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Friday, September 30, 2016

Community standards

More and more it seems to me that explaining trans concepts simply in individualistic terms is a mistake. Can understand it in terms of trans narratives being hegemonised by queer theory, and obviously there's the UScentricity, but think it leads to very false constructions that needlessly complicate. Not to say they don't have some validity but by no means are they complete or satisfactory lenses through which to understand gender. For we are not simply isolated islands but pieces of a continent of gender, parts of the main.
I suppose the outstanding example is gender identity itself, as generally referred to within the trans community. Of course the idea that we have some internal gender setting is an appealing one in terms of narrative construction. And for many, hunting down the measure of their internal gendered self is a satisfactory and accurate way of thinking. But at the same time it's also an unsatisfactory fable, a constructed notion of 'real self' that's outside normal 'selfhood' identifications. It's the thread we follow through our personal labyrinths to our most authentic being, but viewing it as necessarily spooled on some inner reality of 'underlying self' seems to me a step too far. We follow a path, we are led by a sense of gender resonances, of authenticity within our various worlds, and it's only natural that some notion of original self comes to mind to explain that journey, but it isn't necessarily so. For example, one might alternatively, and probably more accurately for some, conceive that the questioning process charts a change from one unstable gendered set of neuro-hormonal architectures to a stable one, the dice finally coming to their rest. Or perhaps some of our inquiry itself provides an architecture for identity Whilst original self clearly has a meaning with trans people who have known their identity from first memories, for those of us who have had some questioning experience, it's a notion of perhaps limited value, outside of a mildly self-indulgent authentification.
Part of that sort of bias is simply down to individual and otherwise unknowable sections of possible interiors being posited as the only elements to trans identities. For myself I'm more interested in framing in ways that allow for more social elements, such as commonality. I don't think the main force behind my own personal transition came, at base, from some internal sense, more that it was clear and manifest that I shared an overwhelming commonality with women, that I was operating as a woman because I obviously shared a world with other women. That my 'identity' was female was a notion based on that overwhelming understanding of commonality. As to what the benefits of transition are, my own view is very tied to the notion of commonality and is summed by this the 10 best things about mtf transition . Of course 'identity' is rooted in individual cognitive architectures reflected in common reactions to the somewhat different characteristics of the evident world conveyed by differing neuro-hormonal states,but it also resides in common abilities to access modes of communication. Lacking testosterone and testosterone typical processing capabilities it isn't possible to access key elements of male/male communication, for example 'challenge' forms of relation. Lacking estrogen and estrogen related processing capabilities, communication involving higher measures of informational content, for example, are rarely possible. When dealing with my gender role in the world I'm not trying to assert my authenticity as an act in itself. I'm not posing in female garb to claim my ability so to do. I'm making a proposition to the world, that it would be better for others to treat me as female, to communicate with me that way, to make some of the more basic assumptions that go with that, because that way we can meet and engage in the fullest, best, most real way possible.
And here the notion of gender expression also becomes problematic. Of course we aspire to heterotopic social processes where each can express their individuality via iterative performance etc. But such expression is necessarily a part of a set of communication systems and engagements. Gender expression isn't  an act of abstract individual artistry, it's a projection of place within gendered systems. Authenticity lies in its being a nicely calculated set of messages that illuminate gender identity, the communication systems preferred and the commonality felt. Obviously that's if you're trans, queer expressions being more ludic and based on other parts of the gender elephant.
I suppose this is a long time to go without an example, so here's one I've been talking about with women friends. One significant change that I've been through is that towards babies and children. Talking to a friend a couple of months ago and she offered to post me her new baby pictures in a way that came over that she didn't really expect me to want to see them and I'm all YES, OF COURSE etc. Really love to be around my new god child. And like most women am highly interested in exchanging weird facial expressions with infants. With children it's slightly different, but still a huge alteration from when I was a guy. On top of that in my chosen family relationships I tend to be mostly in those where sister/daughter/mother type predominate as echoes in the friendships . Am I now aware of lots of maternal traits I used to keep hidden ? Is this my real basic identity as a woman coming to the fore ? For me those are simply inadequate questions, not that they don't have some value as descriptive notions but that they miss out on more important factors. For a fuller explanation I suppose I'll look at two things. The first would be the complex ways in which emotional engagement is magnified by estrogen based systems, that sum more data than any testosterone based one ever can.But in this instance I'd also look at social boundaries created by language.Simply I was never particularly interested in infants because they were never a possible part of my communications network (except with my daughter who I spent a sufficiency of time with as an infant to get a little past that ). Now my communication systems are altered, with body language being a far more significant part that ever before. And now infants, because of that, are people to talk with, admittedly on an elementary level but much, much more than ever before. They're a part of the way I define the community around me, and a part that clearly needs to be welcomed into the human community around them, the web and weft of the world of communication of view.
A few months after my massive hormonal change nudged me from male identifying to female in the space of a few months, I think if someone asked me how I knew I was a woman I'd answer in the following. That it was very clear for me that I wasn't male anymore, simply could no longer accept that because I could see guys from the outside and couldn't really talk to them anymore as I used to. That I seem to identify with female far more. And that I believed those visceral notions were a result of a changed set of cognitive processes that are typically supported by specific sets of hormones. And I suppose I might have felt that I could classify those visceral feelings as ones of commonality with women rather than men in every moment of every day. Ask me now and whilst I still feel those cognitive changes were the basis, I'd be more inclined to look to my daily experience as an immediate authentification. And that's an experience of interaction, of communication, of common endeavour, of the commonality that is sisterhood, of the ground that is a woman's world.








Thursday, July 21, 2016

Camera ! Lights ! Action !

A documentary of sorts about my place, a few of the people who used to be around a lot, and me.
Trigger warning for comments re transition.
Fresh from it's run in festivals, Rome, Copenhagen and Cork - the Bookshop

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Being RA


One pleasant thing in the last few months has been finding a term that vastly better fits me than an old one, hence I can say I've 'changed', in terms of self description, from poly to RA .
Looking back and trying to find any precursive stuff to gender transition, that's the thing that most stands out. It was something I first expressed in my late twenties and wasn't particularly about romantic relationships, which I'd always seen as ideally somewhat open, but more about friendships. I grew more and more dissatisfied with referring and categorising people around me into friends, acquaintances, partner, work colleague and the like. Not so much because I was desperate to change any such particular status but because that sort of taxonomy seemed for me to put a stop to how each relationship might develop and kept me comfortable but unambitious in the middle of such.
So basically I spent a few weeks going around apologising to 'friends', exchanging ideas and reiterating my conviction that I should try and avoid such relationship structures and sets of expectations as far as possible. And that I take as a prime RA thing, to constantly have ambition for every relationship around. Of course one can do that without actually calling it RA but it seems to help some sort of belief to counter any internal ranking or structure of self to the relationships around. I think that change was part of the reason why having a wide chosen family has been such an important part of my life since then.
I guess the main way I see that as a precursor is that it came mainly out of a dissatisfaction with the emotional possibilities normally offered by society. Post social transition and the complexity and satisfaction I derive from being with people around me has increased more than I could ever have predicted. And certainly they've helped me cope with many of transition's strains. I seem to have a few mother sister patterns, younger women who I look at partly as daughters but also as older sisters. Those are possibly the most supportive. But I'm lucky enough to live in the middle of a constant social stream where I can engage with a whole set of different people and a large spectrum of possible engagement.
And I think more than anything it's the rewards that come from greater complexities and closer engagements, that are my present reality that most give me the feeling of transition as a coming home...