Tag Archive | Losses

Rationalizations, Exploitation, and Selfishness

Oct5

Today I read a discussion elsewhere that attempted to rationalize the decision to not transition when someone clearly wanted to transition. Excuses included relationships with people who could not accept the truth. This specific argument bothered me greatly.

The argument that “I can’t transition because [insert family member here] can’t accept it” is a rationalization. It marks someone who is in a dependent relationship, not a healthy relationship. It also marks someone who knows very well that they are not loved unconditionally as a human being but instead is “loved” very conditionally. This is called being in a codependent relationship. It’s not healthy.

I experienced all this and looking back on it, it was pure and utter nonsense. How do I know this? How would these same family members react if I said I had cancer? Well, I know the answer to that question because I had and beat cancer eighteen years ago. And for that medical problem, people constantly urged me forward, to not give up, to have hope, to get well. The exact same people who today openly, viciously, and cruelly condemn me for addressing this health issue supported me when it wasn’t a health issue that challenged their own world view.

And you see, that is the height of selfishness.

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one’s neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man and Prison Writings

Oscar Wilde’s comments ring true today too.

It’s not the person transitioning who is selfish. That person is simply addressing a verified medical condition as per the American Medical Association and American Psychological Association. Transgender people aren’t mentally ill. It’s a treatable medical condition.

And yet the exact same people who urged me forward, who supported me as I sought treatment for cancer to become well again, have treated me with deliberate, cruel, vicious disdain for seeking treatment for gender dysphoria caused by an accident of birth.

I do not question those who choose to not transition out of fear of reactions of “loved” ones. I understand that fear all too well. But what I would question is whether those people truly love you or whether you are a mere convenience in your current form for them who would become an inconvenience in another form.

Because, having lived this, it sure looks to me like a lot of people who claim to “love” their transgender relatives do nothing of the kind and instead are selfish individuals who are using their transgender relative for their own purposes, whatever those might be and who fear losing whatever convenience that relative currently provides.

Those of you who are trans need to ask yourselves whether you are really loved or whether you are just being used. I suspect that you’ll find that you’re just being used. I certainly discovered that sad truth and I sacrificed hugely for what turned out to be nothing in the end.

Odds and Ends in the Lazy Days of Summer

Jul25

After this last facial hair removal session, I’m enjoying an extended period of absolutely no facial hair at all. I know the neck and jawline will come back pretty strong again but given where we were on the upper and lower lip and center of the chin, as well as the cheeks, things may be pretty darned sparse from here on out. And for the moment, I’m enjoying it.

I am also noticing how rapidly skin with no facial hair returns to coloring similar to the rest of the face. At the same time there are texture differences from years of facial hair and shaving, so I can see why some transwomen opt to have full facial peels once the facial hair is gone. I’ll definitely want to give it time to heal afterwards but what I’m seeing is even more reason to consider a full facial peel eventually.

Today was interesting for another reason as well. My endocrinologist started me on progesterone. Progesterone should help further the breast development as well as put a little more rear end on me. At least that is the theory. But another side effect of progesterone is increases in hair growth. Since I’m trying to grow mine back, or as much as I can, this is rather welcome. I hope that it helps the process along. Well, both processes! 🙂

That brings me to another item. After coordinating with HR and my boss, I will be officially coming out to my teammates on August 11th. We’ve reviewed and edited my coming out statement. The meeting will be short and I’ll read that then offer to take any questions after the meeting is “officially over”. HR said we must do it that way so that if anyone wants to leave, they can. However, I honestly expect everyone to stay and ask a few questions. But we’ll see. Regardless, it will soon be done and then all that’s left between me and fulltime is the legal paperwork in September or October.

And the last item for this entry. I was saddened to hear of another transwoman who took her life recently. But what angered me were her family, who in their total rejection of her drove her towards that suicide. That same family today took over her Facebook page, changed her name back to her male name, and said the services would be in “his” honor. Even in death, they desecrate someone. That is how sick, twisted, and evil those who hate us actually are.

