Normal, Part 1
So, as promised, this begins what I suspect will be a multiple-post exploration of the concept of “normal.” My initial temptation was to launch right into etymology and mathematics - but instead, in keeping with this blog’s title and theme, I’ll start by telling you a story.
I've mentioned puberty once or twice before, I think. Now, I'm aware that puberty pretty much sucks for everyone. And in fact, today I'm barely even going to mention those aspects of puberty that particularly suck for Transfolk. No, today I'm going to tell you about a moment that actually would have sucked much worse for me if I hadn't been a Transgendered person.
Yes, really.
So... puberty. That time when (A.) you’re hugely self-conscious and anything that makes you socially uncomfortable feels like the end of the world, and (B.) your secondary sex characteristics start to develop. Thus proving that (C.) Mother Nature really does have a sadistic streak!
For female-bodied persons, of course, the most obvious development is in, er, the chest area - a somewhat awkward change even for those who are perfectly happy with their gender.
In my case... well, I hated the damn things already, felt that they definitely weren't supposed to be there, and wanted badly for them to go away - but for God's sake, if they had to be there, couldn't they at least be both the same? Weren't they supposed to be?? The body is supposed to be symmetrical, right?? Aaauuggghhh!!
But no. The right-hand one was small (thank God) but apparently fully developed and "properly" rounded... while the one on the left seemed sort of... underdeveloped: smaller, not as regularly shaped, the nipple almost flat and not very cleanly formed. This non-symmetry bothered me. It felt embarrassing - because of course, with typical teenage self-absorption, I was sure that this nonconforming bit of my body must be highly visible. Everybody must be noticing it, either laughingly or pityingly!
Now, I was a relatively (please note that I said "relatively") sane kid, and I understood that I was probably blowing the problem out of proportion. I told myself firmly that it was really a negligible thing, and that no one else would ever even notice it.
Until that day when I was required to get a physical, preparatory to participation in a music camp. I remember oh-so-clearly how the kindly doctor entered the room and, before she had even said hello, walked immediately over to where I was sitting, naked on the examining table, touched my left breast, and said, in a deeply sympathetic voice, "Oh, I'm SO sorry!"
I have never wanted so much to simultaneously laugh and scream.
Laugh, because she had made (of course) completely the wrong assumption concerning how I'd feel about the discrepancy. (Given the choice, I'd have much preferred that they both be like the smaller, underdeveloped one - which, she proceeded to "reassure" me, would "probably fill out with your first child"!)
And scream because, after all my attempts to convince myself otherwise, here was proof positive that my body was obviously, visibly, and clearly abnormal.
Luckily, I was already developing the ability to ignore my body and its many wrongnesses; this was just one more to add to the list. And so eventually all that throbbing teenage self-consciousness ebbed its way into a chronic-but-vague discomfort, and I more or less forgot I had a body at all. (A convenient solution to many ills, if also likely to cause a few new ones!)
But I shudder to think what that incident and its aftermath might have felt like if I'd really been a teenage girl inside. A girl who comfortably and completely self-identified as female, who fully owned her body and had looked forward to the maturation of that body into womanhood - only to find it, at this painfully and exquisitely sensitive moment, to be inadequate, blemished, unequal to the standard expectation... "abnormal.”
It wasn't until many years later in adulthood that I discovered just how "normal" (or at least common) that little problem actually is. I don't remember how I found it (I certainly wasn't looking for it), and I don't know if it's still out there, but somewhere on the Internet, it turned out, there was actually an entire website devoted to the issue. And on that website was an enormous gallery of photos of women's breasts, and every single pair was "irregular" in some way. I was both fascinated (no, not THAT way - geesh, clean up your brains, people! :D ) and reassured... because the range of variation was astounding. It set my relatively minor asymmetry into a completely different context.
These photos were all self-taken, anonymously contributed by the women themselves (none showed faces), and were all of unaltered breasts - i.e., no post-mastectomy shots, plastic surgery botchups, or the like. There were strangely formed nipples, irregular shapes, and mismatched pairs galore. In some photos one breast was long and thin, the other round and compact; others were dominated by one enormous breast, DD or bigger, with a much smaller sister hovering in its shadow. (Holy mismatched mammaries, Batman!)
The first thought that hit my staggered brain was: WHY HAVE I NEVER SEEN ANY OF THIS???
And a moment later the obvious answer came to my mind: Because anyone with an “abnormal” body hides it.
