Space (The Final Frontier)
Sorry, couldn’t resist. Well, okay, yeah, I could have resisted, but it’s just not in my personality to deny a good Star Trek reference.
In a previous entry (titled Clarity, back in, um, December, I think) I talked a little about gendered social spaces. One friend requested that I say a bit more about that.
Now, I’m not talking about formally gendered spaces, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, mens’ clubs or womens’ colleges. (Though of course there’s lot to be said, discussed, and argued about those!) No, I mean the subtler kind of spaces, the ones that aren’t officially defined in any way, but exist nonetheless.
For instance: you’re at a family gathering, and after a while, you suddenly realize that all of the women have congregated in one room (maybe the kitchen, or a craft room) and all of the men are hanging out in another room (probably the workshop or garage). It didn’t happen on purpose... no one consciously said, hey, for God’s sake, let’s slip away from the menfolk/womenfolk for a while... it just happened that somebody had a new recipe, or somebody wanted to show off the new snowblower, or whatever... and, voila!
And, truth be told, I’m not sure it was ever really about the fascinating minutiae of the recipe, or how many horsepower the snowblower can boast. It seems to be more about people just drifting into the kind of space that feels most comfortable for them - the space where the default modes of conversation and interaction feel most natural, regardless of the topic.
If you are a Cisgendered person - i.e., someone who is comfortable with his or her gender, and always has been - chances are that this kind of situation has never particularly bothered you; in fact, you might not even have been aware of it. (Watch for it at your next holiday party!) And of course, it’s more prevalent in some settings than in others. If your family is a “traditional” grouping of working men and stay-at-home women, chances are it’ll happen early and often. Whereas in a highly educated clan that includes professional persons of both genders, the chance of easily finding multiple topics that can be discussed with equal interest across the gender lines is far better. The division may still happen at some point, but more gently.
Not that there is anything really wrong with this; it’s not intended to exclude anyone, or make anyone uncomfortable. Still, if you happen to be a woman with a deep interest in machinery, or a man who loves to cook, you may find the division a little awkward! And if you’re Trans, the whole thing can feel screwy in ways that seem almost too complicated to define. Ever see one of those silly movies where two people switch bodies for a day and find that all of the “automatic” cues and clues of the other person’s social existence are untranslatable? It’s kinda like that... except it’s every day.
Most Cisgendered persons have trouble really imagining what this must be like. I suspect that part of the problem is this: when you try to imagine what it might be like to be Trans, you’re most likely trying to imagine yourself feeling like the opposite gender to what your body and your mind already know you are... in other words, you’re trying to imagine being someone else, not yourself. This rarely works with any degree of real feeling.
So let’s take an alternate route - a ride through that other gendered space known as the body - in order to understand what being Trans might feel like in the mind. Try this:
If you are a Cisgendered person, play a little imagination game with me now. Imagine that, when you wake up tomorrow, your body has started to change - just a little bit at first, but over the next few weeks and months this change will proceed further and further. (Who knows why; perhaps you’ve mortally offended an old Gypsy seer who has promised you a terrible revenge. Just work with me here.) The physical changes, though small at first, may soon begin to be deeply disturbing.
If you are a man, you begin to notice a subtle - and after a while, not-so-subtle - change in your chest. Things are starting to... protrude... that should not. You hunch down a little inside your shirt to try and hide it, and begin to scour the list of prescription drugs your doctor has you on to see if gynecomastia is listed as a side effect... a few days later you notice, as you get ready to shave, that there’s nothing there TO shave. What the - ? As you check closely for your now-nonexistant beard growth each morning, your features in the mirror begin to look... different somehow: finer, with a more delicate cast. Soon you’re perpetually slouching in an attempt to hide your developing breasts, and have stopped going to the gym because it’s just too embarrassing, even though no one has commented or even seemed to notice. Your voice feels too high, resonating mostly in your head instead of rumbling in your chest as it used to; you can’t seem to force it back down. Your comfortable old jeans now feel too tight across the hips and you suddenly feel very self-conscious about the mere act of walking... and also about the way that guy just opened the door for you...
