Spellbound Transgender - Fairy Tales on Gender Variance

I’d like to share a painting with you. It is called “Alvelek” (Elves’ Play) and is made by the Norwegian painter Theodor Kittelsen.

I think it is relevant for many transgender (crossdreamers, crossdressers, and girlfags included), because it says something about how male bodied persons can be ensnared or bewitched by their inner woman. 

When that happens, their whole lives are at stake. If she can keep them spellbound, they will never be able to become what God or Nature wanted them to be. They will not be able to follow their “inner bliss”, to quote the great Joseph Campbell.

The female elf in this case is clearly one of the many species of “little people” found in Scandinavian folklore.

A related being is huldra, a blonde and beautiful girl-like figure with the tail of a cow. While the elves are “over-earthly”, huldra is more of the subterranean type.

While the female elf ensnares the man with her unearthly femininity, the hulder captures him with her animalistic sexuality.

Below you will see another painting by Kittelsen, called “Huldra disappeared”. Huldra has lured a man into a swamp and he is now lost for humanity. He is probably also in danger of sinking  into the marsh.

Fairy tales are real

But these are all fairy tales, right? They don’t mean anything real.

I can assure you they do!

The people who made these fairy tales were like all great artists: They tried to capture that which cannot be defined by science and dogma – the parts of our minds that can only be reached through metaphors and symbols.

In these cases the fairy tales clearly try to tell us something about how forces in the unconscious may ensnare us.

The man caught by the elf is caught up in her magical mist, like a fly in a spider’s web. The man sinking into the mash – into the underworld – tells us the story about someone who is engulfed by his unconscious: The sub-conscious parts of his own psyche is dominating his life.

Addiction

The inner woman of a transgender crossdreamer and crossdresser may become a hulder or a feminine elf. She may take over his life in  ways that are destructive.

What happens is often that the crossdressing or crossdreaming becomes the focal point of a man’s life. He will let the dressing or the fantasies come before anything else, being that family, friends, job or other social responsibilities. He will, in effect, become very much like an addict, constantly seeking the next exotic or erotic endorphin fix. His emotional and intellectual growth will  be stunted.

There is one important difference between the alcoholic and crossdreamer addict, though: As many crossdreamers and  crossdressers will tell you: It is possible for a male bodied person to integrate the female side in a constructive manner.

To use fairy tale terminology: If you treat the witch standing by the roadside with respect and courtesy, she will reward you with useful advice and powerful magic.

In psychological terms this means that if you accept the inner woman completely and recognize that she is an essential part of yourself, the spell is broken. She is still there, but you are no longer in her power. She is now a loved part of your own being.

Mental illness

I know that a lot of people think of crossdressing and crossdreaming as mental illnesses.

And – of course – if you become addicted to silk stockings or feminization porn, you are in a way mentally ill. This condition is often followed by anxiety and depression, which are also – in some ways – diseases.

But the suffering is the effect, not the cause, of the transgender condition. I am pretty much convinced that the sexual fantasies and the urge to crossdress is the psyche’s way of trying to rebalance the mind. There is a part that has been suppressed, by family, friends and society, a part that will not be denied and that needs to find a voice.

To the extent the inner woman represents the need to express stereotypical “feminine” personality traits, she is like the ensnaring elf. To the extent she represents the need to express female sexual instincts, she is like the hulder. Women are, like men, highly sexually charged beings. The fact that the female side is expressed through sexual dreams should therefore come as no surprise.

Female to male transformations

So far I have focused on images helping the male to female crossdreamer.

Kittelsen has also a painting that for me at least can be used to illustrate the dilemma of the female to male transgender person. This is an illustration of the Norwegian fairy tale Kvitbjørn Kong Valemon (White Bear King Valemon).

Kvitbjørn King Valemon has its roots in the ancient Roman fairy tale about Eros and Psyche, and is also related to the story about the Beauty and the Beast.

King Valemon has been changed into a white bear by an evil witch. Out heroine agrees to marry him in order to get his magic garland of gold. Her acceptance of his animalistic masculine side finally breaks the spell.

The wreath – i.e. the circle – is a symbol of wholeness or completeness. The masculine and feminine side of the psyche has been reconciled, and I think Kittelsen’s painting expresses this in a wonderful way.

Crossgender vs. transgender

I guess some of you will argue that these fairy tales are not really about the transgender condition, but rather about some kind of “crossgender” condition that is common to all human beings. All men should accept and embrace their “feminine” side. That does not necessarily make them transgender, even in the broad sense of the term, and definitely not transsexual.

