the gender spectrum will be hit in terms of emotional and psychological identification. From the polar extremes to dead center. It’s an incredibly nuanced spectrum, and yet everyday we’re asked to step into some box or another. And often, in search of acceptance, we do.
Even the higher number of MTF versus FTM trans persons has everything to do with acceptance. As a female expressing “male” traits, one can find acceptance in the lesbian community or even in straight society as a tomboy. That same acceptance simply does not exist for males manifesting femininity. (Enough has been written about the masculinizing bullying boys go through; about how phrases like “man up” and “ballsy” further entrench patriarchy. Hell, even California’s 2nd person plural of “you guys” — which we’re forced to use even in a room of 200 women and 1 man — has become the American standard. I prefer “y’all”. Hey, the south got this one right…) Male femininity is such a taboo because, historically speaking, there’s been little advantage to being a woman. But ironically, if you’re on the MTF spectrum, the only way to reach a place of acceptance is to head to that opposite end of the binary. There is no middle ground; it’s an all or nothing proposition. For many trans persons, it’s yet another (needless) pressure that compels extreme action.
A Means to an End
If we’re all working to “fix society”, then I wish more than anything that human beings didn’t so need boxes, categories, and tribes to feel at ease in this life. This is the information age, after all, and our society is now a global one. Restricting our view and diminishing nuance makes the world feel smaller and safer, but ultimately it’s corrosive, isolating, and false. I wish for my trans siblings the perspective to rise above the bullshit trappings of that most encompassing tribal opposition — men and women. But beyond anything, I wish them the perspective to know that living as you must in the world is only a means to the end of doing good in the world.
