When I was little I liked playing pretend. I would run the length of our driveway and pretend I was winning the Olympics. I would prowl the yard with my toy rifle pretending I was Annie Oakley. The kids of the family who babysat me, Kate and John and Rob, and I would play dress up and pretend we were in the Muppet movie, or Indiana Jones, or even just in an office. (Oh gosh the world of adult work appears so engaging to kids.)
Playing pretend is what little creative kids do, and when the other kids grew out of it I double downed with the rest of the theater kids, doing 3 hour long productions of Godspell and South Pacific at a community theater with no air conditioning in an old church club building.
How different does the daily narrative you are building in your head have to be from the narrative the world is witnessing before it’s a problem? The party line seems to be that people’s personal narratives have a sacredness about them. Perhaps because telling people who they are, how they look, seems cruel in a world where we all seem so crushable, so disposable, so un-special, so regular. From a mental health standpoint they encourage practitioners to enter into these narratives to build a relationship with the client. If you have a new client come in talking about invisible bugs all over their skin, it is not helpful to argue with them about it. They will leave your office and never return. You enter into their world, you discuss the bugs with them, you write your impressions in a file about them, you assess whether their delusions and hallucinations make them a threat to themselves or others. You treat them as a sick person but you do not reveal to them that that is what they are to you.
There was a client who was an adult baby at the clinic. What that meant is that this person who was actually male and in his fifties lived full time as a female baby. Like, what he had everyone call him was “Baby Jessica.” (It wasn’t Jessica, it was another name, duh.) Now, people don’t actually use the word “Baby” as a title when referring to babies, usually. Except if the baby is trapped in a well. But in an adult baby’s life there are lots of contradictions. Babies don’t take blood pressure medication. Babies don’t argue with receptionists over rushing the submission of insurance forms. Babies aren’t assertive about insisting that the staff of their doctors’ office respect their baby identity.
So how do you play at being a baby when the very intentionality of creating a world in which you are a baby around you is something real babies cannot access? You call your at home caretaker your nanny. You call your wheelchair a stroller. You ask the staff at your doctors’ office to check to see if your medications come in children’s formulas.
“Respecting identity” was a foundational mission of the clinic. We respected identities way more than we respected people’s time or emotions. When I was a patient at the clinic I got a voice mail from the clinic nurse following a blood test asking me to give her a call because my results were concerning. I called. I waited another day and called. I waited two days and called. She called and left another message while I was at work. I called and asked when I should call to reach her, and the receptionist said there was not a good window to reach her. It started to come up on the timing of my next testosterone shot. I called and told the receptionist I didn’t know if I should do my next shot and could the nurse please call me. The receptionist got sick of me calling and suggested I schedule an appointment. The next appointment was a month out. I never ended up speaking to that nurse about my funny test results, which showed there were liver enzymes in my blood. I ended up having an appointment with the nurse practitioner and she told me that’s pretty normal, but I was creeped out enough by how much info I didn’t have access to about what was happening to my liver that I stopped T. Well, and also my life plan was crumbling and I realized being read as a very hairy woman was going to lock me into grinding poverty, what with my dependence on service work. When, a year later, I was in the role of receptionist at that clinic I realized hardly anyone gets to call in and speak to the nurse, or receive a phone call during a window you can actually pick up. Getting a message that freaked you out and then having to wait a couple months to figure out how freaked out you should be was totally normal.
So we all respected Baby Jessica’s identity. I was thinking deeply at the time about why I was so unhappy with what people assumed about me when I told them I was trans. Here is what people tended to hear when I said I was a trans guy:
- That I wanted to fuck women like men fuck women
- That I wanted to participate in male dominated activities like sports fandom, using power tools, and going to strip clubs
- That I had the delusion I already looked like a dude
So when you think an identity is going to feel better and it doesn’t, you wonder what it was you thought you were going to get. I parsed out a couple of changes I thought I was going to get with having a trans identity:
- I thought people wouldn’t openly discuss with each other in front of me my value and availability as a sex object. (hahahahahahaahahahahahahahah oh gosh boy howdy I was wrong about that oh gosh)
- I thought people would listen to me more. Like, believe me about what I saw happening in the world around me, and be more interested in what I was reporting.
- I thought I’d end up with a male body. Like, I understood I wouldn’t get a dick, but I thought I’d get broad shoulders and slim hips. Like the trans guy success stories you see in those “you want me in the bathroom with your wife?” memes.
