“Just Learn To Deal With It”
Recently, at Righteous Anger, we heard a repeat of something we hear so often in our process:
Now sure I’m all for individual rights, but really why can’t these sissies stop complaining about what genetics cursed themselves with and learn to cope with the reality of the world they were born into.
In “TransNational Geographic Outlook,” the author is perhaps more impatient and indifferent than intolerant, but it’s still an angering comment to read. And it’s frustratingly so common for this attitude to be spouted off repeatedly, from virtually every non-trans person we ever come out to. If you don’t live it, chances are good that you might never “get it.” My family will never get it. My co-workers back in Edmonton will never get it (although they are respectful and sympathetic). Many of the people I’ve dealt with in the gay community don’t get it (it is a different issue, who we are, versus who we love). Even transfolk often don’t “get” other transfolk. The fact that someone doesn’t get it, however, doesn’t mean that ”it” isn’t substantial. It really is a mile that one must walk in another’s moccassins to comprehend.
Fortunately, the medical community gets it. Not all of them, mind you, but the studies — the evidence — has demonstrated to the chief of them that GRS (genital reassignment surgery) is not only “acceptable,” it has been the recommended form of treatment for extreme transsexualism for decades. Science has determined that it is far easier to bring the body into alignment with the mind than vice-versa, with extreme Gender Dysphoria. The alternative, quite often, is suicide or self-destruction.
Our expression of gender dictates far more than most people realize. It’s not just a question of having to learn to be satisfied with being an effeminate male or a masculine female. Imagine being the lone lamb undressing for a shower in a locker room full of wolves. Or being the lone girl in the room while a bunch of guys are ogling at the bunny in the magazine that someone brought: “oo-ee, man. Just look at those hooters. And I bet those lips would look great doing…” [act unspecified here] “… yeah. I’d do her. And then I’d do her in the ass. I bet she’d like that. How about you? Would you do her?” “Just dealing with it” means living constantly in situation after situation of discomfort, fear and fabrication. It’s about really being out of our element, and having to cover up that sense of unbelonging, stuff it down into a little ball in the pit of our stomach, and trying to put on what others will find to be an “acceptable face,” all the while feeling like we’re suffocating. “I wonder if they can tell?” I’d always be thinking. Ironically, now that I’ve made the transition and got past that awkward transitory phase of “learning to pass” (which was more like “unlearning to pass as the old person,” to me), I virtually never have this fear.
Gender expression also dictates not only our relationships — the modes of touching, the endearments — but whether we can even function at all in a relationship. Some at the extreme of transsexualism can’t even stand to have their genitals touched, because it feels unnatural, wrong, disconcerting and even sickening. I was even that way with my once-flat chest, although for many years, I had no idea why. Plus, there is a very different dynamic between gay couples, lesbian couples and heterosexual couples, and often transitioning means that one’s relationship dynamic becomes one that feels more comfortable and natural.
It’s a shame that people are so brainwashed by stereotypical sex biases that they choose to change themselves, only falling into a deeper hole of being so shallow as to judge the physical outward appearances of anyone.
There is far more to transsexuality than gender stereotypes. As a woman, I’m comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt. As a man, I was uncomfortable in my own skin. I had actually tried to transition at 19 or so, ran into wall after wall of disinformation and refusals to help, and ultimately was confronted with the claim that GRS would cost tens of thousands of dollars, not including the annual cost of hormones and electrolysis. As I never expected to ever have that much money in my hand at any given moment in my lifetime (I still haven’t, in fact), I did what made sense at the time: I decided to play the hand that was dealt to me. Twenty years, a failed marriage, a near-disowning, and a nearly lost career later (when you consider what we risk by transitioning, you have to realize that this is not a choice we would make if we didn’t seriously have to), I’d had to face the facts that changing the body to match the mind was far easier than trying to do the reverse.
The question at the beginning that spawned this article is not without some merit. GRS has only existed since the 1920s… and transgender people existed throughout history. Obviously, there was some form of “coping” that happened (although it often included “eunuching”), and indications are that many transfolk from previous eras were able to live fulfilling lives by changing mostly their outer expression and the personal dynamic by which they related to the world. Can some do so today?
In my own case, I do believe that I will ultimately need GRS, but for now would prefer to have an orchiectomy (eunuching), and try to find out. But I do know, from others I’ve known personally and from my own experience of “unnaturalness” from some aspects of my own body, that there are many out there who can never achieve that peace and happiness without surgery.
