Recognition in trans narratives (a post that is actually about me, a cis man)
I think, through the years, I’ve found many trans narratives (down to the level of Posts) captivating. That is, I think I find something I recognize or identify with, even if I’m cis.
This recognition is not, I think, an identification with transness (but maybe queerness), but with something more abstract like the pain of self-emancipation.
As far as I’ve understood, coming out, to yourself (and to others) van be a painful experience – you’ll have to disassemble your idea of yourself tied to the wrong gender, and to become “yourself, but more so,” you’ll have to change. At the other end of this process lies pleasure and (more importantly) freedom, but the process is painful, even so. And terrifying. An important difference here is that you can be gay, and invisible if you so wish, but the process of transitioning is visible, even if the goal/result is passing for cis at the other end. You need to change how you’re seen by others, and you need help from others (medicine, bureaucracy, etc.)
That is, conditions not of your own choosing force you to undergo an at times painful and terrifying change in order to live a free life.
So too with certain forms of mental illness – e.g. personality disorders. A personality disorder is something you get as a combination of genes and the conditions of your upbringing, asserting itself as a mal-adaption to bad conditions and ossifying into a part of your personality even in adulthood (hence the name).
These are treatable conditions (contrary to old thinking), but as you can intuit, treatment essentially means changing yourself as a person. That is, a change in order to become free (or “healthy”). For me at least, this a both painful and terrifying process.
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I think there is a recognition even in the process of realization. I always thought I just kinda sucked, and my trying for a different way to live in the world (and to relate to other people) was a malignant, self-pitying activity. The realisation through seeing myself in a set of diagnostic criteria is both, well.
Both a liberation, in that I realise the changeability of my condition. A relief in that it doesn’t have to be like this, but then also terrifying, the horror of changing, and seeing that it’ll be painful.
Another pain is that I can clear-as-day imagine myself in a “liberated” way of being. Is this not what certain trans people see in their minds? A liberated, post-transition self, livelier and more at place in the world? I think the horror of this realisation, and the longing for a different state of being is, I think, coming across these experiences. In the case of my mental problems, at least.
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Maybe somewhat particular to my – or to my variation of personality disorder (avoidant) – is also the fear of being perceived and the simultaneous desire to be perceived (as, mind you, yourself as you really are). This seems to me typical in many trans narratives (?). For me at least, the way I dress and act is very much affected by fear – I dress “neutrally” and (often) act in way as to not “cause trouble” or bother anyone, or the like. If I did as I really wish, both these things would be different. (I would certainly dress in more colourful outfits than I currently do, were I not paralyzed with fear). Compare the boymoder.
How many trans people don’t end up appearing and acting quite different beyond the “simple” change in gender presentation, once they are at ease with themselves? It’s a story at once both different and familiar to my own mind’s desires.
A point of divergence: It seems to me many trans people find refuge online, and here they may live out their gender without the confines of direct (bodily) perception). (a reason why so many furries are trans?)
For me it has not been so, and thinking about it in this comparison I guess it’s obvious as to why (though I never understood it in my adolescence) – my problem isn’t my physical being, but rather my “mere” existence as a person. Simply relating to others is a “crime” I commit. And so, it never mattered whether these relations were online or offline. (The benefits of pseudonymity have been present and certainly, in my 20s I ended up with a more lively social life online than offline (helped by covid), but fundamentally my inhibitions are the same.) I have many abandoned blogs and posting attempts behind me, for this reason. I think it’s only now, realising what the problem “actually” is, that success is possible.
I guess it’s like this: with being trans, the fear of judgement has a clear referent – the transness. With a personality disorder it is not so. Any way of being could be wrong, so really self-isolation is the only “acceptable” way to be. There’s no reference but yourself, entire. (And also – there’s no specific phobia! Trans people have the real phenomenon of trans hatred to worry about.). This is probably why coming out as gay was so difficult for me – after all, that’s an actual thing to be judged as.
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What’s the point, here? Well, the comparison interests me, I guess. I think part of what really compels me about trans narrative, is the idea of actual liberation. There is a point where you’re actually more free (as in freedom, not pain-free). I think this, even though gender is not my “thing” gives me a, I don’t know, script? template? through which I can imagine my own self-emancipation.
That is. If you read about personality disorders, you on the whole get descriptions of a diagnosis, and how much it sucks, and maybe some idea of treatment (but there being little research, the descriptions are quite vague). There is very little, as far as I know, in the way of narratives of what “the other side” of treatment – liberation – is like.
Maybe this is because in the framework of healthcare, the “point” is being “normal” – as in a healthy working adult. Self-realisation is not really permitted as being at stake. Maybe. Or, maybe it’s that liberating one’s “personality” is anyhow so individual and unique in its form, that actually giving a “general” description is impossible (I’m not so sure about that). Or, well, maybe personality orders are so taboo that to talk of them after you’ve gotten better is too costly? Ah, well.
In the anglosphere it seems that the way to talk is about “remission” from whatever personality disorder you have. This is maybe accurate, but also seems a bit of a sad framing. Personally, I think an emancipatory framing is better – as you will never stop being trans, so may you never stop having a personality disorder (maybe), but well, so what? Is it not better to go through the (eternal) process of liberation than to imagine a disorder like a tumour to be kept at bay? I think so, at least.