Bear with me ... this one is a bit dense ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kathryn Martin
...You don't convert to female or gay because of some change in world views. It's not a conversion.
...
This is an interesting one. I sometimes wonder what suppression and repression really are. It's nothing of substance really it's a process or a mechanism but not in and of itself of value. Remember when I said about myself that I became the instrument of my own subjugation. I have no idea why we use these mechanisms to shovel untruth about ourselves into our own pocket. The interesting thing is that these are social mechanism, I reject the idea, that they are psychological. It is the fear of the freak when she stands in front of the mirror and someone might walk by behind and see what she sees.
Krisi's comment might be phrased in an unfortunate manner, but hers is essentially another version (albeit a more positive one) of the mental disorder or mid-life crisis explanation. It substitutes a decision or conversion experience for the irresistible motivational aspects of the others. Another, less savory version of the decision approach is the depraved, fetish manipulator who transitions to deceive men. All of them presume taking on a non-native identity. Doubtless the version that is selected depends on what naturally appeals to the observer. Someone intimately familiar with the religious conversion experience could easily project that onto transition motivation.
Kathryn, I have little doubt that fear and social motivations are important triggers, no matter whether considered as explicit, external fears or internalized mores, but I can tell you of my own hard experience that suppression and compartmentalization are real psychological phenomena. Many things can corrupt the mind. Violation of norms and expectations are among the most powerful. What starts out as – or is at least rooted in - social mechanics becomes a coping mechanism becomes corruption. This is seen in endless behavioral, adjustment, criminal, social and psychological variations.
... Which is why it is so interesting to pose Krisi's little statement against your comments on suppression or Jorja's wondering statement. Minimally, all of them call identity into question, if not outright challenge it's reality. Krisi's is obvious. Jorja asks in good faith, but the question's foundation is common among young transitioners. To wit, how can what is real and strong be held back for so long. I.e., maybe it's not real or wasn't intense?
Yours is more subtle and turns the approaches above on their heads. It invalidates a psychological coping mechanism in order to preserve the reality of the identity! It's as if you are expressing a concern that suppressing and compartmentalizing identity invalidates it somehow. There have been hints in this thread already as to where some people might take that, including the notions of dual and mixed identity. I know you reject that for transsexed people, though you accept for the gender variant. So your response is instead to question the reality of the coping mechanism to preserve the primacy of one identity.
But it is not necessary to do so. I can tell you with 100% certainty, out of my own experience that it is possible to do something, dismiss it, and not remember it. To box things up as "me" and "not me", real and unreal, permanent versus transitory. To build up these behaviors to where they are entirely unconscious. And that when you do, they are no different than any other aspect of your personality. Fully real and fully functioning in your day-to-day life. Moreover, that it is possible to accept the existence a false persona that has real world consequences, hence it's own reality as part of your identity in some ways, while maintaining that there is a core or foundational identity that is primary and which, when freed, can wipe the other away almost as if it never existed.
Surely this is why, in the end, what you do is more important than what you think when it comes to identity. Although it is true that the sense of what you are is inborn and cannot be changed, it is also true that every manifestation of its existence, whether good or bad, cis or not, normal or twisted, or something else, is a real part of you. Put another way, that means my "false" persona was a necessary – and real – manifestation of female identity for me. Not that it was female in itself in any conventional sense, of course, but that it came out of the combination of a female identity, male physical circumstances, and my psychological makeup. The "man" is just as real, in a way, as the woman. But that does not mean I have a mixed gender identity.
The Invisible Woman Was Not Happy With Her Profile
Cisgender men and women don’t change their gender. Transgender people are the only ones who sometimes transition from one relative transgender type to another. In addition, transgender transitions are never as dramatic as they are commonly described. We overstate the changes to validate our new selves and to validate the process of making changes. These are things that don’t require objective validation.
The sad truth for transgender people is that they are usually virtually invisible to themselves and everyone else. This can be a significant source of cognitive dissonance. We want to see our true selves and have them seen by other people. It’s a perfectly natural impulse that most people don’t have to struggle with very much. How we manage this problem varies from person to person. It doesn’t matter how you cope with the problem or when you cope with it as long as you are satisfied with your efforts and the outcome.
You Wear Your Stripes and I’ll Wear Mine
I use the word transgender in its inclusive sense that describes people with transgender and/or transsex issues. I do this because sex is a subset of gender, and sex and gender issues are often interrelated even when they are not intersecting.
No one has to agree with my point of view or get hysterical about it.
I find the whole notion of men changing into women (and vice versa) to be absurd and derogatory in all its variations. If someone is a transwoman after modifications then you can be certain they weren’t all manly before them. Cismen (and ciswomen) don’t participate in these types of transformations.
For some transgender people, putting on a dress or a dress and a new body is all about communicating something to themselves and to other people that can’t otherwise be seen. The unseen you, the core beneath your shell, doesn’t transform very easily. Our shell selves are relatively mutable, but our core selves persist in comparison.
Shell transformations are important because they tell us something about a person’s core identity that doesn’t change as much. Prattle about becoming something you are not or being something you are not diminishes the core identities of transgender people of every stripe. I take it for granted that transgender people are not all the same, even though this concept seems to be incomprehensible to some of you.
Consciousness of Being Transsexual or Consciouness of Transition Being an Option
For the first ten years of my life, nobody in my neck of the woods knew that you could change sex. Christine Jorgenson offered us rumours about sex change, though it was thought a joke, and only when I was already ten years old. Psychologistsin those days were consumed with the idea that the individual should adjust to their situation, and understand what their situation was, as society defined it, and the job of the psychologist was to help the patient adjust. The psychologist treated maladjustment. Cross-dressing was bad, because so their script went, it broke up marriages, so the job of the psychologist was to get the patient to stop it, and save their marriage.
It was difficult to avoid repression, when there was no name or concept in the conscious world to give on a handle to grasp the reality of the transsexuals' being. I think the younger members do not understand why so many late transitions are only taking place now, and these few remarks might lead them back to some historical research in that line. Many think the flow of late transitioners will decloine, as people are starting to be able to transition earlier, and have ready models to understand whether they are trans or not, to the point of commencing analytical and diagnostivc therapy before say, retirement/senior years. When I was young, it was thought that there was no reason to rebel, because society was not flawed in its social psychology. Even political rebellion might sometimes be traced back to a deprived childhood, as in "Come Over Red Rover," a case of Lindner. Therefore, there was the "Rebel Without a Cause," accoirding to that 1940's prison psychiatist,( Robert Lindner). (He worked his way past that point in his thinking, just before he died of cancer.)
