Clownfish Redux

My unpopular perspective is that the adoption of trans identity is frequently a trauma response. Some of the first cracks of daylight that could pierce my former ideology came from Carolyn Gage’s article on how the reality of sexual abuse can complicate FTM trans narratives (“The Inconvenient Truth about Teena Brandon,” Trivia, Issue 10, February 2010).

I recently learned that in the mid-90s, Aaron (still Holly, then) Devor even did a study suggesting that some FTM identity formation is a response to abuse, perhaps a form of dissociative identity disorder. (This resonates: approximately 2/3 of my sexual abuse support group transitioned ftm and identified as “multiple.” This was years after I detransitioned but before I really got what it had meant in the first place.) The study interviews FTMs and specifically some who are trained therapists. According to Devor, “all three of the participants who were therapists mentioned that they thought that their own abuse experiences might be related to their transsexualism.”

There are FTM detransitioners who now say that they were reacting to the corresponding abusive cultural forces–generalized misogyny, hatred of lesbians, if not specific traumas. I knew women who openly said they were transitioning not because they believed they were male or men, but because they did not want to be women or to be treated as such. They wanted to be women in private, among lesbians, but not in the hostile outside world. In some ways, this works like an individualized inverse of the goals of women’s land–a way to create your body as a protective mechanism instead of a target, separating your psyche from the daily assaults of being perceived as female in order to find out what your humanity is. The women I’ve known who start transition later in life have essentially cited the usual body hatred but also said it was because they did not want to be *old women* in particular. In other words, these are pragmatic choices made from deeply compromised positions.

Though I think FTM and MTF realities are inherently asymmetrical because of sex differences and resulting socialization, I can’t help but suspect some MTFs may be forming an identity out of trauma response as well–males who don’t or can’t conform to male gender norms certainly experience abuse and trauma, as well as living under a generalized cultural threat. They’re punished for being “like women.” The 17-month old child murdered by a 20-year-old man for being “too feminine.” Larry King, murdered in 2008. Far, far too many to list. Most of the TDOR roll call.

Most of the trans women I knew back when I “was trans” either saw themselves as sort of being a different kind of gay man (in some ways counterparts to butch dykes), or else seemed to be working very hard not to be associated with feminine gay men in a way that looks in retrospect a lot like pragmatic survival and a self-preservation instinct rather than just a neutrally different identity. Then there were those who acted like fetishistic, predatory men, for whom the breaking of the gender taboo was the point, and for whom violating all kinds of boundaries and taboos seemed to be the primary motivation-something different seemed to be at work there, but more on that later.

All of that said, trans identity obviously means many things to many people; people claiming various different identities under the trans umbrella argue against female-only spaces from various and often conflicting viewpoints–the lack of coherence even in acceptable terms of speech makes it a shifting-sands, moving-goal-posts endeavor. That may sound like a digression but if, at the end of the day, trans is frequently about managing trauma (or conversely, for some males, about enacting boundary-violation), then it makes sense that the discourse created out of this community would contain some signs of an abuse cycle in action.

All of this is to say–I believe people who have transitioned should be able to name and  organize themselves (without erasing female reality), and be protected from violence and discrimination from within and from without–and that this must be accomplished without compromising the sex-based protections that women rely on. (A related topic for another day is the internal dynamics of a “trans community” that contains both traumatized females and males and fetishistic boundary-violating males under the same umbrella.) Much of the violence that transing people experience is born of a knee-jerk “ick” from those who are threatened by ambiguity and by the violation of gender taboos, and that unchecked response ultimately serves nobody but the most powerful male beneficiaries of patriarchy.

Unfortunately, at this point, all critique of trans theory/politics is assumed to consist solely of that “ick” and horror of ambiguity; it obviously doesn’t. Many women, including many gender-noncompliant women who embody “ambiguity” themselves, are saying something much different than “ick,” and standing firmly in opposition to the gender rules and roles that create gender taboos in the first place. Further, it is understandable that many women have horror of ambiguity in males because in some cases this *does* signify wolves wearing sheepskins–and because, by definition, the boundary-violators are far more likely to come into contact with female-only space and with lesbian feminists than the mtfs who *don’t* use trans for the explicit purpose of enacting boundary-violation, but for social survival and trauma management, the existing politics are skewed in terms of both the push and the push-back.

