PEOPLE’S EXHIBIT A:
Somebody I’m friends with on Facebook posts this on an LGBT message board: “I made my decision not to go on hormones, and that was a personal choice”.
One of the first replies posted was: “Honey I’m sorry… actually I’m not… if you are not taking the steps to become a woman… you are not trans… you are simply a feminine gay man… stop confusing people and making it harder for real Trans people.”
PEOPLE’S EXHIBIT B:
On a different message board, I am replying to someone who has referred to me dismissively as “a cisgendered straight guy who really wants to be a sexual minority so he can be part of a movement”.
I reply tersely: “No”. He quotes that and replies “Yes”.
I write: “Being a straight male — being heterosexual — isn’t just ‘you have boy parts and your sexual attraction is for people who have girl parts’. (If you disagree with that you aren’t leaving any room for a transgender lesbian, who, prior to surgery, has ‘boy parts’. Maybe you and your friends consider transgender lesbians to be ‘straight males’ up until they transition, I don’t know)”
And to THAT he replies: "I would consider Trans people as the Gender they feel they are, whether they’ve had surgery or not.
That isn’t at all relelvant to your case because YOU AREN’T TRANS! Transgendered people try to live as their preferred gender to the best their social and financial circumstances permit. If they can, they will fully transition, though sadly that isn’t possible for a lot of people. You aren’t doing that."
PEOPLE’S EXHIBIT C:
On a Facebook-based chat, I have this exchange with yet another person:
Other Person: Your [sic] Gay…A man to have female tendency is a GAY Man how hard is that???..my gawed!!!
Allan Hunter: Not hard at all, not for male-bodied people. Which is why I don’t identify as GAY, I’m a male-bodied girl who is attracted to female-bodied people. If I identified as gay, people would assume it meant I was attracted to MALE-bodied people, now wouldn’t they?
Other Person: Well you can’t be Lesbian…
Other Person: Your straight and you like women
Allan Hunter: I don’t identify as lesbian because I am male, and lesbians in general do not consider male-bodied people to share that identity with them.
I don’t identify as a straight man because I am a girl, or a sissy or a feminine person if you prefer, and straight males have made it loudly and specifically apparent that they don’t consider people like me to be men, nor do I wish to be seen as one of them. Also, “straight” means more than “people with female equipment and people with male equipment getting it on”. Heterosexuality is gendered, with specific and polarized expectations of the male and the female person – a “man” role and a “woman” role. I’m a woman or girl and both my identity and the relationships and partners available to me are quite different.
Of course it may be your intention to call “bullshit” on this and say “we don’t want your kind and do not consider that you belong”. I’m kind of used to that. Rather than just putting my fingers in my ears and saying “no ur wrong”, I’d rather go into this with you if you’re so inclined. Why is my identity invalid and yours valid? Couldn’t I just as easily say “You’re a woman like any other, there are no ‘gay people’, you’re just a woman, that’s all there are is women and men, and you’re making a big deal out of irrelevant things that don’t matter”?? {edited: changed gender references}
Other Person: I just said you can’t be Lesbian!!!
Allan Hunter: Other Person: I agree. I can’t be lesbian. I can’t be gay. I can’t be a straight man. I’m not bi. And transgender doesn’t fit either. It’s something else.
Allan Hunter: The female people I’m attracted to tend to be butch. Some identify as guys / bois / men. If anyone is going to be the top it isn’t going to be me. It’s different from being a straight guy, trust me.
Other Person: Then that’s your problem…since you strongly believe your A women…Then you need to get a sex change…let’s see if that makes you happy.
PEOPLE’S EXHIBIT C:
Back in January, I sent my standard query letter to a publisher that publishes LGBT titles. My cover letter explains that THE STORY of Q is specifically a genderqueer coming-out story. In fact, it was roughly the same cover letter that I posted here back in Sept 2014.
