Don’t Tell ME How I was “Socialized”

Someone lamented in a comment section (I know better, and yet…) that she would have preferred “male” socialization, even as it relates to being trans feminine, to her own lived experience. 

I gave a brief comment about not fitting in ANYWHERE, and being seen as something less than either male or female, ostracized all around. I wasn’t intentionally playing “Victim Olympics” -a game I detest- merely stating that one cannot genuinely ever “prefer” something one has no real knowledge of. 

She went on to write an amateur sociology textbook (in the comments section?) I have yet to read. 

My point remains. White folks saying, “I should’ve been born black” (or black folks wishing they’d been born with white skin) or even me saying I “should’ve been born a cis girl” or the queers wishing to have been born het, are all roughly the same folly. I wasn’t born a cis girl. I will never be a cis woman. I will also never be black. Or short. Or right-handed. I will never have naturally brown eyes. So for me, to wish for something I never had or will, is wasted time. To lament what my life wasn’t is to miss what it is. 

Many, if not most, of Us humans didn’t get all we wanted from birth. Even the friends I have who were born into wealth, yearned for direct parental attention. Or actual affection, or blue eyes. They yearned to be seen. Me, too! Being SEEN is a human desire we all share. 

It is vitally important to listen to ALL of our stories, and hopefully craft a world more conducive to the diversity that exists. But even among the “woke” -and that isn’t a bad word, but it should be an ongoing goal- many folks with more privilege become condescending toward those who’ve enjoyed less of what they took for granted. I don’t seek anyone’s “pity” because I am trans. I’m also NOT doing the sorting, because when we sort, we also discard. The point of hearing one another’s reality is to create a world where fewer folks are forced to suffer by virtue of “how” they arrived on planet earth. 

I do want folks to better understand my trans experience, and “the” trans experience shared by so many, yet so few, and uniquely different for each. The hope is that folks will see my humanity as an integral part of our shared humanity, and behave better. Many of my trans siblings are at great risk to their personal safety because of where they live, because they don’t “pass” (are not invisible to the cis eye) or because they were raised by people infected by religious ideology that often stands far apart from human decency and compassion. 

They tried to force me to “be” a “boy” when the concept was utterly foreign to the small being I was. It led to many tears and much frustration, and the compulsion to hide my essence and identity from a world I was assured would literally kill me over my perceived differences. These are the cards I was dealt. I shuffled my own deck, came of age in the early days of the AIDS Pandemic, and committed to life with a cis woman as my partner, without even having the words or capacity to explore the thing I really was-which was a bisexual trans woman. 

C-PTSD is real, folks. Those of us who grew up in abusive homes carry trauma in our bones. We don’t always regulate emotion or anger well. We often carry a sense of complete worthlessness. We feel disconnected from others, often deeply mistrustful. Carrying that shit into a marriage at barely 22 with a child on the way isn’t a recipe for a successful union. But it got the both of us out of our respective homes, and we set out to create something from almost nothing. I am happy that she has moved on to the financially abundant life she always wanted, that we were likely never going to have together. And two beautiful intelligent children, now grown, were the result. 

Actively trying to convey the tools I never had was an ongoing and intentional process that included weekly therapy, a whole lot of reading, and prioritizing those kids above all else. No regrets there, I promise. It’s the one “job” I had over those 24 years that I did not resent, kept trying to do better, and would do all over again. 

But I had to learn how to parent, just as I had to “learn” how to (badly, sadly, comically) “be” a man in America. I was thankfully raised in a gender-nonconforming household. Ironic, since they tried their level best to beat gender conformity into me. My father was softer than his contemporaries. He could sew, bake, garden, and crochet. He did laundry and hung it on the clothesline, often hanging the sheets on the outer ropes to form a “tent” from the neighbors’ eyes. 

It was my mother who was rough and tumble. She worked full time, played cards, loved a dirty joke, and had a gambling habit that nearly cost the house. She “wore the pants” in our family even as she didn’t own a pair until the later 1970’s. He was nurturing, she was not. He showed me it was possible to be a man who didn’t conform, and she, a woman who didn’t conform -but it was all very “do as I say and not as I do” in our house. 

