(Trans)Woman In Progress: The Perpetual Emotion Machine
I am the gerbil powering the Perpetual Emotion Machine. Except that I'm not. No, I'm racing in the wheel, but it's the wheel's turning that's forcing me to run, and not the other way around. Fear into shame, shame into doubt, doubt into fear. All without end.
There's DVDs to teach "Feminine Movement," DVDs to teach voice feminization, DVDs to teach makeup, padding and impersonation. It's all about "passing." It's all about fear, it's all about shame, and it's all about doubt.
Don't get me wrong. I mean to be in no way critical to the transwomen who've used these things to blend in and build successful lives. Much of what these tools teach are absolutely necessary for transwomen to understand (even if they don't practice them), in order to cope with and participate in our society. The less conspicuous you can be, the more secure you are and the more rewarding your life becomes. But it's still about fear, still about shame, and still about doubt.
The fears are everywhere: Can observers tell that I'm trans? What if this Doctor refuses to treat me? If I stop and ask for directions with my voice as deep as it is, will Security come by and escort me out of the store? What if my Mother never comes to accept who I am? Does the building caretaker know about me yet, and will he flip out when he shows up to fix the tub, only to find me dressed this way? How are the customers at work going to deal with my sudden transition, when some of them have known the old me for 18 years? Does he really think I'm as attractive as he's saying, or is he secretly thinking with disappointment, "she has a man's lips; she has a man's tiny hips; she has a man's hands?"
Underlying all of that is the shame: the shame of being different; the shame of not having been able to live up to prior expectations; the shame of having hurt so many people close to you in order to have your freedom; the shame of being a minority that can't help but be visible when you're walking down the street, a minority that the public associates with mental illness and Michael Jackson.
And it's when all of these converge on you that the doubts set in. Rarely are the doubts about whether you are doing the right thing by transitioning. Instead, the doubts are about whether you are strong enough, whether you are safe in your life, whether people will allow you to live in peace, whether you will ever find any respect or (harder still) love, doubts whether there will ever be a place in this world where you belong.
And when the doubts take you, you become very afraid. When you are allowed to think about any of it, this is what keeps the whole process steamrolling.
But the transsexual has an advantage: none of these things are at all new to us. They have always been there, only the applications are different.
Before, the fear was whether you "passed" as a boy. Would you get beat up if the kids thought you were queer? Is this walk that I've been practicing working, and does it look manly enough? What if I can't be the "little man" my Mother wants me to be? What if someone finds the doll I've hidden in my closet? Much later, the fear becomes: What if I can't satisfy my girlfriend or she finds out that I'm strange -- will she reject me?
The shame of being different, of course, was always a constant, and it's sometimes not until your teen years that you realize that you're not the only person on the bloody planet who is different in this way. And the doubts, those are still there as you wonder if you'll ever feel at home anywhere; wonder if your marriage to someone you really care about can last, when you can't stand playing the role that you're supposed to play in it; wonder if you can go on living with the fear and the shame.
That's part of what people don't "get" about transitioning. This is not like dressing up one day on Halloween and becoming somebody else (although I did once enjoy the holiday as a rare opportunity to escape the trap of my life for a few hours). For the pre-transition transsexual, it's every other day of the year that is about pretending. Although the body may have been made male, the identity never was.
Instructional DVDs notwithstanding, we are not "playing" anything. We are allowing ourselves to be what we've hidden all our lives, until we couldn't take the suffocation anymore. The instructional DVDs are little compared to the lessons of adolescence, parental guidance and friendly advice from confidantes that women receive over the course of their lives, and really doesn't undermine that. Because we take the advice, or we ignore it, but it's all about learning what is comfortable to us, and what makes sense to us. I don't walk like Danae Doyle tells me to (personally, I don't think many real women do, except when occasions call for more decorum), although I don't regret buying the disc, and realize that there were some subtleties to learn from.
What's different, then, and what's to be gained from transition is to be free of the sense of hiding. You can lose the suffocation of wearing a mask. It can be difficult, because some of us have worn that mask so long, we're not sure who it is that's underneath anymore -- and then we have to undertake a process to rediscover that. But it's that sense of freedom that can be had.
That is, unless a person simply trades one mask for another. That is the risk of transition. If they try to become the woman that they think they're supposed to be, it really isn't going to be a whole lot different from when they tried to be the man they were told that they were supposed to be. The key is, instead, to allow themselves to discover the woman that they are (or man, in the case of FTMs).
I believe, however (and have been told this by many who have transitioned), that doing so brings one unexpected difference. As you become more comfortable in your new skin, you begin to blend in better (although possibly not completely), and that fear and shame and doubt, over time, does something you never expected: it slows, and then ceases to drive you.
