Back
Text Copyright © 1997-2000 by Lisa Lees / Contact Lisa
One of the great myths of our culture is that at birth each infant can be identified as distinctly 'male' or 'female' (reproductive physiology), will grow up to have correspondingly 'masculine' or 'feminine' behavior (gender), live as a 'man' or a 'woman' (social role), and marry a woman or a man (heterosexual affective orientation). This is not so. There is much disagreement as to why this is not so, but a significant number of people in fact do not fit this simple idea of biologically predetermined gender/role destiny.
This handout discusses a few of the terms and phrases you heard in this workshop. The resource guide (www.lisalees.com/trans/resources.html) provides references for further study. Please note that this is a relatively new area of discourse, and there are opinions and experiences that differ from those of the presenters of this workshop.
There appears to be little correlation between being intersexed or transsexed and having any particular affective orientation, but then the concept of 'affective orientation' is somewhat indistinct in the context of intersexed or transsexed people. Many such people desire a socially normative (e.g., heterosexual) lifestyle, but it is quite possible that a male-to-female transsexual person identify as a butch lesbian, or for a female-to-male transsexual person to be a drag queen, for example.
(As intersex and transsex and transgender people share their experiences and talk with others, it is becoming clear that many of us have never felt comfortable with the idea of a boy/girl or man/woman role and have no desire to simply change from one socially enforced gender role to 'the other' gender role. We are challenging the idea that there are only two possible gender roles, the idea that body parts must match gender role, and the notion that gender is fixed for life.)
Intersexuality and transsexuality are rare. Most children only have to learn how to be the boys and girls we expect them to be. But even this isn't always easy. We act as if children should know how to behave, but we correct them when they do something `wrong' for their gender. And we often refuse to answer their questions about the very things that make them different from one another.
In most families, children quickly learn that their bodies and their sexuality are taboo subjects. The most important questions children ask about their personal identities are the questions to which we respond, "Not now! We'll talk about that when you're older," but never do. So children learn from each other, from movies and television, and largely from the messages embedded in advertisements.
One has only to talk openly with high school and college students to find that they do not know what it means to be masculine or feminine, what is expected of them as men and women, how the two are different, and how to get along together. Those who try to emulate the cultural norms have a hard enough time of it; those who are truly different often have a desperate time of it. The incidence of suicide among teens and young adults known to identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender is much higher than for the general teen and young adult population.
Patrick Califia asks in hir book Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism, "Who would you be if you had never been punished for gender-inappropriate behavior, or seen another child punished for deviation from masculine or feminine norms, or participated in dishing out such punishment?" Keep that question in mind through the remainder of this day and try to be aware of the gender messages you receive and send.
Lisa does quite a bit of public speaking. Here are some of the questions sie has been asked about being transsexual, along with hir considered answers. (But these are hir answers, from hir experience and life and thought, and may not agree with what you will hear from other trans/queer people/freaks.)
Hope that other people see me the way I see myself. That's the key, that my public gender identity now is in line with what my private gender identity always has been. (Yes, I beg the question of where gender identity comes from, but I bet you can't answer that either.)
I think what is often behind this question is something along the lines of, "Why didn't you just get therapy and accept the way you were born? Why did you have to do something as drastic and upsetting as changing your sex?"
First, I didn't do this to upset you, I did it to make me comfortable. (Why does this upset you?)
Second, why shouldn't I? As a society we sanction fixing all manner of 'flaws' in the human body. Entire industries are devoted to products that help people change their image. An advertisement that runs in a local magazine has this text: "I could have worn padded swimsuits. I could have learned to live with what I had." (Photo of smiling 'actual plastic surgery patient' showing off her cleavage.) "I had breast enlargement surgery instead. You decide how to look your best. And more important, how you feel your best."
Third, I didn't actually change much of anything, and perhaps that is what most upsets many people; that the dividing line between `man' and `woman' is very thin and is easily crossed. History is full of people who have passed as one or the other. In my view, I was forced to pass as something I'm not, and now I'm just being honest.
I receive some hate mail, see many hateful letters to the editor, and am aware of an increasing amount of hate-motivated violence in our society. But almost everyone who hates me also hates a long list of other people, so I try to not take it personally, and I never respond to hate with anything other than forgiveness. I wish, however, that my children didn't have to see so much hate in their lives.
As a diagnostic category, a transsexual person is one who wants to or does make a permanent change in their public presentation or performance of gender. Simplistically a transsexual person wants to or does adopt the other of the role man/woman they were assigned at birth. There are, of course, many ways to do this, many degrees of success, and many degrees of failure.
