Hi Rhyd, thanks so much for this excellent piece. The part about being called into sacred roles by your community/elders really resonated...it’s so important in general, as you said. I used to think a community that assigns roles would feel stifling, but now all I want is a community that sees me and asks me to share gifts they recognize…
Hi Rhyd, thanks so much for this excellent piece. The part about being called into sacred roles by your community/elders really resonated...it’s so important in general, as you said. I used to think a community that assigns roles would feel stifling, but now all I want is a community that sees me and asks me to share gifts they recognize in me...
I am feeling stuck on a point of confusion and I would love your thoughts. I felt very brainwashed by what some call “trans ideology” when I lived among west coast leftist circles, and I now see it as extremely regressive, as some variation of “women are Barbie, men are ken, and if you’re not either one then you’re not cis-gendered and your body might be wrong” (not to mention, there is a ton of social pressure to find some “queer” identity, lest you be seen as basically republican/a morally bankrupt individual. The social pressure is massive; when I visit my friends in California they are taken aback that my partner and I still identify as he/him man and she/her woman, and it clearly makes them uncomfortable.)
So I feel confused when I try to imagine a more beautiful version of the transgender experience that doesn’t rely on regressive stereotypes (the very idea that a effeminate man or a masculine women aren’t a man or a woman does not feel
empowering to me). Yet of course, there are some general (biologically based) descriptions of men and women that are true, in so far as they are descriptive on average and not prescriptive for everyone. There’s a tension here I struggle to work through between hating the regressive stereotypes and yet feeling some real stereotypes around men and women...the idea that a “woman” is a performance of makeup, heels and being submissive, and that “woman” can be separated from wombs, menstrual blood and pregnancy feels so wrong and sexist to me, yet at the same time, I can feel into the truth that there are some real behavioral stereotypes, that on average women are more nurturing, emotional, socially perceptive, and less action-oriented than men. Or maybe that’s even too restrictive...yet when I travel to other cultures, it doesn’t feel weird that for example, the women are primarily in charge of feeding and nurturing their families.
So what would it mean for a man to feel that he is on some level a woman? I suppose, given what you said above, he would not “actually really be a woman” (one who needs expensive surgeries and a lifetime of pills to change his body), but perhaps that he has more access to the feminine principle because of his female soul and thus has a different role to play than other men. And critically it would also likely not mean he could claim to have and need the same experiences as women, or access to all the same spaces. Maybe he would be able to speak on behalf of the feminine principle (yin, maybe?) as women are able to, as his being is more closely aligned to it than other men?
I know instead of a clear question I’ve rather offered some internal musings, but I hope you can get a sense of my confusion. I’m very curious what comes up for you.
Hi Sama! I really appreciate your questions to Rhyd here and am looking forward to his reply. And just wanted to say I've dm-ed you on the MN forum we're both on! xxx
Many years ago, I was married to a transwoman--pre transition. We divorced because the Stanford reassignment clinic required it. We eventually separated shortly before her surgery. While we were together, I pressed back against gender stereotypes: "Sorry dear, I can't help with hair and makeup, I don't set my hair and I don't wear makeup. And "ain't I a woman?" Years later we had a conversation about her life after transition. At one point she was working as an apprentice operating engineer (driving earth moving equipment) which she enjoyed. A work injury ended that career, but she spent the remaining working years as a technician on the equipment that creates circuit boards. The interesting thing is that she told me that before transition she would not have felt comfortable in these "male" jobs, but that after transition she felt free to do things that were "male" without her "female" identity being threatened. So, in her case the surgical reassignment seems to have been a success in terms of life satisfaction. Post transition, after a few months of sexual experimentation, she identified as lesbian and has been married to another woman since Vermont legalized same sex unions. Obviously, the rhetoric around what was then called transsexuality was quite different in1970 than now. There were fewer public examples, fewer physicians willing to participate in treatment, etc. My ex was incredibly lucky to have understanding parents who paid medical bills, an employer who permitted her to do the required year of dressing and identifying as female at work (thank the Retail Clerk's Union, which insisted that a union member could not be fired for a medical condition) and the availability of the Stanford program.
Oddly, one category of gender performance (as contrasted to gender identity) that seems to have dropped away is that of transvestite. In the 1970s this was understood as a person finding erotic pleasure in wearing the clothes of the other gender, sometimes in ways that did not challenge gender identity. For example, men who dressed in masculine clothing with silky underwear or stockings concealed. Many were in heterosexual relationships, sometimes with their habits concealed from their partners, sometimes not. So, transvestitism could range from the silk undies under the business suit to dressing in completely female garb including makeup and wigs and hoping to "pass" as RG (the slang of the time for Real Girl). When we first met my ex was only just discovering her transgender identity and initially presented me with readings about transvestites--and had an alternate female identity who "came out" when she dressed up. Complicated. And, much of this was illegal--at least any visible cross dressing. Many states and cities had statutes against disguises (passed to fight the KKK) which were turned against crossdressing persons of either sex or sexual orientation. Some police departments had arbitrary rules about how many articles of correct gender clothing would prevent arrest.
