It Takes a Village to Break a Child

I do not often get comments on my blog; if I exclude the pingbacks, spam and my own replies, I’ve received twenty-two comments from ten different individuals since I started the eye of paradox two years ago. Four of those people have identified themselves as transgendered, and like every transgendered person I’ve known, it has affected their lives as bad or worse than mine and I do not have to explain myself to them to be understood. For a long time, I’ve understood that this condition is difficult or even impossible for people who have not experienced it to comprehend. In order to live with normal people, the “cisgendered” if I use the term that’s come into use to describe those who identify with their birth sex, I’ve had to go to incredible lengths to comprehend and empathize with them. I’ve tried many, many times to find a way to describe what it feels like to live with this condition, hoping to make it easier for my family and friends to understand me. As I mentioned, I do not always like what comes out when I write on this topic, because it is a very intensely emotional issue and intensely emotional writing just encourages people to accuse me of being mellow-dramatic. I honestly expect most people to be driven away by the things I have written. Growing up, it did not take me long to learn how incredibly unsympathetic most people are about this issue. I was never asked to explain myself. With the exception of my adopted mother, who confronted me when I was six to ask if I wanted to be a girl, no one ever asked me why I acted like a girl. By the time she asked, I knew better than to admit it, since every other time someone noticed I was just slapped, spanked, or jerked around while being criticized for acting like a girl and being commanded to stop. That does not mean I was not asking myself why I acted like a girl. Even though the question was often on my mind, the only answer that ever rang true was the one that the facts denied.

Because I was being held to a standard of behavior I truly did not understand and which did not come naturally to me, I had no choice but to conceal my pain and confusion in order to conform to that standard. As I’ve said before, it had been made clear to me that my “disobedience” was justification for punishment, rejection and abandonment, so it did not take long before I was conditioned to assume that anyone who enforced the male standard of behavior could not be trusted. I could not ask anyone why it hurt so much to not be a girl or why nothing about being a boy made me happy. I could never understand why compliments and praises highlighting my qualities or accomplishments as a boy left me feeling hurt, hollow and unhappy. I did at least feel relief and gratitude for the fact that it made people happy with me, and at the time I thought that was what happiness was. I was not always caught on the double-edged sword of gender conflict. No one can be, because one thing that Sophia Marsden pointed out is true; life is full of things that can be appreciated no matter who or what you are. In fact, I pretty much lived for those things, using them to distract myself, and in my preoccupation I pretty much forgot myself and acted like a girl — perhaps a tomboy, I should say, since I managed to get away with it more often than not. If there is a bright side to my childhood, it was that I found ways to be as much like a boy or a girl as I wanted to, as long as no adults were observing me. Unfortunately, I was never comfortable with my genitalia, or the fact that the sensitive organ served as a constant reminder of why I was not a girl. It pissed me off that I was never allowed to let my hair grow, and I hated the clothes I was forced to wear.

The simple fact is, there was always something bringing the gender conflict to the fore. No matter how hard I tried to be obedient, practical and realistic, the notion of myself as a boy never took hold. I was always caught off guard by the realization that I was male, and even when I was trying my hardest to keep that fact in mind, I would look at the girls around me with admiration and envy, forever underscored with an ache of loss. I did not really wonder why, because I knew why I felt this way, and knew it was forbidden, so I simply did not allow myself to think of it most of the time. I just locked myself away and died a little more each day. In a sense, when I got my hands on an anatomy book and finally found out why I was not a girl, I understood what was expected of me. I still did not know why I felt like a girl, and I still do not know. I do not know why I feel like I am lying whenever I act like a man. It is a feeling that makes me feel so sick, I cannot even get past the stupid “male or female” check-box on a job application. I mean, if you look at me and assume I’m just another guy, then, well, whatever, I cannot blame you for what you see, but if you ask me, I no longer know what to say. I am no longer a child to be threatened with abandonment, I am no longer willing to give anyone the power to reject me. I am more than willing to do any job asked of me, but I am no longer able to ask for a job, and if I care even an ounce for my own well-being, I cannot say anyone can pay me enough to endure what I have to do to myself in order to work. I got into temping and contracting because, for the most part, I am never in a position to ask for work, I am asked for; unfortunately, even that is drying up, and once my savings run out, I’ll be stuck homeless in Alaska with winter around the corner. The scary thing is, that doesn’t frighten me. I’m long past the point where I can be motivated by fear. Or, I am more afraid of compromising myself ever again.

