it strikes me that internalized cissexism[1] plagues our communities. we try to prove to ourselves that we are trans by asking ourselves if we would, in the press of a button, bring our selves and bodies into alignment, and in that act, make ourselves cis. we wonder and we obsess, pondering the question, “am I trans?” but we never ask “am I cis?”
but this self-directed transphobia runs much deeper. how many grieve for the selves they lost, for the person that might have been, had they been born cis? in this, we never stop to ask ourselves, “what would I have lost?”
for myself: everything I cherish, all I value most. to be cis, I must give up the experiences that have shaped me most, and in so doing, I’d make of myself someone else. there are many painful things I might have wished to avoid but, looking back, I see a clear trajectory of necessary action taken quietly and without fanfare to survive what had to be survived until freedom was within reach. to dream of living some other life would be a critique of that person inside who worked so hard to bring us to this point of inner tranquility and outer safety. and really, what do I have to critique? should I castigate the child for repressing in an unsafe home, especially after learning now, as an adult, that my father would hurt or kill me if he learns I’m trans? or should I reprimand the young woman for learning to endure, internally divided, and oh so alone? but, one might ask, “what of your body? do you not transition to make it as cis as possible?” to this: no. my trans body has endured so much, with both strength and grace, and it will weather so much more; I dare the coming storms.
rather, I transition now to make this body habitable for her, for the scarred and indomitable woman who would leave her mark on the world. I transition because a little remodeling frees her from repressive chains. I remake tomorrow, not yesterday. if instead, I chased a platonically perfect body, if I rumimated on the experience of a cis childhood, lost to the circumstances of my birth, if I obsessed over the impossible, I’d forget the diamond, dreaming of a reprieve from the heat of her makers’ forge. I do not wish I were cis.
[1] the notion that we are all cis, with perhaps an asterisk to note the disquieting, uncomfortable, growing population of exceptions who wish they were cis, and must be helped to it.
You make some good points, and I don’t mean to invalidate anything you say but the emotions are running hot right now so hopefully this take comes out reasonable.
I think there’s something to be said for not looking back too much. Lots of terrible things in the past that are best left alone.
Philosophically, who are we but a culmination of our experiences? Is the concept of the self as a discrete unit meaningful? If we were to go back and change the past, would that result in the me of today being different person? Well, in my eyes, every day I wake up a different person - only a shadow of who I was the previous day remains anyway. So hypothetically, personally, changing the past doesn’t destroy “me” in a way I’d find too meaningfully substantial
3. Lots of trauma in the past.
Abusive household. Lost all my friends when I came out. And now the only people I can truly relate to are people who I talk to over the internet. I hardly know how to socialize face to face. Almost died from self harm.
If I could erase all this trauma, if I could have a community that I could meet face to face, and be comfortable in the body I lived in, would this not be better?
possible internalized transphobia
Are we just inventing rationalizations for why we’re happy where we are because we can’t change it?
Ultimately it’s moot because we can’t change it. Live with what you’ve got and look ahead to make the future the best one you can have.
Can you please spoiler your third point.
spoiler
Mostly because you talk about self harm and for community health reasons it’s important to make sure we keep harder stuff CWd because a lot of people have dealt with similar here. People need to engage with content when they feel mentally able to.
This point is internalized transphobia, a cw for this would be appreciated as well.
Will re-add the message when you can fix it, just message me
Ok I can’t see if I got the formatting right on jerboa so lmk if that looks good
looks good now
got it! the spoiler is messed up a little, so formatting does need to be fixed a bit, but ill leave it up. thanks for understanding
i hope one day mods will be able to tag comments and posts as nsfw or not
Ooh good idea. I’m a software developer maybe I’ll submit a PR
That would be based
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my goal isn’t to invalidate trauma and abuse. god knows we’ve all been through hell in this transphobic society and I also lost all my friends & family. but I found a new one and I’m so happy for it because I know nothing can separate us. I know you’ll get there too.
r.e. rationalizations: no. I genuinely love who I am and am happy for where I’ve gotten to. I understand that not everyone is not there yet. but I also think it’s healthiest to remind ourselves of the gems we’ve accumulated along this treacherous path, rather than merely stewing in the misery of it.
Yeah, I am the summation of my experiences and thoughts and feelings. It’s impossible for me to have been born cis, because then it wouldn’t be me. I am trans, inherently. It’s such a fundamental part of who I am that being anything else would erase my existence entirely.
It’s interesting to me bc I don’t have as much of a salient concept of me as a discrete entity. Like I think of myself more as a collection of brain modules, many of whom disagree with each other, that sorta have to live together in the same vessel. And I feel like the person I am when I wake up is not the same person as the one who went to sleep bc I just feel so different every day. So removing a part of me that brings suffering to the other parts is psychologically less like death and more like changing a tire on a car, like yeah it’s not the same as before but it never is anyway.
It’s all hypothetical anyway bc these are things I cannot change