Transcending Boundaries: Loose Thoughts

[rax]

I took notes on all of the events I attended at Transcending Boundaries, all of which ranged from good to awesome, but I wanted to get some of my thoughts out on a particular issue, which is how I reacted to being around a whole pile of trans, bi, poly, and intersex people for a weekend. (We were also sharing the hotel and convention space with some sort of cheerleading competition, which was extra weird.) This is all very navel-gazey and mostly about me and those topics up there, so if you don't want to read about that, stop reading, I guess.

At some point during the conference, eredien turned to me and said "You do realize that your voice went way up in pitch and you started adding a bunch of qualifiers into your speech, right?" I was like "No, of course not! I'm totally not doing that, what are you talking about" and it took until the ride home listening to my voice to go "Oh my God I sound like 2003." When I was at the point of Trying Really Hard To Pass, one of the things I did was bring my speaking voice up into breathy-high-pitched-land. Friends and family (sometimes even the same person at different times) were torn about whether this really helped bring home the difference, or just made me sound like a fool; I didn't really have any transpertise to rely on so I just went with it. Eventually I stopped doing this, although it had definitely succeeded in atrophying something in my vocal chords (as I discover on the rare occasions that something causes me to try to sing bass). As you might suspect from my working in sales in California and then in phone support for my current job, I'm not particularly worried about my voice except in brief moments of paranoia; it works, great, whatever. Recently I'd actually been trying to bring my pitch down, for reasons I'm going to leave out here. So discovering I had done this was really frustrating.

I knew why --- or at least I knew the place where I had to start to untangle what was going on in my head. I was spending a bunch of time with trans people, in particular trans women, who I saw as not passing as well as me. Now there are a few things going on here:

• I have a very competitive streak (as anyone who's played Race for the Galaxy with me knows), and so I wanted to position myself as Doing It Right.
• I'm made uncomfortable by some people who don't pass well because of my own internalized transphobia, and often express this in an attempt to distance myself in my presentation, whether it be in "passing better" or in acting unfeminine. In fact, my tiptoes into butchness and androgyny may have a little bit to do with trying to distance myself from what I see as "traditional" transfemininity. Of course, none of the trans women I [know I] interact with on a regular basis really do this at all. But at Transcending Boundaries, there was a lot of "You're six three why are you wearing heels." The obvious answer, of course, is "Because I want to. Why shoudn't I wear heels? To accommodate your trangst?"
• The conference itself as a space full of genderqueer persons actually has some of that internalized "I need to do this better than you" going on. I'm not the only person there with internalized transphobia; I'm not the only person there with a complicated relationship to gender. I think a new friend I made on twitter expressed this really well over in eir blog. This was my first time in a really genderqueer space; I feel like for the most part I fit in well, but there was definitely some amount of "Yeah, boundaries are being policed here too."
• I occasionally have mixed feelings around passing to begin with; someone at the conference made the excellent comment that "Passing isn't a matter of being better or worse than someone else, it's not something to feel guilty about or proud of." Still I can't help sometimes feeling guilty, and sometimes being prideful. It's a thing.

Despite all that I was remarkably comfortable being out and up front about my embodied experience, so that part was cool at least. Even if it was possible in this kind of space to "do trans wrong," or at least to do it more right than someone else, it was definitely not wrong to do trans. That in and of itself is pretty cool; in most social settings, even with people I know are chill, I am usually pretty reticent to talk about trans stuff. (One could argue that I am giving in to a covering demand: It's OK to be trans, and I don't necessarily have to keep it a secret, as long as I basically don't talk about it and just pretend I'm a cis person whenever it comes up.) This is changing gradually, though it's still kind of pulling teeth. I prefer to screw around with gender in my appearance, which feels safer to do now that I'm read as female ~all the time, although in some ways it's actually harder --- it's much easier to freak someone out with a beard and a skirt than it is with *gasp* boy jeans.

