Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I just came across this article online that I think is worthwhile to read:
"the_emergence_and_danger_of_the_acceptable_trans_n on the bilerico site from March 2013"

This is the 'acceptable trans narrative' that the author sees problems with:

"This is the story everyone can write: Ever since childhood, so-and-so felt they were "trapped in the wrong body." They wanted to wear the clothes and play with the toys of the other gender. They were bullied and ostracized. As they grew up, they became depressed. Perhaps even suicide was considered or attempted. Eventually they got the help they needed and transitioned to the opposite gender through hormones and surgery. They're much happier now, but things are still tough and they struggle sometimes."

I have to agree with what the author says about this. That 'acceptable trans narrative', the author's term for the stereotypical transgender person's story that most cis people are familiar with, does represent many trans people. However, for each trans person that DOES represent, there are many more of us that it does not. Not everyone gets their happy ending. Not everyone can afford to transition. Too many trans people are the victims of violent hate crimes. There are also transgender youth who aren't accepted by their families and either end up homeless or coerced into repressing their true gender - and this can have tragic consequences, such as in the case of Leelah Alcorn. The 'acceptable trans narrative' doesn't represent these less-privileged trans people who don't get their happy ending.

Heck, for many of us, transitioning isn't even as simple as 'transitioning to the opposite gender through hormones and surgery' because we don't fit into the gender binary. There are plenty of us nonbinary people out there who either have a gender that isn't recognized by society at large as legitimate or, like me, have no gender in a world where everyone sees them as gendered. Us nonbinary people, whether genderqueer, agender, genderfluid, bigender, demigender, and so on, tend to be overlooked by the media when they do represent transgender people because we don't fit into the 'acceptable trans narrative' because we're neither MtF nor FtM.

I'm not trying to say the 'acceptable trans narrative' is completely 'wrong'. If you write a simple, summarized narrative to sum up the experiences of transgender people, it would be arguably one of the most representative. The problem with it is that the lives and stories of transgender people are too diverse to sum up with one large generalization. The 'acceptable trans narrative' doesn't need to be done away with; there just needs to be more representation of trans people who DON'T fit into that narrative, and their stories need to be seen as just as 'acceptable' as this one.

Anyway, there's my two cents. Feel free to share whatever opinions you may have.

Mod Edit: sorry the posting of links to external sites is not allowed (ToS1) apologies, I have edited to show the location of the information.

Interesting article, and good points are made. I'm not sure exactly what I think of it though.

If it takes a fairy tale story that doesn't fit everyone to gain understanding and acceptance from the mainstream, then cool. But there does seem to be a sort of batting order. Okay sexual orientation gained mainstream acceptance, time to push the next issue! And in the meantime all sorts of societal problems get pushed aside or ignored and are only spoken of in hushed tones or on the periphery of the mainstream. The things you simply don't talk about in polite company because there's not a squeaky clean acceptable narrative available.

You don't want to pry the comfortably closed minds open too quickly and create a backlash that damages forward progress. Or do you? Maybe that's how things get done and a new narrative becomes acceptable. I don't know.

Interesting to think about. It seems like new social issues gain acceptance more quickly than they used to. I hope we can continue to illuminate the blind spots and make progress on all fronts.

Any skilled therapist will see a 'canned' narrative from a mile away, so it's not so much of an issue there.

My therapist is the only person who's heard my entire story and will be the only person who ever does. I don't much care what 'society' has to think to accept me, that's their issue. I also think that most intelligent people will realise that we all have our own stories - just like they do.

Not all of us immediately recognized we were "trapped in the wrong body" at age 4. And we didn't all prefer to always play with dolls or wear princess dresses. I preferred legos, and only played with dolls once in a while, and usually with my sister. I didn't wear princess dresses, not even once. For me, understanding that I was trans* was like putting pieces of a puzzle together.

I really like that article.

The "standard" narrative kept me from recognizing myself as trans for decades because I didn't feel female, didn't know from a young age, etc.

