Category: Thoughts

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Are transgender people meant to suffer?

sufferA speculation borne of personal experience, which is being verified as accurate in my own life experience.

As I wrote in the previous post about all those instances of mass suffering: is it random chance that people end up in these situations? If so, I could see how one could come to a conclusion like this:

“[the Universe is] a cold, uncaring place…[where our role is] to white knuckle my way through it, doing pointless things…until the day I die. At that point, if I’ve lived by my ideals, maybe God (or the universe) will give me some rest.”

Maybe this is the point transgender people (and others) come to shortly before committing suicide. I don’t know if transamorous men ever feel that level of despair, but we know many gay men have. And I would include them among us as “people born into potentially risky circumstances.”

But if the Universe is as nasty a place as that quote suggests, and there are many who believe it is, then the logical conclusion for some – the obviously rational and reasonable one – is to kill ones self. I mean if the person in question had no choice in the matter and  that choice was random and foisted upon them by some random-chance Universe, why can’t suicide be a logical response? I might consider the same option…

But that’s just shallow, lazy thinking.

Not the suicide part. I’m not here to judge such decisions. I’m talking about thoughts and conclusions which lead to beliefs that the universe is an uncaring, cold place.

I write that because there is literally overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including overwhelming evidence that every transgender person – and every transamorous one – came into the world clear of the decision to be such a person, with clear purposes for making that choice.

I explain how that could be, next week.

In short, transgender people and transamorous ones, aren’t meant to suffer. That they do is eminently logical when viewed from a particular perspective.

 

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Where does transgender come from?

Born this way but whyLet’s presume you’re a transperson, trans attracted person or a sympathizer or ‘ally’. Why on earth would you willingly choose to be born as something seen by the mainstream as such an affront that the chances of you being killed (in the case of a trans person) or at least ridiculed (in the other cases)?

Lady Gaga says we are all “born this way.”  Ok, but why?

Why were so many people born black in the slavery days, jews during the holocaust, or residents of Hiroshima or Nagasaki on those fateful days in WWII? How about the people born to live in Syria or Iraq? Why would someone be “born this way” only to become a murder victim?

Is it all random?

Really?

I don’t think so. And I don’t think science is going to be much help.

Science admittedly doesn’t know the answer to the question “where does transgender come from?” Hell, they’re still trying to figure out how “boys” and “girls” happen. And so long as it denies existence of a condition requiring no-time and no-space, I don’t think it’s gonna find it.

I believe “transgender” comes from the same place “transamorous” comes from: That no-time and no-space state we all come from. Religion calls this state “heaven”. I have had a long-running beef with this concept, but now I can see why religion calls it that (in various permutations). It is, indeed, a state of pure positivity, where all things are known and possible and All Things are eternal. But it’s not a white robes and harps kind of place.

How do I know? I’ll get to that.

Words come with so much baggage, it’s challenging to talk about our origins.  “Heaven” comes with so much baggage, it makes understanding where transgender and transamorous originate a sticky topic. Especially when, supposedly, the “boss” in heaven, according to some people, abhors what transpeople are.

So I prefer a less-loaded phrase such as “Infinite Intelligence”, “All That Is”, or “Source” to describe our origins. These words tend to come with less past meaning.

What if there were very good reasons for why people come into the world and face such seeming horrendous experiences. What if there were very good reasons why you came into the world as transgender or transamorous? That’s what I’m going to explore over the next series of short, pithy posts.

 

Stay tuned.

 

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When the “Tranimal” is something important

HIPPOA transgender person has coined both a new term and new identity: tranimal.

The article describing the writer’s identity made it into the peer reviewed journal on theoretical humanity called Angelaki. Essentially, the author, a transperson, identifies as a hippopotamus.

Fascinating. I’m not even going to try to get the pronouns right. I honestly can’t make them out. The basics in the author’s own words:

“It was, in fact, the main way through which I had learned to deal with what was broadly considered to be my “trans identity,” a term that always felt uncomfortable and irrelevant. For a while, if someone was asking me how I “identified,” I would joke about being a hippopotamus trapped in a human’s body – later, a human trapped in a hippopotamus’ body, until my humorous “truth” solidified and I began announcing myself as an old butch hippo dyke trapped in a young human faggy transboy’s body (it may sound better in French)…”

“…In a surprising, sometimes overwhelming way I find comfort in this collectively performed animal identity. Let me put it this way: something about being a hippo makes me feel cute, confident, sexy, and safe. I discovered that another self was available for me: being a hippo means that I don’t have to be a boy or a girl, a child or an adult, normal or strange. It means that my smile becomes a hippo smile, and the way that I carry my body, a hippo walk. It brings me freedom, space, and a thrilling sense of possibility. Where does this transformative power come from? How does a word, how does an image disrupt “reality” to the point that my body’s relationship to space is somewhat altered?…”

What I find so intriguing about this, especially as it relates to trans-ness and trans-attraction, is how much freedom humanity is aggressively taking in expressing itself in as many diverse ways as possible. I don’t know if humanity has always done this, but there seems perhaps to be a golden age to identity that is blowing to smithereens, nearly every convention of what it means to be human.