I've written about this previously, but I had "something like" gender dysphoria most of my adolescence. I wasn't fully convinced I was really a woman, but I was very convinced I wasn't "really" a man. And I'm sure had this all happened now, I'd have rushed into (or been rushed into) transition around the age of 13 or 14 with disastrous consequences.
So, I can only really speak of the path I found, which had a strange inverse mechanism. The more I let myself feel okay with the parts of me that I perceived as "feminine," the more comfortable I became being male-bodied. This is something I've noticed in my relationship with my husband, who really likes my masculine qualities and remarks often that I'm the most masculine man he's ever known.
What's funny in those moments is that he remarks most on my masculinity when I am feeling most "feminine," when I feel most that I am embodying these other aspects of me.
And I think this is the answer to your question. For many people who identify as trans people, often their view of the opposite sex from their body is confused by stereotypes or a deeper struggle that we all experience to some degree. The trans woman who gets surgery to look like a magazine model or a porn star has a false or damaged view of what embodying femininity is. Of course, all women struggle with this view within modern society.
The key (and this is very useful for non-binary identified people too) is to explode open our ideas of what masculinity and femininity are, to expand them to match how many kinds of women and men there really are. There are millions and millions of paths for this, contrary to what we are sold. I think the more radical position for someone who identifies as non-binary would be to question their own inherited stereotypes about what the sexes actually mean, rather than merely staking out that position with a declaration.
Thank you for this, this was super clarifying and deeply resonated with me. I haven’t had the exact same process coming to terms with my own gender, but I so deeply feel that “strange inverse mechanism” in so much of my life…it just feels like a fundamental truth of reality that never totally makes sense when I approach it cognitively, that both parts of a duality contain each other (like the Tai Chi symbol).
Yes, exactly. If I could sit down with a self-declared non-binary person, I would ask them what they felt was expected of them if identified as male, or female. Basically, I think I would be asking "What are you afraid of?" As far as I am concerned, a major goal of 2nd wave feminism was to free women, and by extension men, from fearing gender expectations. You can be a woman and not have to know how to bake a cake, or have naturally curly hair, or walk like a lady, etc. You shouldn't have to pretend to be dumber or weaker or less interested in certain areas than the men. And conversely for men. The hippy movement had already broken some male roles expectations: protest against violence, wear bright colors and long hair. But 2nd wave feminism got turned into a race to join the male corporate world and enjoy unconstrained sex lives--adopting male gender expectations instead of challenging--a topic for another discussion. Now the 'woke' seem to have reified gender roles as a key element of identity.
Hi Rhyd, thanks so much for this excellent piece. The part about being called into sacred roles by your community/elders really resonated...it’s so important in general, as you said. I used to think a community that assigns roles would feel stifling, but now all I want is a community that sees me and asks me to share gifts they recognize in me...
I am feeling stuck on a point of confusion and I would love your thoughts. I felt very brainwashed by what some call “trans ideology” when I lived among west coast leftist circles, and I now see it as extremely regressive, as some variation of “women are Barbie, men are ken, and if you’re not either one then you’re not cis-gendered and your body might be wrong” (not to mention, there is a ton of social pressure to find some “queer” identity, lest you be seen as basically republican/a morally bankrupt individual. The social pressure is massive; when I visit my friends in California they are taken aback that my partner and I still identify as he/him man and she/her woman, and it clearly makes them uncomfortable.)
So I feel confused when I try to imagine a more beautiful version of the transgender experience that doesn’t rely on regressive stereotypes (the very idea that a effeminate man or a masculine women aren’t a man or a woman does not feel
empowering to me). Yet of course, there are some general (biologically based) descriptions of men and women that are true, in so far as they are descriptive on average and not prescriptive for everyone. There’s a tension here I struggle to work through between hating the regressive stereotypes and yet feeling some real stereotypes around men and women...the idea that a “woman” is a performance of makeup, heels and being submissive, and that “woman” can be separated from wombs, menstrual blood and pregnancy feels so wrong and sexist to me, yet at the same time, I can feel into the truth that there are some real behavioral stereotypes, that on average women are more nurturing, emotional, socially perceptive, and less action-oriented than men. Or maybe that’s even too restrictive...yet when I travel to other cultures, it doesn’t feel weird that for example, the women are primarily in charge of feeding and nurturing their families.
So what would it mean for a man to feel that he is on some level a woman? I suppose, given what you said above, he would not “actually really be a woman” (one who needs expensive surgeries and a lifetime of pills to change his body), but perhaps that he has more access to the feminine principle because of his female soul and thus has a different role to play than other men. And critically it would also likely not mean he could claim to have and need the same experiences as women, or access to all the same spaces. Maybe he would be able to speak on behalf of the feminine principle (yin, maybe?) as women are able to, as his being is more closely aligned to it than other men?
I know instead of a clear question I’ve rather offered some internal musings, but I hope you can get a sense of my confusion. I’m very curious what comes up for you.