I think a lot of the issue is that we let cis people tell our stories for us. Before my transition, nearly everything I read or heard about trans people came from cis people.

We need to start telling our own stories and insist that people listen.

For many parts I do fit the standard narrative but I deviate from it sometimes

The prevalence for that 'Acceptable Narrative' is, in part, due to the history of care for treating gender dysphoria or what was then a 'disease' or GID.  In the 50s-70s only those few with that narrative, a plan to stay stealth and the most likely to be passable were admitted when thousands applied to John Hopkins Medical Center for transition help.

As Kelly notes, a skilled therapist and many of us recognize a formulaic narrative.  And then, there are commonalities to our lives but they still do not 'make' us transgender.

The strict binary narrative was part of my past denial package and not helpful in appreciating the rich complexity of an individual.

While I agree that this narrative is typical, so are MANY others. Many boggle the mind, at least mine, and I come from an area where it is really hard to boggle anyones mind over the age 12. We've seen and heard it all.

As in all human experience, you can find similarities to others, as well as vast disparities. There is no "Typical" human experience beyond Birth, and Death

Quote from: rachel89 on June 05, 2015, 07:07:42 AM
Not all of us immediately recognized we were "trapped in the wrong body" at age 4. And we didn't all prefer to always play with dolls or wear princess dresses. I preferred legos, and only played with dolls once in a while, and usually with my sister. I didn't wear princess dresses, not even once. For me, understanding that I was trans* was like putting pieces of a puzzle together.

  This mirrors my experience quite closely, except I didn't have a sister.  Things might have turned out a little differently if I'd had the influence of a sister.

Quote from: fennec-fox on June 04, 2015, 02:59:27 PM

Not a bad article.  I can relate in the sense that I don't like telling my story to people who are familiar with transgender people because it's pretty generic sounding with a few exceptions.  Mainly, I thought all kids felt the way I did when I was little so I didn't really notice anything was especially "wrong" until puberty and all my changes were like "Awe, hell no..." and I was never into boys like a lot of transgirls were before confronting their issues.  Beyond that, I fit the stereotype of doing stupidly male-affirming (read dangerous) things to suppress it until it became a biological imperative to face my issue, etc.

It seems like anytime I tell my story, I'm confirming a stereotype while there's so many other stories out there that need told.

I agree wholeheartedly except for one thing - it's not emerging, it's been the Standard Trans Narrative for a long time. I actually didn't know I *could* transition, for at least a decade, because I thought if you didn't know as a kid you weren't really trans. I was convinced, when I figured it out at age 32, that my therapist would tell me to go away and stop faking it. I thought I had to be suicidal and miserable and desperate, and feel trapped, before I'd deserve to transition.

And I've, disappointingly, had other trans people argue with me that by telling MY story, I was claiming theirs weren't valid; that by pointing out that the Standard Trans Narrative doesn't fit everyone, I was saying it didn't fit anyone.

Truthfully I think it is more of a guesstimate or like a theory in science but not yet a law of science. Sure it has points but it still has holes in it.

Myself I fit in parts and others not. Such as I didn't know when I was young nor did I play with dolls but I did tend to play board games and didn't really care for sports.

The reality is it is a guideline that of course needs to be updated and used with some latitude after all its not written in stone nor fully accurate. What should be done is viewing each person on a case by case basis perhaps adapted like law is with precidents if you follow my thinking.

Quote from: rachel89 on June 05, 2015, 07:07:42 AMAnd we didn't all prefer to always play with dolls or wear princess dresses.

I certainly didn't...

I actually came back after a long hiatus to commiserate about how I feel so alienated from the gender expression I had as a child.

I played with a wide variety of toys but my room was mostly things like toy trucks and army men.  I went looking for toads and lizards in the back yard.  I got offended when people mistook me for a girl because of my looks and my mannerisms.  I grew up to be a man who people described as a "big, intimidating guy."  And now I look back at how incredibly butch I was in my youth and I'm just gobsmacked by it. 