If you are a woman, imagine your breasts slowly shrinking. Are you losing too much weight, or is this some strange new form of wasting illness? You try researching online, but these days you find yourself constantly distracted by the ringing phone, which you’re afraid to answer because your deepening voice makes people on the other end assume you’re your husband, brother, father, son, or Significant Other. Meanwhile, your waist is thickening, shoulders widening, features coarsening, making you feel big and clumsy and ugly. Dieting is no help, and that push-up bra isn’t helping either - there’s nothing left to push up; flat is flat. One day you catch your reflection in a mirrored wall as you dash to work, and realize that you have five-o’clock-shadow...you stop short, unsure if you can possibly face the world seeing you this way, even though the world doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it... you suddenly understand, with a horrible sinking feeling, why the barista this morning cheerfully called you “sir” as she handed you your coffee...
(Notice that we haven’t even mentioned what’s happening Down Below yet, and we’ve probably made you pretty uncomfortable already!)
Okay, now imagine that all of this is happening to you AND EVERYONE AROUND YOU THINKS IT’S NORMAL. Family and friends can’t figure out what you’re so upset about. Your doctor, consulted in a panic, sees nothing wrong at all, counsels you smilingly not to worry. And every day your mirror shows you more and more a stranger to yourself. You begin to dread those moments of nakedness in the shower, the need to touch and handle this alien body that is not you...
Congratulations - you have just experienced puberty as a Transgendered person. Not literally, of course, but a very similar experience in its essence. (Except, of course, that you can just open your eyes and make the bad dream go away... I can’t.)
Which parts made you feel most uncomfortable? (See, isn’t this a FUN game?)
But wait - there’s more! We were talking bout social spaces, right? So, back to our little Gedankenexperiment...
You - the person who lives inside your mind - hasn’t changed, and your sense of your own gender remains the same, but now your body no longer matches it. Everyone is treating this as normal... but that doesn’t mean that they continue to treat you as they always have before. Oh, no. For now you’ve begun to feel a subtle but powerful shift in... well, let’s call it the openness and closedness of certain kinds of spaces.
If you are a male whose body now reads as female, the friendly women around you are now trying to draw you into their social space. They make certain kinds of overtures that expect certain kinds of responses, and when you don’t know the right responses to give, they may misread you as stand-offish, stuck-up, or even rude. Or they may decide you’re simply shy, and keep trying, inviting you into situations and conversations where you feel lost, or can only join in by being fake, playing a role. Meanwhile, that space of easy male camaraderie of which you were once a denizen now feels like a walled-in room that you can no longer enter; your overtures are met with polite, even friendly replies that nonetheless establish a distance which was not there before. That male world is now an inner sanctum with a “Members Only” sign, and you don’t have a membership card. If you do somehow succeed in penetrating it, you quickly realize that it has automatically ceased to really be a male space; your very presence has changed it, making others feel that it’s no longer “just us guys” and act accordingly...
Similarly, if you are a female whose body now reads as male, the warmth of female social space has now become a distant flame for you; you’re welcome to warm your hands at the hearth for a while, but you’re no longer invited to plop down and toast your toes (and possibly some marshmallows too) around the bonfire while having a long heart-to-heart with the girls. You can try, of course, but you may find it more awkward or reserved, less open and trusting, than you’re accustomed to. (You may get partway in if you retain enough of your old feminine mannerisms to be “read,” socially, as gay... but that, of course, will eventually present other problems...) In exchange, the male space now stands open to you: not as eagerly welcoming, perhaps, nor as fluent in the language of emotion, it may feel a bit colder than what you’re used to... but hey, don’t worry, you’ll soon learn to play the game, pretend the right interests, earn the membership card...
Why does this happen? Well, because humans tend to have certain kinds of automatic, visceral responses (sometimes biologically programmed and sometimes socially learned) to physical gender cues, and we both consciously and unconsciously define many of our social spaces based on these - even though we may intellectually understand that the body and the personality housed in it are (as my grandfather would say) three different things. Members of your close community can certainly learn not to take these cues at face value, given time and patience - but hey, don’t worry, there’s still a whole world full of strangers out there for you to feel isolated in, or act fake in, or unwittingly give offense to, because you are constantly being read wrong.
Now think about this:
When I hear my correct (male) pronoun from strangers... when the toll guy says “Here ya go, buddy” instead of “Thank you, ma’am”... when I get an e-mail addressed to the (masculine) name I’ve chosen instead of my (feminine) birth name... I am experiencing this in reverse. I’m finding out, at long last, a little about what it might feel like to have no sense of disjunction between my mind and my body, my sense of self and the social spaces that lie open to me... in short, what it might feel like to be Cisgendered.
