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On Identifying As Male
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, so I’m going to try to flesh it out a little bit.
At this point in my life, I am almost universally perceived as a man. Even to people who know my history, my thoughts/actions/experiences are considered to be male. Not because of a conscious identity, but because of social reality. I don’t have to establish and reinforce my not-female identity like I did 10 months ago; it’s just given to me. It’s a type of privilege, and I recognize that. When I act in ways that are gendered “feminine”, I’m considered to have a non-traditional masculinity rather than having “residual” femaleness. It’s easy to convey to others that I don’t subscribe to traditional misogynistic masculinity; it rarely even requires words. I feel that I am closer to women as a [someone perceived as a] man than I would have felt if I had been a male-identified [person perceived as a] woman.
This is confusing; let me try again. I don’t have to establish my difference from women; I don’t have to separate myself from femininity and womanhood. It’s taken for granted. When I express myself now, I feel like I am considered by women to be a really great guy–an especially nice guy, a feminist guy, a guy who is building community with women. If I had claimed a male identity before, I would’ve felt like I was forcibly separating myself from a community that I was a part of (for all intensive purposes). It would have felt like I was leaving a community with which I shared many common struggles in order to ally myself with a community that is the source of many of those struggles–a community I wasn’t a part of and knew nothing about.
And I just didn’t feel like a man, and I didn’t know what a man felt like. Now, though, inasmuch as I know what it’s like to be any gender, I feel like I know what it’s like to live as male. I am still just as profoundly uncomfortable with the sexism and homophobia and violence that are the hallmarks of traditional masculinity. But I do and will look like a man, be treated like a man, receive male privilege, challenge heterosexism as a queer man, and combat patriarchy as a feminist ally.
I want to live my life as the kind of man that I wish all men would be. I think that, at long last, is my working definition of what it means to be a man. And I am one, and I’m alright with that.
Subconscious Sex
From Julia Serano’s website:
subconscious sex
A subconscious, intrinsic, self-understanding that all people experience regarding their own sex embodiment. Cissexuals tend not to notice or appreciate their own subconscious sex because it is concordant with their physical sex (and therefore they tend to conflate for two). In contrast, trans people tend to be excruciatingly aware of their subconscious sex (as it is at odds with their physical sex). Trans people most often describe their subconscious sex as an intrinsic, inexplicable, deeply felt understanding that there is something “wrong” with the sex they were born into, or that they should be (or wish they could become) the other sex.
That nicely sums up some of my more current theories about myself. Namely, I don’t feel like I have any sort of gender trouble whatsoever. I’ve never had a particular attachment to any gender identity; my gender expression hasn’t changed in any meaningful way since I was first able to pull on my own shirt. I was no more or less fine being treated as female than I am being treated as male–which is to say, I think that the social roles that men and women are expected to occupy are largely bullshit, and I intend to ignore them completely, except to challenge misogyny where I find it.
That’s the biggest thing I’ve noticed lately–that the trans people I know haven’t changed, and don’t intend to change, their gender expressions. As a female-assigned person, people saw me as fairly “masculine”. These days I’m perceived as an adequately (if not particularly) masculine man.
I’ve noticed that I’ve tended to describe my experience as “body dysphoria” rather than “gender dyshoria”. My gender is still pretty stable–it doesn’t amount to much of anything, and I don’t really care too much one way or another. But mybody is the problem, because my very visceral sense of myself, and of my internal rightness, is male. My embodiment feels wrong.
I definitely can’t say that I wouldn’t have a problem if I had a male body but continued to be treated as a woman. But that’s only because people aren’t treated as women for the hell of it–they’re treated as women because their bodies are perceived as female. And for my dysphoria to be mitigated, I feel like I need to perceive my own body as male, and have other people treat my body as male..
Gender
I haven’t been thinking much about transition lately, and mostly there isn’t much to say. But my position on things has changed slowly and significantly.
I am perceived as male. 100% of the time. It’s been a long time since I worried which bathroom I belong in. I’m even starting to get pretty good at understanding male social codes. I’m completely relaxed about pronouns, and I still prefer male pronouns. Sometimes, I’ll realize that someone I’m getting to know has absolutely no idea that I’m not birth-assigned male. And I like it.
I don’t particularly feel like a man. I don’t really know what that feels like. I do, however, know that this makes me happy. I’m not sure if I’m genderqueer, exactly, except in the sense that I see gender as mutable, arbitrary, and often nonconsensual. If I appear gender-variant, it’s only in the sense that I don’t look straight–in sexual orientation, not gender. I’m only visibly genderqueer in the sense that the social markers of queer sexuality are often perceived as gender-cues.
And maybe that’s what it’s about for me? Maybe it’s not about gender identity at all. I’m not a masculine woman. I’m an androgynous-dressing, feminine-acting, non-woman. When I’m read as a queer guy, I feel affirmed. And I just want to be read as something that comes reasonably close to how I see myself socially. And I am, now.
These days, the most awkward social situations for me are ones in which I am perceived to be the straight-male half of a socially-sanctioned heterosexual relationship. I’m not all that upset about being perceived as a straight dude–I find it silly. But I hate for any of my female-assigned partners (none of whom identify as female or straight) to be read as straight because of me. But it’s not like being read as a lesbian couple was doing them any favors, either.
I’m not a man. I’m definitely not a woman. I might not really be genderqueer. I don’t really identify as transsexual. But I like the way I look, and I like where I am right now. So, I must be moving in the right direction.