Part of me wants to be nostalgic for the days of toy trucks and army men, but part of me is horrified by it.  These things reminds me of 28 years of gradually feeling more and more at odds with my gender from my teens onward, until I reached a point in my adult life where sex became unpleasant and the person I saw in the mirror every morning became a stranger.

I'm left wondering, what the hell happened to me?  Why did it take 28 years for this to incubate?  Why did I have to be born with this time bomb ticking away inside my personality?  And neither medicine nor common sense provide any answers.  Maybe it's nature, maybe it's nurture, but no one has an opinion that goes beyond rampant speculation and untestable hypotheses and variables like me just make the job of sorting out the how and why of it a Gordian knot of questions.  The narrative of "I always knew I was a girl" makes me feel like I shouldn't even exist.

Actually, a lot of gender therapists and psychiatrists don't even think we exist and I noticed even the article you linked to doesn't talk about late-onset cases.

I really think there should be a more support for late and slow-onset cases because it's a painful and baffling experience.

QuoteI certainly didn't...

I think I Should have qualified that statement with "trans feminine"

Rose : I don't know if it will help, but I see myself now as a boy (and man) who grew up into a woman. My past experience was valid but so is my present, and it's confused cis people for the most part who insist that we can't have both be true - that we *have* to come up with a coherent narrative that makes sense to someone who doesn't understand transition in the first place.

Basically, it's OK however you want to frame your own life. People change, sometimes dramatically. That's not an answer about "why" - and believe me, I feel you in wanting one - but maybe it will help to know you don't have to make sense of it for *other* people?

My best explanation would be I feel as if I am not both but rather pulled both ways stuck in the middle and the balance is shifting. Much like a fork in the road except 2 ropes pulling you both ways yet you are rooted at that point with no choice.

Just my view of course. Read into that as you will and realize some don't fit that either aka the non binary would be a fork in the road but make my own bath in between the fork.

Quote from: rachel89 on June 06, 2015, 08:17:04 AMI think I Should have qualified that statement with "trans feminine"

Heh heh heh. ;D

I've always been stymied by the whole toy narrative. If your parents don't buy you certain toys, you have little chance to play with them, especially if your siblings don't have those toys either. My brother was old enough that he didn't have a lot of toys that were appropriate for me, and he often wasn't inclined to share anyway. He did finally give me ONE of his GI Joes instead of throwing it away. The other one went into the garbage despite my howls of protest.

I played with the girls' toys I was given, begged for boys' toys, and was usually given "compromise" toys. For example, I wanted model cars, Hot Wheels, Tonka trucks, stuff like that; my parents got me a plastic dune buggy thing. I wanted Legos, but I got Crystal Climbers. I wanted a GI Joe, so I got a Ken doll. Yeehaw.

I must have driven them nuts with my cowboy and spy and space obsessions. I got a six-shooter and some cowboy regalia, and finally a spy pistol that I loved to death. But no phasers, alas.

Arch, that all sounds so familiar. I did "inherit" some of my older brother's toys: his erector set, Lincoln logs, and such. (He had no interest in them, and grew up to be a gay fashion designer, of all things; his idea of fun was to make clothes for the Barbie doll which was foisted on me at some point -- pretty much the only time I played with it...)

So I'd get dolls and such as gifts, and promptly cut their hair off and declared that they were boys. The only saving thing was that several relatives, who lived a long way off, just sent me money for Xmas and birthdays, and that was mine to spend as I liked. Tonka trucks and toy soldiers featured heavily in my purchases.

But I did have the six-shooter and cowboy regalia, by God.

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi1262.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fii610%2FTysilio%2FGunslingers-1_zpsx4rj9y41.jpg&hash=91efc27e7c8581a75aa8c6f49a96cb3b0d8bf43d)

I'm the one on the left, who doesn't look like a dork.

So, yeah, I fit that narrative. But I think it's worth remembering that a few decades ago, the notion of any "acceptable trans narrative" would have been laughable. We, especially FTMs, didn't exist.