Anyways, I was at a point in my life where I was really puzzling over why taking on a trans identity wasn’t making me feel better and why all the assumptions people put on me with that trans identity felt so familiar, like oh great, I’m another kind of object for having sex with who has to conform to a gender stereotype to make you comfortable, THIS FEELS REAL FAMILIAR TO ME.
So I was puzzling over what Baby Jessica wanted. Because he seemed frustrated and upset a lot of the time, and also it was clear saying “I want to live full time as a baby” was not the same as “I will attempt to exhibit some life strategies that you see babies exhibit.”
Guys, you know what Baby Jessica wanted? He wanted people to talk to him in the high pitched, enthused, thrilled to see such a cute baby, aren’t we so happy someone brought a BABY into the office voice, isn’t having a BABY around just such a beautiful thrill voice when he called up. Then when you would do that he’d respond in a cartoony baby voice back. It made him SO HAPPY to be talked to in that voice.
So I started putting on that voice when he’d call in. He told his nurse practitioner I was very good at respecting his baby identity. I got a note of praise in the clinic newsletter for how good I was at respecting his baby identity. It was the one piece of good feedback about my performance I ever got at that clinic.
I had to ask myself- am I a version of Baby Jessica? Baby Jessica won’t go to the doctor unless people play this little game, the rules of which he can’t even fully articulate. He’s using this “Baby identity” game when actually he wants some nurturing enthusiasm for his presence and some cooing. Baby Jessica feels the need for these things he can’t articulate so profoundly that he’s willing to diminish the potential of his life down to almost nothing. He’s created a persona that assures no one will ever turn to him for leadership, he cannot go out in public without freaking everyone out, he effectively has given up on creating anything in this lifetime. So he can get cooed at a little bit.
Now- how does someone decide they would like such a small life? I don’t know, mean parents, a porn addiction, trying out adult life and having it kick you straight in the balls for a lot of years? That’s all speculation. I don’t have insight into what makes a grown man give up in such a profound and complete way.
You might say, well, but that’s what he needs to do to be happy. There’s some pity in that response, but I don’t think there’s a lot of actual respect in that response. There isn’t much wondering, “what value and worth could this person be bringing to our world if they weren’t committed to being an adult baby?” To say, oh, he needs to do this to be happy is also saying, “There’s nothing society needs from this individual besides him sitting alone in his apartment, waiting for his caretaker to come over so they can start playing Baby and Nanny together.”
I don’t think I was being respectful when I put on that cooing voice for him. I didn’t feel respected when people would call me “dude” and invite me to strip clubs and try to teach me about power tools. The kind of respect I want is a belief that I’m valuable, my time is valuable, my thoughts are valuable, my leadership is valuable, and this world will not get as good as it can get if my thoughts and leadership are ignored.
When we think about behaviors people insist on, the question is, does this behavior substantially limit this person’s contribution to the world? If you had a friend who was a great artist, and they picked up a heroin habit, you’d say, “Hey idiot you’re denying the world great art by this dumb thing you’re doing! And yeah, heroin makes you happy, but you have value to the rest of the world beyond you being happy!”
A lot of my anger at the people who were cheerleaders for my transition is their enthusiasm for all these limits I was placing on my life- the black hole of time and money and energy transitioning is- revealed that they didn’t think I had much value. They didn’t say anything like, “What you could do with that time and money and energy if you directed it towards a goal beyond changing your body is so profound that this pursuit seems like a massive waste of what you are capable of.”
I mean, if they had said that I would’ve called them transphobic. But I still wish they had said it.
Now you may say, being a trans dude doesn’t limit people the way an adult baby identity does. Well, I can tell you being a non-passing trans dude does. It limits where you can live, who you can live with, where you can get a job, where you can go to the doctor, who you feel safe socializing with. You end up in a teeny tiny world- first you cut out everyone who doesn’t get your pronouns right, then you cut out everyone who’s being a creepy fetishist, then you cut out everyone who can’t deal with all the anxiety attacks you’re always having because just dealing with other people’s reactions to you is too damn much to take. The world gets very, very small. Not as small as an adult baby’s world, I’ll give you that. But teeny tiny still.
