Authentically Me
In a lengthy comment elsewhere, someone said:
All need freedom of expression, to be actually free… Those people still deserve rights and advocacy etc even if they are being discriminated against for a falsehood than an actuality… They are just people…
This is something that I think gets lost in the theoretical fog, and bears emphasis.
I really don’t care much whether anyone believes that people born with penises are “really” women or not, though of course I have my own opinions on the matter. And I dismiss the “wangs in the loo” argument as a stalking horse for deeply rooted and widely applied transphobia.
But what some individuals require is that other people behave the way they say they ought to, that others be the kinds of women or men that they are willing to recognize, before they will begrudge even the minimum respect or dignity. These people escalate their denial of “authenticity” of one kind of expression or another to a denial of citizenship, of sanity, of personhood.
The fact is that most people are just trying to be… and while I, for one, don’t insist that anyone concede to my claims about my own sense of myself (though it would be appreciated, if my reciprocity is to be expected), I do object to their categorical prejudice, and as long as I do no actual harm I expect not to be actively hindered.
I am “authentic” insofar as I am authentically me, and reasonably well socialized. No item of my expression is “fake” or an affectation… it is a legitimate response to my relation to the culture in which I find myself, and results in equilibrium: my behaviors and expressed identity are fed back to me by my interactions with others, and they match up, where they did not before.
And that’s all anyone can do. That’s what being real is.
[Edited from the original. And for the sake of substantial credit, I need to point out that when I first wrote it, in response to the original comment, I had this entry from the incomparable Callan very much in mind:]
Every time you see someone express transgender, they are expressing something they know to be true about themselves in the best way they know how to do it.
No matter how dramatic or cartoony or contradictory or ambiguous factually false someone’s trans expression may seem to you, no matter how it is laced with shame, self-loathing, and rationalizations, it is an expression that comes from deep inside of them. And only by being affirmed in that expression can they find deeper meanings, become more mature in their self knowledge & expression. If they feel repressed, they will remain clouded and confused in their understanding and their choices.
Every time you see someone express transgender, they are expressing something they know to be true about themselves in the best way they know how to do it.
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