Objectivism and Transsexual Identity (part1) we are not language constructs.

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Just a quick post after a brief chat with Katie at genderqueer.co.uk about gender / trans labels. I thought it would be useful to look at transsexualism as being something emerging out of issues of gender identity whilst transgender being a function of behavioural gender roles. note* I use the phrase trans to describe the entire spectrum and transsexual and transgender in alignment.

I thought after this chat it would be beneficial, if only for me, to look at the fine line that exists  between externally ‘real’ concepts and equally subjectively ‘real’ inner realities.  Both have their part to play in much of the difficulties surrounding trans identity, from the perspective of the observer and also the person being observed. In the first part I want to look at the objective external reality, in the second part the inner subjective self and in the third part bring the two together.

One of the first mistakes some trans people make, I state this as a truism, is to argue against the fact that there are objectively real binary genders.  They say that male and female are language constructs and are more about assigned roles than actual real difference. I would hope to elucidate briefly how the brain works and forms concepts without the need for any language and hence show that male and female are objective realities as opposed to mere labels constructed from language.  I think epistemological language games remove us from really useful discussion about gender, that would lead to better psychological outcomes and a more fulfilling idea of a real true self.

I use objectivism as a way of explaining how we are born with the innate hard coded ability to form concepts. These concepts are necessarily free from language they are part of our gene code and essential for our survival. I am not strictly seeing this from a Jungian archetype perspective but rather from Rand’s ideas on concept formation.

When Rand speaks of concepts she talks of the innate ability for us to distinguish one thing from another thing. To classify things based upon similarities and equally classify other things from that, based upon their differences. We are born with the understanding for example that object x is close to us whilst object y is  further away. We don’t need language for this or any units of measurements we simply understand that concept without thinking. It is the objective reality of the world we are born into. Equally from this we grasp the concept of size and shape so again we can distinguish the appearance of object x and object y. Rand looked at this as concepts being formed due to our inbuilt mathematical sense of the world we find ourselves in. If we saw one table we would have the inbuilt understanding to see it as being different from a chair, in terms of attributes such as shape. This is fundamental to how our brain works and learns.

Objectivism indicates we are born with the ability to form concepts without language and to be able to differentiate and create classes, sub classes and types of things. We can see similarities and we can see differences. Male and female are not only fundamentally biologically different there common external presentation is different. This differences may be subtle in some cases (not when unclothed)but the brain has a highly tuned ability to detect minute differences and classify patterns accordingly. We are far more capable of doing this than even the best computers. This external difference is what manifests itself to the observers brain as conceptual awareness of a female class as opposed to a male class. This is unavoidable as this is how our brains are wired to understand the world in which we find ourselves. Heidegger talks of being in the world and it is a core part of our being in the world that we form concepts.

We cannot create a path that takes us away from the reality of how we are as human beings or deny the way our brains actually work in order that we learn. To seek to deny what is true takes us back to Descatres saying how do I know a devil is not deceiving me and the world is actually real at all.  It seems in our secular age we have looked to science to find answers where once we looked to belief. It seems out of time to be debating ideas of true binary genders as a non physical reality when evidentially that is clearly not the case. We are not born with language but rather the ability to conceptualise without it. This is based further upon the brain’s innate ability to differentiate mathematically, without needing a measurement. The brain knows there is a size difference, a shape difference without needing language or the direct ability to understand mathematics.

Whilst many would say this is writing about the extreme end of gender politics as some trans people may view things. I personally feel it very important to begin with acknowledgement of fundamental real objective difference. This then will enable me to fully explore transsexualism as opposed to transgender as the foundations will be firmly in place. I would then seek to build the subjective and environmental walls upon and around this core in part 2.

Related Articles

• What Is a Transgender Individual? (brainz.org)
• Words, definitions and meaning. What is Transgender? (tresourcewritings.wordpress.com)
• Fired Alberta transgendered teacher rejects deal (ctv.ca)

Filters

 

Image by mseckington via Flickr

 

A neurotic internal dialogue which questions ideas about gender, identity, celebrity culture and the contained madness that we all have to somehow ‘filter’ in order that we function. I wrote it a while ago but I thought it fitted well with the earlier posts about I and self and the impact the outside has on the inside. How madness is a gentle falling rather than a sudden collapse and a collective accepting or dismissing based upon universality of opinion.  The neurosis displayed here is not unlike the facebook and social network culture of brief punctuation between the next random thought. The gradualness of thought assembling and dissembling all at the same time. This neural activity like some form of universal pinball network with thoughts colliding adding subtracting from a nonsensical whole, accumulation of ? Its maths mainly we are processing at enormous speed. Maths flying through our ears and in through our eyes.   Our internal minds as maps of the universe spinning outwards trying to assimilate the bits we need at certain moments and having to filter very quickly almost beyond our genetic ability the ideas that are relevant to us or that we choose to allow to construct us.

