It's the subtle invalidations that shatter

Rachel got me thinking of the down-side of support. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but in my experience the very environments that are the most supportive and accepting can often be the most limiting and toxic for some transsexual women.

Before I go further, I've got to put up the standard disclaimer. The only life I can speak with any authority about is my own. The only thoughts that I can claim ownership for are mine. I can't talk for other people and really try hard not to. I have a very specific identity that shapes my thoughts and actions, and lots of other people have very different identities and thoughts, all of which are just as valid as mine. Just because I feel a certain way about things doesn't mean that anyone else feelings are in any way lessened, at least when those feelings are of self identity. If you're forcing an identity on someone else, well then you're fair game. This is where I get nasty, and really that's the purpose of this post.

I've made it pretty clear that I identify as female. I've been as feminine as I could without being beaten for it for my whole life (actually I've suffered more than my share of beatings), and my gender identity has been and is female. This is the core of my rejection of transgender. I don't identify as transgender because I don't feel my gender identity has changed. My sex characteristics (breasts, body hair, fat distribution, external genitalia) have certainly changed, hence my usage of the term transsexual. My gender, not so much.

Now as I acknowledged straight up, lots and lots of people don't see things the same way as I do. Lots of people are rejecting of the whole trans anything position, and will, once they find out a trans person is trans, utterly invalidate their gender identity, through abuse, aggressive mis-gendering, using deadnames, etc. These people aren't at all accepting, and they're the ones that trans people run a million miles to avoid.

More recently, coincident with the rise of transgender, there's been a rapid upswing in support and acceptance of transgender people. Lots of communities are actually quite nice to us, as long as we don't ever go to the bathroom or want a relationship, at any rate. There's been a latching on to the very concept transgender that's liberating for a whole bunch of people.

Trouble is, much of this support and acceptance is phrased along these lines:

You make an awesome woman, for a man. I would never have known.

In my somewhat limited experience, this quote summarises the length, depth, and breadth of queer thought on trans women. Accepting communities, be they transgender, gay, lesbian, BDSM, all feel pretty-much the same way about trans women. This is liberating and wonderful for trans women who identify as male, or as trans, but if you identify as female it's a poison chalice. It's a wonderfully supportive environment that is at the same utterly invalidating, and will limit your growth, forcing you to spend all your time at an awful half-way point, feeling like an imposter.

One of the really neat things about living way out in the bush in a small country town, as I do, is exactly due to it's problems. The nearest scene is many hundreds of kilometres away, and there's just no concept of trans here. Women in my town are butch, femme, dirty, clean, tall, short, fat, skinny, but unquestionably women. No subtle invalidations, ever.