Developing identities

Did you keep a journal or diary as a child? Have you ever read what you wrote years down the track and been surprised or even shocked by your own naivety and cluelessness? I know I certainly have. Back when I was a teen and young adult, when my life was topsy turvy and ever changing, I occasionally wrote my thoughts down, much like I am right now. No blogs of course, because there were no blogs back then, but there were still plenty of ways to jot your thoughts down.

People grow through a process of negotiation. Even straight teenagers spend years pushing boundaries, finding out where they can and can't go. Exploring.

Same for transsexual teens. But different. Because trans teens get to hear the word "no" so much more often than cissexual teens. If you don't know WTF I'm talking about when I say cissexual, then I recommend you go read "Whipping Girl", by Julia Serano, possibly the smartest transsexual person I've ever come across. But I digress. Looking back now at the stuff I wrote all those years ago, I'm more than a little dismayed. Where now I feel my identity is and always has been rock solid, back then it wasn't always so. More than that, the language has changed as well.

So in one entry I might write that I wish I was a girl. In another I wonder if I'm gay. The word "tranny" comes up, too, a word that these days has really offensive connotations, but clearly didn't for me in the eighties, as is obvious from the context. Declarations of a female identity are much more sparse than I remember.

These days I've had many, many years of socialisation as an adult woman reinforcing my female gender identity. Then it wasn't the case, so my language, even in private, is a whole lot less sure. More pleading. Desperate even.

The internet is a boon for trans people. It gives us a place where we can interact with other like minded people, where we can forge weird dysfunctional communities which we can draw support from. But I fear that the permanence of what we write here is not good. I wonder where my own identity would be these days if I was constantly reminded of the things I'd written at a point where I just had no idea. Where's the encouragement for evolution of thought, for growth.

I remember being disgusted by Trudy Kennedy, the psychologist who ran the Monash gender clinic back in the nineties, when she told me that I should do my best to avoid other trans people. These days I look back at that statement and see a different side. A side that allows for growth beyond a trans identity.

Anyway, another celebrity has announced that they're transitioning. The media coverage is comprehensive and makes me want to throw things, because they're trotting out the same gumph that they always have, and the discourse, which I felt had been making a little progress, has taken a whole lot of steps backwards.

The media will pay attention for as long as there's drama. Then they'll lose interest. So the world will get another dose of the pathetic clueless trans person, and have their prejudices reinforced. Again.

My Seventh Birthday

There's been a lot of talk of late about reparative therapy, in the wake of Leelah Alhorn's suicide.

I thought it might be good to add my own voice to the chorus of people speaking out against reparative therapy.

So for me the whole thing starts when I was six years old. That wasn't when my gender identity formed - it was simply when it got the point where my parents sought professional "help" about it.

As a pre-schooler I was unashamedly feminine. I played with dolls whenever I could get my hands on them. My world was one of make believe and stories. When we did dress-ups in kindergarten I made a beeline for the fairy princess outfit. I was often in trouble with my parents (mum mainly - dad coped by staying at work), but it was generally reasonably benign.

By six year's age though, things were getting a touch more serious. My femininity, which until then could be written off as cute, was now starting to get embarrassing for my parents. I was doing it in public and that just wasn't on.

Interestingly enough, I don't think the concept of me being transsexual crossed my parent's minds. They were scared I might turn out gay. So they got me a referral to a pediatric psychologist, and along we went.

The psychologist was nice enough. I had no idea at all why we were there and wasn't at all phased. I remember playing while he watched and asked questions about what I was doing. Then I got to sit in the waiting room for ages while he talked to mum. It was mum's manner when she came out that makes me remember the day. She was clearly angry and determined, with a real set to her features, and she wasn't in a mood to talk.

My relationship with my mum until then, despite being yelled at with some regularity about different things, was pretty good. I'm the youngest of four, and had mum all to myself for a couple of years when my next eldest brother went off to school. During that time we did lots of things together. Shopping, housework, playing. All good stuff. I remember we'd go to a big department store in the city every couple of weeks and I'd get a bucket of chips and a multi-coloured jelly in a cup for lunch. Good times.

The good times pretty-much ended on that day. As an adult, having read widely, I can fairly accurately surmise exactly what was said to mum in the psychologist's office that made her so angry. Gender identity was a sexy, new, exciting branch of psychology back in the seventies. One of the pioneers in the field was John Money, who quite literally wrote the book on trans and gay kids.