I had breakfast
with David and Victoria.
David said I could
have his Orange juice.

I like David a lot.
He doesnt like me.

It is hot in L.A.
Sometimes I stay in
and go through Vicky’s things.
I can’t get into them
as she is tiny.

I am bored.

I call Paris (not the city).
We have lunch in
her pink Bentley.
She is my best girlfriend,
and we talk about boys.

They are demonstrating about War.
We are being photographed.
People are dying right now,
and the world is on fire.

She is beautiful and
I am very ugly.
I say, “Paris in your video.”
She blushes.

“You are so like me
especially in the bathroom
when you are in those
black knickers
and looking at your perfect
reflection.”

She hugs me, and the skin
on her face comes away.
She smiles.
Bones teeth and muscle.
“Are you ok?” I say.
I pick up her face
and she says, ‘try it.’
I do.

The electric window falls.
We laugh.
One thousand suns
flash in my eyes.

‘Paris!’ (not the city).
‘Paris here over here!’
I close the window.
I return her face.
We giggle that was such fun.
She drops me off at my
doctor.

He is giving me injections
so my breasts will grow.
He has done nothing with
my penis, which I hate.
He says if I keep it
I can make money in
porn, and get really hot boyfriends.
“As hot as David?”
He says ‘sure.’

“Can you give me an injection
so I can save people
who are unhappy?”
Pick them up and take
them to a safe place.
He says ‘no that would make
you a superhero.’
But he knows someone in the
hills who talks with
the dead.

I like having so much money.
I pay for cute guys
to come over.
I just lay on the bed
and look at their
bronze bodies and tight asses.
They do what I want.
They twirl, bend over,
fetch me things, get
on all fours, growl,
and let me take pictures,
even kiss my feet.
I let them have my bagel.
Just one thousand dollars.
I think they all fall in love with me.
They keep calling my cell.

There are lots of drugs
I would like to try.
They all look so sexy
in their little white bottles.
Those long black names.
Some are in capitals
but I like the lowercase ones.
I wish Prada made drugs.
How amazing! Or even Gucci,
that would be fabulous.

I would have a designer bloodstream.
I just know my cells would love it.
They would be flawless.
I would cut myself and that is nice.
Under a microscope you can see,
the white cells with Prada written in
the centre.

People go to prison sometmes.
For lots of things.
I like the ones who do terrible crimes.
Its fun to watch and TV does it so well.
People write and say so much
about the awful ones.
They get the best graphics
and really good looking, clever people
interested in them.

I am a boy but really a girl.
I dont know to which prison,
they would send me.
I would get a really expensive lawyer.
It would take years for them to decide
and everyone would talk about me forever.
How great would that be?
So great, so amazing.
I would get more google searches,
than Paris and Vicky,
but they are my friends,
and I am not a bitch.

The supreme court ruled.
The boy is an abnormal growth
and must be removed.
The red bar would run along,
the bottom of huge televisions.
Brad and Angelina would
say something at this
point.
All over the world,
people would send texts
about me.

I would of course have to do terrible things.
I am so lazy though,
and it is so hot.

I watch Vicky get ready,
some of her girlfriends
dont like me.
They are all better looking than me.
I have read more books so screw those
thick whores.

I get angry sometimes.
I dont like being inside out
and people not seeing the real me.
Like you do…

Art & The Individual, A Haven for Difference

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After a disastrous appointment at a gender clinic in London, I have been thinking to myself the weight of pressure we place upon ourselves to create futures and bring others along with us in the creation of our dreams. The human need for affirmation and cultural acceptance is incredibly strong and we as individuals are constantly trying to fulfil this tremendous sense of self purpose whilst at the same time seeking in others an understanding that in some way we are ‘right’ in the choices we make. If we make choices that exist outside of the cultural norm we feel an incredible sense of isolation and difficulty with expressing that. Of course psychologically no one wishes to spend their lives in having to justify what they perceive they are.  Yet at the same time most of us want wider acceptance without having to acquiesce or fit in. In other words we want that ideal sense of human individuality our individual uniqueness to shine yet we also want the light of understanding from others too.

