Dyssonance

As I’ve made sure to mention often, I am an out trans woman.

In the time that I’ve gained whatever meager attention I’ve somehow earned over the 3 years of writing this blog and its antecedents, I’ve had people tell me all sorts of things about being out.

I’ve had them tell me it embarasses them.

I’ve had then tell me it will get me killed.

I’ve had then tell me that I’m going to be forever labeled as “not woman”.

I’ve had them tell me it’s a mistake.

I’ve had then tell me it’s stupid and will cost me jobs.

I’ve had them tell me that it’s why I’m so miserable — which is funny, because, well, I’m not miserable, and in part because I’m out.

All these things, and more.  And in all of it, there’s only one thing that anyone’s ever said, in fact, to me, about being out that’s positive,

And that was they were proud of me.

Which is kinda silly in a lot of ways, but, at the time it was said, meant a lot.

Well, I’m out.  And moreso, despite the folks who will say “but you can’t be” or that will try and make it about more than a simple shifting from y to z, I’m done with my transition.

That doesn’t mean I’m done with my surgeries.  That means I’m done going from “him” to “her”. That I’ve changed my expression and role and I’m pretty good with it — far better than I was before.

Life — the *whole* of life — is about learning and growing as a person for me.  Transition is a small part of life for me, not an unending extension of it.

Which doesn’t mean that for those people for whom transition is an extended part of their lives that I think they are wrong or bad about that.  Transition is not a general thing, it is a specific thing, and it applies to the individual.

But for me, it’s important, because, since I am an Out person, I want it known that I’m done with transition.

But of late I’m wondering what, exactly, it is, I’m “out” about.

Although Iv’e recently comne to the realization that I’m bisexual, I can’t really say I’m out about that.  And I was never really in a closet for me to come out of, which is what being out is really supposed to convey.  I didn’t “hide” my being bisexual, mostly because I wasn’t bisexual until recently.

And I can’t really say I’m “Out” about being trans for the same reason.  I’ve never really had a closet.  I kinda kept it hush hush for a while online, and I certainly was in denial to myself, but once I got over my denial I started moving as fast as my circumstances would allow.

I don’t run around telling everyone I’m trans.  I don’t even really look for occasions to do so — most of the time it’s not even something on my mind — much like my being a bisexual.

For me, being trans is just a kind of shorthand for saying that I’ve bothered to finally get ove rthe problems in my life that sorta kept me from being the person that I was “deep down inside”.

Stealth or Blending are not really the opposite of out, either. They aren’t really “in” something. It could be argued that stealth and blending are a form of hiding, which is what the closet was, a metaphor for being hidden. But, well they aren’t exactly hiding anything.  They have histories. They have records.  They have people who knew them back then who might one day recognize them now.

So what is stealth of blending?  There are some who describe it as letting only the people closest to you know. Some who describe it as “well, I transitioned at work, so everyone there knows, but in the rest of my life, only my partner/spouse/best friend/etc knows”. Then there are the ones who tell no one.

They get everything done, they move away from everyone and everything they know, and they start over.

They never talk about it.  They tell lies or avoid conversations about their pasts. They reconfigure their past to match their present. They make people think they never went through the single hardest thing a human being can ever go through.

I’m wondering, then, if that is our closet, then what is our out?

And we use a lot of reasons for it. My favorite, the one I’ve used in the past when I was determined to go fully stealth (and I was — make no mistake.  I just chose to give it up), is “I transitioned just to be a woman.”

I don’t think I ever used the ” instead of some tranny” sort of line that almost always seems to follow that out of the mouths of most.

I may have, though.

Except, well I still did that.  And I still am that. Just a woman, that is.  Indeed, the only people who call me something other than just a woman are the one’s that say I’m a tall woman, or a black woman or a hispanic woman or a gay woman or a white woman or a…

Hmmm.  So much for being just a woman.

But why is the Trans thing so “bad”.  It has to be bad, you see — it’s something that one avoids.  One does not avoid good things unless one is punishing one’s self or being punished by someone else. The reason for that is some kind of stigma — some sort of social taboo or *wrongness* that is felt or enacted on the person.

By others.

And, sometimes, by one’s self if one listens to those others.

Stigma is a powerful force.  I’ve dealt with it much of my life, and one of the interesting things that I’ve found about stigma is that it only really has great power over one’s life when you allow it to have that.

I was raised with the stigma of being “black” in a “white” community. I was called nigger when I was 7 years old. I had no clue what that was at the time.

One of the ways that stigma was overcome was I embraced it — I took that rejection and made it a mark of individuality, of personal indifference. I reclaimed it.

And I suppose that for me, that’s what I mean by being out.  That I am reclaiming the idea that I’m just a woman.  Yeah, I’m a transsexual,  SO the fuck what?  Big freaking whoop!

Who the hell cares?

Yeah, I’ve got a big ole story of hardship and misery and I can tell you all the stats and give you all the propaganda and all that, but so what?

It doesn’t mean I’m more or less of a woman. Nor does being described as a trans woman.

Being called a trans man, well, that would piss me off — and probably upset a whole bunch of trans men who I’m sure will take the time to point out that as  a trans woman I have a strong tendency to unintentionally erase them.

That doesn’ t make me a third sex, either — even in the eyes of the almighty rest of the country.  To them I’m either a woman or a man. And, in either case, I’m *also* a trans person.  As in *in addition to*, not in replacement of.

Because they don’t think in terms of what *really* makes up sex, they think in terms of what they were taught in 8th grade biology “men have XY, women have XX”. THat such is not entirely correct is irrelevant to them — it’s too complicated and they like to keep things simple.

Well, I’m not a simple person.  But I am a woman. I am a transsexual.

And for me, being those things is not bad.

Apparently, for others that’s not the case.  For others, my being a transsexual is a bad thing — and most intersting of all is that my being a transsexual is due to their worries about being told they are something other than a woman.

Which strikes me as their problem, and one they should get over, because there is nothing wrong with being trans.  No matter what the sort of trans person.

It’s not.  IT’s perfectly fine, not a big deal, and personally I’m kinda sick and tired of other people heaping their bullshit problems on me when tye just want me to go away.

Well, news flash: I will.  In either 2013 or 2016, I will go away, and the duration thereby will be decided in 2012.

Because by then I’ll have either accomplished everything I wanted to get done, or I’ll be too damn busy trying to open my Inn.

But it won’t be into stealth or into blending because, well, let’s face a truth here:

I stand out.

Period.

Which, now that I write that, may really be what being out is all about.

Standing out.  Being yourself.  Being true to yourself and knowing yourself and having the confidence and the strength of conviction that comes from that.

La grande dame, sans peur de l’autre.

(You know, I really should learn French…)

Popularity: 2% [?]

Unique visitors to post: 3