I am far enough into my public transition to start making notes of patterns. (It’s going well, as far as I can tell, thanks for asking.)
One of them is this. Someone is talking to me for the first time after they have become aware that I am trans, and they say, “I certainly support you in making this choice for yourself. It’s not something I would do, but …”
So far, I have always replied by smiling and saying, “Well, of course not. You’re cisgender.” And so far, in every case, that response seems to give them pause. They stop talking for a moment and look thoughtful.
I am coming to suspect that “It’s not something I would do” is highly correlated with the notion, probably unconscious, that transition is a bizarre thing which I chose to do for some incomprehensible reason that they can’t quite wrap their minds around, like moving to Antarctica to start a guava farm, or knitting a barbed-wire fence out of strips of soda cans.
In their minds, transition is entirely voluntary. And my re-casting of transition, however mildly, as a response to a stimulus, and specifically a response to a specific inborn characteristic, gives them pause.
Up to that point, there was an unspoken clause in that sentence: “It’s not something I would do if I were you but…”
Well, you know, it’s easy to look at someone doing the funky chicken after someone else drops an ice cube down the back of their shirt and think, “I would never do that. My response would be much cooler.” Yeah, okay. And I know people who meet that particular situation by calmly reaching under their shirt and evicting the errant ice cube, or by looking at the ice cube prankster calmly and saying, “Really?”
Fair enough. So, cool person. Let’s see you pull off that insouciance when it’s not a surprise ice cube, but a surprise wasp. Or a surprise gaggle of spiders. Not so full of ennui now, eh?
From my perspective, it’s as though someone said, “I totally support you in taking that analgesic. It’s not something I would do, but I totally support your right to do it.”
Yes, quite so. You don’t have a migraine. If you did, sooner or later you’d be reaching for this prescription bottle, old chap.
“I totally support you in turning on the heat in your house. It’s not something I would do, but…”
Okay. But you live in a well-insulated house in San Diego, and I live in northern New England. Let’s bring you up here in February and see how long it takes you to fire up the wood stove.
Trans people have a problem. They didn’t create it, but they solve it. You may not be able to see the problem, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. It just means that you’re not in a position to see it. And if you assert that it doesn’t exist because you can’t see it, you’re standing in exactly the same ethical position as someone who tells a person with chronic pain that it’s all in their head. Consider that for a moment… still feeling comfy about what you would do if you were trans?
Transition: It’s not a lifestyle choice. It’s a rational response to an affliction.
Grace
Interesting observation. May I ask – would you consider it equally problematic if someone said “I certainly support you in making this choice for yourself. It’s not something I could imagine myself doing…”?
Well-put. Thanks for sharing this.
Eytan, how in your mind is the question you pose different from the one Grace discusses in the article? I’m not being snarky. I’m honestly curious how that would change the equation. If imagination is being used in the broad sense of “do I have the creativity to picture what it would be like for me to live someone else’s choices?” I guess it’s valid, although still a weird scene-stealing thing to say when someone has just confided in you. But people generally use “I couldn’t imagine doing that” to mean “I would never do that. I can think of absolutely no circumstances where I might decide to do that,” which brings us back to Grace’s original objection.
LandnotL – I’m not sure if it is different, which is why I’m asking Grace.
The reason why I think it might be different is hard to express, but let me try this – I don’t think transitioning is bizarre for a trans person. As Grace said, it seems to me to be a solution to a problem they are experiencing. But – just because something is a solution, doesn’t mean it’s not scary.
To use one of Grace’s analogies that has personal resonance for me – it took me years of suffering through migraines before I started taking painkillers for them.
I’m not trans, and I know that I don’t know what it is like to be trans. But I can imagine what it would be like for me if I was, and, judging by the way I have handled some of the issues that I’ve experienced in my life, I’m not at all sure that my response to being trans wouldn’t just be to try to live with the problem rather than try to solve it. I didn’t ever say “I can’t imagine myself doing that” to Grace, but I certainly thought it when I read her posts. Because I can’t imagine myself having the courage.
But then as I read Grace’s post I ask myself: does that make a difference, really? Does the my idea that transitioning is scary really just reduce to the fact that transitioning is unfamiliar? And the reason it is unfamiliar is that I’ve never had to deal with it. Maybe if I was trans it would feel natural to me. Certainly, I do not go to my homosexual friends and say “You have had sex with people of the same gender as you? I support you, but it’s not something I would do”. But then again, it is something I can imagine myself doing – just like I can imagine myself flying a plane or dying my hair blond or voting Conservative. Not things I’m likely to do, but well within the realm of things I could do if I just wanted to. Transitioning – regardless of the nature it takes, by the way, I’m not just talking about surgery – strikes me as a step beyond those. But is that because it is a bigger step? Or is that latent transphobia reading its ugly head? I’m not sure.