We have the individual desperately striving to be themselves whilst we also have to acknowledge the collective spaces we occupy and the sense of difference and responsibility this brings in a parallel time frame. The world of Art probably best allows us to express that individuality. It gives us a social arena where the individual is afforded by the wider collective a right to express themselves within that context. We feel this individual expression afforded here, by proxy underlines all our senses of the world seen in microcosm. It speaks to us all in varying ways, even if we think the expression trite and self serving in some way it affirms us and says there is a place where we can be just one voice in a global cacophony of sound. Art enriches us all in this way, it goes beyond the normal notion of cultural conformity and has no walls.

Outside of Art and the culturally allowed frame of self expression we have the life we must lead as others do. We must work, engage, interact, travel, have social discourse be involved in our local communities and share concern for our neighbours and the environment we inhabit. We want our lives to be productive, contributory and useful. Our individuality should not seek to withdraw from social collective responsibility but it is in these spaces that our uniqueness is halted. The majority takes precedence and of course in communities that is a sensible model for cohesive social growth. The problem is the extent to which the individual is allowed access to contribute it they are outside of the ‘normal’ expectations of a wider social group. These expectations are of course socially malleable depending upon the surrounding environment one is lucky enough or not to live in. It would not seem to take a wide social anthropological study to say that perhaps those in communities with less access to education, finance and broader senses of a world beyond the narrowness that financial constraint imposes, would welcome less an individual expressing themselves for example as I would outside of the gender binary norm. In communities where there is a greater sense of a broader world based upon a wider exposure to a diversity and cultural difference perhaps one might find more of a chance to express themselves.

The question for the individual is how they approach the need for self authenticity with the need also to be in the world, when being in that world often means abuse, ridicule, potential harm, and lack of empathy or support. The psychological strain is enormous as it is rather like crossing a frozen lake where on the other side we feel awaiting us is a personal sense of fulfilment a place where we will meet our true self. This is only a feeling however, it is a dream and a belief, it is an internal map that speaks to us and continually forces our feet in its direction. This is inbuilt and not something I  understand, it is the chemistry of my mind and the amalgamation of my life and it leads me there. I have no comprehension as to how individual elements of me have brought me to what I consider my identity now. I just know I am here. The crossing of this lake is enormously difficult and fraught with individual self doubt and the wider collective reiteration of the dangers involved.   I can of course stay here and never cross and be subsumed into the collective and exist as someone who can go from day to day and contribute and be accepted. I don’t have to look for tribes that will take me in like some abandoned creature and that will further distance me from the reality of life. Yes it is important that common niche groups form collective and cohesive bonds to build awareness and address collective difference of opinion. That is positive and I want to be active there but I don’t want to be active there so the niche group defines me more than I define myself.

Art is indeed a refuge and that is why I spend so much time there. So much time creating, thinking and exploring individual expression that does not seek a wider acceptance but just expresses the inner self. I seek it because it allows one freedom to be oneself and also if honest hide oneself in explanations of eccentricity and the individual thought that Art expects and allows. It does not make a tube ride easier or sitting in a waiting room or shopping or conversing with others any less fraught or difficult. It does present a haven, a place where identity is fluid and a feeling one doesn’t need to explain. It is a space free of affirmation, it is a place where we see others who think differently and spend their lives in these small authentic interior spaces. It is an arena where one is free from justification, one is accepted via the door of creativity and one finds tranquillity despite the difficulty in the creation or getting out in our chosen medium the wonder and sadness of existence. The pain and joy of being alive and the capturing of  that as mere episodes in time passing.

I would like to write more about this dichotomy and the havens that we seek to find peace in living the unique authentic us under the pressure of collective thought and programmed thinking. It is very difficult though as what one wants is the right to be part of both and one’s life isn’t long enough to make that happen. The choice is to find personal happiness without excluding oneself from the world that others experience too. To not be only concerned with our authenticity but also to want to give all we can to make life better for all people who live it. I would hate my personal choice to leave me outside of that. I think I would find equal unhappiness if by my following my own dream I couldn’t help or contribute to the dreams of others.

Related Articles

• Do Afghan Children Prove Gender is Fluid? (gayrights.change.org)
• Reality, Truth, Perception, Individualism, Society: What is Reality If Not a Subjective Analysis Based Upon One’s Life Experience? (socyberty.com)
• Marcia Reynolds: What Is Femininity? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Genes and culture: OXTR gene influences social behaviour differently in Americans and Koreans | Not Exactly Rocket Science (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Living with diversity: for a politics of hope without fear (newstatesman.com)

The loneliness of the long distance gender dysphoric part 2

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Part 2.