I do not want to die, and I do not want to quit, but I do not trust anyone, I know I do not fit in, and even though there are people who understand and care, I know they have to take care of themselves first. I have made little appeals for anonymous help because I know I need it, and since I do not really expect anything to come of it, I really feel no guilt for asking. When you hurt enough, you scream. It’s human nature. Walking by and pretending not to hear the screaming is too. I really have no idea what I would have done if anyone had stopped and asked what was wrong. I would really be at a loss if someone thought they could help and offered. If someone wanted to throw money at me, no strings attached, I’d take advantage of it; it would be stupid not to and even if I’ve lost the will to go on living like this, I’m still too stubborn to die. I go through these spells of crying for help unable to decide for myself if they’re the remnants of my morbid sense of humor, a way to make it clear that I can manage a cry for help without killing myself, or simply an example of believing in people even if I am no longer able to trust anyone. In the end, the reason I write is not in the hope of salvation, but in the hope of understanding the answers to questions I do not even know how to ask. The people who shaped my childhood did not understand me, and their actions hurt me because they were carried out by kind and caring people I depended on. I could not tell you who is responsible for breaking my spirit, or failing to simply ask “why does this boy think he’s a girl?” My father stepped out of the picture when I was three, my mother’s parents convinced her to put me up for adoption when I was four, I was passed around between extended family members and foster care like a hot potato. Someone, perhaps more than one, saw my natural personality as a problem and whatever they did, the damage was done by the time I found myself in a safe and stable environment. I guess that just means that sometimes it takes a village to break a child.

Hidden in Plain Sight

On April 27, 2008 at 12:36 am, I began a post — this post, actually — but got no further than the title. I don’t know if that was because that title summed up my feelings so well that there was no point to writing any further about what was on my mind. Yesterday, those words came back to me at the conclusion of A Glimpse into the Eye of Paradox. I’ve always thought of the truth as something that is hidden in plain sight, and approached it as something that we take so much for granted we really don’t know what to do with it. One might as well say that the truth that can be put into words is not the truth. Communication is more a matter of interpretation, and there is no singularity to interpretation. The truth is out there, and every time we encounter it, we are seeing it from a limited point of view. When we come across it again from a different point of view, we still recognize it as the truth but it not only appears different, we ourselves understand it in a different context.

As I said yesterday, I consider myself to be hidden in plain sight. There are days when it is not hard to think of myself as a very high functioning autistic, because the person I really am has almost no connection to the real world; I rely on an artificial mental construct to interact with people around me. The better that construct is, the more disassociated I actually am. As much as I hate the effect this has on me, and as much as I view it as evidence of my acquired distrust of people, I can see it as simply a more extreme form of social persona that is created by each person to deal with other people. We do not expect to be accepted for who we really are, and so we lie to gain acceptance. Little white lies, for the most part, and no one really thinks much about it. Of course, they hurt us, and this manner of hurting ourselves gives rise to shame and guilt over the lying and the possession of undesirable traits. So, maybe we all try to hide in plain sight.

By that, I mean, we try to conform. I obscured myself that way. The problem with conformity is that you have to believe in the existence of a norm. In that vein, I once looked at social gender constructs and human nature and concluded that each of us must be heir to all of human potential, so it was perfectly normal for a man to have many feminine traits that had to be denied in order to become a man. Because of social gender constructs, it was a natural if unfortunate consequence that men who possessed a number of so-called feminine traits would end up with dangerous inferiority complexes, both to conform to the social ideal of masculinity and to condemn in each other what they were insecure about in themselves. The problem with this assumption was that it implied that we have to choose but we do not have a real choice. In nature, any option that is not fatal is viable. In honesty, society would probably benefit most from men who possessed more “feminine” characteristics, and the men would probably be happier and healthier as well.

I conformed to the expectations of people around me because it was clear to me what would happen if I did not. When I really thought about it, it became obvious to me that the thing that messed society up so much was the perception of social ideals that ultimately favored one tiny group of self-justified elites. But, if that’s not who you are, you can never be happy trying to conform to that false ideal. I’ve seen a lot of people try to take advantage of these social constructs to pursue power, whether in the form of money, fame, or politics, but this is no path to happiness or enlightenment. This just reinforces the system that abuses the people under its influence. A warped social system is as responsible for creating and perpetuating the illusion of poverty as it is the illusion of prosperity. If you cannot fit in and thrive while being true to yourself, you can never gain anything from taking part. I learned that the hard way. I played the part I was expected to, only to have the life sucked out of me. If I had been paid in proportion to the personal cost of my sacrifices, I’d have billions by now.