An Absurdity of Trans Self Hatred And My Response

Jan9

On a forum where I am not allowed to post my thoughts without censorship, a post as made that trans folk should be like a starfish opening a clam, slow steady pressure that eventually succeeds. This is pretty wise advice for most cases and I had no quibble with that advice. But another poster came in and posted complete and utter nonsense. This poster has waged a war against transition itself and urged trans people to always “sit in the back of the bus” if even a single cisgender person objects. Here is what she said:

Yet a very relevant digression because that sort of militant action created many negative reactions and created opponents, opponents who could have cared less but were forced to become opponents because of the offensive behavior and not just fighting for gay rights but attacking many non-gays for their beliefs. Beliefs which by and large had nothing to do with gay issues.

The turning point for gays was when non-militant folks started coming out and demonstrated gay people can be decent human beings and all weren’t such offensive people.

You message here Becky is a very good one and illustrates that desires can be obtained, respect and acceptance achieved by being a decent human being first and using slow and constant change. There have been thousands just like you who have provided positive examples who have been instrumental in achieving so much for trans.

It seems more and more a certain portion of the community seems focused on flushing all this good will folks like you have earned for trans by becoming more angry at non-trans and not pushing for needs but pushing for things that go well beyond the needs of trans and not respecting things most people will find offensive.

This is my response, which I cannot post there because of censorship.

Once upon a time, most whites found the mere presence of blacks offensive. White women argued that black women would prey upon white women in integrated restrooms. Sound familiar?

There are certain things that are morally abhorrent regardless of how they are done. I take great exception to the “stay at the back of the bus” mentality. Coming out gently, the “starfish” approach doesn’t mean not rattling cages. It means doing things in a slow steady forward progression. But people can still be exceptionally stiff necked, cruel, rude, and even dangerous when faced with change they dislike. Should someone stop transition at a certain point just to satisfy family members yet remain in a suicidal depression by doing so? I don’t think so. Should a trans person be denied restroom access to simply empty their bowels or bladder because some bigot is upset that trans folk merely exist? That’s the narrative of Pacific Justice Institute – that your mere existence is harassment of cisgender women.

Among my friends and family, I’ve achieved a more than 90% success and acceptance rate among the people I know. Yet there are losses and those losses were not caused by me. Those losses were the deliberate choices of those people to reject me, despite multiple health care professionals all agreeing that this was what I needed to do. And those losses remain very painful.

Your frequent harangues against transition and against not upsetting anyone amount to allowing one family member to tell you to not seek cancer treatment when ill with cancer. That’s absurd, isn’t it? And it’s just as absurd when applied to therapies that mental health professionals can statistically prove are highly likely to succeed in reducing stress and anxiety brought about by gender dysphoria.

No one is “forced to become an opponent”. That’s an absurd rationalization for bigotry, hatred, and injustice. Becoming an opponent is a choice that the opponent makes not the trans person, not the gay person, not the black person, not the hispanic person. George Wallace chose to become an opponent of blacks. Every single person who chooses to oppose equal rights for transgender people is making exactly the same sort of choice as George Wallace. All that black people did was stand up and say, “I want to be respected and treated decently.” What George Wallace did, and what trans bigots do today is respond with, “Hell no! We’re never going to respect you! We’d turn the dogs on you, the water cannons, and we’d round you up and ship you to camps if we could!” This isn’t even an exaggeration either because trans opponents have made exactly those sort of arguments, from the Tennessee state representative who promised to “stomp a mudhole” into any trans woman he saw enter a restroom, to a North Carolina GOP state organizer who wants to send every trans person off to camps, to even my eldest son who says I need a tattoo on my forehead and arm that tell the world I am trans. (Does that sound familiar?)

Your argument is an “Uncle Tom” argument. Your argument is fear and loathing of what you and other trans folk are, and a choice to allow your rights to be trampled and yourself to be bullied, all so you don’t upset the bigots. I do not accept your choice. You’re free to sit in the back of the bus, but I won’t.

I’m not even sorry to say this, but to hell with you and your fear mongering about who we are. You are a menace to young trans people everywhere by sowing excessive doubt and worry. My only regret is I cannot post my frank opinion of your complete and utter bullshit right where it would matter.

Why Now?

