News and Events => Opinions & Editorials => Topic started by: Shana A on April 03, 2012, 12:22:24 PM Return to Full Version
Title: “Harry Benjamin Syndrome” Syndrome
Post by: Shana A on April 03, 2012, 12:22:24 PM
Post by: Shana A on April 03, 2012, 12:22:24 PM
"Harry Benjamin Syndrome" Syndrome
April 2, 2012 at 9:00 am Natalie Reed
http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/04/02/harry-benjamin-syndrome-syndrome/ (http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/04/02/harry-benjamin-syndrome-syndrome/)
Anyway, yeah, this is the kind of thing one actually does, sadly, come across in the trans community way more often than is (personally) comfortable. For all we've been through, trans people are not necessarily above falling into the same binary or hierarchical attitudes about gender common to our culture, nor does finding oneself on the receiving end of cissexism necessarily cause someone to immediately divest themselves of all the cisnormative ideas that have been drilled into them over the course of their lives. Deciding to transition doesn't magically or instantly cause someone to let go of things like gender binarism, genital essentialism, misogyny, transphobia, the confusion of gender expression and role with gender identity, heteronormativity and heterosexism, the idea of sexuality and gender having a deterministic relationship to one another, the idea that gender and sex have a deterministic relationship to one another, or the one million and one ways that any given concept, object, characteristic or behaviour is gendered one way or the other.
And as a friend of mine once put it, "most people are only exactly as tolerant as is required to accept themselves."
Not everyone has the strength and confidence to assert for themselves the validity of their identity in a culture that is overtly hostile to it. So when you have certain models or structures within that culture that offer some semblance of conditional external validation (no matter how absurdly high that bar has been set), people are going to build their sense of worth upon how close they get to meeting those conditions.
April 2, 2012 at 9:00 am Natalie Reed
http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/04/02/harry-benjamin-syndrome-syndrome/ (http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/04/02/harry-benjamin-syndrome-syndrome/)
Anyway, yeah, this is the kind of thing one actually does, sadly, come across in the trans community way more often than is (personally) comfortable. For all we've been through, trans people are not necessarily above falling into the same binary or hierarchical attitudes about gender common to our culture, nor does finding oneself on the receiving end of cissexism necessarily cause someone to immediately divest themselves of all the cisnormative ideas that have been drilled into them over the course of their lives. Deciding to transition doesn't magically or instantly cause someone to let go of things like gender binarism, genital essentialism, misogyny, transphobia, the confusion of gender expression and role with gender identity, heteronormativity and heterosexism, the idea of sexuality and gender having a deterministic relationship to one another, the idea that gender and sex have a deterministic relationship to one another, or the one million and one ways that any given concept, object, characteristic or behaviour is gendered one way or the other.
And as a friend of mine once put it, "most people are only exactly as tolerant as is required to accept themselves."
Not everyone has the strength and confidence to assert for themselves the validity of their identity in a culture that is overtly hostile to it. So when you have certain models or structures within that culture that offer some semblance of conditional external validation (no matter how absurdly high that bar has been set), people are going to build their sense of worth upon how close they get to meeting those conditions.