And let me tell ya - you people have it GOOD! So hey, don’t forget that one when you count your blessings tonight. :)
In a previous entry (titled Clarity, back in, um, December, I think) I talked a little about gendered social spaces. One friend requested that I say a bit more about that.
Now, I’m not talking about formally gendered spaces, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, mens’ clubs or womens’ colleges. (Though of course there’s lot to be said, discussed, and argued about those!) No, I mean the subtler kind of spaces, the ones that aren’t officially defined in any way, but exist nonetheless.
For instance: you’re at a family gathering, and after a while, you suddenly realize that all of the women have congregated in one room (maybe the kitchen, or a craft room) and all of the men are hanging out in another room (probably the workshop or garage). It didn’t happen on purpose... no one consciously said, hey, for God’s sake, let’s slip away from the menfolk/womenfolk for a while... it just happened that somebody had a new recipe, or somebody wanted to show off the new snowblower, or whatever... and, voila!
And, truth be told, I’m not sure it was ever really about the fascinating minutiae of the recipe, or how many horsepower the snowblower can boast. It seems to be more about people just drifting into the kind of space that feels most comfortable for them - the space where the default modes of conversation and interaction feel most natural, regardless of the topic.
If you are a Cisgendered person - i.e., someone who is comfortable with his or her gender, and always has been - chances are that this kind of situation has never particularly bothered you; in fact, you might not even have been aware of it. (Watch for it at your next holiday party!) And of course, it’s more prevalent in some settings than in others. If your family is a “traditional” grouping of working men and stay-at-home women, chances are it’ll happen early and often. Whereas in a highly educated clan that includes professional persons of both genders, the chance of easily finding multiple topics that can be discussed with equal interest across the gender lines is far better. The division may still happen at some point, but more gently.
Not that there is anything really wrong with this; it’s not intended to exclude anyone, or make anyone uncomfortable. Still, if you happen to be a woman with a deep interest in machinery, or a man who loves to cook, you may find the division a little awkward! And if you’re Trans, the whole thing can feel screwy in ways that seem almost too complicated to define. Ever see one of those silly movies where two people switch bodies for a day and find that all of the “automatic” cues and clues of the other person’s social existence are untranslatable? It’s kinda like that... except it’s every day.
Most Cisgendered persons have trouble really imagining what this must be like. I suspect that part of the problem is this: when you try to imagine what it might be like to be Trans, you’re most likely trying to imagine yourself feeling like the opposite gender to what your body and your mind already know you are... in other words, you’re trying to imagine being someone else, not yourself. This rarely works with any degree of real feeling.
So let’s take an alternate route - a ride through that other gendered space known as the body - in order to understand what being Trans might feel like in the mind. Try this:
If you are a Cisgendered person, play a little imagination game with me now. Imagine that, when you wake up tomorrow, your body has started to change - just a little bit at first, but over the next few weeks and months this change will proceed further and further. (Who knows why; perhaps you’ve mortally offended an old Gypsy seer who has promised you a terrible revenge. Just work with me here.) The physical changes, though small at first, may soon begin to be deeply disturbing.
If you are a man, you begin to notice a subtle - and after a while, not-so-subtle - change in your chest. Things are starting to... protrude... that should not. You hunch down a little inside your shirt to try and hide it, and begin to scour the list of prescription drugs your doctor has you on to see if gynecomastia is listed as a side effect... a few days later you notice, as you get ready to shave, that there’s nothing there TO shave. What the - ? As you check closely for your now-nonexistant beard growth each morning, your features in the mirror begin to look... different somehow: finer, with a more delicate cast. Soon you’re perpetually slouching in an attempt to hide your developing breasts, and have stopped going to the gym because it’s just too embarrassing, even though no one has commented or even seemed to notice. Your voice feels too high, resonating mostly in your head instead of rumbling in your chest as it used to; you can’t seem to force it back down. Your comfortable old jeans now feel too tight across the hips and you suddenly feel very self-conscious about the mere act of walking... and also about the way that guy just opened the door for you...