I have a different and related set of issues surrounding non-monogamy (and some of the other groups at the conference --- in particular the couple of people walking around in lots of leather made me kind of uncomfortable --- but I'm going to focus on this one here). There's this voice in my head that sees "I <3 > 1" pins and shirts with three people-symbols holding hands and is all "Ugh, do they really have to flaunt it? That's so gross." This leaving aside, of course, that I've gone to restaurants with two partners, or walked down the street, in a way much more in your face than wearing a button, and flaunted much more at the public than wearing a button at a poly conference. I mean, come on Rachel. :) I think part of what's going on here, and maybe a little in the trans case too, is a sort of ageism --- I associate black-t-shirted poly people with the Diesel crowd frozen in time when I was a terrified undergraduate and they were all Oh My God Old. I'm now actually friends with a number of those people, and occasionally even go, but not all of that wiring is cleared out of my head yet, and this conference was definitely an opportunity for me to see the places where I still hold some of this discomfort and am projecting it onto other people. It should arguably go without saying, but if I'm uncomfortable with someone's non-monogamy, the problem is with me, not with their behavior and presentation. And if I'm uncomfortable with their non-monogamy, what does that mean about my level of comfort with my own?

If grappling with this stuff was all that I got out of the conference, it would have been well worth my time, but more draining than rejuvenating and maybe not so fun. Luckily, the actual workshops and the other experiences I had there were super awesome. Hopefully I'll be writing about those soon! In the meantime, here's some stuff I need to work on in my own head. It's so much easier to do that if I can enumerate it, so, rock.

Comments

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that you're putting these thoughts in semi-public - making experiences like this discoverable helps (even a tiny bit) for everyone coming after and trying to make sense of things.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Mmm. We have some friends who are MtF who have expressed concern at the attention-drawing way I tend to dress. And they are nowhere near as far along in their transition, still worrying about if they pass, trying to Fit In instead of figuring out their own insane, unique personal style.

When I go too long without talking about my gender stuff, I find some part of me wanting to stand up and say "hi, if you didn't know already, I'm trans". I did this in a quiet way the other day, when uploading a 'show a casual photo' meme (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3074077/) to FA - note the 'gender' tag on the right, and the discussion beneath. Because some part of me knows that SILENCE == DEATH. I don't usually want to have looong discussions about it, but I like to keep that fact out there. In part because if I'm out about it, nobody can use it to attack me, nobody can threaten to reveal that SHE HAS A DICK!!! when I casually list my sex as 'dickgirl'; in part because it's an example for people who're considering transition, or are liable to trans-bash by default: here's this strange, interesting, pretty, smart woman, who does beautiful art, and happens to be trans.

also you need to tell me where you managed to find good heels for big tranny feet. unless you are exceptionally small in the foot department and can go shop off the rack in normal stores, in which case i hate you with the blazing hate of a thousand thousand envious suns. *n.n*

[rax.livejournal.com]

My feet are women's 13 wide. I got my pair of ridiculous heels at Teddy's Shoes (http://www.yelp.com/biz/teddy-shoes-cambridge) in Central Square, but unlike most of the Yelp reviewers, I am in the "he is a lechy chaser and I am never setting foot in that store again" camp. Your mileage may vary, but I strongly recommend going in with a partner. Alternately the Flea (http://www.nelaonline.org/fff.php) will have a bunch of vendors with better selections, although there is an admission fee. (You can volunteer to get out of it if you don't mind carrying boxes for a couple of hours.) For normal shoes, I just use Endless (http://www.endless.com/), Amazon's shoe store. They carry enough things in a 13 and I don't actually need that many pairs of shoes. (Heresy, I know.)

I've actually been dealing with a stalker outing and threaten to out me in various places, which honestly is part of why I am just going ahead and making this public; the people who actually read this who I was trying to keep the information private from, I have now already lost. I was working on this anyway, though the way it happened sucked. I've always been really psyched for how you handle things, though, and I think as I work out my own issues it's being easier for me to just be up front about it. :) Personally, I vacillate between wanting to fill in the gender field as "Awesome" and "Fuck You" depending on my mood. Usually neither of those options are available, so it doesn't matter.

I do also get the thing where if I've known someone for a long time I eventually want to tell them, not even because I think it's that important, but because eventually I am just tired of thinking about whether or not they know.

[twitch124.livejournal.com]

Side comment, unrelated to the core points: freaking boy jeans! I'm a cisgendered female and want to fit in men's Levi's 501s again so badly my gums bleed from the teeth grinding. But these are orthoganal body issues and feel free to ping me in person if you want to hear me rant about someone calling me on my bullshit last month.

[kelkyag]

and I don't actually need that many pairs of shoes. (Heresy, I know.)