“And if you assert that it doesn’t exist because you can’t see it, you’re standing in exactly the same ethical position as someone who tells a person with chronic pain that it’s all in their head. Consider that for a moment… still feeling comfy about what you would do if you were trans?”
I was with you until this. Most people feel just peachy telling others that the chronic pain is all in their heads, so not a very good example.
I feel like a big part of the problem with the “I wouldn’t do it” line is that it serves to distance the person saying it from the activity. It serves to say “I may be supportive of trans people, but don’t get the idea that I’m one of them!” So even Eytan’s rephrasing still positions trans-ness as something you need to distance yourself from. Otherwise why bring it up at all?
Stentor – I think you’ve got it the wrong way around. It’s not a signal that people are trying to distance themselves from trans people. It’s a signal that people already are distant from trans people and trans issues and that they’re having a problem bridging that distance.
It doesn’t matter if it’s my alternate phrasing, or the original once Grace gave, what it’s describing is a failure of empathy. Thinking “what would I do in your position” is one of the basic human reactions to anything. I don’t know about you, but for me, every time I’m unable to do so, it’s probably something I’d remark about, and I’m far from unique in that. I’m sure that some people – quite possibly many people – are quite happy with maintaining this distance, but I don’t think that the fact people bring it up should be taken as evidence of that attitude.
(For what it’s worth, when I say “I can’t see myself in your shoes”, however it’s phrased, there’s almost always an implicit “please help me do so” attached. Which is problematic in other ways – it’s a way of turning the conversation from being about the other person into being about myself, something I’m aware I have a tendency to do and which I am constantly trying to avoid).
The statement also implies “it’s not something that I imagine that I would do if I were trans.”
Well, sure. It’s something you need as part of living your life. But only a very very very few people actually transition. If you have .025%-1% of the population who is trans and only a smallish subset actually go through transition, then it’s “bizzare” in the meaning of “very unusual.”
The more unusual it is, the less that people are likely to be able to accurately empathize. That may be reasonable and expected, but doesn’t make it any less sucky for the “my life is unusual and therefore nobody can accurately emphasize with me” person though.
This, however:
hmmm…. yeah, sort of.
I mean, we all have at least some experience empathizing with people who are not us, and we are all expected to have at least some ability to process questions and answers for which we may have no direct experience. Right? They range from “how should this person be punished for a crime we didn’t witness?” to “what should we do in this war based on national interests and data we don’t entirely have?” to “how should we evaluate this person’s claim of discomfort?” You’re a cop; you must do that all the time.
Smart people will still have the guts to know that it’s a decision where they have limited information, and to therefore make their conclusions less strict. But I don’t think people will ever stop trying to reach conclusions about situations, even where they have limited data.
The whole “I support you in your decision” thing is also pretty weird by itself. What are the gorram options here — “I don’t support you in your decision” is pretty much a conversation- and relationship-stopper. It just arrogates such enormous unjustified power to the speaker.
“It’s not something I would do” may equal “I can’t imagine my way into your situation”. It could be intentionally off-putting, or an attempt to empathize. I am cis, and somewhat deficient in imagination and information concerning the various transgender experiences, so I do the obvious and read blogs and essays and an occasional memoir. Likely I will never “get it”, just as I will never “get” everything about having a masculine upbringing, everything about being a racial minority, growing up on a farm, etc, etc. The physiology, psychology, and philosophy seem less important than the practical issues of just using that person’s preferred pronoun and not being flustered at bathroom use or other socially gendered situations.
It’s also correlated with privilege. I can’t see a trans person saying to a cis person “it’s not something I would do.” Because cis people, not trans people, are the measure of all things. What cis people would do is normative, not what trans people would do. And of course, it is trans people who have to explain themselves to cis people upon demand, not the other way around.
This works equally well if you replace (cis, trans) with any other ( privileged, non-privileged) pair, such as ( white, black ), ( straight, gay ), or (male, female).
I can think of a lot of situations where it might be really bad idea to presume that the “I certainly support you in making this choice for yourself. It’s not something I would do, but …” response was a way of expressing the idea that transitioning is bizarre or incomprehensible. If I heard a friend who is transgender respond to someone with “Well, of course not. You’re cisgender” I’d be really, really disappointed for several reasons.
