TransEnough: Changing To Fit In
“You’re not trans enough.”
These words stopped me in my tracks, filling me with doubt, shame, and fear. They continued, their voice dripping hate, “You don’t know what it’s like, to be trans. It’s not fun, it’s not happy, and it isn’t something anybody does because they want to. They do it because they have to. This is a phase for you: you’re young and cute and you pass. You haven’t had hormones or operations, and you can put down your trendy little emo genderqueer identity anytime you want. You aren’t trans, and you never will be.”
I didn’t discover the term genderqueer until I was twenty-four, hard on the heels of coming out as a dyke. Genderqueer. The word reinvented my world, a quiet freedom said under my breath as I moved out of my shared apartment in the suburbs to my very own little studio in the gay district. I stealthily put a rainbow sticker on the back of my car, hoping that co-workers would notice, and that passersby would take note and give me the secret queer handshake. Every time I passed as a man I got a little happy flutter in my stomach, and I broached the subject of gender-neutral pronouns to uncomprehending friends.
I started looking for local community, and had fairly limited success; after one support group where a person first asked if I was FtM, to which I responded that I identified as genderqueer and they said I made a much prettier girl anyways, I turned my energies elsewhere and found my community online. People from all over the world gathered in the forums I frequented, and their experiences and words helped inform the way I looked at my life. I also came to realize that not everyone who identified as some kind of queer saw gender as an endless scope of possibility; rather, there were as many people who identified as LGB as straight who thought of gender as a binary option.
~~~
From our youngest interactions we are taught that there are two possibilities: one is either a boy or a girl. Blue or pink, Hotwheels or Barbie, assertive or submissive. These stereotypes are reinforced in a million subtle ways every day, from the hyperfocus on a woman’s appearance being her strongest asset to the gendered segregation of bathrooms. Perhaps some of the strongest desire for gender norming comes from within the transgender population, the culmination of internalized self-hate brought about by a society which views any kind of gender non-conformity as a psychological disorder and dangerous aberration. Children who do not fit into a binary gender structure are pressured, tormented and physically abused until they capitulate – on the surface. People who identify outside their socially assigned gender must then bury their true selves beneath a veneer of social acceptability. They are taught to hate their difference, that it is a matter of shame. If a person does dare to transition, it is something that should be done as quickly and quietly as possible, and preferably somewhere far away. When they are finished, they had better adhere to the social norms of their new gender with rigid religiosity – and don’t be surprised if you’re kindly asked to start your life anew elsewhere, out of sight and mind of your family and friends, who don’t need to be reminded of their failure with keeping you in your socially assigned gender.
When we teach our children that they have only one option – to identify with their genitals – what kind of possibility do we leave open for them but self-hate? What choice do we give but the one in which a person changes their genitals to match their identity, spending thousands of dollars and undergoing often risky operations? Where does this put the disenfranchised, the marginalized, those without disposable income or access to healthcare, or the desire to change their bodies to meet other people’s expectations?
What would it be like to live in a world where every person was accepted as they are, right now?
The emphasis with being transgender is often on physical, tangible changes. A person identifying as pre-transition is generally one who is awaiting outside approval to enact certain changes on their body: hormones, name change, surgeries. To be in transition is to be in process, and post-transition is to have put the between stages and body alterations behind oneself; to have solidly landed in the other option of a binary gender system. This is a perfect world scenario, in which the person transitioning has an identity opposite to their socially assigned role, is in good health, has access to healthcare, a support network of friends and family, and a disposable income somewhere in excess of fifty thousand dollars that they can devote to surgeries and other related costs1.
For people without access to even basic healthcare, lacking the support of their family and friends, existing below the poverty line, these tangible goals become, in many cases, an unattainable dream. Does this inability to enact physical changes make the person any less transgendered or invalidate their gender identity, whatever it may be?
Even if a person has access to the means to undergo the process of transitioning, they may not want to; they may have a comfortable relationship with their body but identify as gender non-conforming, and ask that they be addressed with different pronouns, or may be happy just as they are. Does the fact that they identify outside of a binary structure and do not desire to change their body to meet other people’s expectations make them somehow incomplete, a failure?
Socially, we are taught time and again that it is the exterior appearance that matters. Women are told that when they lose five, ten, fifty pounds and buy that name brand mascara, get that breast enhancement, put on that little black dress and dye their hair blonde they will be beautiful. Men are taught to be aggressive, strong and not too sensitive; don’t cry, don’t be compassionate, and don’t wear pink or we’ll think you a sissy. Change this, lose that, put this on, strap yourself in, belt yourself down, don’t be too smart – where is the real person found? Everyone is measured against irrational and unattainable goals where the option is to change to fit the archetype or be viewed as a failure: not pretty enough, too smart, too fat, too poor, too slutty, too aggressive, too much and not enough. With these impossible standards to measure against, anyone who identifies outside of these archetypes is a threat, to be met with suspicion, condescension and fear. Anyone who identifies with an archetype that is contrary to their socially assigned role must, therefore, be especially vigilant in conforming to their chosen archetype lest they have their validity called into question. “So, do ya have a penis or a cunt, or both? Can I see it?” is a not uncommon query, and often partnered with “Well, you’re not a real woman/man.” Given the self-endowed right of any passersby to call the identity of a transgender, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming person into question, it is no surprise that such strong focus is placed on the ability of an individual to undergo the physical changes necessary to pass in society as a “genuine” man or woman.
It is easy, with such expectations and pressures, to get caught up in the process of transitioning and to lose sight of oneself in the process. No matter how a person identifies or what goal they are moving towards, they should not undervalue themselves as they are right now. Enacting physical changes on oneself will not change the person inside; it will just make it easier for society to read you the way you want to be read. You, right now, are beautiful, and you, right now, are complete.
~~~
The TransEnough Project is about the right of every person to identify as they wish and the fact that wherever they are in their life right now is enough. It is about the inherent beauty of every person, and the fact that one does not need to attain tangible physical goals to become more. Every person is real and genuine, every person is beautiful, and every person is enough and more than enough, right now.
ENDNOTES
1. Jamison Green, Becoming a Visible Man (Nashville: Vanderbilt UP) 2004, 119.
