Posts tagged: trans
Comments (2) Review: Transgender Voices
By Rebecca, April 30, 2010 2:28 am
I wish I remember who recommended Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men to me. It may have been through this blog, but…oh well! The book is written by Lori Girshick, a “sociologist and social justice activist,” and is an exploration of 150 interviews she conducted with individuals who responded to a survey looking for “gender transgressors.” Much of the book directly quotes these interviews, with Girshick interjecting her summarized opinions and conclusions throughout.
The book is divided into 6 chapters, with multiple sub-headings in each chapter. The chapters are:
- The Social Construction of Biological Fact
- Self-Definition: Birth through Adolescence
- Constructing the Self: Options and Challenges
- Coming Out to Community, Family, and Work
- Gender Policing
- Inner Turmoil and Moving Toward Acceptance
There is also an epilogue, “Gender Liberation,” and an appendix with the survey-advertising flier and the survey itself.
As you may be able to guess from the book’s subtitle, “Beyond Women and Men,” and even more so from the chapter titles, I generally agree with the politics of Transgender Voices. Girshick does a solid job of representing a very wide spectrum of people, and (for the most part) she interjects her own thoughts only to provide context or summarize how aggregate groups felt, rather than impose a specific definition of identity or gender.
However, in the introduction, “Identity Boxes,” Girshick lays the groundwork for a view I’m not 100% comfortable with:
My own bias in this book is to advocate for liberation from the binary gender system, which for many people artificially restricts the fullest expression of self. At the same time, though, I deeply respect those who wish to identify with “male” or “female,” “man” or “woman,” and are willing to undergo expensive and painful medical treatments to achieve physical correspondence with who they feel themselves to be given the current gender system.” (Pg 11, Emphasis in original)
Questions on being trans, from highschoolers (pt 5)
By Rebecca, April 26, 2010 2:28 pm
It’s been a while, I know, but I figured it was time to finish off some of these questions. Lets go!
- Do you want to have “bottom” surgery?
“Bottom” surgery usually means sex reassignment surgery (SRS) and I think “want’ is a tricky word to use here. If the Vagina Fairy came through my window (no, not that one) to wave her wand and give me a pussy, I’d say “Yes!” in a heartbeat. I’d also say that I do want to have had SRS, in the same way I want to have learned a foreign language: I want the results, but don’t want to go through the pain and suffering to get there. But do I want to have surgery at some point in the future?
I’m not sure.
Continue reading 'Questions on being trans, from highschoolers (pt 5)'»
emotion, gender, sex, trans, transitioning
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questions, sex, trans, transitioning
Apologizing to myself
By Rebecca, April 13, 2010 8:39 pm
This post was prompted by an article in Yoga Journal, given to me by my mom, called “Forgiveness Heals.” There will be a companion post, a writing exercise about forgiving myself, sometime soon.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I stayed silent too long, spoke too softly to be heard, gave in too quickly.
My kindergarten classroom stretched along an endless hallway. There was a finger-painting station, a corner with cardboard building blocks, a book nook, a playhouse with a kitchen. Trim along the ceiling had numbers, one for each day of the school year, and we would hold a little classroom celebration every time we hit a number ending in zero. We sang, and drew, and played tag at recess. Once a week, I would leave the class and go down the hall to talk with the school psychologist. Even then, my parents knew something was wrong.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell her – in her office with reassuring colors and a calm far removed from the kindergarten class – that there had been some mistake, that my bowl-cut should have been reserved for a boy, could I trade in my button-down shirts for pigtails, please?
Topless while trans
By Rebecca, April 5, 2010 2:27 am
One of the questions I’m sometimes asked is whether or not there’s anything I regret about transitioning. Generally I either say “Nope!” or comment on how I missed the testosterone-fueled muscles I had pre-hormones, but not much else.
As summer approaches – and Chicago experiences an unseasonable streak of 70+ degree weather in early April – it made me realize I do miss one other thing: going topless.
You don’t get to out me
By Rebecca, March 31, 2010 8:48 am
I did end up sending an email to my friends, along the lines of what I discussed in this post:
Hey friends!
This is kind of an uncomfortable email for me to write, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about and need to address:
Please don’t out me. That is, please don’t tell people I’m trans.