This is correct. Like all myths, fairy tales and great works of art, these stories and these images speak on many levels. I still think they can be of great value to those of us who struggle with our sex and gender identities, though. And they definitely tell us something about the power of the unconscious.

If you are truly transsexual, your transsexual condition cannot be overcome through myths, arts or psychotherapy. But I am sure the symbols can be used by you to make sense of the life you are living.

See also my blog post on how the Japanese animated movie Ponyo can be used to interpret transgender conditions.

This entry is based on a blog post originally published over at Crossdreamers.

What drives a girlfag?

paradoxspace:

HOW CAN “GIRLFAG” BE AN ACTUAL SEXUALITY. “OH I ONLY LIKE GAY GUYS :P” GAY GUYS DO NOT DIFFER FROM STRAIGHT GUYS AT ALL YOURE JUST STEREOTYPING THEM AND FETISHZING IT!!!

Gay guys differ from straight guys in one important aspect: They love men, and not women. And there you will find the key to the girlfag mystery.

This is not about stereotyping. Sure, you will find girlfags who feel a special attraction to feminine men. But there are also those who love the idea of a big bear or any other variation of male expressions. 

Most girlfags have a very realistic understanding of the diversity of men and masculinity, and respect that diversity. I am sure you will find that some of them have special preferences as regards the looks and mannerisms of the lovers found in their sexual fantasies, but in this they are not different from other women or men, straight or gay.

The fact that a cis-woman gets aroused by imagining herself in bed with –let’s say – big muscular guys, does not stop her from loving the more average build of her boyfriend or husband, and it most certainly does not make her a pervert. If loving big muscular guys is a fetish, so be it! But that fetish cannot be used to define this woman’s sexuality or identity.

You make it sound as if loving a gay guy means that you are a fetishist. This would mean that all gay men loving gay men are nothing but fetishists (an argument that has been made repeatedly by the enemies of both gay and transgender people, I might add).

It would also mean that all gay men who feel attracted to straight men are fetishist, at which point the term become completely meaningless.

So what about girlfags? What drives them, really? 

They have been completely off the science radar up till now – which is probably a good thing. But that means there is no consensus among the “experts” as regards what causes this “condition”.

The girlfags themselves speak of a strong identification with men. They dream about being men, in their fantasies and/or in real life.

The evidence point to there being some kind of girlfag continuum of what I call crossdreaming:

For some their fantasies are just a reflection of some kind of broad gender variance. They think of themselves as heterosexual women with a certain “kink”.

At the other end of the spectrum you will find people with full blown gender dysphoria. There are girlfags who suffer tremendously from a misalignment between their female body and their male sex identity. They are, in fact, trans men – men who love men. They are gay men.

The similarity of the longings and sexual fantasies of these different types of girlfags makes me believe that they are different shades of transgender – that is: transgender in the broad umbrella sense of the word.

You will find the exact same continuum on the male to female side: There are crossdressers and crossdreamers who are content with exploring their inner woman in secret – as men. But there are also severely dysphoric male bodied crossdressers and crossdreamers who fully identify as women. They are, in fact, women, even if it may take them some time to overcome their internalized transphobia and embrace their true identity.

And yes, the lines between lesbians and heterosexual trans men, and gay men and androphilic trans women  are equally blurred..

Needless to say, all these gender variant men and women are identified as fetishists by those who hate trans people. I sincerely hope you are not one of them.

To conclude: The fact that there are both gender dysphoric and non-dysphoric girlfags points in the direction of them being variants of an underlying transgender phenomena of different intensity.

Unless you want to reduce all gender variant and gay people to fetishists, calling them so makes no sense at all. So please stop doing so!

The Inner Closet of Gay and Transgender

The term “inner closet” was coined by Jonathan Rauch in the book Denial, My 25 Years Without a Soul. 

Rauch is a gay man, but the term also fits well with the experience of many transgender persons, whether they are transsexual or not.

In the outer closet one is trying to maintain a false front to the world. In the inner closet, however, one is trying to fool oneself.

Rauch  puts it this way:

“In the inner closet, the delusion ensnares its weaver, at least to an extent. One tells oneself white lies and makes excuses to explain away the obvious. ‘Not homosexual – bisexual, maybe.’ 'Just randy those nights and feeling lonely.’ 'Just a phase.’”

But there is even a third place, Rauch argues, a closet beyond the inner closet called “the alien landscape of inversion”.