Sep30

I was reading Kira’s latest post, Revision, and it got me to thinking. I was going to respond to her but this began to grow into something long enough deserving of its own spot on my blog.

I am often asked why did it take this long for me to face my gender dysphoria? And truth to tell, it was largely three things. First, when I was younger, I didn’t even have the words to adequately express how I felt. I was fascinated with “sex change” stories when I was young but I was given so much baloney, and believed it, that I could never see myself doing that. I obsessed over girl things but I was male and, much to my dismay, I had those male dangly bits to constantly remind me that I was physically male. It didn’t matter that I thought of myself as female inside. It didn’t matter that I’d adopted a female name for myself when younger. There was this huge psychological disconnect. Maybe I thought I’d “outgrow” whatever this was. Maybe I was afraid to face what it meant. I don’t know. I just know that at that time, I lacked the words to adequately convey how I felt about myself.

Second, because of my socialization, I had this burning desire to “become the man” I was expected to be. That same desire made enlisting in the army trivially easy as a decision. By that point, I had a wife, a baby on the way, and needed steady work, which in that part of the country in that decade was very hard to find. So there I was being offered a job that carried the “mystique” of being able to “cure” me of my strange longings.

And the third part was me overcoming that aspect of my socialization against queer people to accept and be comfortable with GLBT persons generally, which then allowed me to face myself honestly. Part of that socialization, in the coal mine and steel mill country of the 1960s and 1970s, also horridly mocked people who were “queer” (homosexual). I didn’t see myself as queer but the hints around the edges of society suggested that what I felt was even worse than being “queer”. I was terrified of being found out, mocked, isolated, physically assaulted, and all the rest that came with that.

It was when I was planning suicide and I stopped myself, realizing that I do not want to do this but I can’t live like this anymore that I finally realized that I needed help, more help than this proud and arrogant person would have admitted to needing ever before in my life.

I go back now and look at things and it’s not just me interpreting my past. It’s my therapist hearing these things and helping me see what was different about my past. Yes, I am interpreting that past through hindsight but I have tools and memes and vocabulary now to better express what I felt then, and still do today.

My greatest regret remains not putting these pieces together earlier in my life, that I might have spared certain persons their own self-induced anguish at the horror of being related to a trans woman. If I had known then what I know now, there would have been no striving to be “a man”, no baby, no wedding, no such obligations and all those who today are horrified at the mere thought that they might be related to a transwoman would be spared that self-induced fear and loathing.

However, facing this earlier would also remove so many wonderful and precious people from my life. Julie, Elizabeth, Fran and Kate, my daughter, and so many others as well. And so my regrets are not large. They are not consuming regrets. They are tiny ones in the overall scheme of things, an overall scheme with which I become happier with each passing day and more confident of myself.

Ringing out the old, ringing in the new

Jan4

It’s a new year with new hopes but 2012 did not go quietly into the night. December turned into a difficult month for me as my mother died a few weeks before Christmas. What had been planned as a trip home to spend time with my mother got rescheduled to become a trip home to mourn her passing. As I am nowhere near full time yet, this final trip for my mother was done in male mode, also to not bring that issue full face into so many people’s consciousness while they were mourning her.

Then my spouse elected to fly north again and spend Christmas with her family, leaving me alone for the holidays for the first time since I was stationed in Germany as a soldier 34 years previously. My daughter did have me over for Christmas eve dinner though and I greatly appreciated that, as well as my youngest son and his wife showing up at that dinner and being polite to me. My eldest son chose not to interact with me at all during the holidays other than to drop off a gift the week before, say a few words, then depart.

So there was plenty of time to mourn my mother, and my own failure to reveal myself to her. I’m pretty sure she would have loved me and supported me nonetheless, but now it’s something I’ll never get to do or share with her.

With the arrival of the new year, my primary supporters sent me positive messages and continue to cheer me on. I came out to a few more friends, who accepted me as well.

There’s much on the horizon for 2013. I expect to be pursuing my divorce by this fall, if all goes as I expect. Once that is done I can finally begin really moving forward with my own plans. In the meanwhile, I continue to do basic things, facial electrolysis, bought a new wig, expand my feminine wardrobe, and just enjoy expressing myself without false male constraints.