it strikes me that internalized cissexism[1] plagues our communities. we try to prove to ourselves that we are trans by asking ourselves if we would, in the press of a button, bring our selves and bodies into alignment, and in that act, make ourselves cis. we wonder and we obsess, pondering the question, “am I trans?” but we never ask “am I cis?”
but this self-directed transphobia runs much deeper. how many grieve for the selves they lost, for the person that might have been, had they been born cis? in this, we never stop to ask ourselves, “what would I have lost?”
for myself: everything I cherish, all I value most. to be cis, I must give up the experiences that have shaped me most, and in so doing, I’d make of myself someone else. there are many painful things I might have wished to avoid but, looking back, I see a clear trajectory of necessary action taken quietly and without fanfare to survive what had to be survived until freedom was within reach. to dream of living some other life would be a critique of that person inside who worked so hard to bring us to this point of inner tranquility and outer safety. and really, what do I have to critique? should I castigate the child for repressing in an unsafe home, especially after learning now, as an adult, that my father would hurt or kill me if he learns I’m trans? or should I reprimand the young woman for learning to endure, internally divided, and oh so alone? but, one might ask, “what of your body? do you not transition to make it as cis as possible?” to this: no. my trans body has endured so much, with both strength and grace, and it will weather so much more; I dare the coming storms.
rather, I transition now to make this body habitable for her, for the scarred and indomitable woman who would leave her mark on the world. I transition because a little remodeling frees her from repressive chains. I remake tomorrow, not yesterday. if instead, I chased a platonically perfect body, if I rumimated on the experience of a cis childhood, lost to the circumstances of my birth, if I obsessed over the impossible, I’d forget the diamond, dreaming of a reprieve from the heat of her makers’ forge. I do not wish I were cis.
[1] the notion that we are all cis, with perhaps an asterisk to note the disquieting, uncomfortable, growing population of exceptions who wish they were cis, and must be helped to it.
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I wouldn’t be a commie if I wasn’t trans, I also wouldn’t have most of the awesome friends I have who are themselves all trans. As miserable as it can be, there’s no fucking way I would want to be a cis woman, or god forbid a cis man.
I fuckin love my country
I feel like I’d be a totally different person, it’s almost impossible to predict. Maybe I’d be a Mormon housewife with 50 kids or something cause I have a pretty absurd maternal urge. But I feel like my life would be kinda sucky without the trans community
This is pretty much where I’m at. It’s impossible to say what kind of person I would’ve been if I was a cis woman, but I’m sure I would not have been the person I am today. I probably would’ve been more like my sister, and I actually like how different we are.
I’ve been permanently split on whether or not I’d be cis if given the choice. I question if my gender dysphoria would end, or if my feelings of dysphoria would pop up in my other shortcomings of traditional womanhood. However, I agree with you. Being trans has made me have to look through so many other lenses for understanding, it’s ultimately made me more empathetic
If there was a magical third option in these magical scenarios where I get to have a womb and ovaries and a girl childhood but also I’m still trans I’d take it. Because I like being trans! I get to wake up every day and be happy that I’m a girl. And the cultural weight of the oppression does kind of force one to consider how all struggles - the struggle for trans healthcare and trans lives, the struggle for black lives in the US, the international struggle against the only half proverbial Empire, the struggle for housing and food, etc - how all these struggles are really just refractions of the one primary struggle and that we have so much to gain by uniting, like the miners in the UK and the LGBT activists of the 80s finding out the power of solidarity.
Beautifully written.
I just wish I could be enby in peace. If we were all cis, I’d certainly lose that and I don’t think I’d be happy either way - girl or boy. At that point, I’d just toss a coin to decide, to be honest. I think it’s why I so strongly wish for a gender abolition future. It’s the only world I can imagine myself happy (as far as gender is concerned at least).
exactly! I didn’t want to get into the enbyphobia inherent in “the button” type questions as it’s not my lane but it’s extremely real.
Im an mtf closet case that cant transition (too much IBS, anxiety, living in a body is hard enough as it is, im too old) so idk wish the cure for gender dysphoria existed. Would prefer being cis. All being trans gives me is a perspective on how everythings bullshit. It doesnt give me anything special.
you can transition. we’re all here to support you.
Fun fact: Transitioning is a cure for dysphoria
I feel this strongly. I’ve stopped caring about cis worship and passing dictates after transitioning to a “good enough for me” point and it has done wonders for coping with leftover dysphoria and social anxiety. In my day to day life, it’s just amazing living like that. But it also means that trans spaces, even the progressive ones that do not tolerate transmedicalism, are becoming harder to navigate for me because they’re full of vents from eggs and baby trans people that have so much to unpack. I don’t have the spoons for that, but it’s hard to let it slide when somebody sounds as if they’ll end as some self-loathing contrapoints loser.
If I were cis I would lose all of wonderful people, so its not worth it
🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵
i would lose myself and my friends
It’s a tough question. I mean, I can say this for sure. I don’t think I’d redo my life as a cis woman. Oh god it’s hard to actually say that though, im not entirely sure. but like you said, I wouldn’t be the same person like at all. I can 100%, without a doubt say that I wouldn’t want to be a “happy and content” cis man though. That sounds hellish.