“In this place, it is a dead certainty that one is not homosexual; and instead of turning oneself upside-down to fool the world, one turn the world upside-down. This third zone, in which confusion and evasion are so pervasive as to create a self-contained world of rational lunacy, is all but impenetrable.”

Rauch compares this place to a photographic negative. Things are in proper proportions and relation to each other, and you can live in this world for a long time. But if you for some reason manage to see the positive – your real nature – the negative’s unreal nature becomes painfully clear.

For me, as a male to female gender dysphoric transgender, reading the book felt like coming home. Like Rauch, I managed to split my soul in two when younger. I actually managed to make myself believe I was “normal”, at the same time as i had i these intense fantasies about being a woman. I felt completely out of place in my role as a man, and decoupled my mind from a body I did not recognize. Still, I believed I was normal, at least gender and sex wise.

This is what our desperate need to belong and be loved does to people.

I should add that I grew up without the World Wide Web. I lived in a community where being transgender was something you read about in the newspapers – if ever.  There were no words for what I was in my part of the world. I wasn’t even a crossdresser, because if I had been, I might have found some kindred spirits.

I have wasted years pretending to be a man. Too many, I am afraid.

So if anyone is wondering why a male to female transgender spend so much time on defending girlfags, crossdreamers and crossdressers it is because I know for a fact that some of them are both gender dysphoric and transsexual. Not all of them, mind you! But some of them are, and they may not even know it yet.

This is why I urge everyone to be cautious when arguing about girlfags. You have no idea what this person really feels. She might not know it herself.

The Invalidation of Trans People Continues 1

johnessex:

I do think I’ve got my first hate-follow.  Hi, crossdreamers!  Let me just say that you probably aren’t going to like following me, mostly because my bisexuality isn’t fodder to get your ladyparts wet.  Watch gay porn if you want that.

To my transgender readers,

Some of you have asked me to stop reblogging the hate posts targeting girlfags, crossdreamers and trans people, for the simple reason that there is a limit to how much we can take of this before it starts doing something to our minds.

I get it, and I am going to follow up on your advice shortly. Right now, however, I think it is important that we expose some of these people. They are condemning themselves by their own actions, which is a good thing.

We need to show the world in general, and the LGBT community in particular, what kind of mentality these people represent.

One of the reasons the gay and lesbian communities did eventually gain acceptance and recognition in many parts of the world, was that it became harder and harder for their oppressors to present themselves as anything but bigots. It is hard to demonize and dehumanize gay and lesbians, when people know so many of them personally and realize that they are people, just like themselves.

As long as these people are allowed to dehumanize girlfags and reduce them to mere fetishists, this oppression will continue. 

Admittedly, it is disappointing to see that so many of these attacks come from other parts of the LGBT community. Of all people, they should know better. I guess it proves that people are people, no matter how oppressed they may be. Maybe it is too tempting for them to vent out all their frustration against someone who is even lower on the pecking order than they are themselves. 

Now, lets use John here as an example.

I decided to follow John, not because I agree with him on all issues, but because I found that many of his posts and reposts contained interesting observations and arguments. He had also been following the girlfag debate, so I decided to find out more about him and his way of thinking. Think of it as research. Think of it as me wanting to broaden my horizons. Think of it as me listening.

How does John interpret this? As a “hate-follow”. That says a lot about his frame of mind. 

Then he goes on to sexualize me,arguing that his "bisexuality isn’t fodder to get [my] ladyparts wet".  

Those who have followed the girlfag debate will see the irony in this, as girlfags are constantly accused of sexualizing and fetishizing gay men. If sexualizing is such a sin, why is it that the girlfags bashers are allowed to reduce girlfags and other trans people to fetishists. In what way is this any different?

It isn’t. And this is an important clue if you want to understand what this persecution is  about. John is doing to girlfags what others have been doing to him. He has found a safe spot where he is allowed to hate and despise. To let go of all that frustration represents a seductive emotional release. Too bad it leads to the dark side.

Here’s the thing:  I am not a girlfag. I am male to female transgender. I have no lady parts, unfortunately. Nor am I particularly attracted to men. John would have known this if he had bothered to find out more about the person he is attacking.

But he isn’t, because he feels safe in his world of simple stereotypes. Only girlfags would feel kinship with girlfags, right?

Wrong! The girlfags do belong to my family, because so many of them are truly transgender. 

There is a T in LGBT, for a reason. And please remember that the great majority of that community does not share the ideas of these bullies.

