Different

[Foxglove]

Hi, Everyone! Sometimes I have some fairly strange ideas, and one occurred to me last night. It’s a commonplace on this forum that a lot of cisgender people don’t like us transfolk because we’re different. People can’t tolerate anything that’s different.

I’m not going to say that’s wrong. In fact, I’ve said many a time myself that it’s true. One example of persecution I often cite I saw on a TV show about bullying at school. There was one kid on the show who was tormented at school because he was tall, because he wore glasses, because he had red hair and because he had a very odd surname. When little things like that will get you bullied, then it makes sense to say that whatever makes you different, whatever separates you from the herd will make you the target of lovely people who have nothing better to do in life than make others unhappy.

So I’m not going to deny that people don’t like what’s different. But perhaps that’s not always the case. It occurred to me that perhaps in some cases certain cisgender people dislike us, not because they perceive us as different, but because they don’t perceive us as different. Let me try to explain.

It’s obvious that in a lot of cases, people have no trouble accepting what’s different. E.g., if a woman sees a guy with a beard, she’s not going to be repulsed by the fact that he’s got hair on his face. She hasn’t got any herself, but she doesn’t find his facial hair disgusting. That’s because she understands that he’s different: he’s a guy and facial hair is a guy thing. Similarly, when a guy sees a woman, he sees a physical shape that’s very different from his own, but he has no trouble accepting that.

It doesn’t surprise us to see dogs and cats behaving differently from us, and anyone who has difficulty accepting that sharks and snakes are different from us is going to be in trouble.

And yet sometimes we can fail to completely perceive differences. Was it Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady? “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” That may sound quite silly—except that a number of years ago, a woman friend of mine, who wasn’t a stupid person by any means, while watching some little girls and boys playing, asked with considerable exasperation, “Why do little boys have to be so different from girls?” “It’s because of their hormones.” “Yeah, but girls have hormones, too.” “Well, yes, it’s true, they do.”

If you expect a woman to be more like a man, or if you expect little boys to play like little girls, you’re not fully perceiving differences. There is a fundamental difference between the sexes (no matter how hard that difference may be to define), and if you fail to perceive it, it can be a source of frustration for you. This is a case, not of people not accepting differences, but of not fully perceiving them to begin with.

Once, I heard a child psychologist on the radio giving advice to parents: “If you try a more adult approach, you might get a more adult response,” he said very smugly. And I said to myself, “What an idiot! This guy is an expert on children? He doesn’t even know what a child is! You will never, ever get an adult response from a child. He’s a child, for Pete’s sake!” It does help to know the difference between adults and children.

And then there was a bit of an argument I had not too long ago with my dad. He’s quite elderly now and is a life-long convinced Christian. I think he’s worried about me spending all eternity in hell (and he doesn’t even know I’m TG). So he decided it was time to put me straight on a few things. He didn’t get anywhere—and neither did I. He may have been a bit surprised by the outcome, but I wasn’t.

My dad is one of those believers who operates purely on faith. His beliefs are so obviously true in his eyes that he cannot imagine why anyone wouldn’t accept them. Maybe he thinks I’m just blind or stubborn or wilful or whatever, but what he doesn’t see is that I’m different. What he doesn’t see is that the very foundations of Christianity can be challenged, very seriously challenged, by rational enquiry.

He accepts that someone might have questions about the faith. But in that case, all you do is open the Bible, find the appropriate verse, and hey presto! Your question is answered and all your doubts magically disappear. That is, even when he’s enquiring, he never leaves the realm of faith. He has no trouble accepting the principle of rational enquiry in other domains, but when it comes to religion he doesn’t see it as a possibility.

Hence, he doesn’t perceive the difference between the two of us. Whereas I do, which is why I don’t like getting into arguments about religion with him. I know that it’s useless because we have no common basis for communication. He doesn’t see that, and hence he remains quite baffled and frustrated.

Which brings me to people’s perceptions of TGism. You know how you’ll see news items on the net, and lots of times there’s comments from readers, and lots of times those comments can be quite nasty as regards us transpeople. I came across a comment one day that wasn’t nasty. The guy making it sounded like a decent guy—a decent guy who’s just honestly baffled. Quoth he, “The way I see it, you just accept the way you’re born and get on with it.”

I had to laugh. “Man, if we could do that, we wouldn’t be trans. That’s kind of the definition of being trans, you know: that in some way, great or small, you can’t go along with what everybody else of your birthsex is doing.” He’s a guy who doesn’t perceive the difference between us, he knows nothing about TGism, doesn’t understand the implications of it. Hence his expectations are completely at odds with reality.

