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[rottenkid.livejournal.com]

From PlanetOut

Visible Man: Brave New World revisited

Jamison Green offers a man's POV on life in the trans lane. Opinion, advice and information from an internationally respected leader of the FTM community.


My article last fall ("Brave New World") about Sue Bartone, the Massachusetts candidate for state representative who identified as transgendered, had exactly the effect I expected it would. Some people saw it as a celebration of the spectrum of trans experience. Some praised it for its willingness to speak the truth about what some people fear and are loath to discuss in public. Others people reacted as if it was a position statement on the superiority of gender-variant people over transsexual people, an idea which anyone familiar with my work would find patently absurd. But the real success of the piece was that it caused people to think.

One concept I touched on in that article was the idea of nonsurgical transsexuals. I mentioned that some transsexual people who have had surgery may have regrets about the outcome of that surgery, and I remarked that I thought Bartone was courageous for owning her gender identity and not letting gender variance hold her back. I also said that some transsexual people who regard surgery as a qualifier for transsexual status might feel threatened by nonsurgical transsexual-identified people. I did not claim that Bartone was transsexual, and I did not assert that transsexual people were not courageous for owning their gender identity and seeking physical congruence.

Some transsexual people are afraid that if "unqualified" people change their sex surgically and then have regrets, it will look bad for all transsexual people; therefore they think we should never discuss these events for fear of drawing attention to the questions of choice, access and autonomy. Also, some believe that if we acknowledge the existence of nonsurgical transsexual people it dilutes the position of transsexual people who require medical intervention (hormones and surgery) to self-actualize.

The fact is there are fully "qualified" transsexual people who have regrets about various aspects of their transitions. Bad surgical outcomes can happen to anyone. Losing one's job or family can be something that anyone might regret. This doesn't mean such a person regrets everything about being transsexual, or that society should revoke the privilege of access to body-altering technology, forcing all transsexual people to live as nonsurgical transsexuals. These are complex concepts for most nontrans people, and often difficult to discuss even among transpeople when ideas become polarized, as they easily do for myriad reasons. But if we can't talk about these varying experiences, we ultimately end up invalidating ourselves as well as others.

Medical language about transsexualism does qualify different manifestations of the desire to change one's sex. "Primary" transsexuals are those, like me, who were clear about their gender identity from a very early age. Our gender never changes. We never could conform to the expectations for gender expression of our natal physical sex, so when we do change our sex our gender expression is natural for our new bodies, according to the judgment of gender conformists.

"Secondary" transsexuals are those whose desire to change sex comes upon them in adolescence or later. They may change their gender expression as well as their sex, and often have more social difficulty because they have to retrain themselves in the gender expression appropriate to their new sex. Cross-dressers and other transgender-identified people (like Sue Bartone) who do not have a desire to change their sex regardless of how effective their gender expression is in either male or female presentation, are not necessarily good candidates for surgical sex reassignment. They may prefer their natal bodies, or the ability to live in both the male and female sphere, and being pressured to conform to one or the other gender expression might be damaging for them. On the other hand, who are we to say what the best solution is for every other person's self-perceived difficulties in life?

I have never argued that one manifestation of transness is better than another. Whether I am addressing the need for safety and civil rights for trans people in the nontrans world, or the need for different styles of trans people to respect each other's differences, my work has been consistently about asserting the dignity of all experience, and the validity of all identities. Some people may disagree, may want to claim that their way of being is superior or more authentic, and that is their prerogative, but it is not a view that I support.

I do not encourage people to change their sex, either socially or physically. Being a transsexual person is a complicated matter, and it is something that anyone who feels the need to transition should weigh very carefully. Transsexual people must be willing to accept the consequences of their actions. I have only two regrets about my own transition: that I was unable to do it before my father passed away, and that it caused me to be separated from my children. But neither of those considerations clouds my satisfaction with what my transition did for me, or with the very positive changes in my present and future life that came with it.

The brave new world that acknowledges a broad scope of transgender experience -- as opposed to a rigid definition of "a true transsexual" or "a true gender identity" that requires validation from some authority -- is a world that acknowledges the autonomy of every individual. People need to be able to make their own fully informed choices, even if they make mistakes. The conventions that we agree upon to mold our society should not require sexist definitions of male and female gender roles for anyone -- transsexual, transgender or nontrans alike.