It’s the difference between respecting someone’s identity and respecting them. Saying “I will play along because you need this to feel ok,” and saying, “Whoa, you’re too valuable to not investigate why you need such a limited life to feel ok, also, are you actually feeling more ok these days? Maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board re: how you try to make yourself feel ok?”
Detransition care has to be actually respectful. Practitioners who work with detransitioned people need to be actually interested in their client’s insights and in their client’s potential as leaders and creators. Practitioners need to believe, “these people cannot be allowed to kill or hide themselves away, because they are too valuable to this society.” It can’t be this condescending, “oh whatever you need honey,” fake out respect that we got from the people who gave us hormones. We certainly deserve respect. We certainly have come far enough and through enough to demand it.
This is brilliant!
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I think this is the plain-spoken, real-world complement to thirdwaytrans also-awesome professional therapy take on identity and its limitations:
http://thirdwaytrans.com/2016/02/01/identity-is-not-the-same-as-authenticity/
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Reblogged this on Purple Sage and commented:
This is brilliant, please read.
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Ah, Maria, reading your thoughts is so helpful to me, as I look for wisdom in dealing with my teen daughter’s sometime wish to transition (and pretty consistent adoption of ‘guy’ presentation and definitely online presence). Even beyond all the scary potential physical consequences of what she is contemplating — I would regret the potential investment of so much mental, emotional, and financial energy in a quest that can never completely be fulfilled, and the narrowing of the world as a result. (Since she will not ever find a world that will perfectly respond to her as if she were a man.) I value this kid and her future so, so much, and I hope i can communicate that to her in a loving way. That she can do all the stuff she likes, dress how she likes, and still have the kind of weight in the world that I think she is seeking, without a herculean effort to turn her body into “the other.” I don’t think she suffers from body dysphoria, exactly, so … trying to buy time for her with many distractions, just trying to give her brain a chance to mature, you know? Ai yai yai. Thank you for your writing.
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Brilliant piece.
@Puzzled:
” That she can do all the stuff she likes, dress how she likes, and still have the kind of weight in the world that I think she is seeking, without a herculean effort to turn her body into “the other.” ”
But can she? Can she have the weight in the world she is seeking? In a patriarchal world?
I think a girl’s fears that she won’t be able to do all the things she wants to do are valid. What she is mistaken about is the solution. Patriarchy must be dismantled, not her own body.
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Yeah, I agree with that. Unfortunately I do not see the patriarchy being dismantled any time soon, and I can’t tell her that there’s no hope for her to get the kind of respect she wants and still be female-bodied. Otherwise I’m simply supporting her interest in becoming a man (or whatever the transing industry is telling her a medically created man is). She’s interested in instant gratification (at 17) and social structures beyond rich/poor pretty much elude her. One primary reason for my foot-dragging on the medical issue is to try to give her brain a chance to catch up, so she can see some of this stuff for herself.
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That part of the comment is confusing. Don’t ftts also want to be left alone and be innocuous in the way men get to be, without the objectification and condescension, with freedom by the barrow full? Are there trans men who are leaders outside of a trans context?
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The adult baby story is, to me, a particularly acute version of much of what manifests with trans identity, namely that a lot of trans people seem to want to be treated as their “gender” only in terms that they would prefer. The adult baby wants to be cooed over every time adults interact with him, but that’s not an authentic baby experience. There are adults who would react with disgust when seeing a baby. Adults, like me, who act uncomfortable around babies. There are adults who apparently think hitting or shaking a crying baby is an appropriate solution to that problem. There are adults who let babies in their charge go without food or a diaper change for too long. Being a child is actually a very precarious and dangerous situation where, if you got stuck with the wrong caretaker, you could wind up seriously hurt or dead.
And there’s a parallel here with how a number of trans women don’t seem to want to be treated like women when that treatment is something they dislike. They don’t want their opinions dismissed; who would? Many don’t want to be treated like a sex object or be victims of male violence. I’ve seen some trans men balk at the expectations put on them as men as well. A while ago Buck Angel caught some flak for saying he thought trans men shouldn’t be asking for donations to fund their transitions, that that’s behavior unbecoming of a man. I’m not really one for enforcing strict gender roles, but that’s a negative side of “being a man” (you’re not supposed to be vulnerable or ask for help), that many trans men would apparently rather opt out of. But the world doesn’t let you pick and choose. You don’t get to opt into the fun experience of being a child or a woman or a man with none of the drawbacks.
