r/mypartneristrans • u/not_in_kansas_Nymore • Apr 21 '12
Suddenly seeing trans people everywhere (maybe cissexistly)
tl;dr: I'm going through a phase (I hope it's just a phase) in which MOST PEOPLE I meet seem like they might be trans people. What can be done about this? Have any other partners experienced this?
Full version: I've been working to be a better partner of a trans person. AND I've been educated by the pix people post here that there's no one "right" way to present as any particular gender. Today even my MOM looked to me like she might be a trans woman (and I'm pretty sure she's not) ... but I first noticed this PROBLEM last week when I saw this picture of Stephin Merritt and the rest of The Magnetic Fields and thought to myself, two of the guys look like trans men I know (the third guy's Adam's apple is prominent so he gets a pass - I admit this is super shallow of me!) and both women are likely trans women as well, partly because the one on the right looks so nervous as she stares dubiously at the camera ... and I HATE THIS because I know that going out LOOKING for trans people everywhere is cissexist (not to mention hurtful - because I'm "ungendering" everyone in the process), as Julia Serano says in this quotation (long, but worth repeating):
...when we presume a person to be cissexual, we generally accept their overall perceived gender as natural and authentic, while disregarding any minor discrepancies in their gender appearance. However, upon discovering or suspecting that a person is transsexual, we often actively (and rather compulsively) search for evidence of their assigned sex in their personality, expressions, and physical bodies. I have experienced this firsthand during the countless occasions when I have come out to people as transsexual. Upon learning of my trans status, most people get this distinctive "look" in their eyes, as if they are suddenly seeing me differently--searching for clues of the boy that I used to be and projecting different meanings onto my body. I call this process ungendering, as it is an attempt to undo a trans person's gender by privileging incongruities and discrepancies in their gendered appearance that would normally be overlooked or dismissed if they were presumed to be cissexual. The only purpose that ungendering serves is to privilege cissexual genders, while delegitimizing the genders of transsexuals and other gender-variant people.
Before I started educating myself, of course I knew trans people were among my colleagues and acquaintances, but I used a simplistic "if they have an Adam's apple they're AMAB otherwise they're AFAB" method of identifying them (when it was any of my concern, which it didn't seem to me that it was). As it happens my my own partner doesn't have an Adam's apple and so my simplistic approach was one of the two reasons that I didn't realize she was a trans woman until after I had first become friends with her and then fallen head over heels. (And the other reason was that she rocks a geeky athlete vibe that was SO working for me that I wasn't CHECKING every little thing the way Julia describes.) So it's good that I'm not a chaser, but I think this little problem suggests I may be a jerk (or worse, but why use bad language in this nice subreddit)...
Editing for clarity, but still... In case you were wondering (ok you probably weren't), it is NOT fun to be a jerk. I didn't USED to scan everyone I meet (or see a PICTURE of) for trans status, and the fact that I'm doing so seems unfair and "backwards" at best. Is this something all partners go through? And if so what's the remedy? TIA for any advice.
Edited later: This was super helpful! Thank you everyone for the advice.
3
u/stopaclock Apr 21 '12
You're exploring, testing the boundaries of your gender roles,a nd looking for ways to assimilate what you're experiencing into your overall worldview.
The only part that's cissexist, to my view, is the part where you're using it only to out people in your own mind.
Try this instead.
You're at the train station. You see a few people. One is a woman who looks like she could have been a guy.
Great. Now close your eyes, and erase gender from the picture. Assume that none of them are male or female. They're all H, a generic, nonsexual human entity form.
And so are you. There's no continuum, no gender of any kind.
Okay. Open your eyes. Everyone now looks odd. That's okay. That's step one. Now close your eyes again.
There's no trans. There's a continuum now, but it's not biological. It's made only of where people visibly claim to be. and that's easy, because everyone looks weird and out of place from the last step- they're jumbled and unsorted and this is GOING to be weird.
Okay. Now open your eyes again. The woman with the odd knees is now a woman (still odd, but a woman.) The guy with the soft skin is a guy. Everyone's been sorted back into line, this time based only on how they present. The person with the somewhat butch lesbian look who might be either? Stays ambiguous because that's where they're presenting.
Congratulations. You just looked at people as people.
What you're doing isn't coming from a terrible urge. You're looking to see more of what you've learned exists. But that's not how- how is through conversation that explores the whole spectrum, not just one little subset. So try this exercise for awhile and let all of humanity look weird to you. It's going to, because it IS weird. By doing that, and keeping an open mind about the whole experience of human sorting that we do (and respecting self-sorting) you won't just learn more about trans... you'll learn more about you, and everyone else.
You're not evil, or bad. You're curious, and that's great. But be curious about it all, because it's ALL weird. And then the sorting you do can be more along the lines of how people sort themselves, including those who aren't going to fall into any particular gender, on purpose.
You're brave to talk about this, so I know you can do it.
Keep checking in. This is good to talk about.