Instead, I’ve got a hole more than deep enough to bury myself in. I have been shocked awake, as if by some near death experience, and I can no longer deny the truth of myself no matter how much of a misfit it makes me. I have to be true to myself, even if that means I have no hope of stable employment, even if it means I cannot function in the environment that would provide stable employment. I should be honest, I don’t want any job that I would have to lie to get or play a role to hold on to. I know that will only push me off the deep end. I am beginning to think that there is no place for me in the world of deep thinking, though it’s probably where I belong. I have always known that people have to figure out the important truths for themselves. It never hurts to write about them, to give people food for thought; once in a while, what you can write down is enough to lead someone else to their own epiphanies, and I’ve had enough of my own to map out a few promising paths. I would love to keep on exploring the frontiers of consciousness, but I just don’t have the right backing. I am not catching anyone’s interest.

I usually do not worry about the fate of humanity. I know that the truth is there for anyone who wants to see it; I know that people often see what they want to see, or use what they see to justify what they think, but as long as people are still curious and confront the paradox of death seriously, they can get past the usual mistakes and still get to the point. I was originally more interested in finding my own miracles and being able to point out precisely how they worked in the event I was able to solve my own problem using them. I have to pursue transformation because failing to would mean living a meaningless life and dying a meaningless death. That realization is part of what undermined my attempts to write fiction simply to support myself. I would much rather live the kind of story that comes to me than simply write it. I would rather be working actively toward my own salvation. I would rather be fighting for my soul. I would rather face the moment of my death with a smile and an understanding of what that step in the dance of life really was, and if necessary, be able to step around it.

I am not afraid of the prospect of oblivion, but I do find existence worth holding on to, even if I have to change it to make it work right. It’s a good idea and one that needs a lot of improvement, and while I may not be well equipped for that, I still want to work on it. I might have once tried to save the world, but it takes all of us to o that, so I am going to focus on ideas that might help people save themselves. I once said, “if you want to make the world a better place, you need to make better people” but I’ve revised that second part to, “you need people who want to make themselves better” and since you can’t force people to be better, you have to give them what they need to improve on their own. Society does not serve that purpose, but people can work inside of society to benefit more people. I was kind of hoping there would be people with resources and no ideas on the lookout for someone like me — I’m doing this one way or the other, with support or without, but… yeah, support would be nice — but I can see how hard it is now to believe in a single voice lost in the roar of the surf.

Thanks to the Internet, I simply have one more way to be hidden in plain sight. It’s not quite as bad as being the needle in a haystack, and at the same time it’s as bad as not being the only needle in the haystack. I really do not have much care for money, I have never been much motivated to make it since its not really the solution to the problems that really matter to me. I could use money to transition, to travel and do research, set up a better studio and information system, but most of the money I’ve made in life has been only good for paying for rent, food and bills. Most of the people I’ve known on a personal level have been in the same position. I have taken whatever work I could get to keep up with the bills. The problem is, I passed the point where I don’t care anymore. I want to keep working on some of the questions I am forever asking, and I want to share my observations still, but I am no longer afraid of homelessness and death, not enough to make the personal sacrifices I’ve made in the past for the privilege of starvation wages. If nobody sees me, if nobody hears me, if nobody really cares, that’s fine. If you didn’t notice I was here, I understand.

I have tried to ask for help. I’ve tried to catch people’s attention, and I’ve tried to put something worthy of interest out there for you. I have a lot more, but I am running out of time. I have to say that now, while there’s still a chance. I have to ask strangers for help like this because I am too inward bound to know how to get attention from the right people, people who can get what I am saying, who can see where I am going and who feel that it is as important as I do. The truth is hidden in plain sight, and so we overlook it every day. I think it’s past time we stopped and looked into it. I think it’s essential for us to survive and grow. I think that anyone who has confronted the prospect of oblivion should know better than to ignore the implications that are all around us. I think it is time we took our imagination and intuition as seriously as our reason. I think it is time we took our wishful thinking and stripped away the whimsy, and made a serious study of doing the impossible. Lots of people have dreams, but my dream has always been to achieve realization. The only way to do that is to be able to go beyond our normal thinking, and that is the stumbling block most people fall over. I can hardly get through the day without tripping over myself, but give me any other stumbling block and I can fly right over it.

A True Identity is Nothing to Fear

The response I received to my last post, Conundrum, prompted me to check out the recent posts of the people who commented or posted blogs in the transgender category yesterday. As a result, I became aware of the outcry against the appointment of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, Dr. Ray Blanchard, and J. Michael Bailey, by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), to the work group responsible for revising the entry for Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the Manual for Diagnosis of Mental Disorders. The first blog I read on the subject, posted by Gender Outlaw, struck a very personal chord with me. In addition to being transgendered, I was put up for adoption when I was four and spent a year in foster care while the state attempted to contact my biological father so that he might claim his custody rights. It was during my time in foster care that I was terrorized out of identifying myself as a girl and learned to keep my true identity a secret. It took time to learn how to restrain my natural impulses and act like a boy, and the threat of abandonment and rejection was used to reinforce “correct” behavior. By the time I was adopted, this conditioning had scarred me for life, rendering me incapable of trusting anyone with my true thoughts and feelings. When my new family noticed my feminine traits and confronted me with questions about my behavior, or offered even a mild rebuke for “acting like a girl” I was consumed with that fear of rejection and lied to deflect any suspicions.