We should all be in this together to push back against unreasonable expectations and unacceptable treatment from others, but I don’t get the sense that trans activism is interested in that so much as giving a small number of people some sort of escape clause.
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I recently read this comic which is about exactly those differences:
http://humoncomics.com/the-proposal
(Man asks woman to be his “mommy”. She then … reacts not exactly like he wanted)
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I also relate so hard to the ridiculousness of getting medical results. I’ve always told my doctor’s office to just leave whatever they want in my voicemail. My voicemail is secure; barring hackers, no one else has access to it. Just give me my results or tell me why you’re calling so I don’t have to play phone tag with you for two weeks. (I’ve also worked in a clinic before, and I know HIPAA allows for this if the patient approves it.) But I have never, not once in my life had a doctor be willing to do that. They won’t even give a general idea of why they’re calling. It could be a billing issue for all I know, but they won’t say. Drives me nuts.
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Beautiful. Thank you. Reblogged on http://transwidow.wordpress.com
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The ways in which you see a trans-identified person’s world becoming smaller are often true for cis gender non-conforming people. Do you also see gender non-conformity as a maladaptive identity? Where do you draw the line on accepting the status quo and playing the game in order to succeed within what is (I don’t think you’d disagree) an unquestionably and fundamentally flawed and fucked up social system that seeks to limit success and acceptance to the tiniest majority (mostly rich, white men)?
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I don’t see gender non-conformity as an identity but a set of behaviors. I’ve developed a set of feminine behaviors for financial purposes since detransitoning but no, I don’t think that conforming to gender stereotypes is inherently more healthy than not conforming. I think doing what you need to do to make it through daily life and create what you want to in the world is health. “What you have to do” is dependent on income and geography and education levels and race and the industry you work in. I think psychological health means taking care of yourself and valuing your comfort and your contributions to the world. If you were born female and you’re out there rocking a fade and hairy legs and you’re also getting your dreams out- good for you, you’re killing it. There’s a lot of women who can’t do that, and if because of their job or their community they gotta wear a full face to get their dreams out, then yeah, I think that’s a healthy response to a pretty sick set of societal norms. I think different people have to do different things in their lifetimes. How that fits in with adult babies- that’s my boundary to all that acceptance, I don’t think anyone should live full time as an adult baby and I think it shows some serious mental illness that should be addressed. I guess if there was some scenario where getting in with an adult baby crowd was going to get you funding for your app or something I could see going full baby as a healthy strategy.
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LOL, the adult baby crowd! All the adult baby millionaires who you can hit up for funding. and because you’re all adult babies who have this tremendous feeling of comradeship… Oh wait except babies don’t feel that so you all have to totally suppress it. And then you won’t get your funding.
You’re right about the adult baby guy shrinking his world. I find that so incredibly disturbing. I’m disabled and have a ‘pre-shrunk’ world. And I am DAMN sure going to have an impact on the world.
The medical offices, as you put it not respecting peoples time or emotions. That was perfect! Write more about how medicine actually treats people. Not for any reason other than that I love that stuff. There’s a great New Yorker thing from like six years ago by Paul Auster. Where when he was having a heart attack and was in the hospital and he’s elderly, they asked his wife what do you want us to do. Meaning like maybe let him die. And she said DO EVERYTHING! Anyway I’d like to hear more of that. 😊
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But what if you are limited by your exteriors, in the sense that it forbids you from expressing your truth? I remember your essay about the poledancing skinny hipped gay man, whose pole movement expressed something utterly different than, say, a sad chubby cis woman who was trying to improve so she could make more money stripping her way through college? What about the “badass” woman with the fade, muscles, and tattoos who is sick of having her girlfriends want her to strap it on and slap them when she is penetration critical or bdsm critical, and who is sick of her boyfriends demanding emotional labor from her because she is “strong”? There’s a larger problem here, of looks becoming a synecdoche for EVERYTHING nowadays. And trans people are the canaries in the coalmine: See the four ten hairy hippy angry AFAB who can’t be the glamorous lithe snub nosed snippy gay man, or the two hundred fifty pound sad pigtailed AMAB who can’t be a cute Madchen in Uniform lesbian! And then everyone, straights and cis gays alike, laugh at us for daring to imagine a way out of biological, physiological, genital destiny PARTICULARLY if we are trans, (genitally) dysphoric, and, after transition, enjoy dating those of our target gender rather than our assigned sex at birth. This is why straight trans men, while misgendered as “butch lesbians” are not ridiculed the way gay/bi trans men are, and straight trans women are pitied as effeminate queens without enough (misogynistic) superiority over “fish”, while gay/bi trans women are considered predators.
