Tag: Transness

On Responsibility

Empathy and compassion are truly important traits. To understand others emotions is powerful, to care about them though difficult is even more so.

Have you tried to understand someone you disagree with?

I don’t mean in the logical exercise of determining whether you think they are right or wrong but to deconstruct how they arrived where they did.

It’s difficult in a purely logical sense at times to take those steps. Sure it’s enough that we are confident that we are right what’s it matter how someone else is wrong.

Yet there’s more to this then just determining truth. As people we can’t unwind the emotionality of our thoughts and someone who disagrees with you also had emotions baked into their thoughts.

We have a responsibility to understand those around us.

I often find because I am in a different social situation the most people that empathy and understanding are critical because it’s not often that someone understands my perspective. So I have the responsibility of bridging that gap.

It’s not a matter of fairness but a matter of maturity, to be the best we can be does not usually leave room for the privilege of equality. To understand someone who disagrees with you or perhaps even hates you is hard.

Social circumstances often put trans people in a power disadvantage. Thus learning early and learning well the responsibility of understanding can be a matter of sanity let alone serenity.

There is a time to fight and a time to listen. It’s hard to want to listen to someone as they stab you. The pain of your cuts and wounds can overpower your reason and close you off from your compassion.

It is not an easy road we walk, but mercy and compassion for those less fortunate to have the strength gifted you by your experiences can help still the conflict in your heart.

People can be selfish, mean, and cruel. it’s not enough to expect people to unlearn through they must be shown the way.

I’ve often been called an old soul. Or mature beyond my years and I don’t think it has anything to do with the nature of my consciousness but the trauma it’s experienced. It takes a lot of care and concern to unwind the pain that is caused to a young trans kid. The pressure of adulthood is rarely a safe place to deal with that trauma.

It’s why it’s even more important to be kind to others. Care about those who are more fortunate than yourself. There’s no cost to kindness. But there’s a fee for cruelty.

As all people we have a responsibility to be caring and understanding of others but I think trans people have a special insight into how to model that compassion and kindness. I know I once truly hated myself and it took me a very long time to see the other side of that argument and embrace the idea of loving myself. That is a lesson we have to gift to the world so long as we care to give it.

On Not Belonging

There’s a tremendous amount of pressure that I often feel when interacting with others. Call it a weight to carry a burden to bare. I often think of it like friction. There’s a feeling of difficulty that goes into just existing in this world.

The concept of intersectionality is one I think of often. There are often moments where I feel like I’m straddling three different sets of rules and expectations. Rather then high wires each feels more like fishing line. Impossibly hard to balance on and even when you succeed it pierces your flesh.

The intersection of my femininity with my queerness and my transness often creates huge potentials for this friction. My transness makes my femininity conditional and more heavily policed. My queerness is often difficult to express because it’s so intimately related to my transness that it’s off putting or difficult to understand by cis queer people. So each element works in concert to further restrict my range of social acceptability.

It often leaves me in a position where I feel tired. The burden is heavy. The conditions of my existence in this world are limiting. Every action I take needing to be applied through multiple filters to consider not only the impact on me but the reception of others. Often the expectations contradict. Expressing transness often comes with the effect of losing the conditional acceptance of my womanhood.

It’s difficult to say but I often feel like my emotions and expression is too difficult for others to handle. No one likes when you make them feel bad and when my humanity causes others to feel uncomfortable your very presence causes that negative reaction in others.

I’m a walking reminder that the world isn’t as simple or as easy as we like to pretend it is. Rather the. Folks taking a second to question their own biases thoughts or feelings on the subject. The usual response is to put the responsibility for their discomfort on me.

Which gets back to the friction. When your existence makes people uncomfortable and the responsibility for that discomfort falls on you. Then your life is spent wading through negativity, which grinds you down.

There’s no grand solution here. if you’re wondering if there’s anything you can do exposure and understanding do work but incredibly slowly, slower then you might like. But know that you’re not alone and together we can make it through.

The subtlety of trans unacceptance

My Wife and I are in the process of becoming foster parents. This process hit a rather unfortunate roadblock the other day. My wife started her own business a month ago, it’s a busy time, she is working more then ever. She’s enjoying her work and its been a really positive experience.

The social worker doing our assessment tried to explain it wasn’t entirely because of my transition that she wasn’t ready to accept our application. She was great about it, I can tell she cares, and I’m curious how much of her misgivings are from her supervisor. I can not help but think that if my wife was my husband, they would forgive a busy father. That I am seen as too unstable because of my transition, I need the support of a ‘real’ mother for those kids.

I’m pretty devastated, my wife and I aren’t in a position to have kids of our own obviously, and we’re not sure about adoption yet, but fostering was a way for us to do some good, we have a huge empty house, we both have had rough childhoods and want to try and give some warmth and safety to a kid that really needs it. I know we’ll be good at it.

I’ve talked about how I don’t hate being trans, how its a defining part of me and has shaped me into the person I am. I wouldn’t change it if I could. I do so wish that it didn’t make my life so difficult. I find myself feeling tired, not physically tired, but emotionally. Having to justify transness, and explain it, and put it into a box it doesn’t fit in is exhausting.

I am a person, I am a human being, I am a woman who happens to be trans. I want nothing more then the dignity afforded others. I wish only to be treated like a person with a name that explains who I am, not who my parents thought I was before I was born. I wish that my sum total experiences were cherished and celebrated for what they are not as a contradiction of what is ‘normal’ (which just means straight and cisgender.) I long for a world in which transness is an experience that can be shared with others to enrich them, not to justify why others are ‘coerced’ into being uncomfortable.

Every culture is enriched by the variety of experiences and stories that are allowed to enliven it. Let us culturally accept that transness does not fit into any other context then itself and give it the room and space to breathe life into the lives of those who don’t experience it. Let trans people be people, let them give you strength as their experiences have given them, let their stories give your life greater meaning, let their struggles help you understand your own. We are not monsters, we are not to be feared, we are not looking to upset any natural order, we are but people whose place in history has long been blotted out, and whose stories have not been allowed to pass to others. That no more makes us new, or frightening then any other group who have existed outside of ‘proper society.’

Trans stories and lives matter, we have a role in society, we have a place in the hearts of those around us. We have a right to do good around us. Just let us.