― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
This article is ostensibly about transitioning post-forties or later. That said, much will ring true to many who are younger or indeed not transitioning at all as largely it is about how we all change over time and at it’s core, it is about stereotypes and social programming.
It is essentially about tribes and law.
So whilst this is about those of us who transition or simply question our gender expression it is also importantly about the people surrounding us. In youth these people about us are our immediate friends and family. People we are born to or join us in life's path for a while. These are special in that they do not need you to sign a lawful contract to have a relationship with them. However with a spouse there is a mutual lawful agreement. If this pact is based on misconception or wrong information then it only deepens the severity of any scar when one finally realises who they may have hidden away over time, within themselves.
Our cultural and societal conventions and traditions can be worthy but they can also be deeply negative if they don’t allow total honesty. If people are not allowed the right to openly express how they feel at a young age then relationship problems will inevitably occur later in life.
If in your fifties, be you male or female, you discover a repressed love of baking cakes you may annoy some people with random purchases or smells in the kitchen but you don’t ask them to realign their understanding of society. If however, you realise you don’t fit the binary gender model it can present a big issue to those with whom you may have, by now, a lifelong deeply personal and legal contract.
For those of us who have already gone far down a life path, shifting our gender expression, coming out or transitioning - even the thought of it - presents it’s own unique challenges. The obvious question most ask is, why now? If you felt this way why didn’t you say earlier. Why did you hide what you felt?
This is a question I asked myself and the point of this post.
Casting my mind back I was very unsure about what I felt. So far as I knew the world in which I grew up in and live now says, it is bad or at best, abnormal to not conform to a gender stereotype. Now everyone ‘hates’ stereotypes, but not when it comes to gender. Odd that, don't you think?
I hid what I felt because I was not free. I was not free to express it or explore it. For many of us living in the west we like to believe that we live in a free world, but that is not true. Much of our reality is based in social acceptance...
So I pause here for a moment and look at social acceptance from a very non-gender perspective taking the form of two different TED talks.
In one of the most emotive and stirring TED talks I’ve ever seen on what shapes many as they grow, Shane Koyczan at time point 2.28, says that as he was growing up he was being told to…
“Accept the identity others would give me”
Another supporting argument comes form Hetain Patel in this TED Radio hour talk which describes when as he was growing up and from a minority background, he just wanted to fit in. Echoing Shane Koyczan about how all kids want to 'fit in'. As usual the whole episode is good but specifically listen at at point 26:40. Further, at point 27:47 he goes on to say about how he felt ‘ashamed’ because he was different.
Now Hetain Patel mentioned he felt ashamed which leads me to the Transgender Philosophy Podcast, in which Felix Conrad argues the reason for not coming out is shame and it is the removal of that internal shame that allows us to come out. Essentially, as you get older you gain the life experience to question the things society tells you are really you. There is a constant thought of I must be wrong if everyone else says so. Maybe if I wait another year it will all just go away as I can’t be right. Yet after so many years you realise you were right all along. Therefore a late onset of acceptance of oneself occurs as natural part of a maturing process.
So there is a basic instinct in all children and in all people indeed, to ‘fit in’. A natural survival instinct to be part of a tribe. However, as humans our tribes are shaped by its laws.
In the fifties and especially the sixties revolutionary times no doubt, but gender was what it had always been. In fact in the 60’s and into the seventies in the US and UK, if a male was found dressing as a female then by law the result could be…
“…incarceration in mental institutions and the application of aversion therapy through the use of electric shocks or nausea-inducing drugs.”
Into the seventies gender bending moved on and through into the eighties and make-up wearing new romantics then breathed life into the concept of a non-fixed gender role. However, by and large these were transient social statements by young people discovering themselves. Themselves who usually ended up from a gender perspective being exactly what there forebears had been. Not a bad thing, it just dilutes the understanding of non-binary gender.
Beyond the laws, and in turn what shapes them, is the information we have to hand and our own understanding of it.
"I was growing up in a very different time and I had no information. Meanwhile, I had all of my diversions — sports...this...that...married...family — but after 65 years, here I was right back with the same problems that I had when I was 10 years old and I had to finally do something about that."
Then there is the physiological argument. At a recent Trans' support group meeting I was talking with a woman from the Beaumont Society who said some people also believe that late transitioning may be to do with a drop in testosterone. I certainly think this could well be a contributory factor but in and of itself, not the actual reason, the spark as it were. This could back up a view again by Caitlyn Jenner in the same article where she says:
"I firmly believe that there are intensity levels of being trans," she wrote. "For example, a boy at a young age — four or five-years-old — might refuse to wear guy clothes and will only wear dresses. Not as a one-time thing, or as just dress-up play, but insistently, every day saying, 'I'm a girl.' They can't — and won't — hide their true identity, even at that young age. Then there are others, like me, who can (kind of) live with it for a long time, even though it's very uncomfortable."
So then, what's my answer? Why do some people come out in later life? I’d argue it is simply due to a lack of true freedom in our society. A society shaped by the law which by our own acceptance creates it.
We do not acknowledge this feeling inside because at first as children we want to fit in and therefore set our path. Then in later life we do not want to hurt those close to us. However as time moves on we realise our lives will mean nothing if we propagate a system which does not allow true freedom for ourselves and of course, others.
We are all our own victims in this respect, transgender - or not.
I’ll leave you with another quote and link:
Look at me
You may think you see
Who I really am
But you'll never know me
Every day
It's as if I play a part
Now I see
If I wear a mask
I can fool the world
But I cannot fool my heart