These women were courageous enough to send in their photos, to help other women overcome the discomfort - hell, let’s say it straight out, the fear and self-loathing - that can come with feeling like you’re not “normal.” I applaud them for this courage, and for their understanding of how important it is, in a culture that commercializes women’s bodies, to put these “imperfect” products into view, blasting the deadly illusion that so many of us have: that everyone is normal except YOU!
How could there possibly be SO MANY women out there (the photo galley was HUGE) who didn’t conform to “normal” in this way, and yet I’d never seen a single one? (Nor have I, to this day, anywhere except on that website.)
But of course, in real life - away from the anonymity of the nameless, faceless photo gallery - most of these women probably hide their “deformity.” And seriously, who could blame them? Because it’s one thing to understand, intellectually, how hurtful our focus on being “normal” can be, and how much its hold on us needs to be broken... but it’s another thing entirely to emotionally deal with the stares, comments, and discomfort, day after day after day, of letting people know that you personally don’t quite “fit the mold.” After all, little girls grow up assuming that they’re supposed to be formed with perfect symmetry, like Barbie dolls. And everybody else is, right? They sure look like they are. So if you’re not... there’s clearly something wrong with you!
I don’t know how to effectively fight things like this, except to keep questioning - and keep questioning - and KEEP questioning - the whys and wherefores of “normal.”
It’s my hope that Transfolk can be a help there, if we’re willing to continue becoming more and more visible in the world.
In the old days, the ideal was for people like me to transition quietly and quickly and out of sight, praying to God that we would end up passing well enough to vanish back into the ranks of “normal” men and women on the far end of the journey - and that we would never need to reveal to anyone the aspects of our bodies that weren’t quite “normal” and never would be, no matter how successful the transition.
Some Transfolk continue to do it this way - and that’s okay. Not everyone is temperamentally designed to be an activist, and not everyone’s life (or job, or family situation) allows for any great degree of openness in such matters.
But some of us who can are choosing to continue to stand up and identify as Trans, even after a successful transition, even if we pass completely. And others, like me, are choosing to be completely “out” while in the transition process, willing to publicly occupy that odd, unnamed middle-space between male and female.
And by doing so, we are - I hope! - helping bit by bit to change our culture’s perceptions and expectations of whether or not "normal" is really the most important thing to be.
I've mentioned puberty once or twice before, I think. Now, I'm aware that puberty pretty much sucks for everyone. And in fact, today I'm barely even going to mention those aspects of puberty that particularly suck for Transfolk. No, today I'm going to tell you about a moment that actually would have sucked much worse for me if I hadn't been a Transgendered person.
Yes, really.
So... puberty. That time when (A.) you’re hugely self-conscious and anything that makes you socially uncomfortable feels like the end of the world, and (B.) your secondary sex characteristics start to develop. Thus proving that (C.) Mother Nature really does have a sadistic streak!
For female-bodied persons, of course, the most obvious development is in, er, the chest area - a somewhat awkward change even for those who are perfectly happy with their gender.
In my case... well, I hated the damn things already, felt that they definitely weren't supposed to be there, and wanted badly for them to go away - but for God's sake, if they had to be there, couldn't they at least be both the same? Weren't they supposed to be?? The body is supposed to be symmetrical, right?? Aaauuggghhh!!
But no. The right-hand one was small (thank God) but apparently fully developed and "properly" rounded... while the one on the left seemed sort of... underdeveloped: smaller, not as regularly shaped, the nipple almost flat and not very cleanly formed. This non-symmetry bothered me. It felt embarrassing - because of course, with typical teenage self-absorption, I was sure that this nonconforming bit of my body must be highly visible. Everybody must be noticing it, either laughingly or pityingly!
Now, I was a relatively (please note that I said "relatively") sane kid, and I understood that I was probably blowing the problem out of proportion. I told myself firmly that it was really a negligible thing, and that no one else would ever even notice it.
Until that day when I was required to get a physical, preparatory to participation in a music camp. I remember oh-so-clearly how the kindly doctor entered the room and, before she had even said hello, walked immediately over to where I was sitting, naked on the examining table, touched my left breast, and said, in a deeply sympathetic voice, "Oh, I'm SO sorry!"
I have never wanted so much to simultaneously laugh and scream.