First of all, the comment assumes that the person is cisgender. After all, just as the person didn’t know that my loved one is transgender, my loved one who is transgender may not be aware of the fact that the person they’re speaking to isn’t cisgender. I can imagine that being mis-gendered by anyone can be incredibly hurtful, especially for those who are gender nonconformant. I’m cisgender, so I don’t know whether it feels the same. However, the idea of being mis-gendered by someone who is transgender makes me think about how awful and sickening it is to me when other mixed-race/mixed-ethnicity folks make assertions about what race they’ve decided that I belong to or when others within the queer community make assumptive assertions about my orientation.
Secondly, I’d be really upset about the “Well, of course not. You’re cisgender.” response because I feel like it betrays a certain lack of understanding about intersectionality. There are lots of other privilege issues involved in why a person could decide that transitioning certainly isn’t anything they’d do.
I had a best friend in middle school. She came out to everyone. I totally supported her choice to do that, but it certainly wasn’t something that I’d do and it had everything to do with privilege. As a person of color living in a white-dominated society, I already had my racial identity working against me. It’s damned hard to get a job when you’re competing against white people and most of the folks doing the hiring are white. My friend didn’t have to worry about that. When you’re a black woman of color your femininity and womanhood is automatically denied. We are already seen as hypersexual or asexual and, as such, completely acceptable targets for sexualized violence. Now, couple that with being an “out” lesbian, with all of the stereotypes that go along with it, and see how long it takes before you are sexually assaulted. My friend didn’t have to deal with that combination and never would.
I’ve known folks who will likely never transition to living as the gender that they are. I wish they lived in a world where they could, but they don’t. They can support those who do transition while recognizing that they wouldn’t/won’t do it. It doesn’t mean they’re cisgender or otherwise privileged relative to those who do transition. We don’t all pay the same cost for bucking the system. Some people just can’t afford to do it.
There’s also some real ablism in this post, but I think that might be best explained in a different comment.
Thanks, everyone, for the responses. I learned from them.
Eytan:
As far as I can recall, no one has responded to me with your alternate phrasing (hereafter Version 2). That’s important, because in the case of the phrasing I’m quoting (Version 1) there was intonation and context which I can’t convey in print or elided for brevity and privacy. In the case of Version 2, I don’t know what the context would be, or what the tone would be.
Trying to hold all else equal, it seems to me that the speaker in Version 2 is a lot more likely to be trans themselves, which would certainly affect how I respond. Also, it seems to me that Version 2 spotlights the speaker’s inability to imagine doing it, rather than the action itself. In other words, it seems to me that Version 2 has less of the “if I were in your shoes, I certainly would not do what you are doing” intimation.
But I think that someone saying, “I can’t imagine doing that” would say it with a different tone than that which accompanied Version 1 in my actual experience. Following your example, I think if you were to say Version 2 to me, and in your mind you were referencing your belief that you would not have the courage, your tone might be more similar to the tone people have used when they have said, “I don’t think that I could ever do that.” Often, that statement, or one like it, accompanies someone praising me for having the courage.
(Though, let me say, transition may require some small amount of courage, but it’s only the last rung. I think that almost always, most of that ladder is built of necessity.)
You make a valid point when you say that for some trans people, not transitioning is a workable choice. Not all dysphoria is created equal, and not all circumstances are created equal. People can and do make rational decisions not to transition. I did, for many years.
arrogantworm:
The pain analogy is very useful, because almost everyone has had pain for which they could not point to a visible cause, and so as an analogy it’s broadly accessible.
However, I don’t have chronic pain (my pains are all episodic, so far), and so I don’t have the personal experience of having people tell me it’s in my imagination. I have heard many people describe being treated that way, though, and I believe them, because my life experience does include a lot of interactions with jerks.
So I take your point, and it interests me, but in my experience the pain analogy works well for most people. One trans person, in fact, pointed to that exact same paragraph as the best way she has ever heard of to describe “teh trans”, as some of us affectionately backhand it.
paul:
Good point, the “I support you” statement could suggest that the speaker thinks its within their remit to grant or withhold permission. However, it also could signal “I am telling you that I will go along with you reasonably far to help you toward this goal” which is something transitioning people need to hear, because transitioning people need people who know them to change pronouns, and (usually, and in my case) name. In other words, in order to function with me, people need to accommodate me at least as far as name and pronouns, and “I support you” conveys that message. So in my own case, I’m okay with it, because in every case, even the ones I referenced with the quote, that part seemed to me to be well-intended.
bint alshamsa:
In this case, you’re at a disadvantage because I am recalling actual experiences I had recently, and you don’t have the benefit of hearing the tone and knowing the details of the context. I am quite certain that all of the people who have said this to me so far are cisgender. I acknowledge that there exists a non-zero probability that I am wrong, but I think I’m right beyond a reasonable doubt. Because I am so certain, in these cases, I think that the situational necessity of calling their attention to the fact that my choice is a rational response to a real problem outweighs the vanishingly small possibility that they may be a trans person AND unable to cope with me not somehow knowing that they are transgender, even though they are closeted.