You don’t “learn to deal with it.” You learn to fix it.
Gee Mercedes, you are starting to sound like one of us “old guard”, “gender fundamentalists” transsexual separatists, evil anti-tg by virtue of being pro TS types……….careful hon or they’ll be coming for you next.
I will give you the same advice, I have given to others. If you can live without what you refer to as “GRS” then do so. It is not something to have, just because it seems like the thing to do. For me, it was life saving. For others, it is, at best, a waste of money, and at worst, a devastating mistake. There is no going back, and we don’t need another transgender person angry over their error, and ranting against transsexuals. Having an orchiectomy to “try and find out” sounds like you probably don’t need the surgery. If you don’t desperately need it now, you may well regret even that relatively small step.
Harry Benjamin was an exceptionallly compassionate human being on many levels. There is a concept put forth as an attribution to him, which revolvles over and over again in my mind. Excuse my paraphrase. “It is easier to alter the body to fit the mind, than the mind to the body”
Considering both the professional and cultural climate within which he found himself, Benjamin’s thinking is remarakable in astuteness. It would have been impossible to change either of those aspects of his tme in any meaningful way, to provide any form of acceptance, emotional relief or mental peace to those he was attempting to hekp, in any other way besides advocating what society would accept as a normalizing process.
Curiously I’ve never heard it requoted as “it is best to” or as “the only way to”. Restructuring any socio cultural construct takes decades or longer. Gender is, with the exception of actual discussion of biological reproductive function, a socio cultural construct, limited to a binary system of classification. THis works well in biology (mostly) since we reproduce always in the same sperm/ova fashion. It does not work, where an innumerable number of expressions are possible within a socio cultural context withou an additional application of external force.
The term cope does not have any inherent perjorative meaning. Judgement as such is a matter of perception. Coping is in fact, one of the benefits of sentience. Because we can “cope” with changes in environment, we are no longer restricted by our enviroment. Because we can cope with illness, our life spans are longer.
Will Roscoe’s book “Changing Ones” discusses the significant presence historically of gender variance and its acceptance in Native American culture, beyond a binary system. There are similarities in other indigenous cultures as well.
The classical debate of nature vs nuture has proven a failure from either extreme of perspective. Like most extremes, the actual truth exists somewhere in between, within the variations.
I appreciate and I am grateful for the courage, commitment and the struggles faced by all those made the first steps towards opening peoples eyes, hearts and minds to the internal conflicts and pain that anguish of imposed gender identification creates. But it is possible now to address additional issues, to make additional changes and open additional options that may better make human rights more accessible to a greater number of people. It is easy and understandable to resent the rise of new opportunities after you’ve commited a lifetime to what appears to be the only choice. But berating these new opportunities, or those who choose them does nothing to validate your own choice. Only a life well live and enjoyed can do that.
THe only timetable I need for living my life is my own. As you said, the statement you’ve quoted is angering. Its impatience and indifference appears to trivialize a complex source of personal emotional pain. It also holds some merit as truth. Every human being is limited by the biology dealt of birth. Sometimes there are no options. I’m thankful for the ones I have.
Just Jennifer wrote above: “If you don’t desperately need it [SRS] now, you may well regret even that relatively small step.” I’m not desperate. Over too many years, I had even adjusted reasonably well to being male, thanks in large part to an optimistic temperament, a wonderful wife and soulmate, and various forms of self-medication and self-indulgence. My shameful fantasy was mainly kept far away from my day-to-day thoughts, aided by my woeful ignorance of just what the possibilities were.
Once I learned all that I have about transsexualism and what I could have, once I got over the shame, I realized that what I had thought was a reasonably happy state was nothing of the kind. Now that I present mainly as female (not yet full time, but getting there), now that I’m only a couple weeks away from starting HRT, I know what really makes me happy. I wouldn’t have ended my life before I knew this. I coped pretty effectively. But now that my world is different, now that I know what I know, I want as much of what used to be a fantasy to me as I can have.
I have not yet decided to have SRS. That’s at least a year away anyway (and thankfully covered by my provincial health plan). But I’m seriously considering it, because then my body would match the mental map I seem always to have had. I will continue to consider it carefully, but if I decide to go through with it, I will not regret the choice.
Perhaps some should not have bottom surgery unless they’re desperate. Maybe even many. But there are exceptions to every rule.