I love you all. I’ve said this over and over again: I’m privileged, blessed, and really fucking lucky to be surrounded by friends like you. In a world that isn’t too kind to people outside the norm, you all pretty much shrugged your shoulders when I came out. Not because it wasn’t important to me, but because it didn’t change our friendships. I really value that. I love being able to have conversations and debates, to share joy and sorrow, with people who I’ve known for years, and who have known me.
But staying in Chicago after high school and college has also made transitioning occasionally more work than I’d like. To pick a really easy example, I went to the bank yesterday and the teller was the mom of someone I went to elementary school with (and not someone I particularly cared for, at that). She knew she sort of recognized me, but totally didn’t know how to respond to my presentation as Rebecca. It wasn’t a problem, and she was respectful, but it kind of threw me out of my stride to have to say, “Yeah, I’m going by Rebecca now…” Even though I love Chicago, and am glad I’ve stuck around, having to be reminded of that pre- and post-transition disconnect takes its toll.
Continue reading 'You don’t get to out me'»
coming out, queer, theory
| coming out, friends, queer, theory, trans
Who gets to out you?
By Rebecca, March 30, 2010 12:25 am
One of my roommates, Alice, had a friend over last night, Bob. The three of us were joking about Passover and Easter, and how none of us really practice what are ostensibly our respective religions. Alice was saying that she attended church enough at her (Catholic) middle school, so doesn’t need to attend now: she’s built up a quota. Bob replied, “Nope. You’re going to hell.” (He was joking. Don’t worry.) I laughed and said, “Well, I’ll be there too: I’m Jewish.”
Bob, chuckling, gestured to me and said, “Right. He’s going to hell because he doesn’t acknowledge the big JC…” And continued talking, using the incorrect pronoun, to the point where I started to wonder if he maybe wasn’t referring to me; most people catch themselves earlier than Bob did.
But no, I finally had to correct him, “She. Not he.”
He apologized, corrected himself, and the conversation moved on. Shortly thereafter I left and went to bed.
And realized I’d never actually told Bob I was trans.
Getting past passing
By Rebecca, March 23, 2010 7:58 pm
Maddie at xoros.net recently wrote a post, Passing Fallacy, on the idea of passing. That is, being perceived as the gender you are presenting as, rather than your assigned-at-birth gender. I really like where she takes her definition, though:
[passing] is a struggle to over ride what others impose and imprint on you in order to win the right to assert one’s self image, one’s self. It’s trying to win the right not to be made to feel like a failure, an othered, degendered oddity. It is trying to be “convincing” enough (read – meet enough of their stereotypes) that people are prepared to accept what you say. Rather than just listening to what you say.
That idea, of passing being an issue of whose reality ‘wins,’ is the main reason I try to say “perceived as a woman” rather than “passing as a woman.” Because it turns around passing and makes it about what it really is: a problem created by the gaze-er, not the gaze-ee.
emotion, trans
| confidence, passing, trans
Little Mermaid at Feministing
By Rebecca, March 11, 2010 10:21 pm
Interesting post about the trans experience of watching The Little Mermaid over at Feministing. Made me think of my own response to the film.
Family can surprise you
By Rebecca, February 9, 2010 11:47 am
I just got off the phone with my dad. Both of my parents have been calling me pretty much every day, since last Wednesday when I told them how difficult things were for me right now. I’ve been getting a bit tired of having the same conversation over and over:
Mom or dad: How’re you feeling?
Me: The same.
Dad or mom: Are you feeling any better?
Me: No, not really.
(Yes, I know they mean well and they’re asking because they love me.)
I was expecting a repeat of this and, indeed, the conversation did start that way. But then my dad mentioned how a J – a friend of my dad’s and a reporter in Chicago – had been telling my dad about Christina Kahrl. Christina is a trans sports writer in Chicago, and I met her at a Broadway Youth Center event a few months ago. Apparently, J was saying he’d be happy to set up some sort of meeting for me with Christina; my dad was calling to ask me about this and see if I might want to talk with someone who has “been there.”
It seems like a little thing, particularly in contrast to my dad’s continued difficulty of calling me Rebecca, but I was really surprised and touched by the offer.
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