AMM’s very powerful follow-up comment:
Rob @14
@9: It’s like when my father convinced me (for an afternoon) that I could sell stuff door-to-door. I went out and canvased the neighborhood. And I realized: it’s just not me. I am not, cut out to be a salesman
@10: AMM, I love that analogy.
I don’t. Facile as it may seem this is because being a salesperson (in the widest sense) is a learnt skill, not a state of being. People we call naturals at sales simply have personalities that better enable them to quickly get over the hump of sucking at it and finding it hard. They probably learn how as kids. It’s closely linked to performing (acting). For the rest of us we practice, try and eventually get at least tolerably good at sales, but never actually enjoy it, even if we get satisfaction from our success.
You missed the point. Could I have learned to be a salesman if my life had depended upon it? Probably.
But I would have hated it. I would have had to spend every day stomping down my revulsion at what I was doing. I would have died inside, and at some point felt like dying was better than living. At some point, it wouldn’t have mattered whether I killed myself or not. I figured that out in a half-hour. And Rob, if you don’t believe I could figure that out in that short of a time, you simply have no clue, you are one of those “knows not, and knows not that he knows not.”
This is the point that cis people miss. They don’t seem to understand what it is like to feel revulsion at having to live as one’s assigned sex to the point that one has to deaden oneself and become an empty shell and maybe come to the realization that being alive is worse than being dead. Most trans people learn to act out their assigned gender role and to believe that that’s what life is like. Many go to extraordinary lengths to silence that inner voice and squeeze themselves into being what everyone tells them they are. But at some point, it just doesn’t work any more. At some point, there is nothing that society and life can reward or threaten you with that makes it worth going on that way.
How much of it is biology? How much is social gender BS? How much of it is one’s nature? Would I feel less alienated from myself if I lived in some sort of feminist gender-free utopia? Who knows? And who cares? We are what we are, however we got that way, and we have to live (or not) in the world as it is, not as we wish it would be. If transition (medical and/or social) makes us feel less alienated from ourselves, if living as genderqueer or asking to be referred to as “It” makes us feel less revulsion at ourselves, then I don’t care what the theorists and scientists and feminist pontiffs and Dr. Knowitalls have to say, we’ll take it.
I like this a lot. People for whom gender is painful and discordant with sense of self have the right to be supported and to take any and all measures to live more comfortably right now. I think we need to continue to examine gender, though, and explore how one’s personal sense of gender develops and how gender can be made less painful for as many people as possible. We can’t do this if any questioning or investigation of the origins and individual experiences of gender are off limits, and I’ve seen a lot of people suggesting that questioning the inevitability or immutability of gendered identity is by definition trans excluding.
To be honest I think it is probably impossible to feel what trans people feel about their bodies and selves if one is not trans. (And I know very well that trans people’s experiences vary also). I can empathize, I can offer support, I can protect as needed, I can worry, love and stand by my beloved trans-husband. But I cannot feel what she felt, nor what it felt like to “sweep those feelings under the rug” and proceed as a man, nor what it felt like to accept that the feelings would not be staying under the rug, and transition must be explored and lived through. No one should have to suffer as much as pre-transition/transitioning trans people suffer, I don’t care how awful they are.
But acknowledging that we cannot get inside another’s brain and feelings and observing suffering and calling it what it is – inhuman suffering – does not mean that I have missed the point. It means that the point is very rare in most people’s experience. That it is uncomfortable for most people. Scary even. No section at the Rite-Aid greeting card display that says “Congratulations on your Transition!!!” or “Golly!! We hear that your husband is your wife now.”
And THAT doesn’t mean the uncomfortable people should get to hate or disrespect what trans people say about their own experiences.
Why should any one of us intentionally and cruelly add to the suffering of others?
This is so important, and has left me with a possible insight. I have an analogy that might work.
When someone is suffering with an illness, it is absolutely essential for their concerns to be met with validation and compassion. They need to talk to their doctors and find help; to have support from their friends and family and peers. It’s also necessary for medical researchers to dispassionately examine the causes and potential cures, and make detailed case studies and catalogue the symptoms. And it’s infuriating for some well-meaning but clueless friend to ask if you’ve tried echinacea and yoga. And it’s even more than doubly infuriating for some asshat stranger to say it’s all your fault for not eating the kale, or it’s all in your head, you’re delusional.
So these conversations happen for trans people, too. A lot of feminists are seeing themselves in the researcher role, where gender roles are harmful and this is one of the ways it hurts people and oh, fascinating, look at this social/physical interaction here and what if we try X as a therapy… This is valid, but also not always what’s wanted: in some conversations a trans person may be wanting a supportive friend rather than a researcher. And sometimes some of us, being cis and less sensitive or informed on the topic, slip into the clueless friend mode. And the asshat strangers most certainly exist (boo, they suck!).
Any thoughts?
Being a cis person, I think I do understand.
I disagree that being a salesperson is a merely a learned skill. What one does makes up a great deal of what one is. Profession is an important part of identity.
I’ve seen a lot of people struggling by not doing what they are. Perhaps not the the extent that trans people are struggling, but enough to develop some sympathy.
Thank you for writing that, AMM.
This is important. There are two very different conversations going on here, and we need to keep them separate. All those questions are really interesting and important – but discussing them is not going to solve the problems of trans people who are deeply unhappy now.
alona @1:
The reason this is considered “trans excluding” is that it almost always ends up turning into questioning or denying the validity of people’s trans-ness. It’s a little like discussion of racial differences in intelligence — historically, it’s been used to provide intellectual support for oppression, and given that we live in a society which is always looking for excuses to oppress, anything that could somehow be twisted into supporting oppression will be so used.
The more common way of expressing this is to say, “for you, it’s an intellectual exercise. For us, it’s our lives.”
If we ever get to the point that living as some other gender than the one our anatomy seems to suggest is seen as no more controversial than wearing a different style of shoes, then maybe such discussions will be possible. (And maybe by then, our unconscious preconceptions about gender won’t be so bad as to make everything we say about it utter rubbish.)
I, also like the ‘Salesperson’ analogy. An alternative analogy that more people may relate to is ‘Telemarketing salesperson’. Yes, we can all do telemarketing, and if your life depended on earning a living and the only occupation available to you is telemarketing sales, you would pick up the phone, call a random number, speak to a random stranger, and attempt to sell them shit that they probably do not want, or need.
We can all pretty much relate (ablest statement excluding those who cannot speak) to being a telemarketing salesperson. At one point, as rietpluim say, what you do as a profession impacts your view of yourself. Very powerful analogy, in my opinion.