Tough out of Necessity
Posted by: Ryan on: May 18, 2008
- In: Feminism| transition
- Comment!
Women’s bodies are public property. This is quite a Feminism 101 concept. Women’s bodies are up for public consumption, critique, and possession. I’ve long accepted that. I’ve witnessed it in my own life.
As I am accepted as male more and more, I am granted the privileges of not having my appearance commented upon, I am given more personal space, I am not touched by strangers, my weight is now irrelevant. People used to brush past me without so much as a comment… now I get a ’sorry mate’ if people walk past me close, without even touching me.
Even if people see me as a butch dyke, they generally extend me a similar set of privileges, regarding personal space, and not sexualising my body.
I have discovered that if I am outed as trans, all those privileges, privileges which should be rights, are immediately waived. Trans bodies are barely human. I no longer have feelings, or a need for personal space, or privacy.
Every time I have been out partying recently, and been outed as trans, either by myself or someone else, I have had at least one person subsequently try to grab my crotch. I’m really not cool with people grabbing my private parts.
People asking me questions about the contents of my briefs is bad enough, without them trying to investigate on their own.
Thats the worst offense, but the analysis of my masculinity, or lack there of, questions about my breasts, patting my chest, coming on to me cos “trans men are hot” (as opposed to ‘Ryan is hot’, there’s a tangible difference, and one that I don’t like at all).
I used to have no boundaries at all, I was constantly vulnerable, and being harassed so constantly that it was just life. However, even as a woman that was propositioned for sex at work more than once, kissed by customers, had my arms stroked, my arse pinched, been grabbed, and so on, I have never experienced the same level of extreme disrespect and invasion of my body as I have in recent times.
I have found that I have had to get tough, and get tough fast. Last night I had to be very firm with a drag queen who wanted to investigate my crotch. Its occurred to me, that being assertive is no longer optional. Passivity puts me in real danger.
10 Responses to "Tough out of Necessity"
I find the phallic obsession rather odd. I myself don’t plan on having bottom surgery… I consider the risk of damage to a very delicate area a little too high for me to consider it.
I respect that everyone has different needs/desires in that department, but it seems that everyone just assumes that is what a sex change is all about.
It is very annoying.
Also, yeah, the timing of that email is kinda amusing.
I haven’t experienced this quite to the same extent you have (then again, I don’t go to parties and the like–I mostly hang out with just friends and co-workers), but when I first come out to acquaintances, they seemed to like asking me about my genitals and what a “sex-change” will do to them.
The first couple times I, naively, told them what hormones would do and what surgeries were available–but after the first two people asked me (out of the three or so I had told at that point) I started to just point them towards google and then change the subject.
I’m generally okay with some of those sorts of questions from my friends; we talk about sex and stuff all the time (everything from our favorite position to penis size to embarrassing moments/exes). But that doesn’t mean I’m going to tell someone I just met how my boyfriend and I fuck. >.<
My first (and only) experience with a trans* chatroom back in high school involved some chaser telling me trannybois were the best of both worlds and that she wanted to fuck me. I asked her how we were the best of both worlds and why there were only two worlds. She got flustered and said something about boy parts and girly parts–and then I told her I just have boy parts, since I’m a boy and therefore all my parts are boy parts. She never replied, I closed the chatwindow, and then went back to reading Harry/Draco fanfic.
I can’t really compare my experiences with a person perceived as a woman’s though; I pretty much started passing as a 12 year old cis*boy or dyke back when I was 16 and even before then I looked young for my age so no one really bothered me about sexual stuff.
Ryan, I don’t plan on getting bottom surgery either. I acknowledge that my feelings about it might change with time but for now, I’m happy with what I have and with using soft and hard packers. But like Drakyn, I *am* tired of educating people about surgical alternatives for FTMs and how most of us don’t wind up getting a phallo because etc etc etc. Again, I understand why most people think transitioning has mainly to do with a sex change OPERATION and I thought so too before but I’m tired of specifying that, for FTMs, most of the work is done through hormones and, often, top surgery. So, yeah, if anyone is interested enough, they can easily find that information online.
Drakyn, lucky you being read as male so young! I started girl puberty at 10 and was cursed/blessed (depending on how one looks at it) with rather big breasts early on so that would’ve never worked for me. Besides, at the time, I desperately wanted to be a girl, just to be normal. To think I now eschew normalcy. HA!
Drakyn, yeah, I have started directing people to Google. I don’t mind talking about hormones, cos I am so pumped to be starting T so soon, that you can’t shut me up about it, but surgeries…. meh. Not interested in discussing it with most anyone.
Also, I second Jacky in the ‘lucky you’ thing. I still have trouble passing… my face is *extremely* femme, and my voice is really really high, in spite of my efforts to make it lower. I wish I had a cold. *sigh* I am glad I start T soon, it makes it easier. I have kinda given up trying to pass, I just act like me… and surprisingly I pass better with that attitude.
