I wrote this preface to the pseudo-autobiography I was writing--tentative title "Growing Up As One of Jehovah's Transsexuals", after my earliest YouTube Videos--and it was various issues surrounding this chapter, feminism, a broken relationship, and some medical problems that caused me to not only abandon finishing this project for a while, but also considered rewriting a good chunk of the book, including this chapter.
In the end this chapter just seemed too harsh. Something no one would like or understand. Possibly destructive. And after some of the very hurtful things that were said and done to me, I decided perhaps I should take my own advice, remove myself from the trans-feminist community, and let go of this whole project. Of course, those of you who have been keeping up realized I found peace, focused on family, and really turned inward for a while, over the past year.
I just made my first YouTube post on a transgender issue that I have made in a while. I don't intend to seriously get involved again. But I did this because of Blaire White, whose harsh mean-girl-esque tones at first assaulted my empathy for other trans people. But then I realized she was doing something far more important with her seemingly harsh words.
Shocking people. Waking people up.The same thing I tried to do with my YouTube videos and posts when I first left the Jehovah's Witness cult.
She is standing up for a real culture that is being assaulted. And its being assaulted because of the very things I describe in this forgotten preface. It was after Blaire's debate with Indigofox tonight--hearing Indigo exclaim that she needed to be careful what she said--that I suddenly remembered this preface. I decided it was time to share it and maybe even go back to finishing up that book.
So, as you please, the preface:
If there was a transgender bible—a single book of meaning for gender-dysphoric euphoric bliss--I would think that bible might be Invisible Monsters. That’s right. The psychotic tale of gaining peace through a road trip of self-destruction and sarcasm, brought to you by the author of Fight Club.
That would be the Bible, at least for transgender people. Specifically the hardcover edition—the one that says Remix. I think this would be the perfect candidate for a bible. It is gritty, grotesque, and full of monstrosity—which is how you spell “humanity” after you’ve been through shit. And with all its confusion and horror, you can’t decide who is the biggest monster, the protagonist or the antagonist; or even which is which of these two. The book jumps around, does not read coherently, is confusing to boot, but yet is incredibly quotable, not unlike a bible. It is fiction that screams truth. Or truth that screams fiction. Either way, that’s an important feature in any bible. And of course, the story surrounds transgender characters—the worst you’ll ever meet, probably—but it doesn’t shout that out from page one as the main theme. Not like this book. It’s not that we need a bible. We're divided, like all the rest of the globe, between sticking with the Bible everyone else uses and just throwing various bibles out the window. So I’m not saying we should adopt it as some sort of doctrine, just that it would fit nicely in many situations, as it does in my purse.
It's not weird that I already have taken to carrying it with me practically everywhere. I’ve moved a lot lately, so yeah. That explains it.
Of course, this is an idea I really wouldn’t tell anyone. Except now, in a book that anyone can just pick up and read whenever they damn well feel like it.
I’ve got to have my drama.
Still, voicing this thought could be a gamble; the type where it is a fifty-fifty chance whether you’d be praised by an entire community or shot down by that same community. I don’t know if many people are familiar with this type of dilemma. For me, it is my life-story. There’s plenty of pages left to get to that.
I am still trying to decide whether the characters in the book are likable. The one thing I know for sure is that they remind me so much of myself.
People say I’m likable.
My story is not the typical transgender autobiography. I’m never entirely sure whether the community appreciates my contributions to the “narrative” or not. I look too "cis" to be "trans", but I have two beautiful children who keep me so very honest about my past. Yet, I am by no means politically correct. I don’t try very hard at that. It is just my story, albeit an exaggerated form of it, with names changed and dialog bedazzled. Apart from the amount of times I use the word “transgender” in this particular chapter, I’d like to think this book is not even about that. I try to distance myself from the label.
If you ever feel alone, lock yourself in a room full of transsexuals for a week. You will be cured in a day or two, and from then forward, begging to be let out and cut free from all the drama.
Talk about your toxic relationships.
The one thing I will say-flat out—about being transgender is that the direst thing trans people need, in my experience, is not to be a community. The last thing most of us need is yet another transgender friend. Yet we take them on because we know how hard it is. We have empathy for them and, of course, another friend is still another friend. However, we remain so interconnected, as part of a larger community, because there is power in it. Like “beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.” And power is something we are deeply lacking individually, even with beauty, money, and guns. What we need most, is not to be considered a nation or a rock unto ourselves.
But it is so easy to be pushed into feeling that way.
