My take on being transgender offends some people. I am not a culture warrior. I depsise postmodernism. I think victimhood is a status one should scorn about themselves and use that scorn as fuel to heal and transcend. No, I don’t go in for social justice theory or the left-wing screeching that seems to be de rigueur in the USA. I am not American. Online, it feels like there is “the many” and “the me”. Perhaps you are like me.
It’s likely “the many” and “the me” have both drunk kool-aid, although different flavours. For one, I am about pragmatism more than pride; more about building myself into someone formidable in the world as it is; less about excusing my weaknesses and demanding the world change to suit me. Both the me approach and the many approach are variations of iconoclasm, but the icon I choose to clasm is not in the hands of society. It is the icon I hold of myself – my self-concept. By embracing my transness, I am not joining a bandwagon. I am embracing me.
FUNCTION OVER COMFORT
To me – a functionalist – gender is a set of two roles and behaviours. One generally fits well enough for someone born with male genitalia, the other for people born with female genitalia. Transgender people are those whose assigned role chafes so much that their life improves if they abandon it. I said I was a functionalist, this is a functionalist definition.
So, under our functionalist definition, what is transness is easily confused with?
- Crossdressing – wearing of clothes for the reason that they are coded to the other gender
- Homosexuality – being attracted to people of same gender
- Autogynephilia – being turned on by being or feeling feminine
- Escapism – self-soothing by taking a holiday from a social role that is painful
- Objectification – turned on by being objectified in some way by someone else, e.g. seen as a sexual plaything
- Sissiness – being turned on by exaggerating juvenile femininity and dependency.
SIDE ISSUES TO THE SIDE
These are side issues to being trans, in the same way fries can be a side dish to steak. Fries can also be served with many other dishes or eaten by themselves. And, often, steak is served without fries. This is something that many trans people and trans-admirers misunderstand. You can display some mix of the above and not be trans. You can be trans and display none of the above.
For people who are trans, so much is mixed up and feels like it is all one dish. Identity, gender, personality, attraction, romance, sex and socialisation – everything all piled together and wrapped up like a burrito. This is not the case.
For men who are intrigued by trans women, this is doubly confusing.
How can you understand us if we don’t understand ourselves? If we can’t figure out what is main and what is side? If we present you with a burrito?
However, this may not matter so long as you support us in our confusion and we support you in your attraction. If we can each do that, then there are good intentions and mutual care on both sides.
MAGNETISED BY THE FEMME
So, you may be a guy who is attracted to femininity regardless of the body that wears it. You may find that transwomen revel in and flaunt their femininity – aka hyperfemininity – more than ciswomen. Maybe we do this because we have had to fight for it, rather than have it imposed on us.
You may be what is referred to as a “chaser” – you are also valid. The thought of a woman who has a bit extra to be exciting or you simply may like the idea of a partner who has renounced masculinity entirely, so leaving that role for you to inhabit and proudly supporting you in it.
You may be a skoliosexual who simply finds androgyny or non-binary people to be hot. Whatever it is, you are a person. Transwomen love you as a human with flaws if you can love us as humans with flaws.
Because really, it is about love and understanding, not politics and grandstanding.