I will no longer be contributing to this blog. My girlfriend is intelligent and perceptive and empathetic about a lot of things, but the issue of transgender is not of them. She believes that people who don’t require surgery to live (I almost said ‘live happily’, but no, simply to SURVIVE and SALVAGE what is left of a miserable existence) are also transgender. They are not. They are individuals who are tired of society’s restrictions, but they are not true transgendered people and any pain they have suffered does not come close to what true transgendered people suffer, not nearly. And no one who is not a transgendered person will truly understand this pain.
Sarah- Alice, did I even say that I believed that? I was simply pondering the concept aloud…. PS, my girlfriend lives in poverty. Here is what I wrote last night but I felt frightened to read aloud.
Last night I upset my girlfriend on the phone because of my lack of single-mindedness regarding labels. Maybe she feels that I’m trying to claim something that isn’t mine. I wrote the definitions of transgender and cisgender, but anyone reading this is probably already familiar.
I feel erased while Alice is like, yr one or the other Jesus Christ- genderqueer; gender fuck or whatever you call yrself, if your body matches yr gender yr cisgender. Get over it get over it get over it. This will probably be incoherent you’ve been warned.
I loathe my vagina. Sometimes I feel dysphoria about my breasts too. I hate my name and I’d secretly (not secret anymore) would love to have what would have been my male birth name. Who knows if any of those things count as trans. Maybe it’s internalized misogyny. I don’t think they do count, but I feel erased when reading about ‘cisgender’ and ‘transgender’ because no, I don’t think that an androgynous female falls under the ‘transgender umbrella’ because my understanding of ‘transgender’ has always been similar to Alice’s- a transgender individual is generally an individual with gender dysphoria; it is not like dressing feminine as a man. And I don’t think that a lot of the groups listed would even regard themselves as transgender. One thing that would make my transness unbelievable is my femininity/love of feminine things. This is not about wanting to be a ‘special snowflake’. I’m feeling unfathomably sick and upset. I’m really sorry if this offends anybody. I’m sick of pretending to be somebody who I’m not. I just wonder if yr kind of questioning your gender identity as I have for several years, if that makes you OMG CIS since you haven’t given yourself a label yet, or what. ps this text is not in response to this post.
xx
I do not care if you are offended by this. If you do not require surgery, you are either in denial (and the need will come in time) or you are not truly transgender. Saying you are transgender when you are not only spreads the myth that it is a choice. It is not a choice. You are not transgender. Get over yourself and stop trying to latch onto something more tragic than you will ever know.
This is the most personal issue I have, and it takes a lot just to hold it together enough to write about the least bit coherently. But I felt the need to get this message out there, even if it will be received negatively. The tiny amount of offense any of you might get out of this does not compare to the amount of pain and suffering I’ve endured and I am tired of sacrificing myself for unlearned people.
-Alice
