To Discuss or To Hold? Transsexuality in a Cissexual Society
Posted October 21, 2008
http://radnichole.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/to-discuss-or-to-hold-transsexuality-in-a-cissexual-society/I've been having a very interesting and useful, at least for me, discussion over the past few days with another woman with a transsexed history. The discussion has revolved around transphobia and the various ways we, as women with transsexed histories cope with and internalize various aspects of ourselves in our quests to erase from memory, sometimes, or to reify, sometimes, the very real and deeply-hurtful ways in which we have had to struggle with who we are. How do we cope internally with a world that holds a default position of "completeness" for the individual from the time of birth through to death?
I don't, as a note, mean to exclude men with transsexing histories from my discussion. They may well have among themselves similar discussions. The fact is, I simply don't know. I only know that which has affected me and what has affected others I have talked with, interacted with and experienced some of the same things with. So, this discussion might well apply to men as well. But, if it does, they must be the ones to tell their particular experiences.
I meet and have met very many women who simply have been fortunate, or even less than fortunate, in their transitions in terms of that very Western and capitalistic notion of "beauty." They have surgeries that re-mould their faces, their breasts, their hips and tummies. They conclude their electrolysis and finally have their confrimatory surgery and simply desire to go their own way, disappear into what we often appear to think is a "real life."