The fact is, regardless of why people transition, people now exist who are living in trans predicaments, and they have practical social, medical, legal, and logistical needs. But what “trans” itself means and what cultural space it belongs in are a different matter, and one that cannot be resolved in a way that’s divorced from female realities.

The culture of the current trans politics looks a lot like overt misogyny from many sides. I know that if I had had the word “cis” back when I “was trans” I would have loved it and latched onto it. I basically acted out that idea even without the word. What is now called “cis” was my enemy. Why? Because (in many ways subconsciously) my project was about obliterating femaleness and womanhood–my own, surely, but not only mine. Positing my experience as separate and “one-down” from other women was the only way to matter at all. What I aimed to gain could only be gained at the expense of women as a whole.

This was a driven behavior, not freely chosen. It felt inherent and immutable; indeed, I could not have “thought” my way out. I watch many other people who identify as trans acting out something that looks very, very familiar–but what can I say? The I-dentity is internal, personal, no one else can know. It can’t be refuted. The individual is the only expert, regardless of the way it ripples out in impact across many other people. The biggest crime any affected party can commit is “making it about themselves” instead of about the trans-identifying individual. But of course, as Muriel Rukeyser wrote in Islands, “O for God’s sake/they are connected/underneath.” This idea has no currency when the project is denying that connection. The same community that understands, “No more suicide/it kills everyone” (“No More Pain,” Embrace, 90s punk band) depends on treating transition in exactly the opposite manner. This has the effect of (subculturally) consolidating social capital and control with the trans-identifying I-ndividual.

This is a powerful feeling for someone who has been robbed of their personal and bodily autonomy by the dominant culture. This was a big attraction for me as a survivor. A way to control reality instead of being destroyed; to be told I was entitled to assert my body and its meaning, and entitled to have a righteously angry subculture defend me in doing so, at least in theory–in practice, for me at least, the defense was pretty thin. Still, what a feeling to think of myself as being targeted for a Real oppression deserving redress. A primary emergency. A red alert.

Misogyny, for some reason, was never considered important beyond a certain level of lip service. It was background noise, not an emergency. What happened to me as a female child–male violence and female complicity in that violence–was expected. It was a sad personal problem. Nobody named it systemic social control. Nobody was angry. I was furious, but as a child without a framework or social support, I imploded. I was going to get out of my predicament by any means available, and a downright ubiquitous trans-pomo-queeriousity was the only thing throwing me ropes, making grandiose promises of deliverance.

In that space, I would not have been able to hear any of this. Living in gender theory meant living in an altered state. It was like being an addict. Gender theory acted on my consciousness like a drug. My transition was a kind of living suicide. I am not saying this is true for every person who identifies as trans. I do think that this is true for many, and certainly true for those who are currently loudest in shaping the conversation.

The mainstream, misogynist perspective on what trans means is such that I have generally withdrawn from LGBT/queer social space and networks, because it’s too painful to watch and too awkward to interact within. When I’ve tried to put a toe in the water in saying what I see, I’ve been iced out by well-meaning people who believe they’re being good allies against mindless ignorance and bigotry–who assume I have no personal knowledge, just haven’t read the right queer theory text yet, have a limited view. If I’d published my own thoughts in the 90s, people would be giving them to me and telling me to “educate myself” now.

My perceptions are informed by experience as well as study. And I can’t bear the irony of being told yet again that my story is a sad personal issue, with no relation to social systems of power and control.

Acting from that assumption is the surest way to leave the power structures intact, perpetuate the harm against all females and gender-nonconforming males, and to keep wasting the rich knowledge I ought to have inherited from the consciousness-raising and the hell-raising of my feminist foremothers.

This isn’t something I can say openly, but I won’t live another lie.

Tags: aaron devor, boundary violating males, carolyn gage, consciousness raising, detransition, did i mention misogyny, feminist foremothers, gender taboos, holly devor, I-dentity, individual vs society, individualism, male violence, misogyny, muriel rukeyser, older women know things, queer theory, sex roles, survival, teena brandon, trauma