We have no trouble perceiving differences between cats and dogs, sharks and snakes, rainy days and sunny days. We may not like them, but we know what to expect from them. It’s when we get to people that we have trouble. Perhaps there are cisgender people who simply don’t know what they’re dealing with: perhaps they perceive us as normal men and women like any others, so that when they see us behaving so differently, they’re totally lost.

If they could see that we’re simply a different breed altogether, maybe they could take it in their stride. “Oh, yeah, he/she is one of them.” Then their expectations would accord with reality. They’d see men looking and behaving like men, women looking and behaving like women, and transpeople looking and behaving like transpeople. Then God would be in his heaven and all would be right with the world. A consummation devoutly to be wished.

Best wishes, Annabelle

[kimdl93]

The term cognitive dissonance comes to mind. Often when people are confronted with a reality that conflicts with strongly held beliefs, a curios thing happens. They cling even more ardently to those beliefs and rationalize away evidence to the contrary. You see this in the way people respond to politics, religion and science. We create dissonance by our very nature and that for some people is very disconcerting, so they cling to the archaic beliefs about us more firmly and insist that we are wrong, immoral,deviant or whatever, because thier belief system says so.

[STACY B]

Thats just like a person telling another person without the ability to walk to just get up an walk I do,,, You got leggs use um ,,What the hell is wrong with you get up ,,,, When the person that cant walk is thinking hell if I could walk dont ya think I would ??? ,,,,,, If we on are the subject of all that ,,I want to know why all the Men that have something smart ass to say to us for being who we are ,, WHY ?? arent THEY Body builders ,,,HEY ,,, You must not be a real man ,,Cuz if you were you would look like those Strong men ,,,Not a FAT SLOB ,,,Or a SKINNY little boy,,, You would be a BIG MUCSLE MAN ? So whats uppppppppp

[Kate Simmons]

The bottom line is Hon, when you "follow the herd" as you say, you usually don't consider any possibilities other than what the herd thinks and you certainly don't utilize your own thinking abilities. Therefore the herd folks are locked into a very narrow corridor. I prefer my freedom to be myself, being different notwithstanding.

[Foxglove]

The term cognitive dissonance comes to mind. Often when people are confronted with a reality that conflicts with strongly held beliefs, a curios thing happens. They cling even more ardently to those beliefs and rationalize away evidence to the contrary.

Thats just like a person telling another person without the ability to walk to just get up an walk I do,,,

The bottom line is Hon, when you "follow the herd" as you say, you usually don't consider any possibilities other than what the herd thinks and you certainly don't utilize your own thinking abilities.

Yes, as we're all saying here, they're simply not copping on. Sure would be nice if they would.

[KaTanya]

Doesn't that theory lie at the heart of all societal problems; "why aren't they what I expect them to be?" Almost as though the world collectively forgot to see things for how they are, and instead look though some sort of prism. (eg, why political "discussion" breaks down to name-calling, finger-pointing, and eventually poo-flinging).

It's almost a new form of tribalism, except that technology allows us to be in as many tribes as we can make time to be a member of. There is safety in numbers, and if one must occasionally abandon discovery of truth top retain membership, the answer is too often "so be it."

or maybe it simply explains why some people get all snarkalicious over long posts here...

[noeleena]

Hi,

why are we different. because our makeup is ,its not just one detail or part of us its the all of us & how we are put to gether, our program was long before we were born, our differences were if you like were put in motion & we had no say in the matter,

So yes im very different to males i dont understand why they do certin things , iv tryed to figger them out still dont know & i dought i ever will.

As youv said boys at school & abuse .yes been on the reciveing end there as well.

As we.v been discuseing on the forum how we view men who dress i still dont get why men wont to . yes i hear thier sayings idears & why's, yet , because im not a male i dont get it, how can i , i dont relate to or with men.

Is it a lack of understanding . is it i dont wont to. or is it because im a female who is a woman im different like my many women friends we are if you like on the same wave link . just not the one men are on,

...noeleena...

[Foxglove]

Doesn't that theory lie at the heart of all societal problems; "why aren't they what I expect them to be?"

Yeah, this is what I'm getting at here. We have certain expectations of people, depending on how we perceive them. If cisgender people perceive us as normal men and women, then the fact that we behave very differently will baffle them. They need to change their perception: we're not "normal" people. We're trans. Accept that, and then you can begin to understand why we behave as we do.

