This is an important article: Strong and in parts brutal words from a transgender woman who has decided not to transition.
Much of what Jennifer Coates says makes sense to me. We all have a past that we cannot eacape from, and we often live in a cultural and a social context that wants us to replace one prison of pretending to be someone you are with another.
Bless the trans people who mange to establish new lives as their true selves, but let us never forget those who cannot.
Jennifer writes:
//I adore Laura Jane Grace, but I never wanted to be a punk rocker. I don’t want to be a conversation-starter or a curiosity, and that’s what I would be in this world, to so many people. All I wanted to be was Wendy Darling. I wanted to be an average girl with an average girlhood. I will never be able to go back and have my friends do my hair at sleepovers. I will never go back and wear a gown to prom. I will never have had a girlhood. I’ve had years to try and be at peace with that loss and sometimes I manage. We’re humans. None if it’s fair. So many of us have things taken away from us.//
Cis people may wonder about being the opposite sex, but they don’t obsessively dream of it.
Cis people don’t constantly go over the question of transition, again and again, throughout their lives. Cis people don’t find themselves in this kind of crisis. Cis people don’t secretly spend every birthday wish on wanting to wake up magically transformed into the “opposite” sex, nor do they spend years developing increasingly precise variations of how they’d like this wish to be fulfilled.
Cis people don’t spend all-nighters on the internet secretly researching transition, and secretly looking at who transitioned at what age, how much money they had, how much their features resemble their own, and try to figure out what their own results would be.
Cis people don’t get enormously excited when really really terrible movies that just happen to include gender-bending themes, like “Switch” or “Dr. Jekyl And Mrs. Hyde”, randomly pop up on late night TV, and stay up just to watch them.
The Runway Girl Network (I just love that such a thing exists!) has published an article about Jessica Taylor, an American MTF transgender pilot.
Her transition became the standard for other trans people under the Federal Aviation Administration.
Here’s a few paragraphs from the article by John Walton:
“In January 2012, during a New Year celebration, I vowed to myself that no matter what the outcome would be, I would live an authentic life,” Taylor says simply.
When I ask her to elaborate on what that meant to her — many trans people talk about authenticity as a key reason for deciding to come out, live openly trans lives and, in some cases, transition to living fully in a different gender — Taylor starts off with big picture ideas.
“We all live with a certain understanding of ourselves that we can define and accept. As we age our definition becomes more articulated and meaningful. We begin to understand the limitations of ourselves as well as the definition of our soul,” Taylor says. “Knowing you’re living a life completely contradictory to the one you see in the mirror is like wearing a suit that won’t come off or change.”
Transgender activist and blogger makes an interesting observation on persons who regret transitioning over at A Gender Variance Who is Who.
Some of the male to female regretters have clearly been caught up in some very restrictive ideas of what it means to be a woman.
Zagria writes:
Articles continue to pop up in the press and on-line re persons who transition and then regret and even detransition (change back). While many of such articles attempt to spin the facts to suggest that transition is not a good idea,
it is interesting that so many mention Alan Finch who reverted 17 years ago, and who has long since dropped out of the public eye. Example, another. The reason that Finch is mentioned again and again is that the percentage of transsexuals who revert is actually rather low, and it is difficult for the anti-transsexual polemicists to find recent examples.
As is true of so many aspects of the history of transgender, the most comprehensive list of persons who reverted is found on this site which lists 32 such, persons who reverted for quite a variety of reasons. Given that over 1000 persons are discussed in some detail, this suggests that less than 3% do in fact revert. Charles Kane reverted in 2004 giving a sort-of reason:
“In fact, I found being a woman rather shallow and limiting. So much depends on your appearance, at the expense of everything else. I wasn’t interested in shopping. My female friends would spend hours shopping for clothes, trying on different outfits. But having been a man I knew exactly what would suit me and appeal to men. I could walk into a shop and be out again in five minutes with the right dress. Nor have I ever been interested in celebrity magazines or the things that interest other women, but when I tried to talk to men about blokey things they didn’t take me seriously.”
Which leaves some of us appalled about his conception of womanhood. There are loads and loads of women who are not at all described by that, and in fact it would be an insult to describe them in such terms. I included a person in my Year End Part 2 this year who wants the NHS to pay for a reversal because she finds heels and make-up exhausting. She, like Kane, should explore some the intriguing and delightful ways of being a woman that do not include high heels or make-up or stereotyped behaviour.
I should add that this does not mean that all regretters detransition because they believe in sexist stereotypes.
Given the complexity of sex and gender, the fact that all transsexuals have been raised as the gender they were assigned at birth, the social pressure to conform and the bigotry of others, I am surprised that there are not more stories of regret. But the fact remains that no more than 1 to 4 percent regret transitioning.
Before and after shots of gender reassignment give voice to transgender individuals in Cuba.
Photographer Claudia Gonzalez traces the complex journey traversed by transgender individuals living in Cuba. By presenting her subjects in a collection of arresting diptychs, one representing the phase proceeding the gender reassignment process and the other following it, she resoundingly affirms the identities that have so often been denied throughout the country’s tumultuous history.
Tthese photos show (from top): Danay, La Chichi and Yanelis.
Breaking down five common myths about non-binary transition.
Very interesting piece from Micah over at Netrois Nonsense. Micah is a non-binary identified transperson.
Micah says this about Micah:
“I’m a cool kid-sized adult, small enough to fit into most tight spaces, making me portable and efficient. By day, I work at a small tech startup. By night, I’m a transgender advocate and educator. Basically, I stare at a computer screen… a lot.”
The five myths Micah dismisses are:
You can’t transition at all if you are non-binary
You cannot medically transition
You cannot socially transition
You cannot legally transition
Nobody will love you
And I just love this paragraph:
“A few days after my surgery, I found myself emotionally vulnerable; I was freaking out about my mangled bloody chest, and frantically questioning my decision. I remember what my father said to me when I asked him “what if this was a mistake, if this is all just some radical idea I bought into?” He responded, “well, why should you buy into that idea?””