To this day, I can not remember where I gained the fear of being institutionalized and subjected to shock or aversion therapy. It could have been something someone said to me, or around me. I do not recall, but having suffered an accidental electrocution when I was five I knew what it would do to me, and that fear ensured that my distrust extended to medical professionals in particular. I tried to understand why no one accepted me. Between the ages of five and six I learned the physical facts, and by the time I was seven I knew what a sex change was and how society viewed transsexuals. It confirmed my belief that, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, the thoughts and feelings that made me who I am marked me as abnormal and insane. To protect myself, I could never allow my true thoughts and feelings come to light — no matter how painful it was. The promise of abuse, the threat of violence and possibly even death was certain. I did not want to live like this. I wanted to be a boy, to be sane and normal and wanted in the world.

I did everything I could to accept the reality, carefully controlling my thoughts and feelings, training myself to think and act like a boy, even though I was often clueless about how. I observed and studied boys intently, trying to understand why they did the things they did so that my own actions would seem appropriate. I learned how to be friends with boys and stopped being friends with girls. I became lonely and miserable, my confidence tattered and thin because I could never trust my own instincts. Nothing I did could alter or prevent my true thoughts and feelings from asserting themselves, however. The plain and simple fact that I was not a girl caused instant agony, whenever it crossed my mind. I could understand girls without trying; often better than they understood themselves because my intuition flowed into an analytical mind that questioned everything that others took for granted.

I knew I was supposed to be female, but I did not have the right body and no means of changing it, though I pursued every possibility in secret to the point of absolute frustration and disappointment. I have not given up. I never gave up on finding a way to get the body that goes with my soul, but I struggle and fail to obtain the resources needed. The pose that I maintain, even now that I have overcome my fears enough to assert myself, costs too much. It takes so much out of me. I pay a price for every thought, word, or gesture committed to disguise the emotional tempest that has built up inside of me.

I do not like to answer people when they ask me how I am doing or how I feel. I have to lie, because there is no way to tell the truth. There is no way to describe how I feel, but I would not ask my worst enemy, the most abominable thing in existence, to feel this; how could I ever ask a stranger? How could I put that on a loved one? One moment of this pain is too much to bear. Sadly, when it is there every moment, you learn to. It can not destroy you because it can not exist without you. It is you. It is me.

…

I followed the posts to a petition against the appointment of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, Dr. Ray Blanchard, and J. Michael Bailey. I started this post to include the comments I left along with my signature, not realizing that cracking open that door would let so much out. Now I can see that my comment expresses the conclusions I reached on the repression of identity.

The use of any method to impose a state or frame of mind upon an individual to subvert or subdue that individual’s free willed expression of identity is nothing less than assault with a deadly weapon. No external agent or agency should be permitted to impose a belief, theory or system of thought upon any individual against that individual’s will. Voluntary self examination or constructive therapy should be sufficient to ensure that an individual with ambiguous feelings or confusion is able to resolve any uncertainty that could have negative consequences if an individual were to act in haste.

No one has the right to tell a person who he or she is. A body might house the mind, but it is the mind that makes a body into a person. It is a person’s privilege and natural obligation to assume and assert his or her own identity in accordance with his or her best understanding of him or her self; no one else has sufficient access an individual’s psyche. Social pressure of this nature is threatening enough to the formation of identity and causes significant trauma by itself; as a medical practice it would be an abomination.

The Impact of Social Stratification

We’re all human. None of us have a say in what circumstances we are born. Pretty much any other characteristic by which people can be defined produces some form of social stratification. Thinking about it boggles the mind. I’ve grown up with the ideas of caste and class, and tried to understand how anyone can willingly accept being “put in their place” by the people around them. In the end, I think it all comes down to the perception of power, the ways in which circumstances can be used to dominate society.

It is fair to say that society, like reality itself, is created and sustained by our participation. Society is an unspoken contract, and one that is sort of worked out on the fly and passed down in its present, imperfect form through each generation. We pride ourselves on the progress we have made, but honestly it seems that whatever progress we have made has been in spite of ourselves. But, how can we address it critically and sensibly?