I spoke in the first part about a story of gender confusion from an early age, although at that age I had no concept that this had anything to do my gender as such. I just felt a connection with femininity or rather its outward expression as I saw the world around me as opposed to masculinity and how that was portrayed in the outside world. I had no sense that one should be a boy or a girl or that in essence I wasn’t a girl. I had no understanding of genitals I never contemplated them or thought about them and i didn’t really understand the difference anyhow. I didn’t know they were genitals or what their function was.

Who would I speak to at 6 years of age, where would my knowledge come from and how could I express myself in a language I had no perception of. At this age it was purely about feelings of wanting to wear what I saw my mother and sister wearing. To replicate them and be like the people I loved most deeply. Was this a sense of exclusion, was I seeking to be nearer to the people who were kindest and most loving to me. My father was an abusive monster so perhaps I was rejecting that experience of masculinity, I had no other to go by in the home environment. Did I see the kindness and love and gentle nature of my mother as a refuge from this terror. Was I trying to become her to avoid being him.

None of this took place as thought process then. It only takes place now as  I look back and try and piece together the moments of evolving perception that would later form part of my view of myself and the world. Was I trans gender from a biological standpoint in that in the womb certain chemical events happened that meant my brain and body followed separate paths. Did my external environment as a child drive me away from a masculinity that I saw as destructive, unkind and frightening toward the femininity that I felt safe and secure in. This environment was certainly one where my personal psychology was being formed to have a negative view of what it meant at that age to be male.

In the absence of a scientific diagnosis of this condition I can only try and piece together what I actually know about the events of my life and how I felt as a child in the environment within which I found myself. It was an intense isolated experience, my parents has few external friends and we were poor and had little access to reading or external influence. It was a little like the plays one reads of Tennessee Williams in that suffocating family atmosphere that pervaded my childhood. The strong maternal figure and the house being the epicentre of a universe I felt as very small.

When going out into the world and achieving well academically from a young age. I never lost this sense of being unable to slot into a convenient space with everyone else. I was fortunate in that I was born with a degree of intelligence that made school a place where I could do the things required from me and receive respect in that I was a good candidate to go to a better school when I was 12. I was equally highly aggressive at school toward other boys, not at all afraid and probably projecting the violence I experienced at home. I had this huge male figure to deal with a home of whom I was very frightened however these boys of my age looked like small dots in comparison and I was relentless in my pursuit of assuring that no one in my school space would intimidate me as I was intimidated at home.

I had also learned that fear was a good way of ensuring you were left alone and that if I had exposed any weakness of myself or for one moment expressed my feminine feelings then I would have been drowned at school. I would have had no place where I was safe. School would be safe and I would fight every day to ensure that was so.  I had to be someone else at a very young age and I was conscious of the effort it took. I lived ahead of myself and never was in the moment always planning and calculating how to deal with others and to present myself in situations. This was at 9 and 10 years old, s0 I was  suffering real stress and anxiety about a number of issues and not understanding why.

All of this as in Part 1 is me trying to look backwards and possibly see patterns that were present when I was very young and unable to process what all of this meant. I certainly see now that as a child I was under huge stress without ever recognising it as such. I was frightened to come home because of my father. I was another person at school to protect myself from further harm. I had huge secrets about my affinity with females and being unable to express that in any way other than through furtive dressing. I had yet to experience sexual feelings but when that did come when I attended an all boys grammar school this again led to again having to hide my feelings, suppress and bury them.

There was no Internet, no support groups, no doctors one could talk to. It was just me trying to understand why everything was so difficult and tiring. I had no concept that you could be born male and change that. I had never heard of transsexualism. I was totally isolated and couldn’t connect properly to the world at all. It certainly affected my studies and created a further deep sense of isolation and loneliness as I could not interact with my peers without enormous pretence and artifice which was eventually over time exhausting.

As my body changed and the distance between my physical self and the female physical world started to get further away I found this very painful but excepted an inevitability about it. I had not the slightest sense that one could ever do anything about it. I was very slim however and that made me feel slightly more connected, although my height increasingly made me look male. I started to envy the idea of breasts as I saw them develop on girls in my mid teens and felt my own physical shape was now certainly incorrect or at least not developing along lines that I wanted it to. I continued to dress at home and continued to assume this would be the only place I might be able to ever be myself in quiet intimate moments behind locked doors.

Part 3 to follow.

