She's leaving home

I've had my mind blown just a little bit this week, and been forced to revisit a whole pile of my preconceptions as a result. It started with comments appearing on my blog from the author of "parenting the transgendersexual teen", a blog focussing on issues surrounding DJs (a transsexual teenager) experiences, as viewed through the eyes of her incredibly supportive mum. Her comments were cool. She herself had had something of an education regarding language around trans people's experiences, and had changed the title of her blog as a result. All cool. I felt like perhaps the stuff I write here is perhaps doing some good.

Then last night I was browsing transsexual case law in Australia. It's something I occasionally do, as it keeps me up to date on what's going on. Years ago it was fighting around getting identifying documentation (driver's licences, passports, birth certificates) updated. These days, it's.. Parents petitioning the family court so their transsexual kids can go on hormones.

WTF. Where did this come from? Parents. Facilitating their kid's transitions. Going in to bat against an incredibly opaque and cruel bureaucracy so their kids can have a decent life.

I'm not so young. When I was a teen the accepted method of transitioning was running away, working for a while as a prostitute, pretending you weren't for your psych, saving the huge pile of money that transitioning, surgery, etc. etc. entails, living in abject poverty, and hopefully emerging from the other end of that with your sanity intact, without HIV, and without a drug addiction.

I ran away twice. Figuratively, anyway. I left school earlier than I should have so I could get a job and get away from my abusive parents. Then I had to do it all again. My girlfriend fell pregnant a few months later and I swallowed the "I'm going to buckle down and be a father" pill for a couple of years. I managed to avoid prostitution. I managed to avoid HIV. I managed to avoid drug addiction. That's not to say I didn't take drugs or have risky sex. I did, and I was incredibly lucky. I have my husband to thank for quite a lot.

Anyway, we lived in abject poverty for my twenties and thirties. While my workmates and straight friends were saving their house deposits, I was paying for psychiatrist, endocrinologist and electrologist bills. I was saving every spare penny so I could afford breast augmentation and genital surgery. I was (rather ironically) paying child support for kids that I wasn't allowed to see, at least until they were teenagers with their own agency discovering themselves. I managed to work my way through a degree part time, despite everything. My workmates see me as irresponsible, because I'm in my forties and still renting. If only they knew.

So, now I'm reading of transsexual kids who's parents are determined and tough and fucking incredible, going up against a bureaucracy that's intent on causing as much harm to kids as it can, and paying legal and medical bills in the tens of thousands, so their kids can live normal lives and not go through the years of hurt and pain that my generation did, and it makes me want to laugh and cry and punch the air with the joy of it all.

Anyway, I just wanted you guys to know that what you're doing is just. fucking. amazing. Power to you.

The standard narrative

The issues I've been having with my GP of late has me critiquing my relationship with the gender industry over the years. And then it's had me critiquing my own actions, and wondering how I've shaped my own recollections and thus myself now due to the need to conform to the standard narrative.

The standard narrative is a stereotypical storyline that transsexual people (transsexual women in particular) often report. You'll see and hear elements of the narrative on supportive news reports. Conversely less supportive news reports about a transsexual women will highlight the areas where her experience clashes with the narrative. Think before picture in army uniform.

The narrative isn't something that transsexual women own. It's imposed on us by the psycho-medical establishment, primarily as a filter to limit the number of transsexual women who were able to access treatment. It was created primarily to protect society from an onslaught of, in the sexologists and psychiatrists minds, men in dresses.

Some of the elements of the standard narrative:

• Rejecting your assigned sex at as early an age as possible - preferably as a toddler. Presenting at a gender clinic as early as possible, with extra points awarded for showing up before adulthood.
• Stereotypical feminine play and mannerisms as a kid. Making a bee-line for the dress ups, playing tea party with your dolls, make believe, barbie, pink.
• Rejecting "boys" activities such as football and rough play. Being bullied as a result.
• Being into boys, but in a very measured way. Importantly not being attracted to women, and not bisexual or asexual or slutty. Demure, feminine, liking cock but being shy about it.
• Physical femininity and attractiveness. Bonus points if your shrink can't believe you're in possession of a penis.

So the narrative is essentially a slavish adherence to a nineteen fifties view of femininity, viewed through a misogynist lens. Stepford wives. Old white cis men like Harry Benjamin, who studied us transsexual freaks in the 1960s and wrote all the seminal papers and books on the topic, essentially decided who was legitimate and who wasn't based on whether or not we gave them a boner.

Of course transsexual women aren't generally stupid, or at least any more stupid than cis people. We are reasonably quick to cotton on to the rules of the game, and we "adjust" our stories accordingly. Everyone has all sorts of life experiences, so by being a little selective, fudging bits here and there, you can make your history fit what the listener wants to hear, and as a result get exactly what you want.

There's even an on-line test, called the COGIATI, that you can use to help hone your answers to the sort of bullshit stereotyping questions you're likely to hear. "Oh, I'm hopeless with navigating. I can never figure out which way up to hold the map!", and "I love stories!". Yeah, you get the gist.

By the time I had dealings with the industry in the nineties, things were getting rather nuanced. The shrinks had cottoned on to the idea that people were gaming their system, so you had to be really careful that you didn't overdo it. I found, for example, that deliberately wearing jeans to counselling sessions would get my shrink to go on about "modern women" quite nicely, and tell me I "looked like his daughter". Because that mattered. Of course I made sure to still occasionally wear a skirt, as I didn't want to push the boundaries too far.

In my experience, my level of femininity has varied a lot. It's the primary tool that I employ to ensure that I'm correctly gendered. Early on, as a young adult who was eminently springable, I wound up the gender cues to help people along. After a while on the gear, I found I could relax quite a bit without people misgendering me, and developed my own style and presentation. Getting past the gatekeepers was a huge help, as I no longer had anyone to satisfy but myself.

From everything I've read of late, it's not as bad as it used to be. Young transsexuals don't have quite as much reading and learning to do as we did in my time. Still, knowing what you're likely in for doesn't hurt.