I may be a heretic.

vacillate between wanting to fill in the gender field as "Awesome" and "Fuck You" depending on my mood

I so wish this worked.

I am just tired of thinking about whether or not they know.

Just thinking about that paranoia cycle is exhausting.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I only really need like three or four pairs of footwear - something a bit less casual than the sandals I have now, a pair of boots that actually fit and look cute, and maybe a couple others.

How long ago did you start your transition? According to LJ (yay for XJournal's local copy and its search function) I started in '03; I might be able to be public about it because I've just been at it longer. Or maybe I'm just more comfortable with going "HI I AM A DICKGIRL" due to all the years hanging out in the Herm Haven on Furrymuck and Taps, I dunno. It took me a year or two to get to the point of talking about it publicly, I think, and further to get to the point of being blasé about it. (For instance, there was one ugly argument where someone tried to True Name me, and… I was pissed off for a couple seconds, then realized that, hey, I just all respect for him because he went that low and is more than queer enough to know just how low that is; ever since then the Boy Name has never been a hot button. Though I still look up when people use it to someone else nearby.)

And yeah, secrets suck. Much less work to be open about it.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Also it is good to know that other trannies with passing privilege get uncomfortable around people who don't pass all that well. I, too, feel kinda guilty about that feeling. This is part of why I generally avoid gender-themed social events!

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who was telling me recently that he's found he makes his trans friends uncomfortable because he's not TRYING to pass - he's just one of those people who takes whatever gender cues he wants to and mixes them all up. And his obvious genderfuckery draws attention to them in ways that makes it less likely they will pass.

I can relate. Sometimes I feel like people like us who have no respect for gender are the opposite of trans. But then to cisgendered people we seem like we're the same. *shakes head*

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

To cis people we are the same - because we're on a different axis than the man/woman spectrum they want to collapse into a binary choice. We may be at different points on our spectrum but to them, we're all just off in Weirdville!

I dunno how I feel around genderfucky people. I did have fun experimenting online, recently, with a character whose description used male pronouns, but whose narrative voice used female ones, but that's a far cry from deliberately mixing things up.

[kiya]

Re: gender field, I don't know if I've pointed you at this icon of amberite's, but the 'awesome' vs. 'fuck you' comment reminded me of it.

I Said Yes I Meant No

[etesla.livejournal.com]

But at Transcending Boundaries, there was a lot of "You're six three why are you wearing heels." The obvious answer, of course, is "Because I want to. Why shoudn't I wear heels? To accommodate your trangst?"

This. And it's not just trangst - not to coop your experience, but I'm a 6'2" non-trans woman, and I get that shit all the time. Are we in Siam? Do I really need to keep my head below the emperor's? I wear flats (or close to flats) about 90% of the time, but I have a few pairs of heels I absolutely love, and I'm not going to selectively wear them so as not to offend peoples' sense of how unhappy I should be with my height.

I leave you with a bit of Dean Young, for he is wonderful:

Each case is profoundly nuanced
like the lock systems of Holland.
Some, frankly, are beyond help,
but if you are a tall woman, wear shoes that make you look taller!
Candy corn, what kind of person doesn't like candy corn?
Tell that 70/35% rock couple you cannot come,
you forgot your fencing lesson,
your cat had a puppy,
your tongue is green,
you are in fact dying.
-- Dean Young, I Said Yes I Meant No

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Do tell me if I've ever said this to you before, I'm incredibly self involved and hence forgetful of aspects of other people that might be important to them, but I didn't have the slightest notion you were trans until you just outed yourself. It's not like we've known eachother for a long time, still I was surprised. I spent one evening in your company at your residence at the time of Shatterstripes's Silicon Dawn Tarot show. Learned how to play race for the galaxy there. Well, learned the mechanics of the game anyway.

No one briefed me on quite who you were, and it was enough for me to know you were a friend of the folks in the charmdown apartment, and hence probably "good people" but you were one of a few people who I met on that trip who I'd never met in person or online before, and I'm always rediculously nervous when I don't know someone and I'm with other people who may be furry, or intelligent, or queer, and I don't know what topics might not be cool to bring up. So initially I was scared of you as I am of all people I do not know.