If you are a woman, imagine your breasts slowly shrinking. Are you losing too much weight, or is this some strange new form of wasting illness? You try researching online, but these days you find yourself constantly distracted by the ringing phone, which you’re afraid to answer because your deepening voice makes people on the other end assume you’re your husband, brother, father, son, or Significant Other. Meanwhile, your waist is thickening, shoulders widening, features coarsening, making you feel big and clumsy and ugly. Dieting is no help, and that push-up bra isn’t helping either - there’s nothing left to push up; flat is flat. One day you catch your reflection in a mirrored wall as you dash to work, and realize that you have five-o’clock-shadow...you stop short, unsure if you can possibly face the world seeing you this way, even though the world doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it... you suddenly understand, with a horrible sinking feeling, why the barista this morning cheerfully called you “sir” as she handed you your coffee...
(Notice that we haven’t even mentioned what’s happening Down Below yet, and we’ve probably made you pretty uncomfortable already!)
Okay, now imagine that all of this is happening to you AND EVERYONE AROUND YOU THINKS IT’S NORMAL. Family and friends can’t figure out what you’re so upset about. Your doctor, consulted in a panic, sees nothing wrong at all, counsels you smilingly not to worry. And every day your mirror shows you more and more a stranger to yourself. You begin to dread those moments of nakedness in the shower, the need to touch and handle this alien body that is not you...
Congratulations - you have just experienced puberty as a Transgendered person. Not literally, of course, but a very similar experience in its essence. (Except, of course, that you can just open your eyes and make the bad dream go away... I can’t.)
Which parts made you feel most uncomfortable? (See, isn’t this a FUN game?)
But wait - there’s more! We were talking bout social spaces, right? So, back to our little Gedankenexperiment...
You - the person who lives inside your mind - hasn’t changed, and your sense of your own gender remains the same, but now your body no longer matches it. Everyone is treating this as normal... but that doesn’t mean that they continue to treat you as they always have before. Oh, no. For now you’ve begun to feel a subtle but powerful shift in... well, let’s call it the openness and closedness of certain kinds of spaces.
If you are a male whose body now reads as female, the friendly women around you are now trying to draw you into their social space. They make certain kinds of overtures that expect certain kinds of responses, and when you don’t know the right responses to give, they may misread you as stand-offish, stuck-up, or even rude. Or they may decide you’re simply shy, and keep trying, inviting you into situations and conversations where you feel lost, or can only join in by being fake, playing a role. Meanwhile, that space of easy male camaraderie of which you were once a denizen now feels like a walled-in room that you can no longer enter; your overtures are met with polite, even friendly replies that nonetheless establish a distance which was not there before. That male world is now an inner sanctum with a “Members Only” sign, and you don’t have a membership card. If you do somehow succeed in penetrating it, you quickly realize that it has automatically ceased to really be a male space; your very presence has changed it, making others feel that it’s no longer “just us guys” and act accordingly...
Similarly, if you are a female whose body now reads as male, the warmth of female social space has now become a distant flame for you; you’re welcome to warm your hands at the hearth for a while, but you’re no longer invited to plop down and toast your toes (and possibly some marshmallows too) around the bonfire while having a long heart-to-heart with the girls. You can try, of course, but you may find it more awkward or reserved, less open and trusting, than you’re accustomed to. (You may get partway in if you retain enough of your old feminine mannerisms to be “read,” socially, as gay... but that, of course, will eventually present other problems...) In exchange, the male space now stands open to you: not as eagerly welcoming, perhaps, nor as fluent in the language of emotion, it may feel a bit colder than what you’re used to... but hey, don’t worry, you’ll soon learn to play the game, pretend the right interests, earn the membership card...
Why does this happen? Well, because humans tend to have certain kinds of automatic, visceral responses (sometimes biologically programmed and sometimes socially learned) to physical gender cues, and we both consciously and unconsciously define many of our social spaces based on these - even though we may intellectually understand that the body and the personality housed in it are (as my grandfather would say) three different things. Members of your close community can certainly learn not to take these cues at face value, given time and patience - but hey, don’t worry, there’s still a whole world full of strangers out there for you to feel isolated in, or act fake in, or unwittingly give offense to, because you are constantly being read wrong.
Now think about this:
When I hear my correct (male) pronoun from strangers... when the toll guy says “Here ya go, buddy” instead of “Thank you, ma’am”... when I get an e-mail addressed to the (masculine) name I’ve chosen instead of my (feminine) birth name... I am experiencing this in reverse. I’m finding out, at long last, a little about what it might feel like to have no sense of disjunction between my mind and my body, my sense of self and the social spaces that lie open to me... in short, what it might feel like to be Cisgendered.
And let me tell ya - you people have it GOOD! So hey, don’t forget that one when you count your blessings tonight. :)
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