Money's thesis was that "gender role" (what these days we'd call gender identity) is primarily influenced by nurture, and that gender role may be shaped accordingly. Much of his research was done on David Reimer, a cisgendered boy who suffered severe burning to his penis as an infant during a botched circumcision. When approached by David's parents, Money told them to raise David as a girl. That David utterly rejected this was glossed over in Money's research.

In any case, the "cause" for trans and gay kids was over-attachment to their mother. My mum had been lectured by the psych, telling her that everything was essentially her fault, and that the only way she could "save" me from being gay was to consistently and systematically come down hard on any "effeminate" behaviour.

Starting that day, my relationship with my mum changed dramatically. Where previously we'd gotten along well, now she was deliberately cold and distant. The idea was that feminine behaviour would be punished by withholding affection, and masculine behaviour would be rewarded by providing affection. I never really got past the withholding affection bit though. My dad was as distant as ever, so I was basically alone. My siblings cottoned on to the new way of things, so like some perverse experiment I was rejected by the whole family.

My reaction to this is much what any six year old would do. I hid my femininity and tried desperately to get affection, by being a right brat, which really only made things worse. The new relationship (or lack of) was spelled out pretty well for me on my seventh birthday. My parents had gotten so good at ignoring me that they forgot my birthday all together. Oh well.

The results of this are stark. My gender identity hasn't changed one whit. What has changed though are my attitudes. I have no respect for authority. I have no love for my parents and siblings. I am very stubborn and self-dependant. I do not ask for nor expect help, ever. I'm very cynical.

What have my parents gotten from this? Nothing.

So if you're a parent of a potentially trans or gay kid and you're reading this, ask yourself this: What are you trying to achieve? Do you really want a broken family and to be told by your child to go fuck yourself at the very first opportunity? Or do you want to be a part of a family that's nurturing and accepting and loving?

Your choice.

The incredible irony of the successful trans woman - how age of transition affects your perspective.

Today I read a piece about Catherine McGregor in the Guardian. Cate is, by all accounts, a stupendously successful trans woman. She's a recipient of the Order of Australia, Group Captain in the Royal Australian Air-Force. While working for the Australian Army she was director of the Land Warfare Studies Centre, and since then has been strategic advisor and speech writer for the chief of the Australian Defence Services.

Cate rubs shoulders with politicians, industry heads and other assorted bigwigs. She's done numerous television and radio interviews, written a book on cricket, and she's responsible for the famous "the standard you walk past is the standard you accept" speech by Chief of the Australian Army David Morrison on sexism within the forces.

Wow. such great stuff. She's clearly an amazing woman and a role model for trans people everywhere.

One could be forgiven for reading this stuff and concluding that life is indeed roses for trans people. I mean if a trans woman can make it to the upper echelons of the ADF, things can't be that bad...

Except. Cate transitioned in 2013, at the age of 55. Cate made it to director of the Land Warfare Studies Centre pre-transition. She was awarded the Order of Australia pre-transition. She did, well, most everything, pre-transition. Since transition she's mainly been notable as being Australia's highest ranking trans person. Her role has changed dramatically to a PR one.

So yes, she's successful, indeed incredibly successful. But only because she hid her transsexuality. She's successful in spite of her transsexuality.

Many years ago, I read a throw-away line from someone on an internet forum: "Early transitioners face discrimination before transition, and assimilate afterwards. It's the opposite for late transitioners." This rang really true for me. As a child, and most especially as a teen, I really copped it from all angles because of my complete inability to hide my gender identity. My parents, classmates, teachers... It reached something of a crescendo around transition, where I spent a year or so being visibly trans, then faded away as I assimilated. I think the converse happens for people who are able to cope as teens. They get by, are even stratospherically successful like Cate. But the consequences of this success are that they'll have much more difficulty assimilating post-transition. They'll often be visibly trans the rest of their lives, or simply have so much baggage from before transition that they can't get past.

These days, it's the late transitioners that get all the attention. You could be forgiven for thinking that trans people were one big awkward monolithic group. Of course that's not my experience. From where I sit we all come at this from very different directions, with different goals, different assets, different liabilities, and different outcomes. It's just that this one group, through a combination of weight of numbers, visibility, continuing angst, money, and relative privilege, get all the airplay and dominate the discourse.

I subscribed to a new internet TV streaming service recently, because they had a series that I'd been hearing about all over the place, Transparent. It's the story of a 64 year old transitioner, and the struggles both she and her family face as she goes into the world as a woman. Heartwarming stuff, I'm sure, but where I was looking for kinship I found nothing.