[KaTanya]

Maybe it begs the question, "are they using their 'fear' to overcompensate for something?" Maybe all who "claim" to be cisgendered aren't. Maybe they ust don't know because... they don't know.

It's not part of everyday conversation for most people. On this site, it's tsupposedly) what brings us together. But we are ust a small portion of 6 BILLION people. And maybe not as small as we think. That's why I feel it's more important to bring TG issues into conversation, and maybe remove the fears and ignorance, than to hold a pride parade. A picture is worth a thousand words. If said picture reinforces the wrong stereotype, that's a bad thing.

[Foxglove]

Maybe it begs the question, "are they using their 'fear' to overcompensate for something?" Maybe all who "claim" to be cisgendered aren't. Maybe they ust don't know because... they don't know.

This is a question that I think is impossible to answer. There may well be some transphobes who are themselves trans. But I myself wouldn't count on finding huge numbers in that category. There's a lot of hatred in this world and a lot of reasons for it.

[Kate Simmons]

There is way more to it on higher levels. Two-spirited people have special gifts to bridge the gender gap that creates jealousy in other groups, ergo the hatred and treatment that many of us receive.

[Foxglove]

I don't know, Kate. Maybe you're right. I personally don't think I've ever seen any evidence of jealousy in transphobic people, but anything's possible.

[Kaz]

I just think that we set up a paradox. Those who are open to exploring and accepting the world as it is... are generally okay with it, those who live according to strict rules are not.

But that can't be true because there are lots of people here who are rules based and who are CD... but then they 'know and accept' because they have experienced it.

You could also look at it in terms of 'explorers' and 'stay at homes'... The explorers are open to whatever appears before them, because they have to - it is in their nature as explorers. The 'stay at homes' want something they can understand easily about this strange world that they have heard about but do want to interact with. A simple mental model is all they need... no complexity, they want it boxed, sorted and put away.

There are fewer explorers than 'stay at homes'.

[Foxglove]

There are fewer explorers than 'stay at homes'.

"It's getting harder to describe sailors to the underfed."

Hi, Kaz! I think I see what you're getting at. I think this point is valid:

You could also look at it in terms of 'explorers' and 'stay at homes'... The explorers are open to whatever appears before them, because they have to - it is in their nature as explorers. The 'stay at homes' want something they can understand easily about this strange world that they have heard about but do want to interact with. A simple mental model is all they need... no complexity, they want it boxed, sorted and put away.

Those who explore are more open to new things than those who never look at anything new. That said, I don't think there's any paradox here:

I just think that we set up a paradox. Those who are open to exploring and accepting the world as it is... are generally okay with it, those who live according to strict rules are not.

But that can't be true because there are lots of people here who are rules based and who are CD... but then they 'know and accept' because they have experienced it.

I think this is a bit simplistic because it's not as if explorers don't have rules. What can happen is that the rules they legislate are better than the traditional rules they find strewn along the way. E.g., if a holy book says, "Kill the infidel wherever you find them," the explorer will say, "No, it's wrong to kill despite what any holy book says," because he sees the harm that such a rule creates in the world.

The explorer will look at traditional rules, decide which ones are good and toss out the bad ones, perhaps replacing them with better ones. He will agree as to "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's property," etc., but he'll disagree as to, "If you rape a woman, you have to pay her father a fee and marry her without the right of ever divorcing her," because he can understand that a woman might possibly not want to marry a guy who's raped her and because she's not her father's property. The explorer will say, "Thou shalt not rape."

What we want to do is base our rules on reason, rather than on the whims of some purported supernatural being, in the hope that they'll be more conducive to human happiness and well-being. Which means one of our rules will be, "Thou shalt leave transpeople alone because they're not bloody hurting you."

Best wishes, Annabelle

[Kate Simmons]

Pretty much Hon. Basically Trans people don't follow the rules of the crowd per se but go with what works best for them, considering everyone's rights. Put simply, they are the "light" for their own roadway, therefore being trailblazers on the roads less traveled.

[Kaz]

I see rules as coming from others. I see values, beliefs and principles as coming from within. If I accept a set of rules it is because they fit the other three. I accept that I may not 'typical', as there are many who seem to accept anything... but I would argue that this is because this fits , etc...

My explorer analogy, whilst flawed, was about being less constrained and open to new ideas and experiences. I should have taken it further...