My own personal experience of being deeply in the closet, presenting as male, and having people say things which made it clear that they thought I was male was mainly reassurance that I was not suddenly in an outing crisis. It was also an unpleasant reminder that I was perceived as male, but frankly, that was the water I swam in and the air I breathed; one more was just one more. If someone had started to gender me female while I was deeply in the closet and not ready to be outed, stand back and watch the adrenaline hit the system (which did in fact happen once). However, that’s my experience, and I can easily imagine other trans people experiencing such things differently, and more negatively.
But most of your reply hangs on the proposition that one of these people was actually trans. I agree with you that people can be trans and choose not to transition (which I did for many years), or have unnavigable bars to transition (which I could have had). I know such people. But none of them have ever used the words I quoted to express their opinion of my transition. Certainly one of them could, somewhere. But so far none of them have, which is suggestive.
As to your final line: please say more, if you would like to and it’s possible. I am able-bodied and recognize that it’s easy for me to be ableist without knowing it. It’s not your obligation to teach, but if you’re willing I’m interested in learning.
Grace
Grace, you’re absolutely right that I have NO clue about your conversations, because I wasn’t there and you were. I tried to keep my comment about how I’d feel if one of my friends did that, instead of assuming what you were doing or how well you knew the actual folks involved. My views were mostly about whether this “I support you. It’s not something I’d do” reaction to being told about someone’s transitioning is because the person is cisgender or because they think it’s some bizarre, entirely voluntary thing.
These thoughts are mostly based on watching my gender nonconformant child suffer through several other kinds of marginalization and oppression. Seeing this child face many gender assumptions from folks who are cisgender and those who are transgender has allowed me to see how both can suffer from the same kinds of privilege blindness that makes it easy to assume that only one kind of privilege is involved in any given interaction. The lack of understanding regarding intersectionality comes into play when someone expresses the idea that a statement is because of my child’s assumed gender when it’s really because of some other (marginalizing) factor.
I don’t want to thread jack and let this very important conversation get derailed, but I don’t mind talking about the ablism in it either. Would you prefer for me to contact you privately, wait until this conversation has winded down, or just go for it now?
Go for it. I trust the Alas readership to be able to switch back to the main topic if they feel like it, and I don’t like this feeling of not knowing if or how I put my foot in my mouth.
Grace
They are probably pausing because you a using a term that is not generally well known and they do not know what you are talking about. I just learned that term about a month ago. I don’t like the term for probably a stupid reason. Because it starts with “cis” it reminds me of the word sissy. I don’t like the sound of being called a sissy (even though I know the word does not mean sissy).
If you are striving for a teachable moment maybe think of a different response that doesn’t use the word cisgendered.
I don’t think it is bizarre, and most people have heard about it Grace, but what most of us have not experienced, me included, is meeting or knowing a person who is transgender who is in the process of transitioning. More than likely people who blurt that out are rather subconsciously thinking, “boy I’m glad that’s not me”. It’s not that we think it is weird or bizarre, it is just that we have never met a real live person who is transgender (that we know) and so it is a little bit shocking to us. The people you are exposing transition to, when they meet the second person who is transgender after you, will be more prepared to offer a more appropriate response.
Maybe this isn’t that great of an idea either but when they say,
Maybe you could simply thank them for their support. I don’t think “It’s not something I would do,” is meant to devalue you it is just a new situation and we are surprised is all and we blurt that out not thinking.” Focus on their support Grace, let the rest go. Best of luck to you on your journey.
BTW I mentioned you on another blog this one is Catholic but they don’t really tell you that, MercatorNet. It is the first deeply anti transgender article I have ever read. (Maybe I don’t get out enough). I follow Civil Rights for Sexual Minorities quite closely and have read many many many gay bashing articles. But this article on MercatorNet is the first pure transgender bashing article I have ever read. It is simply anti transgender, and not a general anti gay + anti transgender, my first hate article I have read that solely focuses on denigration people who are transgender. I linked to your articles here Grace, in a comment. Comments are moderated.
The expanding gender agenda
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_expanding_gender_agenda
I even tweeted this to amp because I found it so shocking, I guess he has read things like this before because he tweeted me back and said that the article is the same old same old. But it was shocking to me.
Well, that much is true: everyone knows what “not transgender” means, but certainly not everyone knows what “cisgender” means.