Self-Organizing Man

Thanks very much to Jay for letting me babysit his blog.  For my first post, I thought I’d repost one of my many gender musings that first appeared on the Iron-On Line in March 2004.

When I was about 11, I saw an episode of Casualty featuring an apparent man who turned out to have a female body. I was fascinated that someone had invented a character so similar to me - I’d thought my quirk was unique to me until then. A week later, I read a letter from a viewer asking how dare the makers of Casualty portray a lesbian as deceiving and preying upon a heterosexual woman. I wanted to write and inform the viewer that they had misunderstood, but in the face of such righteous indignation I wondered whether I was the one that had misunderstood.

A week after that, I read another letter informing the first viewer that the character in question wasn’t a lesbian at all but a transsexual. It was probably the first time I came across the word, and certainly the first time I met it in the FtM context. And I felt slightly stupid, because I hadn’t realised that was what the character was. I’d thought he was someone like me.

When I had my blood test, I confided in the counsellor that I’d wanted to get pregnant because I was having trouble believing I was a proper woman. She gave me a big reassuring smile and explained that lots of women try for the whole family thing and later realise they prefer to be with women. It was OK to be a lesbian, but my kind of "not a proper woman" was hidden in the darkness. No-one understood it; no-one thought of it as a possible explanation.

Whenever I hear FtMs described as butch dykes, it’s like a knife. Just like I wanted to correct that letter-writer, I want to correct anyone who thinks a sex change is an easy way out for self-conscious lesbians. Not just because it’s false, not just because it’s ridiculous to anyone who’s seen what gender reassignment entails, but because the more these views get aired, the harder it is for questioning people like me to find the information and reassurance we need.

There may not be enough gay role models, but trans role models are even thinner on the ground, and FtMs seem to be the worst-represented of all. Every time I find someone who seems even vaguely "like me", I hang onto every word they say. When I was eleven, I believed my fears and coping mechanisms were unique. The discovery that they’re not has opened my head right up, but while I believed that, I suffered. Needlessly.

We need role models from everywhere on the gender spectrum. Every time some well-meaning feminist says that FtMs are butch dykes taking the easy way out, it becomes easier for someone like me, who doesn’t feel female but isn’t attracted to women, to decide they’re alone in the world. How do you justify that? What does the feminist movement gain by claiming these guys as dykes?

When I read a summary of My Beautiful Launderette, I found the concept of a gay racist thug intriguingly paradoxical. Surely someone who belonged to an oppressed group wouldn’t want to be party to the oppression of another group? And this strikes me as being more of the same. Lesbian theorists claim transmen as their own, oblivious to how the guys feel about it. They try to take away a right they had to fight for themselves: the right to self-define.

I don’t get it. I probably never will get it. But kids growing up today have one advantage I missed: the internet. Those role models are there, if you know where to look, and even sometimes if you don’t. A friend I met online came out trans to me, and after I’d picked myself up off the floor, one of my first responses was joy that a "guy like me" had written novels. The silence is breaking slowly, and FtMs that don’t fit the "dyke in denial" mould one bit are there for us to see. It’s progress.