Transsexuality (and a long list of other terms that includes transgender, transvestite, invert, queer, femme, butch, andro, tomboy, sissy, nellie, faggot, dyke, freak, pervert, and slut) acknowledges that people aren't as simple as we try to make them be. People are complex, varied, individual, and unique. We blind ourselves to so many facets of the human condition.
Yes. It was emotionally difficult to have to reveal my most private feelings, over and over again, to strangers who would judge whether I would be allowed to do what I knew I had to do. The paperwork, the procedures, and the delays were infuriating. The expense, all of which came out of my pocket, was substantial.
I needed to do this to survive. I had to do this in the face of a clear message from many other people that I'd be better off not surviving. It has been very difficult to not become alienated and bitter because of what I have been through.
If you're giving me two choices, then yes, I consider myself to be a woman. It would be more accurate to say that I am a transsexual person living as a woman, as it might be most accurate to say of anyone that they are a human being living as a `man' or as a `woman'. We are not born knowing how to play those roles. [1]
Society demands that each person be placed in a gender role, and that is where safety lies. But I am very conscious of being other, of being a freak, and I walk an impossible line of being who I am without trying to deceive people that I am not what they think I am. If you think your life is stressful, just try to imagine what mine is like.
No. There is no such thing as "what I was before." I acted a boring part in an incredibly long-running off-Broadway show, but I have always been me, and I still am. This is very hard for people to understand, but to me, I don't seem to be much different at all.
Yes, I look different to others, and in some ways my body feels different to me, but I, my essence of being, has not changed. That my place in the universe has changed so drastically when the same soul still inhabits this body ought to be profoundly interesting. But many of the people who one would think ought to be interested are too busy attacking people like me to waste time on thought.
Oh, pretty much. I guess I suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome or something. I have some really weird dreams, the occasional panic attack, and there are some things I just cannot talk about. What I went through for the first part of my life was rather grim at times, and the 'cure' certainly qualifies as traumatic.
I am certainly way happier with myself. I still don't really fit in anywhere, but I feel more like a marooned space alien than a prisoner of war, so I think that's an improvement. I am finally able to speak, and though I usually feel that no one understands me, there is hope.
No one knows. Most transsexual people spend their lives trying to hide that they are transsexual. Guesses based on the number of people known to have had 'sex-change surgery' and what percentage this is of the people known to have sought counseling about transgender issues, and a wild guess at the number of people who never breathe a word of their inner turmoil, result in numbers between one hundred thousand and one million world wide.
For the only sample population I know anything about, my university, the latter (one in five thousand) seems to be on the low side. But western universities are probably not representative samples of the world population.
Depends on what you mean by 'out'. I'm in-your-face as a political and educational statement, but transsexual is what I am, and I'm not ashamed of it. I just wish people had a better understanding of what it means to be transsexual, and of that thing called 'gender' they take for granted. Which brings us back to why I am out.
Oh, sure. I have always been queer [2]. My memories of preschool, kindergarten, and grade school are memories of being treated as a freak. On my block the other kids liked to trick me into gender-inappropriate behavior and laugh at me. Junior high was a black hole of abuse that I choose to not remember. In high school I was called faggot and queer and sissy and beaten up; I dropped out twice. So, yeh, I'm queer.
If what you are asking is am I homosexual, I don't think it would make sense to answer without a really long discussion about what 'same sex' would mean in my case. From where I'm sitting, hetero and homo don't seem like very useful terms.
Spiritual, yes; religious, no. I am strongly attracted to some elements of several religious groups, but all major religions seem to me to be very invested in defining boxes and placing people in those boxes. Christianity, in particular, seems impossibly entangled in sex and gender and sexuality in ways that make no sense to me.
I'm a nonviolent pacifist.
My genitals are none of your business. If I ever again let someone get close enough to me that that part of my body becomes their business, then the two of us will deal with it, okay? It is not a public issue. (What's the big deal? When is the last time you saw someone's genitals? How many people, in your entire life, have shown you their genitals or talked about them?)
I probably wouldn't change anything. If I had done things differently, I would not be where I am now, I would not know the people I know now, and most importantly, I would not have my children. I have never been so unhappy that I would risk a life without those things.
On the other hand, if I were ten years old again with the future a blank slate, and had access to the information about transsexuality and gender identity to which I now have access, I would probably move heaven and earth to transition as soon as I could. Whether I would then be able to lead a happier life than I in fact have, is up to people like you.
There are young people today facing these issues on a very personal level. By your actions or inactions, you can save a life, or watch one slip away.
----------
Last updated 14 April 1999
You are here: www.lisalees.com/workshops/msu
Back
Text Copyright © 1997-2000 by Lisa Lees /
Contact Lisa