There is one unfortunate aspect of being a transsexual—yes I said transsexual—that has caused me a some grief, personally. It is that, no matter what, the moment it is out to others that you are transgender, people begin to treat you different. It doesn’t matter how you look, or how well you “pass”. It doesn’t matter if the person is being nice or hateful. Different is different. Being more interested is still different. Choosing your words carefully around that girl, is still different. You can always tell when someone is treating you different. And being treated different sometimes leads to worse things.
To be both honest and ironic, this aspect is enough to cause feelings of cis-phobia. I’ve known quite a few trans women that have told me that they find it difficult to trust cisgender people. From time to time, even I have felt like an island in a sea of cisgender, and rather indignant about it. And it is during those times I have flocked to the church of transgender and drank from the deepest depths of the trans-feminist ideology Kool-Aid. Rather than a real flavor—or a real ideology—this is simply a feeling—not an admission, but a feeling—that you’ll never fit in, and that transgender people are the only real people in the world.
I don’t know if I can tell you a way to fix this. I wish I had an answer. All I know is that I am lucky.
Another common aspect of being transgender, or in this case, a trans woman, is being told that you are beautiful. It has become almost like the trans woman salute, it gets said so much. Post a picture online and all your friends, half of which are transgender, call you different incarnations of the word. If you are out with another transgender friend and a picture of the two of you is tagged in social media, it’s an immediate springboard for comments like “You are two gorgeous women,” or “Two magnificent ladies!” No comments on where we are or what we are doing, just comments ensuring us that we are splendiferous and that we are, indeed, women. Like we needed subliminal conditioning to know this. I don’t know who to take seriously sometimes.
Here’s the point: Transgender woman are so often not invited to take part in the cisgender world. We often don’t have moms to ask the serious questions to. We don’t often get to be moms to our children, if we have any. We many times won’t have sisters to go shopping with. And few of us have fathers who spoil us. A cisgender woman at work or school will subsequently wonder why we seem a bit awkward in certain situations, comparatively, and not invite us to do girls night, or the wedding, or the baby shower. It’s not uncommon to do these things with other trans women, because we always invite each other, and because at least we have each other. And that reminds us, over and over again, that we are transgender. Which reminds us, again and again, that we were not born as the sex we align with. Finally, you have developed an irritated and engorged case of extreme gender dysphoria—one of the worst feelings on earth to live with.
We can’t get away from feeling like monsters that most people would either destroy or ignore, no matter how much we attest that we are not. All that really needs to happen, is for us, as individuals, to be consistently a part of something more than being transgender, but a lot of us simply don’t seem to be able to have that.
Again, I’m lucky. The only time anyone has ever been able to tell I was a transsexual is one time when I was sitting next to another transsexual. I’ve done that multiple times, and it only happened once. I’m five foot, six inches tall; I have always looked pretty feminine. Granted, I didn’t completely pass on my first catwalk out of the closet. I had lived as a man for 25 years, and been a construction worker for seven years of it. I didn’t walk "right". I didn’t talk "right". But within eight months of starting hormone replacement therapy, I started living as Samantha full time and I was only spotted as transgender that one time. So, I’m lucky.
And it's the fact that people think I'm lucky which keeps me from saying things I might otherwise.
In the end, I could maybe choose to live in stealth and never tell anyone I am transgender. I could choose not to be an "invisible monster". Sometimes I am ready to. Then again, sometimes I spend too much time looking in the mirror, concerned with how I look, hoping that my luckiness will end while still worrying it will. Worried about how I am going to get through my thirties. Worried that I have wrinkles and smile lines. Will this be a new barrier? Will I still pass as effortlessly as I always have? And then I feel ashamed for thinking this way. And then I post a new blog or video or whatever social media dictates, and wonder to myself if I actually could ever leave the community. But you know what they say, “with great power, comes great responsibility.”
Chuck Palahniuk didn’t say that last quote, by the way.
Really, the greatest power comes from knowing yourself. And this is where Blaire White is coming from. And this is why I post this--why I'm taking a vacation from my absence on this subject--because a lot of people are so caught up they don't see the destructive forces at work within the giant 3rd-wave, SJW, trans-feminist movement. The "us vs them" within gender only conflagrates itself, while everyone just watches in disbelief. There are still ways of advocating for equality, but it sure as shit doesn't involve non-binary forms of gaslighting.
Footnote: Quotes taken from Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palaniuk; and The Amazing Spider-Man comic books, created by Stan Lee and Marvel Comics.