The title I have chosen is bold and perhaps controversial, but let us just take a look at it anyway. Maybe there is something to be learned from it, even if it is not true.
It seems to me, that some personality traits or other personal traits, of even a having a "history," seems to taint us in the eyes of others. Like, what does having big hands got to do with being masculine or feminine? Why do people even want to look at our hands, at least, once they hear from someone that we are or may be transwomen? One elderly woman, even rejected the idea a transwoman at the church could be a woman, because her hands were too big, "for a woman." Well, since she was a professional music teacher, it is unlikely she would have been so good at that, if her hands weren't big enough to span enough keys on the piano. But what on earth does it have to do with being a"real' woman, or something. An excellent pianist perhaps, but a real or natural woman? I got to know a cis-woman who had been teased and perhaps a little bullied, in school, because she was quite tall, and a bit hulking. But surely, once one is long out of school, could folks not just leave that nonsense behind? I mean judging someone on something superficial.
I think there is a general rule somewhere in what is behind this. Something about tainting and too much information here, and a general principle too. We trans are not alone in being tainted in some strange way by our past history. Recently a new friend asked me, and persistently, in a way hard to evade,where my parents were from, and eventually, clarified the query, by asking what I was ethnically. Does this matter? Would I be unwelcome to go out and eat with, if say, I had said I was from Switzerland, generations ago, and they might be afraid I was too enthusiastic about Yodeling? Wouldn't I be embarrassing if I could not control it, and shouted to them, from a distance too far to ordinarily be heard, and so might try yodeling so it would carry better? If instead, I answered, I was Ukrainian, long ago, would that matter? Would they be wary of inviting me to a Russian restaurant, in case I suddenly embarrassed them, by getting up from the table, and doing that dance shown in the Nutcracker Suite ballet, as dancing on the seat of one's pants, a Ukrainian folk dance of some physical virtuosity as well as likely to attract some unwanted attention to us, in public, for that reason alone? Like, what does my ethnic history have to do with anything? So, what does my gender history have to do with anything or need to be known in advance, to anybody I am not going to be intimate with?
Why is this important to us? If this is right, it may mean that in waiting for society to become more accepting of us as "real" women, we may have to wait a very long time indeed. It also may point to ways we can fight, dodge or avoid this sort of tainting. An even worse problem, is how much of our thinking about ourselves and our personal story of transition, is distorted (or tainted, in a way), in our own minds, because we want only to accept a theory that may not be correct, just because it makes it harder by those who accept that theory, on our urging, to taint us. Is that where our faith in the gender binary comes in, accepted perhaps more as a useful myth rather than examined carefully for logical proof, by many transwomen?
Originally Posted by Beth-Lock