In due course, the editor wrote back: “I finished this yesterday, and after discussing it with the publisher, we’re going to have to take a pass on this. It’s not a transgender book and definitely not a gay book, so finding a large enough readership to make this economically viable would be tough.”
I send this reply, cc’ing my publicist, John Sherman, whom I’ve been working with: “That is correct. I thought you knew that. It’s something else.”
My publicist replies to me, responding to my cc: “Yes, it’s something else. Could the subtitle perhaps have been the first clue? Jeez.”
** ahem ** [clears throat]
Let’s get one thing str… I mean, let’s NOT get one thing straight, but let’s at least get one thing established, dammit.
I’m not trying to “join” an existing sexual or gender identity club. I am not submitting an application to be approved and welcomed as if this were the Rainbow Homeowner’s Association and Community Watch Board or something. When I say “this is my identity” I mean “this is who I am”, and you can accept it or you can reject it; you can care, or you can NOT care, but you don’t really get a vote on it.
In second grade I was a person. I was a person who perceived myself to be like the girls. I was a person who was perceived by the other kids as being like the girls. I was a person who was proud to be like the girls despite the expectation of the boys (in particular) and the teachers (sometimes) that I would be embarrassed and ashamed of that. I won’t say I didn’t need and did not seek anyone’s approval – I wanted the girls to accept me and let me play with them. Some did. I was out to prove I was worthy of their acceptance and approval despite being a boy. I won’t claim that, in 2nd grade, I had an understanding of sex and gender as two different things – I didn’t, not like that. But I understood that I was LIKE the girls and I wanted to be PERCEIVED that way; I understood that I was NOT like the (other) boys and I did what I could to distinguish myself from them because I did not like being treated as if I were one of them. Who I was had more to do with being “like the girls” than with the fact that I “was a boy”. I was between 6 and 7 years old when I was in second grade, and that was how I understood matters at the time.
What that means – ONE of the things that that means – is that in third grade and thereafter I was a person WHO HAD THAT HISTORY, a person who already thought of myself in those terms. Hence it was very much a part of my IDENTITY.
So all of my experiences from then on were the experiences of a person WITH THAT IDENTITY.
I didn’t invent it as an adult upon reading about being modern gender identities and LGBTQIA people. Do you get that? I’m not just flinging an angry retort in your direction when I say “you don’t get a vote on my identity”, although yes, encountering people who attempt to negate my identity does make me angry; I’m not in the process of trying on this identity to see if it fits and to see how other people will or won’t accept it.
Instead, this identity is who I have been to myself for over half a century. There’s no original or “normal” or prior identity I can revert back to were someone to (hypothetically) convince me that I am not really as I describe. My lifetime experiences have been shaped by my perception of myself, just as yours have shaped your experiences.
My adaptive coping mechanisms are the adaptive coping mechanisms of a girl who behaves as a girl who has been through a bunch of specific experiences that people who aren’t male girls seldom go through. Those adaptive coping mechanisms reflect the priorities and sensibilities of a girl whose context of operation include
• being in a male body
• being in a social environment where people expect male-bodied people to be masculine and boyish
• being in a social environment that, to the extent it understands and recognizes the possibility of male people being girlish at all, is hostile and contemptuous towards male girls
Those developed coping mechanisms channeled my subsequent experiences: some possible things that could have happened ended up NOT being among my experiences because of how I handled things, and some possible things ended up happening precisely because of how I handled stuff. And of course I was further shaped by those experiences.
Thank you. I’ll climb off this soapbox now. This rant has been simmering in the background for awhile now.
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This is a repost of a blog post. Cleared with the mods in advance.
I can see where it would come across that way, for sure! No winning on that one, just different losing options: I have often castigated myself for spending so many years just seeking “personal solutions”, quietly seeking and finding partners (and slowly getting better at recognizing potentially good matches, good long-term chemistry) and not putting any energy into speaking out, keeping my promise to myself to speak out.