Of course my perspective comes not just from transitioning in my twenties. I carry an enormous chip on my shoulder as a member of generation X as well. I don't have a lot of respect for the boomers, a generation that I feel has had everything handed to them on a plate. Cheap housing, free university education, medicare, you name it. I'm from a generation that's had to fight (and pay) for the scraps. Doubly so when you're young and trans.

The perspective from the other side of the fence though appears to be very different. Where I see two very different groups, late transitioners speak of "spectrums". They see us as all the same, with the same needs and the same challenges.

The modern language bears this out, most specifically the rise of the word "transgender" over the last twenty years or so. When I was young, there were fairly distinct groups of people, and the divisions between who was what were based almost entirely on self identification. Transsexuals had a specific grouping, with our unhealthy dependence on the medical industry. Cross dressers had very different needs, and only occasionally crossed the fence and realised they were transsexual. Drag queens were a whole other animal. Likeable but very much gay guys. Nobody had ever heard of transgender.

Then along comes this new word, which the bureaucrats and doctors love, because it makes it possible to lump all the freaks into one easy subset, and suddenly my GP is calling me "transgendered". This is not a word I've ever used to describe myself. Late transitioners though appear to have latched on hard to this new word. I guess it gives them a means to reconcile their crossdressing past with their transsexual future. It breaks the rigidity of transsexual and allows for quite a lot of slipperiness.

I wouldn't be so annoyed except that there's now a concerted effort to erase the word transsexual from the vocabulary. Again, the late transitioners are sucking all the air from the room. We're told, somewhat ironically, that transsexual is pathologising, that it's vocabulary that's been pushed onto transsexual people by the medical community. From where I sit, that's exactly the case for transgender.

I guess for me, the key distinction is on how you identify. If your core gender identity is female (for someone assigned male at birth), well then you're transsexual. If it isn't, you're not. It doesn't matter what surgeries you have or haven't had, what shape your genitals are, or what sex those you love are. What matters is simply how you identify, honestly, deep down inside.

As for Cate, I admit I'm a little jealous of her success. But then I'm sad for her, too, for her missed opportunities. I'm sad she had to lie to everyone for so very long.

Things that Really Matter - Hair

I'm like Samson. I derive all my power from my hair. I'm really blessed in having quite an awesome, unmanageable, thick mane. Rich and dark and just wavy enough to occasionally drive me nuts.

But it's mine. It's my most treasured thing. I don't joke.

When I was a small child in the seventies, hair was the strongest gender marker I knew of. Little kids are essentially sexless until puberty hits, so the instant marker of boy or girl was length of hair. Girls had long hair, boys short.

Many of my early battles with my parents were over my hair. We disagreed vocally over how long it was, and how long it should be. The battle would invariably end with me at the barber, sitting silently crying while the poor hairdresser inflicted the damage, my mum standing over them scowling to make sure they did as they were told. Short back and sides. Ouch.

As a little kid when I played with the girl next door, I'd often nick a tea-towel and tie it around my head. When challenged by my mum, I learned quickly to tell her I was pretending to be an Arab, or else to pull it off when she came in the room. But of course in the make believe that we were weaving, playing tea parties with her dolls and my bears (I wasn't allowed dolls) we were mums, or princesses, or movie stars, and my tea towel was my wonderful Farrah Fawcett long hair.

Later on my hair (I guess in conjunction with my general femininity) would get me in trouble at school, too. Not straight away. Kids aren't inherently cruel. They take time to learn bigotry from their parents. But by age 12 or so, my hair was weaponised. In the Australian suburban schoolyard, it marked me as a "poof". I stopped, for a few years, complaining so much when I was told to get my hair cut.

So fast forward another couple of years and hair started becoming my nightmare. Not the hair on my head, but everywhere else. I started getting hair on my legs, my arms, my face. I despaired. Puberty can be a tough time for many kids. When you're trans though, it's like your whole body is out to get you.

If I ever meet the person who invented laser epilation, I'm going to kiss them. They are my greatest hero. I was incredibly lucky transitioning in a time when laser hair removal was just getting started. I went to town. My face, underarms, bikini line and legs all got a thorough zapping. It was an amazingly painful process that kept me in abject poverty for a good few years, but so amazingly worth it.

As for the hair on my head, pretty-much as soon as I got out of my parent's house I started to grow it out. I spent most of my twenties with a Betty Page do. Severe fringe, thick and black. Or red, when I had money for dye.

Now I'm in my forties, I'm seeing my peers, one after another, cutting their hair. I'm going grey, but I fully intend on rocking that and being the crazy old lady with the stupidly long hair. After all, it's where I derive all my power.