why can't you just...

One of my favorite bloggers had this to say recently, about reading "Nobody Passes:"

'An unexpected side effect of reading about FTM transsexuals was that I got kind of nostalgic for the concept of "butch," and wished there were more room inside the "female" label to express different looks and identities. I have no doubt that transgender people need to transition, but it's sort of abstractly sad, to my idealistic brain, that their gender expression couldn't be happily accommodated inside their original body because of society's uptight binary system. Oh never mind, I am probably just bringing my feminine-appearing, 65% straight woman baggage to this topic, and I should shut up before some reader takes all this out of context and accuses me of hate speech. '

As usual, she makes me laugh and nod with her insight and spot-on commentary, even when it's insight into a mildly (mildly!) offensive thing that she herself has said.

This is a trope that I've heard fairly frequently among non-trans folks, usually women, usually in regards to transmasculine folks (for some reason, it's never transwomen who should try to push the boundaries of what it means to be male, but almost always transmen who should be content pushing the envelope as butch/masculine women). It comes down to some variation of 'why can't you just be happy the way you are,' a question which, when uttered by someone who IS happy the way they are, doesn't inspire me to much creativity in response. Because I'm not.

And you know, not only am I not happy, I'm not even "the way I am." That is to say, such questions sound to me like "Why can't you just stay a masculine woman?"

I was not a masculine woman- I know that's what I was perceived as, how I was mis-labeled for a while, even by myself, but that's not what I was. I'm not Emma, I'm Eli, and I'm not a masculine woman, I'm a slightly genderqueer guy. So, why can't I just stay a masculine women? Really, the question is, why can't you just keep looking like a masculine woman?

Well, because clearly, everyone seems to have conflated those two questions. I was tired of being misconstrued as female, and the only way to stop being misconstrued as female is to stop looking female. That's not to say that this transition was strictly for the benefit of others- it was for the benefit of myself and my mirror, as well. I can't say, though, how much of my own need for a male body is influenced by what I believe (courtesy of my socialization in the aforementioned 'uptight binary system' our culture) a male body needs to look like. It's possible that if we didn't have such an uptight binary system, I wouldn't have felt the need to pursue physical transition. Or heck, maybe I wouldn't even have felt the need to request masculine pronouns, etc. But, we do have it, and I did (do) feel the need, and regardless of the etiology of that need, it is valid.

Which leads me to another point, which is the diversity of needs of people along the "transmasculine spectrum" aka, those of us assigned female at birth who feel that does not accurately define us. Some of us need to transition, some don't, and those of us who do have a variety of needs with regards to how best to bring about that transition. This has lead to plenty of folks suggesting that there ought to be less 'umbrella'-ing going on, since transsexuals often have a different set of needs and experiences than transgender folks or genderqueer folks, which is a topic for another time, but certainly continues to problematize the notion that trans(masculine) people as a whole could somehow be better served if there were more wiggle room inside the box marked F.

Which leads me to yet another point, that being, at least as is often the case for FTM folks, a conflation of 'butch' with 'male.' I'm not particularly butch, nor have I ever been. Boyish, yes. Masculine, always. But butch? I like chopping wood and grilling and lifting heavy things and I take a manly pride/joy in doing such things. And I try to be a gentleman, and I'm more taciturn than most women. But I've never had quite the kind of strong silence, nor the open shouldered stride that marks a butch person. (usually! watch me try not to be TOO reductive in my generalization!)

I have a nuanced gender identity, with all sorts of traditionally feminine shadings in my masculinity. And it was transitioning that enables me to express that properly now, so that I'm now longer tagged a butch women in my ill-fitting female body.

Anyway. All this to say that, while I certainly don't consider her words 'hate speech,' Mimi's expressed a sentiment that I have heard before, and am rather tired of hearing, particularly because it always strikes me the same way- a gut reaction based upon a misinterpretation.

That said, I can sympathize with her to a slight extent. There are times when I find it a bit sad that I wasn't born with a male body that would've smoothed the path for my lavender tinged boyhood-into-young-manhood. Or that I wasn't born with a gender identity which could've made a comfortable home in my body when it was still factory equipped, so to speak. I certainly find it wearying and sometimes sad to wrestle with the ways in which being trans makes my life harder. (Having babies, worrying about disclosing/safety, etc, etc) But I also find it to have been an interesting and ultimately warding journey. I feel lucky to have experienced things that few men have, and to be able to use those experiences to offer me insight into navigating our heavily gendered society.

And I definitely give her props for being, as usual, one step ahead and acknowledging the impact of her statement. Way to recognize your own cissexist privilege! (perhaps because she's already read Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano?)