Visible Man
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Jamison Green offers a man's POV on life in the trans lane. Opinion,
advice, and information from an internationally respected leader of the
FTM community. |
What We Don't Know
I have many MTF (male-to-female transitioning or transitioned) friends, and
we've often joked about how we feel like ships passing in the night on our
journeys to the opposite ends of the gender spectrum. And wouldn't it be
great if we could just pair up for our surgeries and exchange body parts, ho
ho ho. And I've heard nontrans people talk about us as if that is exactly
how it's done! But the fact is that although we share a similar journey,
many of the assumptions MTFs and FTMs can make about each other are way off
base, not to mention how far afield the assumptions of nontrans people can be!
I'm going to repeat four generalizations that I've heard MTFs make about
FTMs. Please remember, I'm talking about MTFs and FTMs as classes, not
referring to specific individuals, to whom generalizations may not apply. My
goal is to broaden our collective thinking, not to divide us.
1. FTMs have it easier because it's socially
acceptable for them to wear men's clothes before and during transition.
On the surface this is true. However, what looks like women's privilege has its
drawbacks for FTMs. As nontranssexual women can attest, there is as much social
pressure to maintain femininity as there is for anatomic males to maintain
the masculine pride of the men around them. And any woman who expressed her
masculine side as a girl will confirm that there is always a point at
which "tomboy" behavior is also ridiculed and forbidden. The fact that women
are socially permitted to wear men's clothes (to varying degrees) serves to
render female-to-male transsexuals (and some cross-dressers) invisible.
Ultimately this invisibility makes understanding and self-acceptance more
difficult for the transman, because his desire to express himself as a man is
confused with lesbian-feminist and/or androgynist politics. And in a milieu
where masculine appearance is praised while masculine behavior and feelings
are ridiculed, the mixed message works to drive FTM feelings underground,
which does not make things easier at all.
2. MTFs have to adjust to taking lower-paying jobs,
while FTMs can look forward to better employment opportunities.
I was stunned when I heard this one. Most FTMs are just not prepared to become
captains of industry. Also, many FTMs go through periods of unemployment
and career redirection during and after transition. If their transsexualism is
known, FTMs are subject to the same prejudicial treatment as MTFs. Jobs are
gender-typed; this applies no less to pink-collar and white-collar jobs
than to blue-collar jobs. There are masculine and feminine management
and communication styles. Taking hormones doesn't immediately change your
socialization. Classical male socialization is often more successful in
corporations where people are expected to be aggressive and competitive.
People who are not raised to play male hierarchy games often unconsciously
put out the signal that "I'm #2." The very skills which made a pretransition
FTM successful in business -- qualities like cooperativeness, enthusiasm, a "can-do"
attitude -- may work against him as others begin to relate to him as a
man, interpreting him as weak or lacking leadership qualities.
There is also the education factor: Men who grew up as women in the '60s,
'70s, and even '80s were not uniformly steered toward occupations in which
they could find later success as men.
3. All FTMs want is a big dick.
Most men, whether they become soldiers, psychologists, or accountants,
have learned that some of the worst insults are to be called a woman or
a girl, to have it said that you have no balls. Genitals are certifiers of
gender, but they are not the center of it. Sure, most FTMs have accepted
the sexual symbology of the penis and would love to have a good-sized one
that worked perfectly, but we are aware of the limitations of surgery, and
most of us come to be aware of our masculinity in a deeper, more spiritual way.
I am dismayed that whenever I read about transpeople in mainstream
publications there seems to be a fascination with genitalia and a
lack of interest in the social construction of gender that we all
experience, trans or nontrans. This is not to say that I don't think there
is something biologically based about transness, but the fact is that
regardless of its roots, our transsexual process is largely concerned
with the social ramifications of our actions. Relationships to family, lovers,
friends, employers, the mechanics of changing identification papers,
medical records, employment history, dealing with how out-of-the-closet
to be at any given time, dealing with being "read" or "clocked" -- these are
the ongoing issues of our lives. Surgery is only a step along the way. Yes, a
giant step, but once that step is behind us we still have to live in the world.
What's in my pants is on my mind only a small percentage of the time.
OK, sure, when it's time for sex my cock can be the center of the
universe for a little while. But it doesn't govern my life, nor has
any transman I know given his penis (or his desire for one) that much
credit for making him a man. Many FTMs, in fact, lead very happy lives
without having any genital surgery. Having a small penis, or even having
no penis, does not prohibit us from having relationships and pleasuring
our partners, nor does it keep us from being a man.
4. Testosterone is evil.
Anti-male sentiment among MTF people, whether cross-dressers or transsexuals,
is not surprising, but it still makes me sad. If it's expressed with enough
vitriol, it can also make me downright angry. Testosterone isn't what makes
a man a jerk, any more than estrogen makes all women sensitive, politically-correct
saints. This kind of absurdity doesn't serve anyone.
I've had too many conversations with MTFs who presume that FTMs want to be
the kind of man they either couldn't be or were afraid of being. What makes
anyone think all FTMs want to be (or would be) that kind of man, anyway? FTMs
have a different experience of masculinity, particularly since we usually don't
go through the macho one-upmanship training that characterizes the experience of
boys in our culture. Because we come to our consciousness of our masculinity
from within a female body, our sense of maleness is not so fragile as that which
might be experienced by a boy with a feminine gender identity. So please don't
project your concepts of masculinity or femininity onto us. We very likely didn't
experience the kind of femininity that MTFs are seeking or feeling, either.
And by the way, an excess of testosterone in anyone's
system seroconverts to estrogen, so it may just be estrogen that causes all
that anger and mood swinging that people want to blame on testosterone anyway!
We are all individuals on a similar journey of self-discovery and creation.
We are not mirror images of each other, and we do not simply covet each
other's sloughed-off organs and rejected hairstyles. MTFs and FTMs have much
to offer each other, and we need to learn more about each other. We need to
be able to stand together when the nontranssexual world oppresses us.
And we need to be able to recognize and respect each other's genuine differences.
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