I am happy I am trans though 🤗
You make some good points, and I don’t mean to invalidate anything you say but the emotions are running hot right now so hopefully this take comes out reasonable.
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I think there’s something to be said for not looking back too much. Lots of terrible things in the past that are best left alone.
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Philosophically, who are we but a culmination of our experiences? Is the concept of the self as a discrete unit meaningful? If we were to go back and change the past, would that result in the me of today being different person? Well, in my eyes, every day I wake up a different person - only a shadow of who I was the previous day remains anyway. So hypothetically, personally, changing the past doesn’t destroy “me” in a way I’d find too meaningfully substantial
3. Lots of trauma in the past.
Abusive household. Lost all my friends when I came out. And now the only people I can truly relate to are people who I talk to over the internet. I hardly know how to socialize face to face. Almost died from self harm.
If I could erase all this trauma, if I could have a community that I could meet face to face, and be comfortable in the body I lived in, would this not be better?
possible internalized transphobia
Are we just inventing rationalizations for why we’re happy where we are because we can’t change it?
Ultimately it’s moot because we can’t change it. Live with what you’ve got and look ahead to make the future the best one you can have.
Can you please spoiler your third point.
spoiler
Mostly because you talk about self harm and for community health reasons it’s important to make sure we keep harder stuff CWd because a lot of people have dealt with similar here. People need to engage with content when they feel mentally able to.
Are we just inventing rationalizations for why we’re happy where we are because we can’t change it?
This point is internalized transphobia, a cw for this would be appreciated as well.
Will re-add the message when you can fix it, just message me
Ok I can’t see if I got the formatting right on jerboa so lmk if that looks good
looks good now
got it! the spoiler is messed up a little, so formatting does need to be fixed a bit, but ill leave it up. thanks for understanding
i hope one day mods will be able to tag comments and posts as nsfw or not
Ooh good idea. I’m a software developer maybe I’ll submit a PR
That would be based
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my goal isn’t to invalidate trauma and abuse. god knows we’ve all been through hell in this transphobic society and I also lost all my friends & family. but I found a new one and I’m so happy for it because I know nothing can separate us. I know you’ll get there too.
r.e. rationalizations: no. I genuinely love who I am and am happy for where I’ve gotten to. I understand that not everyone is not there yet. but I also think it’s healthiest to remind ourselves of the gems we’ve accumulated along this treacherous path, rather than merely stewing in the misery of it.
Yeah, I am the summation of my experiences and thoughts and feelings. It’s impossible for me to have been born cis, because then it wouldn’t be me. I am trans, inherently. It’s such a fundamental part of who I am that being anything else would erase my existence entirely.
It’s interesting to me bc I don’t have as much of a salient concept of me as a discrete entity. Like I think of myself more as a collection of brain modules, many of whom disagree with each other, that sorta have to live together in the same vessel. And I feel like the person I am when I wake up is not the same person as the one who went to sleep bc I just feel so different every day. So removing a part of me that brings suffering to the other parts is psychologically less like death and more like changing a tire on a car, like yeah it’s not the same as before but it never is anyway.
It’s all hypothetical anyway bc these are things I cannot change
I don’t think being trans is just one part of me. It’s a part of my gender identity, but it’s also a part of my opinions and style and hobbies and relationships and memories and sexuality and even politics. Removing that part would also remove a ton of other connected parts of me, essentially just collapsing my identity.
And also! Would I be a cis woman or a cis man if I was born cis? Because that, too, has all of these effects on my place in the family and society and culture and the economy and politics. Would I be a finance bro or in the military? Would I be married with tons of kids? That different path my life would have taken is so alien to every part of me that it can’t be said to be “me” at all.
I’m very attached to my transness, I think.
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I feel in arrested development with my transition for 4 years. Too afraid to progress to cracked to get back in the shell, going on-and-off HRT. While cis and trans aren’t real in the sense that they have any relevance outside of the society that constructs them, these concepts govern our lives. If there was a button that could make me cis OR if there was a button that could’ve made me commit to my transition the first time, I would press it and not mind either outcome.
I would lose my entire support system which includes my friend group and worst of all my girlfriend.
I wouldn’t have become friends with my buddies from elementary to high school, which means I would have never been introduced to my current best friends.
My girlfriend ID’d as straight before meeting me so we wouldn’t have dated (probably).
Most of my hobbies and interests stem from my father’s interest in computers from when I was a young age. Considering I was an only child for most of my childhood, I can’t say whether or not he would have included me in that interest.
Obviously I can’t say I would have been a much different person, but ruminating on what would have happened if I were born cis is about as productive as regretting not transitioning earlier, or not buying that one lottery ticket that one time. So I don’t.
I am me and even if I’m not the happiest or most comfortable I can be, I am a work in progress that I’m content with working on a day at a time.
Good post, no notes
