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.