Yes, the explorer will have values, beliefs and principles and many of these will be as varied as there are people in the world. Historically, many explorers took their beliefs and values with them as a closed book and used these to 'rule' their behaviours and actions. Some of them were quite barbaric in their behaviours, but were these true explorers or rather empire builders? True explorers, in my world, adopt the viewpoint of 'suspended belief' - i.e. you absorb and learn before you judge and ascribe to rules. To 'explore' is to discover (okay now I think I should have used this word instead!) not to rule!

But then, paradoxically, my values, beliefs and principles are that way inclined. Who am I to judge? I may not like how some people behave, but then how does that make me 'superior'? It doesn't. If we all just accepted diversity and just got on with it life would just be so much simpler!

For me the paradox is clear... a society needs rules to function, but it also needs freedom of expression and personal rights. It needs acceptance of individuals and groups who are not part of the 'norm'. Society rules are aimed at normalisation... preserving the status quo... explorers should be challenging those accepted norms that have become inherent 'rules'... But doing this is hard because those who need rules to function will need new rules... and so the paradox continues...

In the UK we have a thing called 'common law'... it doesn't exist in mainland Europe... I am not sure about Eire (legacy issues!). Again I am not a lawyer and so am not sure abou the USA. The common law precedent was that rules change according to society's needs. It is not perfect, and real change takes a lifetime or two, but the principle is there.

The paradox is real for me... true explorers challenge the rules and push boundaries. The 'stay at homes' (and I do not mean those in the closet, because they are explorers of their own identities), who refuse and negate the unusual and different, will conform to the 'safe' mindset and thereby throw out anything that does not fit that 'set of rules'. History is full of it! Even very recent recent history?

Whoops! I just read Kate's post... TS are explorers...

[vickyheels]

If you go back a few yrs gay men and women had the same problem that we have now.
They were not understood, they did not conform to the hurds rules, the hurd could not understand why they were like it, so the school yard bullying started all over again.
But in the fullness of time gays were understood, well maybe not understood but tollerated. the hurd made rules for them.
We have no rules in the hurd, so we stand where the gays stood back in the day. we get the school yard bullying, we are the ones who are not understood.
Maybe there is hope for us, if the hurd can accept gays why not us.

[KellyJameson]

I do not understand myself well enough to explain it to someone else, I have not been able to capture the experience with words yet so certainly I'm not surprised
by the reactions of others who do not live it.

I fear being a victim of violence for being me but do not expect it, more it is the questioning looks leaving me feeling like I'm a Rubik cube who must be twisted and turned until my sides only show one color.

I do not understand this compulsion to express myself as a woman because it comes from places deep inside me that are long forgotten and whatever key that would unlock this mystery was lost long ago.

I do know that it connects me to my past and creates emotional symmetry but at the same time I dislike the social expectations placed on me as a woman. There is a type of privacy you lose that is unique to being a man, it is much more difficult to hold onto your sense of individuality instead of being a part of a large whole.

Living between genders is very hard and like a F to M I have found myself binding my chest to escape womanhood and than unbinding my chest to escape manhood.

You test your sanity when you do not fit into gender but yet I find myself feeling fortunate not to be a man or woman but something else, a very strange ride indeed.

Reproduction and pair bonding supports life and being TG is standing at the demarcation line between to opposing but mutually attractive forces so you risk being destroyed between the crashing waves and the rocky shore so to save your life you must make a choice, swim out into the ocean or attempt to climb the rocks.

Gender is assumed and when assumptions are challenged the foundations that reality are built on threaten to turn into quicksand and being TG threatens these assumptions.

Just as people are threatened when their religous views are challenged so they are threatened when their gender views are threatened, fortunately not all people
have realities that require support from others for there existence otherwise we would all be dead.

Western civilization is a very fearful civilization because it is so far removed from nature.

[Foxglove]

Kaz, I find your post a bit puzzling. There's next to nothing there that I'd disagree with, yet we're coming to radically different conclusions. How to resolve this?

For me the paradox is clear... a society needs rules to function, but it also needs freedom of expression and personal rights. It needs acceptance of individuals and groups who are not part of the 'norm'. Society rules are aimed at normalisation... preserving the status quo... explorers should be challenging those accepted norms that have become inherent 'rules'... But doing this is hard because those who need rules to function will need new rules... and so the paradox continues...

I think this is the crux of the problem here. We say society needs (1) rules to function and (2) freedom of expression. But the two are not necessarily in conflict. If we want society to function, presumably we want it to function well, and it will function better when everybody's happy. That implies freedom of expression.