Jacky, I think that part of the problem is that most people think that the difference between men and women is all in the genitals, they don’t realise that in fact, its our hormones that have a much greater impact on making us different. People also don’t understand gender cue’s and how they work. They instinctively use them, but don’t realise what they are doing.
I was in a book store one day, and saw a book on body language. It had a passage that said something along the lines of “The first and easiest thing that you can tell about someone else is their gender.” It then listed a bunch of really obvious gender cues (clothes, hair, etc) while missing out the subtler ones that trans people constantly worry will give them away (skin texture, size of hands, jaw line etc). I thought it was hilarious.
Ryan – same here. I pass better when I stop caring about it. It’s so funny how I tried for so long to pass as a women. I was way more anxious about passing than I am now, even though I know many people still perceive me as female, expecially people who’ve known me for a whole.
As for body language – it’s an interesting phenomenon. And so culturally relative.
Jacky, I totally get what you are saying about being anxious to pass as a woman.
I used to be so shy, could barely squeak if someone spoke to me. I would throw up after 2min speeches in English.
I avoided people, and was intensely self conscious all the time. Am I walking right? Am I speaking cutely enough? Is my voice too loud? Do I take up too much space? What is everyone thinking about this tiny thing that I am doing right now?!
Now I just don’t give a shit… I am who I am. I get annoyed when I find myself speaking in my ‘girl voice’, but I’ve come to realize that I am simply so conditioned to speak in an extremely cute with respectful/deference voice to certain demographics that I pretty much can’t help it. Its on my ‘behaviours to eliminate’ list.
I went away to boarding school at 14, so I feel like I did a lot of the experimenting and discovering myself that most people don’t do until they’re in college. Though I did try to force myself to be a girl in middle-school. >.<
So around 15 I started to question my gender (after being in denial for years) and came out to myself as a guy around 16/17.
I have to be careful what I wear or how I style my hair–I’m actually rather borderline on passing as a cis*guy, so small cues can tip the balance.
But I think at least some of it really is attitude; and if I firmly correct someone they just apologize and move on.
Though I have had to suppress and abandon (hopefully temporarily) a lot of my more feminine tendencies. No eyeliner or longish hair until I’ve been on T for a while; and I know I’ll never pass as a straight, gender-normative guy (limp wrists and the like).
My voice is high too, but I’m trying to train myself to talk lower and more from my chest as opposed to my throat.
Ryan: “was intensely self conscious all the time. Am I walking right? Am I speaking cutely enough? Is my voice too loud? Do I take up too much space? What is everyone thinking about this tiny thing that I am doing right now?!”
I remember that. It would come down to the tiniest gestures – were they feminine enough to make me look like a real woman? When I think back, it was such a miserable time. I don’t know how I survived. As for the girl voice . . .yeah, I know what you mean. I hate the sound of my own voice right now but especially that high cutesie tone that I get sometimes.
Drakyn: When I meet new people, often they think I’m male . . . until I talk. Then that’s a dead giveaway. You know, on one hand it bugs me when I’m NOT read as male. On the other hand, you have to admit that for a female-bodied person dressed in all male clothes and with male postures and stances to NOT be labelled as male is fairly progressive. A mere few decades ago, people were getting attacked for dressing and behaving like members of the “opposite” sex so, while my desire to be read as male makes me resentful when people still keep me in the female category, I’m glad at the same time that people are so accepting of butchiness in a woman that they wouldn’t even think of calling me a guy. It’s a strange feeling.
Do you have one? Will you get one? How can you be one without one?
To anyone that’s thought about transgenderism, these questions can be humorous, and are eventually tiresome. In my view, the whole premise of being trans is that bodies don’t define gender, so the question is really moot–an oxymoron.
That being said, I do understand people’s curiosity. Most people that I know have simply never thought about gender in any meaningful kind of way. I first (knowingly) met a transsexual woman a couple of years ago and I was extremely curious about what she had below the belt. I had the decency however to not probe the issue. After all, there is respect and privacy to consider!
Two of my friends recently commented about how the Penis Question is similar in nature to how some people will approach a pregnant woman and touch her belly. Their curiosity about the primal nature of reproduction (and perhaps some ownership over the reproductive experience?) somehow negates any sense of respect.
So far, my own excitement about transition has precluded annoyance, and generally speaking I’m happy to satisfy people’s curiosity–if they’re being decent. Ask me about it a year from now though and I suspect I’ll have a real sense of ennui about it all!
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1 | Jacky V.
May 19, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Ugh. As I was reading this blog, my inbox “dinged” me to signal a new message. It was from an old girlfriend that I “virtually” bumped into and came out to a couple of days ago. Instead of any questions about how I was doing, when I made my decision, etc, I get a question on how I will get a hard-on after a sex change operation. Now, I can deal with the assumption that most people have that a “sex change” for a transguy automatically entails a phallo. I thought so too before I knew anything about transsexuality and transition. But christ almight, why does this person think it’s ok to go straight for the cock? Just because we used to fuck??
Argh! All that to say that it’s ironic that I should get that email while I’m reading your post on how we have no perceived right to privacy.