Did I envy the little cis girls? Yes I did. Never the boys -their brand of growing up seemed rough and loud and violent. But is that envy the reason I am trans? Of COURSE not! The FACT that I am trans is the reason for my envy. But if I have learned anything over nearly 57 years on this planet being this situation over here, it is that I do not wish to be or have anything that isn’t mine. 

I can’t tell you I have enjoyed my life at all times. Especially through my childhood, and in the final throes of my first marriage. Those were things I am still surprised I survived. Had I not had two children I was desperate to give a better life to, my story would have ended at 29. 

I have been financially comfortable (briefly) and I have been poor. I have had few friends in this life, and many. I have been frightened and hopeless and filled with profound grief, and I have had exquisite moments of ecstasy. I have been treated with respect, and spit on. Loved, and beaten. Hated, and cherished. I have scars. Physical and emotional. But I am determined, on my better days, to see this whole thing through. 

Back to the grown woman who would have “preferred” to live my “socialization.” 

You didn’t, friend. 

You showed up where you did, as you did, and me the same. 

Not one of us chose the where and how of it all. But how we participate in what we have found is entirely up to us. What we accept, and what we fight against. Whether we fight at all. If and how we educate ourselves, or avail ourselves of the education fed us. Where we start we do not control, and where we land we don’t control much. But the stuff between our ears, oozing from our pores, and interacting with the rest of humanity? Ours. Each. We do have something to say about how we will be remembered. 

I felt trapped. Condemned to a life being something everyone seemed to despise and deride. Hating on trans folk is a sport everyone can get behind! No bounds of color, language, gender, sexuality or economics required! And when you mix in religion they can feel pious about it, too. Bonus, right? Trans people are still fighting for the right to be seen as REAL, let alone simply Rare. We can’t all even agree as to the “fact” of us being humans, too. And more and more folks out there think a discussion of our right to exist is completely sensible. Warranted even! Imagine! 

Many of you don’t actually have to imagine, because you have been othered, too. But differently othered. So you think it IS different. It really isn’t. I have as little control over my gender identity and sexual orientation as you have over your skin color or country of origin. Believe it or don’t. 

Every lived experience under the LGBTQ+ umbrella is real and valid and within the Human experience. We are not behavior, we are people living from the same source-wiring as the rest of y’all. Ours is just differently arranged. And not by us. But it is no less real and no less valid and no less worthy of respect. I’d venture it is worthy of far more human respect by virtue of the fact we are forced to know ourselves in ways most folks never begin to consider. Religion, by the way, IS a lifestyle choice. Finding and expressing the words that align with your experience of humanity, is living a Life. And as for me, I am beyond done apologizing that you might find my life inconceivable to You. It makes perfect sense -finally- to ME. 

I will never again lament being trans. Nor am I trying to be a cis woman. I am THIS woman. And until and unless one of the deplorables takes the life from my body early -which is always a very real, religion-sanctioned and Chik-fil-A financed  possibility- I will Be THIS woman. And if you actually envy this road enough to tell me it’s “better” than yours, I can’t stop you. But I won’t be joining you, either. 

And one of these days I'ma finally stay out of the comments section for once and all. 

If each of us would simply take the responsibility of being the best individual “us” possible, whether that means working to level the playing field or pointing to those taking disgusting advantage of an imposed and unearned advantage, or even simply minding our own business and tending our own garden -we’d all be the better for it. Hurt people do hurt people. And there are souls out there of every stripe struggling, and for far too many, life is an unending nightmare. For many, the only agency they see comes from ending their own life, perhaps the only time they have ever felt fully in control of anything. 

So I will not envy anyone. I have given up wishing things past had been different. We can’t alter history, even as many of us try with force to whitewash it. Yesterday is just as gone as 2,000 years ago. And it will never be back for a revisit. I can only do my best in the present, moving ever forward. And if that’s where you also choose to live, I’m here for you. 

The only way we will ever begin to understand one another’s stories is to fucking LISTEN to them -we can never effectively tell others who they are without diminishing them, and ourselves by the process. So stop already. Live your own story, as fully as possible. And find the gold within You. There’s your mission, Human. 

Peace, Lovelies

-MM

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