It is so easy to point the finger of blame, or to rationalize human behavior, but I’m still asking myself, “Why does anyone put up with this?” There are certain things, things we have created, that make us desperately unequal. Consider the tendency of formal organizations to create authority, or formal systems to create wealth, or formal status or merit to create prestige.

These are useful things, but they need to be paired with responsibility, integrity, and humility. Look at the way that groups are formed on the basis of common identity or purpose, but create trends of positive and negative discrimination, and the guidelines for institutionalizing them as caste or class. Think of the many ways that individuals who have gained a privileged place in society have acted to protect their privilege by limiting opportunities, controlling resources, creating surplus labor forced to compete for reduced wages.

The fact is that any system or organization can be leveraged to create power, in one of many forms. Money is economic power. Prestige is social power. Authority is political power. This is power we all have, but depending on where we are in the system, that power is either channeled away from us, or right into our hands, and it happens because we allow it to happen. The problem is that social stratification dramatically shifts the balance and flow of power. The more concentrated the power structure becomes, the more severe the inequalities of society.

The ultimate danger is not revolution, however. The more extreme the imbalance is, the more coercive the power structure becomes, the more controlling it becomes. The real danger is not that people will fight the system. The real danger is that they will simply abandon it. They will try to escape their miserable lives through drugs and debauchery, they will turn to crime and simply take what they require, or they will quietly, desperately, take their own lives.

The Best Way to Fit In? Don’t Stand Out

Grouping is an activity that comes instinctively and automatically to people. It is part of a filtering process that allows us to make sense of our universe. Anything can serve as criteria for grouping, but because this is a perceptual-interpretive process; differences and similarities in physical characteristics are the most prevalent. As we learn and grow, we also associate ideas and experiences with the items in our cognitive inventory. We give values to people, places and things based on personal experience, inherited attitudes and beliefs, and assumptions. Part of our ability to form instant impressions and make immediate judgments is based upon preconception — ideas we have formed previously.

Stereotyping is the result of reaching conclusions based on limited observation or information — often inaccurate or unreliable information. The thing that really differentiates the act of grouping people from the act of stereotyping is thinking. When grouping, you are engaged in a thinking process, perceiving and interpreting raw information, but when stereotyping you are simply calling up some predigested conclusion to save the time, effort and attention required to make an accurate and appropriate judgment. It is called “jumping to conclusions” and it is something we do so much that we rarely even notice it. What this means for social relations is disastrous. By assuming that we “know” what we are confronting when we encounter another human being, we actually fail to perceive that individual as a person. We not only take him or her for granted, we automatically dismiss them as being worthy of greater consideration.

The tendency to concentrate into isolated ethnic groups is a natural instinct for most people. It stems from the desire for a common identity or a desire to belong, and apparently the easiest way for a person to fit in is to not stand out. It is an almost universal aversion to being different. It is the differences between us that become the focus of conflict, as immature as it is. The ability to single a person out of a group gives the group power or justifies decisions that would otherwise be unjustifiable. There are no human traits that are immune to discrimination.

Height, weight, color, sex, intelligence, class, nationality, regionality, whatever it is that makes an individual unique can be used to shut them out of the group. Racial discrimination gets a lot of attention, but what about gender-identity discrimination? When a person who has female psychology and male anatomy acts normal (that is, dressing and acting feminine) and gets raped and or murdered, that is an example of extreme prejudice and discrimination.

The fact is, being different is enough to get a person killed. The reality is, civilization is founded on an impulse that encourages intolerance and breeds fear of individuality.

Each new generation is raised in an environment defined by lingering prejudice and emerging enlightenment, responding to the lingering injustices in positive and negative ways that inform the next generation’s prejudices. The victims are not just disadvantaged minorities isolated from “mainstream society” in ghettoes, or resentfully integrated into “suburbia.” Most of the people in the world struggle with poverty and discrimination because poverty and discrimination tend to be self-sustaining and mutually reinforcing. The thing most people overlook is the fact that the rich are a minority isolated from mainstream society — including the majority of individuals of their own race or ethnicity.

While this may sound like a discriminatory statement, minorities continue to struggle with the System mostly because it is not their System. The government and industry of the United States was created by a specific group with the specific purpose of supporting and promoting their own group. It is a privileged system and while it’s laid out on paper as ideals and laws, it is made real by people who do discriminate and are prejudiced — sometimes negatively, against people of other races or ethnic origins, but primarily positively toward their own race and ethnic group. It is perfectly reasonable to point out this selfishness on the part of the elite, and it is not entirely enviable, but it is human. A better system can only be created by people who hold less exclusive views of people.