I'm sorry, yes I know that labeling is unfortunately a part of human behavior, and there are even many that reap the benefits of labels. Still, it comes at the expense of everyone else who doesn't fit damn labels and suffer from them. It's just like the patriarchy, where both many men and women reap the benefits of the patriarchy while screwing all the other women and men.
Anyway, I hate labels so much because something is assumed of you off the bat. For men, it's assumed that one guy are like the other guys, in being potentially threatening, aggressive, and sex hungry, unemotional, and following the male doctrine. A lot of guys are sharks, so most everyone is in guard with guys. Women's assumptions are nicer but it stifles women from being more aggressive, as well as shy to be sexually extroverted.
Even within the trans community, instead of there being a recognized transgender spectrum, everyone huddles into different groups: the transsexuals, the genderqueer, and the crossdressers. And many may truly identify with these groups. Still, i feel like this grouping discourages a true spectrum to be expressed.
So thus the labeling goes like, if you are a crossdresser, you are pretty much either a guy who's a fetishist, or just simply a guy that's happy to be a guy but likes to dress like a woman. If you are genderqueer, its thus assumed that you are a gender rebel and wish for gender to be abolished. You also embrace both masculine and feminine qualities. If you are transsexual, you are assumed to be the gender opposite of your birth sex, and have felt like that since birth.
First thing that gets me pissed off is when a transwoman says "you are either female or you are not" and then goes on insinuating that if you didn't feel like a girl since young, you aren't transsexual. And then someone else then goes and says that they are either transsexual or a crossdresser.
Goddamnit, how do you think I feel knowing that I'll never truly fit in the transgender community? Everyone ->-bleeped-<-in huddles into their own groups.
I'll tell you what, long ago back in the 90's I identified as a crossdresser. However, what got under my skin was that crossdressers lacked a desire to go fulltime or to change their bodies. I wasn't satisfied with not having a female body. So I figured that I wasn't really a crossdresser. I started exposing myself to transsexual things on the internet (back in 1998 to 2000), and I felt like I connected to it. I envied the transwomen that looked passable, and I wanted to be like that. However, I didn't feel at the time like I was "trapped in the wrong body" so I felt like I would face a huge amount of obstacles if I didn't fit the TS narrative. I increasingly got dissatisfied with being male and embraced female fantasies. I fantasized a lot of being female, having sex as a woman, and I allowed myself to see myself as a woman. And then in 2007, I started going out as a woman to transgender clubs and as long as I was able to see myself as a woman, I would act and talk very femininely amazingly naturally, as in it came automatically (ok I did voice training prior to that, but my voice didn't sound passable till I went out as a woman.) So golly gee, I increasingly found out my female self, and in addition to that, my desire to transition rapidly increased, to the point that I wanted to seriously do it (I was pissed off coming home and having to reluctantly present as a guy again, plus I felt like my male self was getting in the way of me being the woman that I wanted to be.)
I looked at the genderqueer label, but genderqueer people (I am friends with one) don't particularily identify with a gender, they like to take whatever they like from each but don't really recognize gender. I am not like that because I've felt since then a real desire to identify as female. I stopped identifying as male years ago because I figured that I don't really have much in common with guys, other than being attracted to women (and then its not in a sexual way, only romantic.) So I guess I am reluctantly genderqueer in terms of my state but I recognize gender and I feel more like identifying as female.
And then one might not like that I said "feel like identifying as female." Well there's really no way that I can feel female without transitioning because when I allow myself to feel female, all my mannerisms and talking gets really feminine, and I'm scared to death about being seen in such a mismatch to how I look, so I stuff it in and wear the persona that has gotten me through for almost 30 years. Wearing masculine clothing also hurts my ability to feel female (because of the perceived mismatch.)
And another thing is that while I feel like being as a woman for the most part, I don't agree with things like having a family, being with a guy, etc... In other words, I'm not willing to adopt everything of what's percieved that a woman should be. So that makes me less of a woman than other transsexuals?
So I feel like a unique class in the transgender spectrum but with virtually noone else in it, or at least with few people coming out like that. Because everyone huddles into different groups, there may be some that don't conform with the group but they are silent because they desire to benefit from the labels of it.
And even then, since I don't transition, I am stuck under the "male" label where everyone, including women, think that I'm a guy and attach every stereotype to it. I ->-bleeped-<-in suffer from being seen as a guy. When it comes to what guys generally are, their likes, etc... I am not a guy. I have no desire to identify as one. My fantasies were with vaginal sex, so Im not male sexually anyway. But I feel "masculine" only because I feel like I have to, to get through in this world without endangering my safety (I was bullied when I was young so I appreciated safety when I fled to live in another city.) I don't have dysphoria all the time, and there's sometimes where I do feel masculine in a non-forced manner, but that's only sometimes. I hate being in this position, but I haven't transitioned in part because I don't feel like the TG community both isn't big enough and I don't feel like I'd fit in within the transgender community. I certainly don't fit in with crossdressers, I don't fit in with genderqueer, and I'm not "woman enough" for transsexuals. Add to that that I'm in pretty much an identity crisis for at least the past 6 to 7 years. Gosh what bad luck did I get in my life.
Ok, maybe I'm blowing off some steam and some of my assumptions aren't entirely accurate. Still I feel the frustration of living in a world where everyone wants to group everyone else and assume a whole bunch of things about them. LABELS are nothing more than a tool, a method of conformity by society, so I feel like I have the right to rant off on this. I never understood the idea of "fitting in" when I was young. I'm biracial and sexually fluid so that adds to things as well. I guess I'm kind of like a cat in that cats don't allow people to control them (the mythbusters guys trying to herd cats, and found zero luck in trying to do so.)
