I don’t write about my own dysphoria or transition experience much.
I found a long time ago that while many people insist on the complete validation of their own experiences, mine were considered irrelevant or inauthentic, simply because of certain liberal positions I hold. And on the question of relevance I even agree somewhat, since I don’t share the egoism so many seem to possess, that frames their own experience as universal and definitive. I don’t believe that one has to have had my experience to be authentic… and really, as an anthropologist, I’m much more interested in others’ experiences than my own.
Further, I also learned that there are two poles of trans exhibitionists, both of whom seem equally fetishistic to me: the sexual transvestites, for whom the display of anatomy is a central point of arousal; and those I have called the transsexual fundamentalists, who exhibit an obsession with the condition and provenance of their own and other peoples’ genitals. It’s repulsive, and I determined very early in my transition that nothing in that area would ever be anyone else’s public business. I am not a replicant. I have no incept date.
During my progress I have often found myself between such extremes. For instance, to a radical feminist I am the patriarchy because I express gender, whereas to a transsexual fundamentalist I am a fake because I supposedly deconstruct gender. And choosing to express gender, I find that what transwomen are permitted to be is narrowly and arbitrarily defined by the agenda of the beholder… which really means that what women are is being narrowly defined, since natal women get an automatic pass, but transwomen have to meet criteria.
Another discovery: one of the most facile ways to demonize and dismiss is to accuse someone of being a member or representative of a “movement”, the motives and assumptions with which you disagree. It’s easy then to call for the end of the movement, and avoid responsibility for calling for the erasure of the people supposedly in it.
Personally, I don’t do movements. I’m not a joiner, and the one thing that has always distinguished my attitude is an absolute dedication to my own will and self-actualization. The fact that some other people are doing something similar to me – transition – makes them allies sometimes, maybe even friends once in a great while if some other point of connection is found, but in no way makes me part of any movement.
But these are people, first and foremost, not faceless cardcarrying members of a movement. And it is the reality of people I will always defend against the screeching bullshit.
At the same time, I generally avoid “movement” politics because they are usually advanced by self-described activists. I distrust activists, most of whom appear to me to be motivated largely by ego, and almost none of whom won’t try to deny it. Activists by definition act, instead of listen. They are solipsistic by nature – convinced by their own experience of what constitutes right action, and once on their own paths almost completely opaque to any new vision.
Were revolution usually democratic – were its leaders elected, and hence representative, rather than self-appointed by the simple fact of being the only people who actually do anything – then we would be far better off. Of course, that would require that we all actually do something… and action does require ego, and so it goes.
