(16-07-2015, 03:46 PM)ClaraKay Wrote: Miranda, thanks for engaging in this discussion. Writing down one's ideas has a way of clarifying nagging issues. I have another area of concern that you may find relevant in your circumstances. Societal validation.
Gender transition starts off being all about making one's external appearance match one's internal self-concept. It's certainly a huge part of anyone's transition and very difficult to do. We spend 90% of our time and resources focusing on the physical transformative aspects of transition. But, after awhile the emphasis shifts more to our relationships with others; people that are special in our lives as well as total strangers.
The challenge that I'm facing now concerns what I call 'societal validation.' Being accepted by the society in which I live my life day in and day out. Some will criticize me for reinforcing society's binary gender paradigm (you're either a man or a woman), but that's too bad. I'm a woman, identify as a woman, and I want others to see me as a woman.
That doesn't mean that there isn't room for those who are in the middle, bouncing between male and female genders, or presenting an ambiguous gender identity. Like I said, I have lots of male friends that like to express their feminine side by cross-dressing as the need and opportunity arise. This is who they are.
I'm entering the phase of my transition where I want to be seen and treated as a woman. My 'girl' friends don't really understand this, and still treat me like I'm a guy in a dress. There's no intention on their part to make me feel uncomfortable, it's just who they are, and not being women, themselves, they aren't sensitive to how I feel. I know this is true, because if a GG is in our midst, they will change their demeanor toward her very noticeably. It's very easy to see that many of my TG friends are men first and foremost. Putting on makeup and a dress does not make them women, and, by and large, they are fine with that. It's becoming a problem for me because the effect it has is to make me feel invalidated in their presence.
I'm finding myself avoiding social occasions where this dynamic is likely to play out. When someone like me who wants to be seen and treated like a female, hangs with male-identifying CDers in a public setting (e.g., restaurant, shopping mall, nightclub, etc.) I become someone who I don't want to be in the eyes of strangers. In those situations, no matter how good my presentation, I'm tagged as a male CDer myself.
It isn't that I object to their gender identity and how they wish to express it. It's that my gender identity is then misinterpreted by strangers; I become someone I'm not. Believe me, it does make a difference in the way people interact with me depending on if they read me as TG or GG. It serves to remind me of the limitations I face in blending seamlessly into the cisgender world which is my goal.
To be criticized for wanting to blend, and in so doing reinforcing the binary gender model of society, is to deny my right to be myself for the sake of others who would dismantle that model. I can't accept that criticism as being any more valid than my expecting my CD friends to transition to be more like me to preserve the binary model.
The answer is to simply move on. It's an aspect of gender transitioning like so many other challenges that we have to confront.
The transgender umbrella has been defined too broadly for us all to embrace a common cause. It seems there is too wide a gap between transsexuals and other transgender people. Attempts to lump us all together along with gay people into a single advocacy group is problematic, in my opinion. I predict it will splinter into two or more separate entities.
Clara
Hi Clara,
Back in post number 20 in this thread, I wrote a paragraph which sort of hinted at my take on a number of these issues.
I completely agree that it is wrong to bracket T with LGB in LGBT. Whilst Transgender is a big umbrella, my understanding is that the majority sheltering under it, are not there for primarily sexual orientation reasons. This mis-linking immediately reinforces in the minds of the un-informed the belief that Transgenderism is purely a sexual issue; it certainly doesn't help to explain to people the difference between gender and sexual orientation..
I am personally not keen, as a person correcting my gender imbalance, to be bracketed with the entire TG movement either. Those who go the full way to identifying a full blown gender issue and who then go on to do something about it are a very small proportion of the wider TG 'community'.
There is a perception of the Transgender world amongst most of the wider populace which I am afraid carries all sorts of negative undertones . They are fed, largely by the media, a picture of a world of depravity and sleaziness, a world which thrives in the dark places. The problem is that the differences between the various TG subgroups are not widely understood, all TG's are seen to be the same and the distinctions between us are not clear to those outside the TG network.
Against this backdrop, I don't think those in the TG world do themselves ('themselves' was deliberate) any favours. I am convinced there are those who revel in this image and promote it, those who flaunt the 'typical' TG image in public. Then there are those who, for various reasons, are not 'out' who unwittingly portray an awful image of secrecy and shame whilst skulking surreptitiously around the clothing racks in the high street shops (It's not their fault, society forces them into this role, I know) . Also, dare I say it, events such as the LGBT 'Pride' marches, events such as Sparkle in Manchester, actually have the effect of re-inforcing people's stereotyped views of the TG world (and come to that the LGB worlds also) thereby polarising opinions, exactly the opposite of what is intended. We become 'on display' as different which actually unwinds history to a time where we were regarded as somehow freaks of nature and abnormal.
As a person who would be labelled by others as TS who just wants to get on with life, living as me (who happens to be a woman) in the wider community, I just don't identify with any of this. Society just has to fix labels on people - I don't want to be labelled by those around me as TG , nor as TS, nor as a Transwoman, in fact, I don't want to be labelled at all, by anyone!!.
I re-iterate, I have absolutely nothing against any of these groups of people. It would be the pinnacle of hypocrisy to criticise other sectors of the community for being 'non standard'. I like the fact that society is such a mixed up, diverse arena. It would be dull, dull if we were all the same and fitted into those pigeon holes the social engineers would like us to. 'Vive La Difference' as the French say.
Vivien and I didn't hang around the Sparkle festival for long. We just felt completely out of place. We moved on and just enjoyed the other, non segregated things that Manchester had to offer over the weekend and in so doing, met a lot of really nice, 'ordinary' people which is ultimately how we view ourselves.
On another of the points you raise, I don't really make a conscious decision to 'blend in' or to 'pass' as such when I walk out through the door. Blending, for me, is, hopefully, just the final outcome of what is going on within; I am beginning to accept that my dress sense and behaviour patterns just naturally, without much thought, fall within the 'norms' of the 'average' female. The transition process, for me, doesn't specifically have blending or passing as a defined goal in its own right. Being accepted as a woman by all I meet is an outcome of the fact that I am just showing the me I feel inside. It is a validation in a way, but not one which I am specifically looking for - it's just great that it continues to occur ever more frequently.
I am finding that I am now being correctly identified as female by almost 100% of the female world but still probably only by about 50% of males. Its interesting this, because I don't feel that anything has changed which would result in this now nearly 100% recognition by other women. There must be a whole raft of subconscious signals being emitted which others pick up on; women, of course, being much more adept at this than men!!

You just wait until the FFS though


(As an aside, the Facial Team quote showed up last night - now just trying to get Skype loaded and working).
In some ways I don't really care about the 50% of males who read me incorrectly yet in other ways it rankles quite a bit. I don't personally believe it is ever possible to get to a point where the entire world would just never believe you were once male, the ultimate in MTF transition as I see it. I tend towards the view that we are all slotting into a place somewhere on a scale of 'passability' - some will for ever display more masculine features than others. This means that there will ALWAYS be people out there who will spot the fact that my underlying frame is male, no matter how much I throw at the change in terms of resources and self training. What I would ideally like is to reach a point where the number of people I meet who instinctively read me correctly and who continue to read me correctly with greater knowledge of me is at a threshold I can cope with. It will never be 100%, but hey, 99% will just have to do.
Did you ever read this interesting article from Alexandra Hamer's website?
http://www.virtualffs.co.uk/My_Facial_Feminisation_Thesis_Part_10_The_Man_in_the_Mirror.html
It is just so easy to be over self critical. We are probably all doing much better than we think. There is the positive for the day!!!!!
Miranda