Further reading:

How to Effectively Invalidate Marginalized People!

Stop the Harassment of Girlfags!

Transgender animals

Humon has made a wonderful set of comics depicting the diversity of sex and sexuality in the animal kingdom. 

They are important because many of them completely debunks the dominating myth of proper sex and gender roles. There is same-sex activities, different “transgender” morphs of males and females, dominant females and reactive females.

This means, of course, that dismissing gay, transgender and genderqueer identities and sexualities as being “unnatural” makes no sense at all. Human diversity is most likely as natural as the one we see in other species.

See also my blog posts on:

• Gay Animals
• Watching the wildlife (on unnatural animals)
• Transgender animals

More examples here!

See also Humon’s page on Deviantart

Dear Truscum: This is What the Word Transgender Actually Means.

tsarbombasticveryfantastic:

If you think people without sex dysphoria are trans, you might want to go back and think for a while on what transgender actually means.

Yes, let us do that, shall we.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, WPATH, often uses the phrase “transsexual, transgender and gender nonconforming people” when presenting their area of responsibility. The

 definition given 

of transgender in their 

Standards of Care i

s taken from Bockting 1999:

“Adjective to describe a diverse group of individuals who cross or transcend culturally defined categories of gender. The gender identity of transgender people differs to varying degrees from the sex they were assigned at birth”

I guess some would argue that this definition requires some kind of alternative fundamental gender identity, but I am not convinced. In any case this association, who has the word “transgender” in its name, also covers other “nonconforming” people.

Here is the 

American Medical Student Association:

“Transgender” is an umbrella term used by people in a number of different groups, including but not limited to cross-dressers (those who wear clothing of the other sex some of the time) to genderqueer people (those who feel that they belong to either both genders or neither gender) and transsexuals (an older term for people who take hormones and have sex-reassignment surgery (SRS) in order to transition to a different sex.“

See also  the U

S National Center for Trangender Equality

, which explicitly includes crossdressers and gender nonconforming people. On my side of the Atlantic, the UK National Health Service (NHS) gives the 

following definition:

"Trans and transgender are terms that are used to describe people who don’t conform to the traditional division of male and female.

Trans embraces many different types of people and lifestyles, including

• People who cross-dress (transvestite people). These people sometimes wear the clothing of the opposite sex, but don’t want to live full-time as a member of the opposite sex.
• People who feel that they’re both male and female, or neither male nor female.
• Drag queens, drag kings and other people who don’t appear conventionally masculine or feminine.
• Transsexual people. These are people who have a strong and constant desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex. Many transsexual people have gender reassignment treatment to make their appearance more consistent with their preferred gender. This often involves hormone therapy and surgery.”

Dictionaries

What about the major dictionaries?

Merriam-Webster can be interpreted both ways, as it defines transgender as 

“of, relating to, or being a person (as a transsexual or transvestite) who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person’s sex at birth.”

But since it includes transvestites,and argues that it is enough to express (as opposed to “identify with”) a different gender identity, it cannot be used to exclude non-transsexual gender variant people.

Oxford is equally inclusive:

“denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender.”

The DSM-5

I know that many truscum transsexual separatist have gone to the current edition of the American Psychiatric Manual to find support for their idea that “trans” and “transgender” mean the same as “transsexual”. 

Note that the DSM is the manual that until last year labelled trans women as mentally ill and that still stigmatizes crossdressers as perverts.

The DSM-5 makes use of a terminology that may be interpreted to mean that transgender equals transsexual. Careful reading, however, tells us that this is not so. 

The DSM-5 says that “Transgender refers to the broad specter of individuals who transiently or persistently identify with a gender different from their natal gender." 

Transiently means "not permanent”. “Gender different from their natal gender” includes all possible gender identities, as described by the manual, not only male or female. In the DSM-5 transgender is therefore a much broader term than “transsexual”, which requires transitioning from male to female or female to male.

In spite of what many truscum believes, the DSM-5 does not require someone to suffer from gender dysphoria to be considered transgender. The manual explicitly states that not all individuals feel distress from gender incongruence. 

Moreover, the new edition of the DSM explicitly states that being diagnosed as having a “transvestic disorder” does not stop you from being diagnosed as having gender dysphoria.

(And if you do not believe me, you can read the text for yourself here!)

Historical use of the term

The medical establishment clearly think of “transgender” as a broad umbrella term. But ultimately it is not they who decide who is to be called transgender. Transgender is a term that has been developed by the transgender community, which for the last 30 years or so has included all kinds of gender variant people.