I'm not there yet, but I'm looking forward to it. And praying that this isn't a myth.
There's DVDs to teach "Feminine Movement," DVDs to teach voice feminization, DVDs to teach makeup, padding and impersonation. It's all about "passing." It's all about fear, it's all about shame, and it's all about doubt.
Don't get me wrong. I mean to be in no way critical to the transwomen who've used these things to blend in and build successful lives. Much of what these tools teach are absolutely necessary for transwomen to understand (even if they don't practice them), in order to cope with and participate in our society. The less conspicuous you can be, the more secure you are and the more rewarding your life becomes. But it's still about fear, still about shame, and still about doubt.
The fears are everywhere: Can observers tell that I'm trans? What if this Doctor refuses to treat me? If I stop and ask for directions with my voice as deep as it is, will Security come by and escort me out of the store? What if my Mother never comes to accept who I am? Does the building caretaker know about me yet, and will he flip out when he shows up to fix the tub, only to find me dressed this way? How are the customers at work going to deal with my sudden transition, when some of them have known the old me for 18 years? Does he really think I'm as attractive as he's saying, or is he secretly thinking with disappointment, "she has a man's lips; she has a man's tiny hips; she has a man's hands?"
Underlying all of that is the shame: the shame of being different; the shame of not having been able to live up to prior expectations; the shame of having hurt so many people close to you in order to have your freedom; the shame of being a minority that can't help but be visible when you're walking down the street, a minority that the public associates with mental illness and Michael Jackson.
And it's when all of these converge on you that the doubts set in. Rarely are the doubts about whether you are doing the right thing by transitioning. Instead, the doubts are about whether you are strong enough, whether you are safe in your life, whether people will allow you to live in peace, whether you will ever find any respect or (harder still) love, doubts whether there will ever be a place in this world where you belong.
And when the doubts take you, you become very afraid. When you are allowed to think about any of it, this is what keeps the whole process steamrolling.
But the transsexual has an advantage: none of these things are at all new to us. They have always been there, only the applications are different.
Before, the fear was whether you "passed" as a boy. Would you get beat up if the kids thought you were queer? Is this walk that I've been practicing working, and does it look manly enough? What if I can't be the "little man" my Mother wants me to be? What if someone finds the doll I've hidden in my closet? Much later, the fear becomes: What if I can't satisfy my girlfriend or she finds out that I'm strange -- will she reject me?
The shame of being different, of course, was always a constant, and it's sometimes not until your teen years that you realize that you're not the only person on the bloody planet who is different in this way. And the doubts, those are still there as you wonder if you'll ever feel at home anywhere; wonder if your marriage to someone you really care about can last, when you can't stand playing the role that you're supposed to play in it; wonder if you can go on living with the fear and the shame.
That's part of what people don't "get" about transitioning. This is not like dressing up one day on Halloween and becoming somebody else (although I did once enjoy the holiday as a rare opportunity to escape the trap of my life for a few hours). For the pre-transition transsexual, it's every other day of the year that is about pretending. Although the body may have been made male, the identity never was.
Instructional DVDs notwithstanding, we are not "playing" anything. We are allowing ourselves to be what we've hidden all our lives, until we couldn't take the suffocation anymore. The instructional DVDs are little compared to the lessons of adolescence, parental guidance and friendly advice from confidantes that women receive over the course of their lives, and really doesn't undermine that. Because we take the advice, or we ignore it, but it's all about learning what is comfortable to us, and what makes sense to us. I don't walk like Danae Doyle tells me to (personally, I don't think many real women do, except when occasions call for more decorum), although I don't regret buying the disc, and realize that there were some subtleties to learn from.
What's different, then, and what's to be gained from transition is to be free of the sense of hiding. You can lose the suffocation of wearing a mask. It can be difficult, because some of us have worn that mask so long, we're not sure who it is that's underneath anymore -- and then we have to undertake a process to rediscover that. But it's that sense of freedom that can be had.
That is, unless a person simply trades one mask for another. That is the risk of transition. If they try to become the woman that they think they're supposed to be, it really isn't going to be a whole lot different from when they tried to be the man they were told that they were supposed to be. The key is, instead, to allow themselves to discover the woman that they are (or man, in the case of FTMs).
I believe, however (and have been told this by many who have transitioned), that doing so brings one unexpected difference. As you become more comfortable in your new skin, you begin to blend in better (although possibly not completely), and that fear and shame and doubt, over time, does something you never expected: it slows, and then ceases to drive you.
I'm not there yet, but I'm looking forward to it. And praying that this isn't a myth.
posted by Mercedes Allen at 11:26 AM
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