I concluded that you were probably a lesbian through inspection of your home's furnishings. I have never knowingly been in the home of a lesbian. I don't know why I am carrying around a platonic ideal of a lesbian couple's dwelling, or where that ideal came from. But from the cosy little living room with overly soft furniture, to the cats under feet, to the artfully displayed liquor shelves in the corner of the dining area I concluded that this is a space created by multiple females for mutual comfort without the influence of a male. That might be a problematic sort of conclusion to come to, all the same it is the one I did secretly come to, and by coming to it satisfied myself that you were not a threat because I could deduce a non-explicitly stated secret about you; a compulsive need that my nervousness requires. Sort of an intellectual dominance game I always get to win because no one knows I'm playing, I guess.

After hearing you speak for some time, and reading your journal online here I've since come to the conclusion that you are easily my intellectual superior, but that does not bother me because you are now more familiar to me than you were then and no longer trigger my natural fearful reaction to strangers.

But just now, discovering that my stupid little deduction was partially incorrect in a questionably significant way was a surprise. If I hadn't already concluded that your mind is superior to my own I would have felt it was an unpleasant surprise, but already having concluded that I must respond to your brain's workings as inherently ineffable this sudden revelation only serves to make me arch my brow and think "Goodness, good show! You fooled me again and you didn't even know we are playing!" Again, I know that might be a somewhat insulting thought to state, even insulting that someone might have such a thought privately.

Anyway, your sexuality was of interest to me because I wasn't, and still am not, entirely sure if the goth catgirl rave preoccupation is maliciously gender exclusive, since the combination of those three things into one event instantly compels me to imagine myself there, yet I present as a cisgender male out of knee rattling fear of presenting myself any other way.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I like that! I've also seen "*tWTF" and like that construction a lot.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I started in 2002. I think part of the difference is that I was much younger, and another part of the difference is that my career has been way more staid; I also until relatively recently didn't interact with many other gender-variant people at all. I think maybe I just bought into the passing narrative much more?

Sometimes secrets are useful. I know that I've lost job interviews in the past for being trans; it's a position of privilege to be able to put this somewhere googlestalkable and know that I'm not going to get fired and I can find work again if I want. (It also helps that the world around me has changed since 2004 and I am no longer in Los Angeles.) At some point a year or two ago I realized that the useful wasn't outweighing the suck but Ive only recently done very much with that knowledge.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I don't think that disrespecting gender is the opposite of trans at all! I totally disrespect gender, I've just used it in a very specific way to be more comfortable in my body and in the world around me.

Re: I Said Yes I Meant No

[rax.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent point, thank you.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think we're quite the platonic ideal of a lesbian house, if only because we've had plenty of non-lesbians live here and contribute to the decor. But it's true that our decoration tends toward the feminine, even with our Token Guy (lutris) making pretty significant changes in the house layout. :)

I don't think it's particularly incorrect to call me culturally a lesbian; I don't see having been born with dangly bits as changing that particularly. (Of course, I have this romantic entanglement with this boy but that's neither here nor there. :) I do recognize that it changes the way some people perceive me --- and that's a big part of the reason I was stealth for so long and continue to be somewhat coy about my trans status, that I don't like that people's perception of me changes. I'm not trying to criticize what's going on in your head --- I do it too, find out someone is trans and go "Oh, huh, mental model reintegrating." But I've had that reintegration occasionally go really poorly and make me sad. Yours doesn't particularly bother me, and is even a little flattering, but in that problematic "no Rachel, passing doesn't make you better than anyone else" way.

Catgirl Goth Rave is not meant to be maliciously gender exclusive and I don't think it's read that way by the people who've attended. But if you feel like the publicity and invitations have been exclusive, that's something I should work on. We have plenty of cisgender males in cat ears, and only a couple of them wear skirts. ;)

[taliabear.livejournal.com]

a) I have a friend with that exact same icon, and b) I totally met that girl at Thresholds this year.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

*nod* I started late in life (later than I would wish I had, but not like I can change that). I was also working in an environment where, while I wasn't out, when people picked up on it they weren't totally thrown because I wasn't the first transwoman to pass through Spümcø. I didn't really go full-time until I moved out of LA, either.

Plus, well, my job is "artist" and "programmer" and that means I have a lot of eccentricity credit. So I can out myself with little of the fear I'd have if I was just another office drone...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Said boy is not exactly a paragon of manliness. *grin*

[eredien]

I concluded that you were probably a lesbian through inspection of your home's furnishings. I have never knowingly been in the home of a lesbian. I don't know why I am carrying around a platonic ideal of a lesbian couple's dwelling, or where that ideal came from. But from the cosy little living room with overly soft furniture, to the cats under feet, to the artfully displayed liquor shelves in the corner of the dining area I concluded that this is a space created by multiple females for mutual comfort without the influence of a male.