Everyone talking about toys makes me want to buy a GI Joe on Ebay. I had little army men and toy reptiles, as well as barbies and stuffed animals. I collected stuffed animals until I was 23, then finally let them go. I still have a few. I have a couple china dolls too that I'm keeping despite turning into a man.

I had Major Matt Mason, an astronaut who came with a moonbase and Captain Action who had masks and costumes to turn him into various superheroes. I didn't have G.I. Joe because I was never much into war and soldiers. They were some of the few acceptable dolls, I mean "action figures"  available for MAABs in the 60's. Captain Action was the boyfriend of the Barbie which belonged to the girl next door.

Funny, I played with the girls in the neighborhood and my two best male friends later turned out to be gay.

And by the way, the more comfortable I get being trans the more of my lost childhood I begin to remember.

I don't think I fit that narrative, yet later in the article, the author creates a check list of things that are actually pretty close to me but certainly not in the order or description that is written. Rose mentioned something that I have only recently (at middle age) been able to describe.

the person I saw in the mirror every morning became a stranger.
The main difference is I have never recognized myself. I have often written it is like a trick to watch me manipulate that other's face in the mirror. It has only gotten more intense as I have aged. I started going grey/white in high school then lost a lot of hair on my head(why couldn't it be nose, ears, back, legs abdomen-anywhere but on my head). I have a job that has months of fairly long work hours and tension so I have aged early. Now I see this old stranger staring back.

Rose also stated, "the article you linked to doesn't talk about late-onset cases." I would suggest that he does the checklist at the end and says between the ages of 35 and 65. Maybe you mean later than that. There seems to be a lot of us in the later bracket on this site. However, many support groups and sites do seem more focused on the younger groups.

Why did it take 28 years for this to incubate?  Why did I have to be born with this time bomb ticking away inside my personality?  And neither medicine nor common sense provide any answers.  Maybe it's nature, maybe it's nurture, but no one has an opinion that goes beyond rampant speculation and untestable hypotheses and variables like me just make the job of sorting out the how and why of it a Gordian knot of questions.  The narrative of "I always knew I was a girl" makes me feel like I shouldn't even exist.

Yeah, I know your question, for me it was more like 48 or 50 years. I'm pretty sure from what I have read some here realized much later even. But I did have a lot of hints. Not exactly the "narrative" but follows some fairly standard descriptions. Like Suzi mentioned, it took me a while to work through all of this messy stuff of past and internal views and feelings mostly because of the aspect of the narrative that says, "I always knew I was a girl". I certainly didn't. I did things that said that but I was not able to add it up.

I like the article. Mostly because I think the prevalence of trans people in the world is under reported. So, I also think the research is skewed  and inaccurate. I understand the idea of the narrative being palatable, while others are messy and not easy to take. It seems a little easy and maybe a little paranoid.  However, I honestly think that studies cannot reflect a community unless more of the community is included in the research.

However, it is not lost on me that many of the stories would not be viewed with empathy, much less sympathy. So, while I would love for all stories to be available and accepted to the public, is it wrong of me to embrace any narrative to make this understood to the general public. Perhaps once the normal "narrative' is accepted, we can start adding  and educating about the other versions on the spectrum.

With hope and warm thoughts,

Joanna

My narrative actually fits the "standard" narrative quite closely (should I be embarrassed?). The main differences were application and degree. I was afraid of my mother--she's an intimidating person--so I rarely defied her, especially in her consistent encouragement of girly pursuits. I resisted a great deal, though, mostly passively.

I don't remember ever declaring myself a boy, but that's what I had my imagination for. In those days, I don't think all that many budding trans kids did declare themselves to be the opposite of their designation.

Toys have such power in my memory. As an adult, I went out and got myself some Matchbox cars out of sheer bloodymindedness. I still have the stuffed collie that my father brought back from Vietnam. I'll keep it until it disintegrates. But I do wish I'd kept my spy pistol. I saw one on eBay a little while back, and it was pricey. Oddly enough, it didn't look nearly as cool and realistic as I remembered.