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Instant Sex Change and other stories
First, two comments on the previous entry:
Iain writes
Leaving aside your issues about the whole female thing, may I just point out that his choice wasn't between working genitals and nonworking genitals; it was between nonworking female nongenitals he didn't want or nonworking male nongenitals he preferred. Either way, he was neutered.
And Beth writes
He has a penis now. And a wife. And, presumably, sex. Penile reconstruction has come a long way since the sixties.
Everyone is better informed than I am. (Well, I knew about the wife.) Maybe if I could actually bring myself to read the book, I would know these things.
But, after I wrote that screed yesterday, I sat back and thought, and realized that my hangups go deeper than I thought in this area. (Quelle surprise, eh?)
Sharyn and I have been corresponding about this McCloskey book - did I get her last name right? - apparently the first-hand account of what getting a sex change was like, and life before and afterwards.
My first response (sight unseen) was "Oh, exactly the sort of My Struggle autobiography I most dislike." (Ardent Readers know about my distaste for autobiography in general, so that's saying something.)
Then I realized that, while I'd have the same response to reading about someone's brave struggle with cancer or polio or AIDS - i.e. I wouldn't read them, they annoy me - TG-themed books come into a special category of distaste, one which, until yesterday, I wasn't aware I had.
Basically, I don't like seeing it treated as a condition, as a disease. I don't even like TG support groups because I feel that, in a perfect world, transgendered people wouldn't need support. In a perfect world you could show up for work in a dress and no one would blink an eye. The thing is, the longer we continue to treat it as if TG people have Something Unusual about them, the longer it'll take to make this a perfect world.
And TG books all seem to be "I enjoy being a girl" books (apologies to Christine Jorgensen) that revel explicitly in the New Life, or they're My Struggle books that tell how agonizing it was, or both. Often both. "Boy, that was rough, but I'm really happy with my life now." Well, I'm just pleased as punch for you. Now go away.
I know, I know, I'm really sinking to a new low here. And I don't mean to piss off all my TG friends, really I don't. Nor am I attempting to downplay your struggles, which in most cases are quite real.
I think the problem is that - outside of these pages, which are a special case - I don't want to create the impression that my gender is a big deal to me. I am reluctant to go near the subject in conversations. And the reason is that I don't want to become a one-note character. I don't want "transgendered" to be the most visible thing on my curriculum vitae. I don't want to be pegged as anyone's "cross-dressing friend." There are better things to be known for; there are probably better things to talk about. And therefore I don't like reading anyone else talking about it either.
What I want is to be able to be what I want without anyone commenting on how weird I am because of it.
Again, this fits in my general philosophy of not liking common commiseration. I don't believe in the "people-with-" groups. I will not rally under a banner for My Disease or My Group, because the instant I do that, it reduces me to nothing but a person with that disease or a member of that group. It doesn't advance me. It cheapens me.
How many of you think of Catherine Jamieson as "that journaller with AIDS?" Be honest. But, you know, when I read her pages I try as hard as I can to forget that. Because she's a lot more than that. And Catherine doesn't seem like the kind of person who rallies under that kind of flag either.
This is a sensitive subject for me - and one I've caught a lot of fire for over the years - no matter what the disease or cause is. But the transgender stuff is probably more of a sore point than any other "condition," because it's one I happen to have.
Which reminds me.
I got this from Aussie this morning:
I think a person who'd been dreaming of being a woman for years and finally got her wish would get an awful case of the bends over it. Witness how whack I got when I was 140 lbs. and somewhat jaw-droppingly gorgeous. I'd been dreaming of it all my life, and I always felt there was a beautiful skinny girl inside me, but I'd look at that babe in the mirror and just go "Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my mirror?" It's just not that easy.
The mean part of my brain wants to say, "Well, that's your malajustment problem, isn't it? Don't generalize that to me."
I guess what annoys me about this - and it's the main thing that was annoying me in all the gender discussion of the past few days - is that I hear beneath the statement above, "Hey, Columbine, if you actually did wake up as a woman one morning, you'd be perfectly miserable." And I don't believe that, and I never will.
I continue to maintain that if I woke up with an Instant Sex Change, it wouldn't make that much difference to me, internally. I'd finally get to wear the clothes I want to wear; there'd be a lot of physical issues to deal with - big deal, they're known quantities. Point is, there wouldn't be any rude surprises.
I concede that the rest of the world would cause/have problems with it, and would make my life difficult from then on because humans are malicious spiteful creatures who despise Anything Different ... but inside my head, I swear, I'd shrug like Tilda Swinton in Orlando when she wakes up halfway through the movie as a woman. No explanation given or needed.
I wish everyone else didn't need an explanation either.
© Columbine
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