Hm. There is totally a stereotype of lesbians=has cats, even among lesbians.

Fascinatingly, some of those descriptions you used could be totally applied to my parents' living room as well. I wonder how many spaces "designed" [read: interior-decorated, architecture is an overwhelmingly male-dominated field, still] for cis couples are designed without the influence of a male, and how that makes men feel in those spaces. (Quite a few, I'd wager).

I thought that it was interesting that it was both much easier and much harder for me to be/feel genderqueer at the conference than it was out on the street in Boston. It was easier (and harder) because I had to keep going, "oh, right, no one is going to assume pronouns here," but then I didn't get the effect of people themselves playing with pronouns, which is one of the things I *like* about being genderqueer, shattering/stretching those language boundaries. (One of my favorite and least favorite moments of the conference was when another conference attendee said, "but you go by , right? So you're a girl!")

It was harder because no one acknowledged me as genderqueer through the entire conference, so I was trying to figure out if they thought I was cis, or a poly lesbian, or what. I was trying to figure out if I 'looked the part' enough, and put a *lot* of thought into what I was wearing, and that was fun, but it was also exhausting.

For me, I think a large part of feeling genderqueer is through the public enactment of that identity through others' readings and mis-readings of my gender (in some senses, it's *always* a misreading), and I didn't get a lot of that at the conference. Since I wasn't sure what people were reading me as, in some senses I felt like I had no gender because no one was projecting their reading on me (at least, in a way I could see). I have to think more about that. I don't think I got pronoun-ed all weekend (except for the incident mentioned above).

[eredien]

I realised that it looks like maybe I didn't say anything about what rax actually originally said, and that's in part because we had a half-hour conversation about it over breakfast, but also because I am still processing the conference.

Wherein Heels are Problematic.

[eredien]

I wear flats (or close to flats) about 90% of the time, but I have a few pairs of heels I absolutely love, and I'm not going to selectively wear them so as not to offend peoples' sense of how unhappy I should be with my height.

Huh. I have to think more about this. I am short (5'2") and was forced to wear heels occasionally during formal events at my last job. This gave me the impression, "you are too short and too unfeminine, which is ok most of the time, but if we need to give off the impression that you are taller and more feminine, we will, even if it makes you cry." (Heels cause a great deal of foot pain for me, and from other women I've talked to, I'm not the only one.) I feel kind of like I am forced into wearing heels so I don't offend people's sense of how unhappy I should be with my height/femininity. Hm.

Re: Wherein Heels are Problematic.

[jessiehl.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'm not short (5'7"), but I still get occasional pressure to wear heels, which I loathe, with the implication that I should want to make myself more feminine and "attractive" by wearing them. The issue with me doesn't seem to be height, since I'm already in the tall-but-not-"too"-tall range, it seems to be some idea of how a woman is supposed to walk and be shaped (to paraphrase my mother, "Yeah, shoes that make your butt stick out, thrust your boobs forward, and make it difficult to move normally or quickly - of course people think that women should wear them").

[weirdquark]

Thrud and I ran into something kind of interesting at the Ren Faire last weekend. Thrud often goes in male garb; not really trying to pass as male, but dressing up as a male character rather than a female one. When she does this at the east coast faires that we've been to, shop keepers play along and address her as sir or my lord or what have you. At the one down here, she dressed in a monks robe, wore a short wig, and had one person call her friar, one person call her a man of the cloth and a woman of the cloth in quick succession, as though they weren't sure what the intent was, and had everyone else use my lady.

And I wondered how much of it was a refusal to recognize the gender play* and how much of it was not noticing that there was an attempt at gender play where people assumed that you'd be offended if they used the "wrong" form a address, and so used what went with your assumed gender and not your gender presentation.

* There was almost no cross-playing, which was kind of weird. I did see a woman in traditional pirate captain gear, but she was also wearing a corset. So it's possible that since no one else is doing it, people assume that if you're a woman in male garb that you're a dressing up as a woman who wears male garb rather than assuming that you're dressing up as a man.