It's Raining Outside, Get Your Umbrella

I've seen a lot of talk lately about the transgender/transsexual issue. A lot of people who identify as transsexual - that is, in their own words, binary identified in a manner other than that assigned at birth, generally with some form of medical intervention (hormones, surgeries, etc) - wish to detach from the transgender umbrella and be considered separately, and a lot of other people who identify as transgender - that is, under that big umbrella which currently includes cross-dressers, those without gender, or with multiple/non-binary/shifting gender, and a lot of happy transsexuals - disagree with them.

While I see the sense in arguments for splitting from the LGBT umbrella, although I do not necessarily agree with them, this one makes less sense to me, since we are all talking about gender. I've decided to stay quiet, though, until now. I honestly didn't know enough to say anything. I'm so new to being trans, I don't even know if I want to call myself a transsexual yet. Then I ran across a comment - a single comment, whose sentiments I see echoed throughout so many of the anti-umbrella arguments I've seen*.

Simply put, it was this: contemporary gender politics, which allow one to choose one's own pronouns and gender quite freely, with no real boundaries, make it harder for binary-identified trans people to gain acceptance in society.

On the face of it, this seems to make some kind of sense. Are we not better served by establishing ourselves separately, as people who cross the gender divide but do land firmly on either side? Would it not be easier to get people to understand that we're not threatening to their binary notions of gender? In fact, we confirm them!

Well, see, that's a problem. I don't like that, because those binary notions of gender are wrong. This isn't just some interesting academic exercise - this is something which affects real people. By disavowing ourselves of the rest of the gender non-conforming population, we cast judgement on them - at least, a lot of people seem to be.

I can't shake the feeling that what these people actually want to do is throw the rest of the umbrella under the bus, make a mad dash for acceptance, and leave everyone else having to face yet another layer of oppression - after all, if even transsexuals won't stand by them and defend their non-binary identity, who's going to take them seriously?

It may work in our favour, though. We may be able to gain a decent amount of mainstream acceptance if we stop pushing the notion that gender is something you get to define for yourself. That is to say, it may work for our community. But what of the children?

You may think me a fake transsexual for saying this, but I did not know I was a girl from a young age. I was twenty-one before I even really entertained the concept, and almost three years older before I managed to accept it and embrace it. And I know people who consider me young.

I did not take the shortest path to that realisation. I took a detour through gender queer. It started by redefining what it meant to be a boy: by shaving my legs, my underarms, and really any body hair I could find; by sometimes wearing makeup, if I was lucky enough to be at a party with some girl who wanted to "humiliate" me; by wearing stockings under my pants to work, etc. I didn't shed my masculine pronouns until I started seriously considering whether I might be trans (a full month before coming out), but I was gender queer for a long time.

All told, I was redefining my gender in my own way for seven years before I managed to land back on some binary notion of gender. I was, for a long time, a boy who was a little bit girly. As I got closer to being trans, I started spending more time around gender queer people, and eventually adopted that label for myself. It was only a change of label for me at that point - the application of a term I didn't know about before, not a change in how I view myself. And that helped, a lot.

You know what else helped? All the people around me who respected every leg of the journey. The people who invited me to events, got me clothes, accepted it when I started using gender-neutral pronouns and didn't blink when I started using feminine ones shortly afterwards. The transgender community, including all the transsexuals within, was instrumental in getting me where I needed to be, because they made the journey easier.

You may help everyone who identifies as a transsexual today by getting out from under the umbrella, but in doing so, you not only hurt your present allies, but you may also make it a lot more difficult for future transsexuals, or even for transsexuals today who don't know it yet, to come to accept themselves. We don't all come to this the same way. Some of us need to deconstruct gender, and play with ours, before being able to discard it and adopt something new. We're not all lucky enough to have known from near birth.

If you do manage to split off, I can't help but wondering what would've happened to me had it happened two years earlier. I may have forever been a boy who was a little bit girly. I guess that means I'm not a real transsexual, though, right?


* I do not think, nor wish to imply, that this sentiment runs through all anti-umbrella advocates. There may be many anti-umbrella advocates who do not feel this way. I've seen a few, but only a few. The vast majority of the anti-umbrella argument going on today does seem to incorporate this sentiment.

It's a skirt, not a blindfold

I'm roughly 180cm tall. My eyes rest about 170cm from the ground. My skirt, which generally lies between my knee and waist, 40cm and 85cm from the ground, respectively, is almost a full meter from my eyes - that is, from the light-sensing, image-forming organs which allow me to perceive the world visually.

So why do people seem to think that my skirt is a blindfold?

I noticed it almost immediately when I started wearing skirts. Whenever I wore a skirt, people stared at me for longer, with more hatred, for almost no reason. I couldn't explain it. They stopped whenever I went back to pants, and then started up again as soon as I switched back.

People would stare at me for ordering some hot chips, as if it's a crime for me to crave grease and salt. They'd stare at me getting on the bus, for holding up their journey, I guess? They'd glare if I was ahead of them in line, or texting in public. I don't even know what I did for a lot of them.

What I didn't understand was why these things never warranted such looks before. I've eaten literally tonnes of chips in my life, caught hundreds of buses, been served before thousands of people, and sent at least a dozen text messages while out and about.

Before long, I realised it was the skirt. I was taught not to stare at people, because when they notice, it makes them uncomfortable. So, I can come to no other conclusion than that they think my skirt is somehow inhibiting my ability to notice. I can think of no explanation other than that they think my skirt is actually a blindfold.

After all, what else had I done to draw such hatred?

Introductions

What would a blog be without an introductory post? Probably a lot more fun to write in the beginning. Oh, the woes of the first world.

Long story short: I'm Belle, and I'm a trans woman. At the time of this writing, I've been on hormones for about two and a half months. I've got a YouTube channel, which I've posted to all of twice.

My family knows, and they're really supportive. They don't always get the best way to act, and misgendering around my mum's house is a common occurrence, but in the ways they can consciously control, they are all very supportive of my transition, and I'm really grateful for that.

My friends are fantastic. I live in Sydney, right near what one might consider the queer capital. When asked to use feminine pronouns, my friends didn't miss a beat. No one gets my name wrong. They all get excited about exciting things about my transition.

I'm a geek with OCD. My biggest fear about starting a blog is tags. Nowhere I've seen ever did them right. I need a list of all my tags, right there, for me to click on and add to. My biggest gripe with most blog editors is that they like to insert "<br />" tags instead of spaces, rather than wrapping paragraphs in a "<p>" tag.

I started this blog because I wanted to rant about something, but it seemed the sort of thing which would be better done in text than video. I'm sure I'll find other things to talk about here. If not, storage space on the Internet is cheap.