The trans historian Cristan Williams  has done extensive research on the development of terms like trans, transgender and transsexual and found that by the mid-1970s, the term “trans” was used as an umbrella term to describe all crossdressers and/or transsexuals. It is still used this way.

I strongly recommend that all truscum read her article “Tracking Transgender: The Historical Truth”.

But for it to make sense to them, however, the new generation of transsexual separatists must keep in mind that she is responding to a different kind of separatists, the so-called “classical transsexuals” or  the “Harry Benjamine Syndrome” tribe. 

The “classic transsexuals” have, ironically, spent an insane amount of time trying to prove that they are not “transgender”, as they believe the word was created by perverted crossdressers trying to appropriate their narrative. (It wasn’t).  In other words: For them “transgender” is a slur.

This bizarre contradiction does in itself  indicate that  the truscum appropriation of the term “transgender” is not about facts, but about redefining language to their own liking. 

Sorry, truscum, this is not for you to decide!

See also “What does transgender really mean? On Wikipedia’s misleading article.”

(via hidethecucumber-deactivated2015)

Is Gender Really Nothing More Than a Performance?

One of the most efficient ways of invalidating trans people of all shades and colors – transsexuals, crossdressers, crossdreamers and girlfags included – is to argue that gender is nothing but a performance, a game, an artificial play of sorts. 

If it is not real, there should be nothing to stop you from playing, right? And if you cannot stop playing, you should at least not pretend that this is as real as the identities of non-transgender people.

Julia Serano has written an extremely important book on the exclusion of marginalized minorities called Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

. The book should be read by anyone interested in women’s and trans issues in particular and in society’s treatment of minorities in general. 

I have taken the liberty of including some of her quotes on gender and performance below:

“If one more person tells me that ‘all gender is performance’, I think I am going to strangle them. What’s most annoying about that soundbite is how it is often recited in a somewhat snooty 'I-took-gender-studies-class-and-you-didn’t’ sort of way, which is ironic given the way that phrase dumbs down gender. It is a crass oversimplification that is as ridiculous as saying all gender is genitals, all gender is chromosomes, or all gender is socialization. In reality, gender is all of these things and more. In fact, if there’s one thing that all of us should be able to agree on, it’s that gender is a confusing and complicated mess.” (Excluded p. 105)

“Sure, I can perform gender: I can curtsy, or throw like a girl, or bat my eyelashes. But performance doesn’t explain why certain behaviors and ways of being  come more naturally to me than others. It offers no insight into the countless restless nights I spent as a pre-teen wrestling with the inexplicable feeling that I should be female. It doesn’t capture the very real physical and emotional changes that I experienced when I hormonally transitioned from testosterone to estrogen. Performance doesn’t even begin to address the fact that, during my transition, I acted the same – wore the same T-shirts, jeans and sneakers that I always had – yet once other people started reading me as female, they started treating me very differently.” (p. 106)

“Instead of saying that all gender is this or all gender is that, let’s recognize that the word gender has scores of meanings built into it. It’s an amalgamation of bodies, identities, and life experiences, of subconscious urges, sensations, and behaviors, some of which developed organically, and others which are shaped by language and culture. Instead of saying that gender is any one single thing, let’s start describing it as a holistic experience.” (p. 107)

“So to clarify, I am not suggesting that biology is the only, or even primary, factor that shapes gender and sexuality. I am simply saying that biology and biological variation do, on some level, influence our gender and sexuality” (p. 113)

“Instead of trying to fictionalize gender, let’s talk about all the moments in life when gender feels all too real. Because gender doesn’t feel like drag when you’re a young trans child begging your parents not to cut your hair or not to force you to wear that dress. And gender doesn’t feel like a performance when, for the first time in your life, you feel safe and empowered enough to express yourself in ways that resonate with you, rather than remaining closeted for the benefit of others. And gender doesn’t feel like a construct when you finally find that special person whose body, personality, identity, and energy feels like a perfect fit with yours.” (p. 108)

Let me add this:

The current attacks on both girlfags and truscum, transsexuals and gender queer here at tumblr has this in common: They all try to reduce trans lives to something unreal, to a performance, to a superficial fetish or to some kind of perversion. I guess they find us very threatening. 

The fact is, however, that trans people do not threaten the identity of non-transgender people, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual, male or female. At the moment you embrace the diversity of life, you will see that there is room for everyone.