Two hundred years ago, gay men and lesbians were considered jokes the way non straight trans people are now.
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Your comments are PACKED with deep stuff, I always need time before responding because there’s so much in them. They’re so great. There’s so much in this one I want to talk about- especially looks being a synecdoche for everything (GAWD so true) and the JOKE stuff. I’ll get a thoughtful reply out to at least one of the themes in here, I swear. 🙂
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“What you could do with that time and money and energy if you directed it towards a goal beyond changing your body is so profound that this pursuit seems like a massive waste of what you are capable of.”
Exactly. I so wish my daughter’s “friends” had told her this.
“Gender dysphoria” has been morphed into picking your gender off of a shelf, like the “grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”….I don’t like being a woman/man, so I’ll be a man/woman. In turn, we’re only becoming even more stereotypical about gender expectations.
Thank you for your writing.
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I’m The Commenter, the post transition gay trans man, and I am in shock at how wrong this is, when gender non conforming kids are told they are trans for merely going against Self Effacing Barbiefication for girls or Militaristic Sadism for boys. By this criteria, most of the amazing cis people I know would have been transitioned as kids.
From reading your essays, I know that you believe that dysphoria, at least for AFABs in this society that despises the female body, is not an adequate marker of transness either, but it is at least miles ahead of this ridiculous 1950s-era throwback structural functionalism. And I am saying this as a former hater of pink and lover of baseball and trucks, who still believes that my “boyish” childhood and adulthood hobbies had/has NOTHING to do with my transness.
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You’re right, I don’t think body dysphoria alone is quite enough. But to break down what is “enough” even further, really it’s about wanting the people seeking medical transition to have as close to a realistic idea of what their body will be and what their lives will be after medical transition as possible, and to want those outcomes. Which s why I want to fight so hard against the “internal identity” narrative, because I think it clouds people’s judgments on what their lives will be and whether they want those lives after these medical interventions. Your voice is very important here because, from everything I can gather, you’re happy with the interventions you’ve gotten and happy with the life you’re living, so that’s a valuable perspective when we’re talking about who this is right for and who this isn’t right for. What would have been helpful to you when you were a kid? Also “effacing barbie-fication” and “militaristic sadism” LOVE THESE SHORTHANDS.
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Maria– I’ve been thinking a lot about this piece over the past couple days and I think there’s something deeply right about it, about our aims being striving for a meaningful life worth living rather than mere temporary happiness or licking wounds. I have a couple concerns though I can’t get over, that I think other commenters have touched on.
1. The first thing I guess is talking about gay/bi identity– clearly a lot of what you’ve written in this piece can apply to adopting one of these identities, since in a homophobic society being gay/bi can horribly limit one’s life. It seems to me that your piece might inadvertently say that persons who prioritize religion/culture etc. above their attractions might be making an acceptable or even positive choice, since they would be living a more expansive life in a lot of ways. To me it appears that people who choose to do this are actually limiting themselves or preventing themselves from having an optimally meaningful life, but I’m not sure how to flesh out exactly why that’s the case if objectively their options are broadened by being (for example) committed to a certain view of religion and thus a heterosexual life pattern. Any thoughts?
2. The other thing is that I am worried that certain classes of people cannot achieve a meaningful or “larger” life in virtue of suffering oppression and marginalization. It might be the case that certain women’s lives for example are so limited by misogyny and other forces that they cannot ever escape having a “small” life and so making moves like transitioning doesn’t appreciably make anything worse. Obviously every person deserves respect but at some point even basic offers of empathy can seem condescending (see criticisms of “it gets better”) if they aren’t accompanied by understanding of the very real fact that some people are stuck in awful situations or have limiting conditions of their lives that won’t ever go away. I feel like for women, for example, patriarchy is not going to be dissolved in our lifetimes, so for all of us, that’s a fundamentally limiting condition. What do we do about that? I I guess the thing I’m struggling with is something like: how can we strive for growth and having value when there’s a wall limiting our growth and society doesn’t value us?
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