If we see the purpose of society's rules as normalization and preserving the status quo, then, yes, there is a basic conflict with freedom of expression. Now it may be that in the past law was all about normalization and preserving the status quo, and it may be that it still is to a great extent today. But it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.

In the UK we have a thing called 'common law'... it doesn't exist in mainland Europe... I am not sure about Eire (legacy issues!). Again I am not a lawyer and so am not sure abou the USA. The common law precedent was that rules change according to society's needs. It is not perfect, and real change takes a lifetime or two, but the principle is there.

We can establish the principle that law should change as society's circumstances change. This is directly contrary to the principle of maintaining the status quo. So the view that society's rules are only about maintaining the status quo depends: which society are we talking about? Now I think Kelly has put her finger on another very real problem:

Western civilization is a very fearful civilization because it is so far removed from nature.

Laws/rules/morality need to reflect reality, and quite often they don't. To take one obvious example, one that was quite a factor in my upbringing: sex. I grew up with traditional, hard-core Christian values that held that sex in itself is something shameful. Now it's something that we have to do in order to reproduce, but that is the only purpose of sex and we should leave it at that.

Which means that a one-night stand between two consenting adults is immoral. The values that I grew up with would have it that the fact the sex is hugely enjoyable is irrelevant. It's reserved for married people and only for the purpose of having children. So if two unmarried and otherwise unattached people meet and are attracted to each other and consent to sexual relations, it's still immoral. God's against it. Which means that God is against something that is natural to our kind--enjoyment of sex--even if it is consensual and is doing no one any harm but on the contrary is doing them a lot of good.

This is clearly a case of morality trying to normalize people. This sort of morality springs from a certain world view, and it is that world view that people are expected to conform to. So let us as explorers throw out that view and its attendant morality. Does that mean we'll have no rules? No, we'll still have rules, but they'll be rules that are in accordance with nature and reality and thus better suited to people's needs. E.g., two consenting adults need to decide if they want to avoid the risk of a pregnancy. If so, they take steps accordingly. Given the widespread prevalence of STD's these days, they'd do well to practice safe sex. And also they need to agree on what sort of sex they want. I knew a guy--a "business associate", certainly not a friend--who met a woman one night and ended up at her place for the night, something she came to regret. He got fairly rough with her and left her with some serious scratches on her back, and she came out of it feeling abused. Who would argue with her?

So we will have rules. But given that they're in conformity with nature and conducive to human happiness, they'll be better rules than the ones we currently have. I don't see any paradox here: I don't see any inherent conflict between society's need for rules in order to function and people's need for self-expression. We choose rules that will foster both. It is possible and it would be the sensible thing to do.

If we all just accepted diversity and just got on with it life would just be so much simpler!

Very true, and I think bit by bit society is coming to accept diversity. A lot of people have more rights than they used to, and even we transpeople are making progress in certain places. Change is taking place at a snail's pace perhaps, but it is taking place.

But diversity doesn't mean there won't be any rules. As long as there are bad people about, we'll still need laws against murder, theft, assault, rape, etc. But such rules are in accordance with nature, and so most of us are happy to have them in place.

But I think your post is in a way confirming what I said in my OP: the fact that as transpeople our rights can be somewhat limited, not because people perceive us as different, but because they don't perceive us as different. Where there's no legislation in place recognizing trans rights and prohibiting discrimination against transpeople, it basically means we're perceived as normal men and women. We've just gone wrong somehow. But when legislation on our behalf is put in place, that means we are being recognized as different, diversity is being accepted, and society becomes better from our point of view. There's no basic conflict between a need for rules and a need for diversity--especially when one of the rules expressly enjoins respect for diversity.

The paradox is real for me... true explorers challenge the rules and push boundaries. The 'stay at homes' (and I do not mean those in the closet, because they are explorers of their own identities), who refuse and negate the unusual and different, will conform to the 'safe' mindset and thereby throw out anything that does not fit that 'set of rules'.

Yes, the "stay-at-homes" will conform and will try and make us conform. There's no paradox here, just a conflict brought about by chronic backwardness. The present situation is not a necessary condition of human life. Enlightenment is coming bit by bit: the insistence on conformity will some day be a thing of the past. We will have rules, we will have freedom of expression, and we will have a society that functions better because it's a happy society. There's no inherent conflict here, simply one that we've manufactured and one that we can do away with when we choose to. You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

Best wishes, Annabelle