“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people”
-Cheris Kramrae and Paula Treichler.
I would argue that actually feminism is the radical notion that people are women-or men for that matter.”
Both/Neither man or woman
I am Transpersonal.
PART 1.
Transsexual the very word is so loaded with stereotypes and fetishsizing connotations; of a chick with a dick or man transitioning to be a woman or a woman who is trapped in a man’s body amongst many others. It contrives my gender experience into a physical reality exclusively that exists both in difference to the controlling binary stereotype of men and women and yet made to conform to the rule of being exclusively either a man or a woman trying to be the opposite. The very word Transsexual cultivates my reality into a terminology created by psychologist who are at best profiteering witnesses to the experience.
And so if I don’t want to use the word transsexual or transgender for that matter since both terms idolize and support the presupposed binary norm of exclusively male or female potentials in the world then what on earth do I call myself? Perhaps I am Transpersonal…a being who expresses the potential of human gender; emotionally, physically, psychologically, sexually and no, none of these words are in chronological order.
And so as a transpersonal being I acknowledge a biological basis for my physical self living within the confines of a gender binary obsessed culture and as such I accept transitionally terms like transsexual, transgender, intersexual, homosexual, eunuch, androgynous or whatever other term you can apply sexual too and oh yes don’t forget gender queer or just plain gender fucked…
But none of that changes the way I feel.
Yes, I was raised by the appearance of a boy but that still does not define me as truly ever having been a boy…and that I do not consider myself ever to have really ever been a male not in the cultured sense or in a biological sense and therefore I am not ever really a male who became a female and I was never a woman trapped in a mans body and although I kind of like it now at least in a past tense 20/20 hindsight kind of way of appreciating history that maybe for a while I was a chick with a dick but even that was only a transitional blink of an eye still I am left again with just having to say I was not a boy and never a man and so equally I must never have been a girl unless I was a girl with a penis but either way not a girl in the cultural norm sense and therefore I am not a woman so in the most honest and humble way I will tell I could never have really been a transsexual at least not in the ways you think after all if I was never a boy I was never a male and I never had to really transition my sex or my sense of self only transition the illusion of an inappropriate confine of gender that was wrongly placed on me based alone on infant genitalia… and so no I am not transsexual… I am transpersonal.
I am Transpersonal.
PART 2.
If you ask me I might say I was born “intersexual” but that’s just one of those clever psychologist terms that nicely integrates male and female in a clinical dysfunctional way but still because of the pervading dominion of the binary exclusive gender code that society acknowledges and demands right now I will use it and just say despite that fact I was conformed to be raised as a boy. But I was never a boy. In fact I feel being raised only a boy completely negated the possibility of any real actual authentic identity. I mean
to base my entire gender for the experience of my whole life simply by infant genitalia is too grotesque and limiting. Even then if you still want to look at another way, then I could maybe tell you I use to sometimes think I was a girl born with a dick. But then that still doesn’t quite fulfill who I am now and so I still have to say I was not a boy and I was not a girl. And therefore I’ve never been a woman and I’ve never been a man.
I truly am another.
The true word if there ever was one must have been lost when those who confessed they were this other had their tongues and more cut out by those who demand boys be boys and girls be girls.
And those same people with all their many knives, knives of power, religion and more are the same ones who have created the fear that still lingers and makes so many of us hold our tongues even now when we want to confess our honest truths especially when our truths transcend the naked body or sexual desire.
And when we do we say with the most bitter of tears, “its not my fault. I didn’t ask to be born this way. I can’t help it. It’s a birth defect…” we hope they’ll pity us and not hurt us with their knives any more.
I know this because I use to say all of these things and now I’m not afraid to say the real truth even if I have to stick my tongue way out and lick the words into your ear… and then tell you where you can stick your knife!
Because what is really grotesque is to feel being who I am is a shame….
But I am not ashamed, not anymore. I am not a victim. I believe I am a divine being, a conscious sentient being capable of incarnating into the experience of life. I believe I chose with conscious divine intention and will power before the birth of this body to be born willing to experience the reality of a body with the experience of gender, gender in all its glorious power. My body, my gender is not a birth defect. It is not a mistake. It is beautiful and has made my life worth living. Only because you or someone you know would stigmatize me and denigrate me for being simply who I am have I had to suffer.
Only because society with its demeaning and limited idea of two genders was I forced to suffer and experience personal turmoil in having to realize myself into a complete biological schism and go crossing from one seeming gender extreme to the other…
And I have done this bravely with great determination and willingly suffered just to prove the power of my own gender and the ability of my gender to be more then either stereotype of what it is to be male or female but to truly be an empowered human being… a caring, honest person. In short to be transpersonal.