Another fascinating trend is being “Tell me I’m fat”. This American Life featured two weeks ago a show about women who are claiming being fat as an authentic identity, not something that should be shamed or be embarrassed about. The podcast episode is deeply satisfying…if you can accept the possibility that All That Is is getting serious about diversity, tolerance, and acceptance. Here’s a transcript excerpt. In case you haven’t heard the show, Ira is the host. Lindy is a fat guest.

“Ira Glass

Coming out as fat is a strange idea, because, of course, people can see if you’re fat. It’s no secret. It’s not like when you come out as gay or transgender. Nobody says to you, dude, I can’t believe you’re fat. Lindy says it was obvious how big she was.

Lindy West

But I always felt like if I didn’t mention it that maybe people wouldn’t notice. Or it could just be this sort of polite secret, like, open secret that we didn’t address, because it felt so shameful. It just felt impolite to talk about, like me not wanting to burden you with my failure.

Ira Glass

Like, I’m not going to bother you with this.

Lindy West

Yeah, and just give me a little more time. Let’s not talk about it, and I promise I’ll fix it.

Ira Glass

That’s key, she says. As long as you’re a fat person who’s trying not to be fat, that’s acceptable. That’s a good fat person. You don’t totally admit to yourself you’re fat, because, well–

Lindy West

The way that we are taught to think about fatness is that fat is not a permanent state. You’re just a thin person who’s failing consistently for your whole life.

[LAUGHTER]

So to actually say, OK, I am fat– and I have been as long as I can remember, so I don’t know why I live in this imaginary future where I, you know, someday I’m going to be thin.”

 

We’re certainly living in interesting times!

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One study: These men aren’t gay

They're not gayBeing gay isn’t a bad thing. Labelling trans-attracted and transamorous men gay, however, creates a host of problems for everyone. Especially because that label – that men sexually and or romantically attracted to transgender women are gay – doesn’t align at all with how trans-attracted and transamorous men actually feel. It’s very similar to calling a transgender woman a man…when she clearly is not.

I just received a 2015 study from a transamorous man, which appears to confirm the fact that men like us are not gay. While I realize science is hardly objective, and has often been used to discredit the LGBT community, I was inspired to read this study.

This study showed there is a great deal of overlap between the sexual tastes of straight men and men interested in transwomen, whereas there is very little overlap between gay men and the men interested in trans women. Here’s how the researchers put it:

[Transamorous and trans-attracted] men had arousal patterns similar to those of heterosexual men and different from those of homosexual men. However, compared to heterosexual men, [Transamorous and trans-attracted] men were relatively more aroused by transgender erotic stimuli than by female erotic stimuli.

I knew this all along of course. I remember seeing a counselor with past cis-gender partners for couples counseling, something I believed at the time had value and merit (I don’t now). After having seen me through several relationships, he suggested I see him alone a couple times. After that he recommended I see a friend of his, another counselor. This person tried to convince me to own the “fact” that I was homosexual.

That idea felt so naturally wrong to me. Not that being gay was bad, but because it just didn’t fit how I felt.

It still doesn’t.

Clearly, this is just one study. Still, you gotta start somewhere. It’s good to see science catching up. As the transgender community draws more attention to itself, I’m sure more people will start looking at the part of the community that gets very little attention…and a lot of vilification…from both the cisgender community and, sadly, the transgender community.

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A cheat sheet for the men

Youll find joy in your transamoryGentleman, there are so many women out there who happen to be trans who are appreciating us and our choice to live authentically. There are many who are sane (as sane as any other human), curious, open-minded and willing to self-examine. If I were in the shoes of men dealing with close-mindedness, drama and negativity, I wouldn’t say or think one more word about these women. If I were in these guys’ shoes, I’d focus on these other women, the empowered and employed, the happy and successful, until THEY are the dominant kind of transgender women I encounter.

If I wasn’t meeting these kinds of women now, I would focus on the idea of them. I would keep focusing on the idea of them and, listening to my inner voice, follow the impulses and explore where they lead. I would do this because I know in time I would begin rendezvousing with these kinds of women over and over until they were my dominant experience.

Along the way, I would look for and praise every result I could find as I did all this. No matter how small I would praise it. In this way, I would draw to me all manner of healthy, happy transwomen, and in my example be a powerful testimony for brothers like me.