Hi Sama! I really appreciate your questions to Rhyd here and am looking forward to his reply. And just wanted to say I've dm-ed you on the MN forum we're both on! xxx
I've replied. :)
Many years ago, I was married to a transwoman--pre transition. We divorced because the Stanford reassignment clinic required it. We eventually separated shortly before her surgery. While we were together, I pressed back against gender stereotypes: "Sorry dear, I can't help with hair and makeup, I don't set my hair and I don't wear makeup. And "ain't I a woman?" Years later we had a conversation about her life after transition. At one point she was working as an apprentice operating engineer (driving earth moving equipment) which she enjoyed. A work injury ended that career, but she spent the remaining working years as a technician on the equipment that creates circuit boards. The interesting thing is that she told me that before transition she would not have felt comfortable in these "male" jobs, but that after transition she felt free to do things that were "male" without her "female" identity being threatened. So, in her case the surgical reassignment seems to have been a success in terms of life satisfaction. Post transition, after a few months of sexual experimentation, she identified as lesbian and has been married to another woman since Vermont legalized same sex unions. Obviously, the rhetoric around what was then called transsexuality was quite different in1970 than now. There were fewer public examples, fewer physicians willing to participate in treatment, etc. My ex was incredibly lucky to have understanding parents who paid medical bills, an employer who permitted her to do the required year of dressing and identifying as female at work (thank the Retail Clerk's Union, which insisted that a union member could not be fired for a medical condition) and the availability of the Stanford program.
Oddly, one category of gender performance (as contrasted to gender identity) that seems to have dropped away is that of transvestite. In the 1970s this was understood as a person finding erotic pleasure in wearing the clothes of the other gender, sometimes in ways that did not challenge gender identity. For example, men who dressed in masculine clothing with silky underwear or stockings concealed. Many were in heterosexual relationships, sometimes with their habits concealed from their partners, sometimes not. So, transvestitism could range from the silk undies under the business suit to dressing in completely female garb including makeup and wigs and hoping to "pass" as RG (the slang of the time for Real Girl). When we first met my ex was only just discovering her transgender identity and initially presented me with readings about transvestites--and had an alternate female identity who "came out" when she dressed up. Complicated. And, much of this was illegal--at least any visible cross dressing. Many states and cities had statutes against disguises (passed to fight the KKK) which were turned against crossdressing persons of either sex or sexual orientation. Some police departments had arbitrary rules about how many articles of correct gender clothing would prevent arrest.
Rita
I've written about this previously, but I had "something like" gender dysphoria most of my adolescence. I wasn't fully convinced I was really a woman, but I was very convinced I wasn't "really" a man. And I'm sure had this all happened now, I'd have rushed into (or been rushed into) transition around the age of 13 or 14 with disastrous consequences.
So, I can only really speak of the path I found, which had a strange inverse mechanism. The more I let myself feel okay with the parts of me that I perceived as "feminine," the more comfortable I became being male-bodied. This is something I've noticed in my relationship with my husband, who really likes my masculine qualities and remarks often that I'm the most masculine man he's ever known.
What's funny in those moments is that he remarks most on my masculinity when I am feeling most "feminine," when I feel most that I am embodying these other aspects of me.
And I think this is the answer to your question. For many people who identify as trans people, often their view of the opposite sex from their body is confused by stereotypes or a deeper struggle that we all experience to some degree. The trans woman who gets surgery to look like a magazine model or a porn star has a false or damaged view of what embodying femininity is. Of course, all women struggle with this view within modern society.
The key (and this is very useful for non-binary identified people too) is to explode open our ideas of what masculinity and femininity are, to expand them to match how many kinds of women and men there really are. There are millions and millions of paths for this, contrary to what we are sold. I think the more radical position for someone who identifies as non-binary would be to question their own inherited stereotypes about what the sexes actually mean, rather than merely staking out that position with a declaration.
Solid answer, Rhyd! 👍🏻
Thank you for this, this was super clarifying and deeply resonated with me. I haven’t had the exact same process coming to terms with my own gender, but I so deeply feel that “strange inverse mechanism” in so much of my life…it just feels like a fundamental truth of reality that never totally makes sense when I approach it cognitively, that both parts of a duality contain each other (like the Tai Chi symbol).
Yes, exactly. If I could sit down with a self-declared non-binary person, I would ask them what they felt was expected of them if identified as male, or female. Basically, I think I would be asking "What are you afraid of?" As far as I am concerned, a major goal of 2nd wave feminism was to free women, and by extension men, from fearing gender expectations. You can be a woman and not have to know how to bake a cake, or have naturally curly hair, or walk like a lady, etc. You shouldn't have to pretend to be dumber or weaker or less interested in certain areas than the men. And conversely for men. The hippy movement had already broken some male roles expectations: protest against violence, wear bright colors and long hair. But 2nd wave feminism got turned into a race to join the male corporate world and enjoy unconstrained sex lives--adopting male gender expectations instead of challenging--a topic for another discussion. Now the 'woke' seem to have reified gender roles as a key element of identity.