Self-Organizing Man

The Lion-Hearted Transitions

September 1, 2005 – 9:41 am

Nick Kittle continues our delightful discussion here.  He raises good questions that I think boil down to: when exactly does transition to transman begin?

In response I want to widen the dialog a bit.  Looking back over my life, I don’t recall experiencing a transition.  Transitions seemed more like it.

Each decision - to change my name, cut my hair, wear men’s clothing - required a transition.  The first transition occurred in my mind-heart.  Then came the transition in a community setting.  Each transition brought with it new experiences, new understandings, the release of fear only to find new anxiety underneath it.

Over time I’ve come to understand my process {perhaps true for others?} thusly:

where

TM = me

and the arrow = a transition point in my process.

At various times of I have felt not at all female.  Others times solely male.  Still other days I fell into infinity.  Then felt only love about myself and my body.

Had I possessed the correct software I could have made designed my Transition Cycle as a Mobius strip:

My Mobius Cycle possesses neither top nor bottom.  No beginning or end.

Nick’s words jibe with my experience.  He writes:

The importance of a name change is mostly symbolic. It’s a way of saying to the world, "That identity my parents bestowed upon me when I was born? Completely wrong; here’s what I really am." Transition begins when you tell the world that, all appearances to the contrary, you are a man. A transman is a transman when he says he is.

My decision to change my name fulfilled a need to have a male name.  Not a need to become a transman.

I like that definition because it doesn’t dictate to anyone else how they should experience their gender, but it leave me free to say with complete confidence that I am not a transman. And yet one tantalising question remains: could I, one day, become one?

Like Nick, I think each transition may lead in any direction at all.  As communities we force the issue when we demand that transitions become transition and female must, inevitably, lead to male.

I wanted simplicity.  I wanted to become a transman / male / masculine.  Short of my secondary sex characteristics, I don’t what defines transman and male anymore.  Have I become a transman?  I don’t know.  I thought so a few years ago.  At which point, precisely, that happened, I cannot say.  So much of my gender grows in my heart-mind.

The Cycle continues.  Right now I think I reside between love (represented by the heart) and infinity on the arrow.  Here courage remains a top requirement.  I must brace my mind in fortitude.

Trans community members place tremendous value on physical choices.  Whether we like it or not, or believe or not, we value others of us who go-all-the-way or live-in-between in a physical (i.e. a way we can see).  But those choices represent results of the tremendous transitions that must occur in our mind-hearts.

Who but myself must I convince of my choices?  I believed in myself enough to convince everyone else in the world.  I believe, then, that each of us may claim the appellation lion-hearted.

Nick writes:

[M]y lack of courage is probably another fiction. I proclaim on my blog that I’m male-souled. I’ve blogged in detail about my gender identity and blithely given the URL to family members so they can read as much of my life as they choose. I describe myself as a boy in the "real world", although few people take that seriously and I don’t bother to enlighten them. It’s true that I could show more courage - cutting my hair so that I pass, for instance - but it’s also a fact that I could show less. I do what I have to do to be true to myself, and perhaps it’s time I learned to accept the label of brave, at least.

I, too, do what I have to do to live true to myself.  And to Nick, the Lion-Hearted, I say Thank You.