Related Articles

• Gay Men and Their Fathers: Hurt and Healing (psychologytoday.com)
• Why We Need to Reimagine Masculinity (newsweek.com:80)
• One’s Gender Identity Isn’t Societal Perception Of It; Marriage Equality Isn’t Just A GLB Issue (pinkbananaworld.com)
• Bodybuilders Flex Their Femininity in NYC Art Exhibit (thefrisky.com)
• Let’s end the great gender lie (guardian.co.uk)

A ‘community’ I don’t feel part of

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I remember the first time I started to look more deeply into the increasing difficulties I was experiencing in my assigned birth gender role. The first port of call was obviously the Internet. I began to explore sites that appeared to offer an arena for dialogue and discussion about these exact issues. It felt wonderful to feel at least virtually I was not alone in the way I had felt before.  I had no real life connection with anyone who had ever experienced these feelings and I had never discussed or explained my personal difficulties with my feelings in my entire life.  I carried on my roles being son, brother, partner and ticking continually all the correct boxes for everyone except myself.  I loved my family and I accepted love was about giving more than receiving and I wanted to sacrifice and make those I love happy. I didn’t want to hurt anyone or upset their lives, I loved them all deeply as my family. My problem was that holding back this enormous tide of emotion inside me was affecting my well being. I was finding it harder and harder to function and increasingly experiencing bouts of depression and anxiety.

The Internet was my outlet. I could talk with others who shared similar stories to myself and who had made it through to the other side of gender change. I could speak with people who were just starting out like me and exploring their feelings and understandably finding it all so very hard. I saw the same issues with depression, anxiety, denial, secret dressing, purging then returning after periods and I also experienced people who were more than happy to live a secret life dressing when they might and finding peace and contentment in that and wanting nothing more. I thought I would be able to share and find a place within a holistic healing community where we all were experiencing life in a very similar way. I however soon discovered I was wrong, not in the sense that there were not some nice people out there who cared for others and the idea of experiencing life more positively was something they wished to pass on to others. Equally not in the sense that we were sharing similar life experiences but in another sense I shall explain and is the main point of my posting.

The transgender ‘community’ like a number of other special interest communities is fractured, there is not a common sense of purpose or indeed an agreement to what one might define as a true definition of transgender. The community encompasses a huge range of people from weekend cross dressers to people who have had full gender re-assignment surgery. When one visits these transgender sites one is faced with what first appears to be a homogeneous world but one quickly discovers that the level of disagreement and  lack of empathy amongst the clique interests that make up a disconnected whole is not a happy place in which to find oneself.  The worst aspects of human nature lurk on many of these discussion boards, jealousy, bitterness, anger, and whilst the initial sense of welcome is obviously firstly exploratory, as one is being sounded out by several specific interest sub groups. This soon turns to lack of interest and communication if your view of what to be transgender is different to the sub group who first saw you as potential recruit. You must identify where you lie along an unidentifiable imaginary spectrum in order to correctly communicate with your allotted sub group. This sub group can reduce further if you have an opinion that might not agree with the clique within the sub group.

So you might ask the point of the post is what? Well I feel it important to say to those who think that just because someone has gender identity issues that they automatically fall within an homogeneous group of  people. There is no universal similarity between people who have gender dysphoria the way each individual experiences it is unique and the way they wish to express it is unique. Their may be an external similarity in that we are biological males representing as females, some more convincingly (within what is defined externally as characteristically female) than others. I believe beneath the surface how each of us experiences what this means and how each of us wants to be in the world is hugely different. It is as meaningful as saying all women experience life and what it means to be a woman in the same way or that all men experience life and what it means to be male in the same way.

We are a mixture of gender as yet not understandable by medicine but we are as each individually different as every other man or woman in the world. Some of it is the same but most is wholly different. So having transgender websites gives us an illuminated sign where we feel we can seek similarity but I personally have found more similarity amongst my genetic female friends who I have now told about me. They truly understand and lovingly seek to support my journey. I get advice I get friendship and I get no sense of jealousy, bitterness or exclusion. The conclusion may be that virtual friendships are pointless and the real world is still the place where one finds true love and support, or it might be that the transgender community is politicised and fractured like the gay community and the amount of sub groups and special interests find making a virtual connection more problematic than helpful. I say this as many who come to transgender sites for the first time may believe that there is a certain way one should feel or behave in order to be accepted and we so desperately want to accepted don’t we. My personal advice would be know your own mind well, don’t seek out virtual sub groups and allow acceptance to dominate your thinking or behaviour. Gender dysphoria is a complex condition requiring professional support and help and a solid loyal friendship base. The internet is quick to access and easy to explore but there are many pitfalls and one should have a guide whom they trust when seeking out answers to the very difficult problems we face.

Related Articles

• ‘No wonder many end up in sex work’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Transgender Exclusion from LGB Health Report (gayrights.change.org)