Laugh, because she had made (of course) completely the wrong assumption concerning how I'd feel about the discrepancy. (Given the choice, I'd have much preferred that they both be like the smaller, underdeveloped one - which, she proceeded to "reassure" me, would "probably fill out with your first child"!)
And scream because, after all my attempts to convince myself otherwise, here was proof positive that my body was obviously, visibly, and clearly abnormal.
Luckily, I was already developing the ability to ignore my body and its many wrongnesses; this was just one more to add to the list. And so eventually all that throbbing teenage self-consciousness ebbed its way into a chronic-but-vague discomfort, and I more or less forgot I had a body at all. (A convenient solution to many ills, if also likely to cause a few new ones!)
But I shudder to think what that incident and its aftermath might have felt like if I'd really been a teenage girl inside. A girl who comfortably and completely self-identified as female, who fully owned her body and had looked forward to the maturation of that body into womanhood - only to find it, at this painfully and exquisitely sensitive moment, to be inadequate, blemished, unequal to the standard expectation... "abnormal.”
It wasn't until many years later in adulthood that I discovered just how "normal" (or at least common) that little problem actually is. I don't remember how I found it (I certainly wasn't looking for it), and I don't know if it's still out there, but somewhere on the Internet, it turned out, there was actually an entire website devoted to the issue. And on that website was an enormous gallery of photos of women's breasts, and every single pair was "irregular" in some way. I was both fascinated (no, not THAT way - geesh, clean up your brains, people! :D ) and reassured... because the range of variation was astounding. It set my relatively minor asymmetry into a completely different context.
These photos were all self-taken, anonymously contributed by the women themselves (none showed faces), and were all of unaltered breasts - i.e., no post-mastectomy shots, plastic surgery botchups, or the like. There were strangely formed nipples, irregular shapes, and mismatched pairs galore. In some photos one breast was long and thin, the other round and compact; others were dominated by one enormous breast, DD or bigger, with a much smaller sister hovering in its shadow. (Holy mismatched mammaries, Batman!)
The first thought that hit my staggered brain was: WHY HAVE I NEVER SEEN ANY OF THIS???
And a moment later the obvious answer came to my mind: Because anyone with an “abnormal” body hides it.
These women were courageous enough to send in their photos, to help other women overcome the discomfort - hell, let’s say it straight out, the fear and self-loathing - that can come with feeling like you’re not “normal.” I applaud them for this courage, and for their understanding of how important it is, in a culture that commercializes women’s bodies, to put these “imperfect” products into view, blasting the deadly illusion that so many of us have: that everyone is normal except YOU!
How could there possibly be SO MANY women out there (the photo galley was HUGE) who didn’t conform to “normal” in this way, and yet I’d never seen a single one? (Nor have I, to this day, anywhere except on that website.)
But of course, in real life - away from the anonymity of the nameless, faceless photo gallery - most of these women probably hide their “deformity.” And seriously, who could blame them? Because it’s one thing to understand, intellectually, how hurtful our focus on being “normal” can be, and how much its hold on us needs to be broken... but it’s another thing entirely to emotionally deal with the stares, comments, and discomfort, day after day after day, of letting people know that you personally don’t quite “fit the mold.” After all, little girls grow up assuming that they’re supposed to be formed with perfect symmetry, like Barbie dolls. And everybody else is, right? They sure look like they are. So if you’re not... there’s clearly something wrong with you!
I don’t know how to effectively fight things like this, except to keep questioning - and keep questioning - and KEEP questioning - the whys and wherefores of “normal.”
It’s my hope that Transfolk can be a help there, if we’re willing to continue becoming more and more visible in the world.
In the old days, the ideal was for people like me to transition quietly and quickly and out of sight, praying to God that we would end up passing well enough to vanish back into the ranks of “normal” men and women on the far end of the journey - and that we would never need to reveal to anyone the aspects of our bodies that weren’t quite “normal” and never would be, no matter how successful the transition.
Some Transfolk continue to do it this way - and that’s okay. Not everyone is temperamentally designed to be an activist, and not everyone’s life (or job, or family situation) allows for any great degree of openness in such matters.
But some of us who can are choosing to continue to stand up and identify as Trans, even after a successful transition, even if we pass completely. And others, like me, are choosing to be completely “out” while in the transition process, willing to publicly occupy that odd, unnamed middle-space between male and female.
And by doing so, we are - I hope! - helping bit by bit to change our culture’s perceptions and expectations of whether or not "normal" is really the most important thing to be.
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