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daely-trans-life · 4 years

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Thoughts on gender and other matters (letter to a friend)

Dearest [Friend],

I finally got around to writing this email, god knows it's long overdue.

You've asked me to explain what lead me to the realisation that I might be transgender and well, that's a larger subject than what I can summarise in a text message (in fact this email might turn into a novel, in which case I'm very sorry), so here we go.

I can see how from an outside point of view it might come as a surprise, albeit for me this realisation is something that's been long in the making... Probably ever since I became aware of the concept of gender itself.

To begin with, I need to explain a little bit about the culture I was raised in, because it ties into the delay significantly. It has to do with the societal expectations as much as the language... Hungarian has no gender markers for words and doesn't use gendered pronouns at all, which also means that in a way, the concept itself is way less defined and pronounced in the cultural context. That, coupled with the strict and rigid code of conduct regarding politeness and formality means that it's generally not discussed in society on any level, neither in family, between friends nor in public education.

It's a binary concept that's dependent on one's genetic makeup and primary sexual characteristics that is assigned at birth and never discussed further. It doesn't involve choice or exploration, and it's not viewed as a spectrum the same way as it is customary in Western countries. But at the same time, traditional gender roles are built into society on every level, and while it's never mentioned, it's enforced and engraved in people way stronger than it is in for example Denmark.

So while as a teen/young adult, I could feel I didn't fit into the box of "girl" or "woman" the way others around me did, I had no vocabulary to describe my experience, and I definitely didn't have a platform for exploring it. On the few occasions when I mentioned it to some friends that I kind of view myself as both a man and a woman or maybe neither, the general answer was something to the effect of "well no shit?! are we meant to be surprised by this?", which was both baffling and very validating at the same time.

And then I moved out of the country and a whole new world of concepts and options and spectra opened up to me, where I also had the opportunity to learn more about my identity when it came to gender and sexuality. I quickly discovered that me not being straight was definitely a thing, and I learnt about labels that finally fit my experience and I found a community that welcomed me and that had people similar to myself in it. And that was all great, but it also taught me that gender was a Thing, and not only that, but it also had way more to it than just binary man and woman.

And I went down that rabbit hole hard. I started identifying as non-binary, tried on a lot of labels and pronouns, some really out there ones too, mostly privately, while trying to find the one that felt right. And of course in the meantime I've met and learnt about trans people, and it kind of hit me how that specific experience resonated with me. But of course, I couldn't just BE a guy... Could I?

Well, no, of course not! Because I had parents that raised me as their daughter, I had a husband who married me to be his wife, and I had always been presented and perceived as a woman... It's not like I could just uproot my entire identity and claim a new one just because it would make me happy... I had others to think of and consequences to dread, and in general, I was too fucked up anyway to really be concerned with something like what noise people make to address me or what concept do they identify me with. So I buried the question deep, never touching it, because as long as I wasn't looking, it didn't hurt and I didn't get confused. And this worked for a while, until it obviously didn't.

And then years had passed and a few things happened. For one, I met my other partner, who also identifies as non-binary and who is way more into the queer aspects of life than my husband. And with Them, I got to talk about the things that have always bothered me and that I previously was unable to talk about. They taught me the language to express myself, not only with words but also with presentation. And while confined in the safety of our shared home, I've stepped onto the Rocky Road of Recovery, that involved a lot of mental healthcare, therapy, exploration and coming to terms with my identity in more than one way.

In a way, unraveling the tangle of issues I've been carrying around helped a lot too. I've been living with the vague sense of "there is something wrong with me" for so long that it just became the everyday reality of my life, and I kind of accepted that all the things I now know are symptoms of certain conditions, were just how life was supposed to be, that the world was supposed to be this hostile, low-key but always uncomfortable place with occasional bursts of horrible pain. And through all that, I still held myself to the expectations I was presented with by my upbringing, because throughout my life, whenever I tried to ask for help in any way, I was generally met with blame and dismissal, and I was taught that the only option was to bite my tongue and power through. So I bit down and did what I could and every time I broke down, I just dug my heels in and kept going until one day I couldn't go on anymore.

And in a way, this was a blessing. Because finally, at the point where I completely gave up, I was presented with an abundance of care and actual help I've never received before. I went to psychiatry, I got my diagnoses, I got a social worker to help me, I got a therapist, and a damn good one for that, and I got the time to heal and figure myself out without having to worry about things like where I was going to live or what I was going to eat. And lo and behold, things started getting better. Of course, a year of therapy cannot undo 20 years of trauma and abuse, I didn't expect it to either, but it gave me tools to work with, ways to address and manage my symptoms and space to explore ways in which I could be happier, healthier and more stable than I've ever been before.

I'm on a good path, and in a good place now. I'm engaged to my partner, still happily married to my husband and we live in a loving, if a bit crooked family in a beautiful place at the countryside. For the first time I'm hopeful about the future and I feel like I have realistic expectations about my life and what I would be able to make of it. Of course there is still a lot of work to be done and a lot of ways I wish to improve, but these dreams had finally stopped being just that, and slowly morphed into goals, things I could actually achieve and I can see ways in which to do so.

And so, now that happiness suddenly became a viable option, I started wondering about the questions of identity again, and well... I guess I just felt like my time has finally come. I'm almost thirty. Yeah, that's a bit late compared to many who had this figured out by their late teens, but hey, I'm young, I have most of my adult life ahead of me! And I finally have the space and the support network that gives me enough confidence to pursue my true identity and everything that comes with that.

I'm taking it slowly though. It's scary as hell, and it's a huge step, and I still have a million questions and a million obstacles to overcome. But if my journey so far had taught me anything, that is that no decision is irreversible, there is no such thing as too late to change things, and that fear is never a good enough reason not to do what's right for you. I'm at square one right now, and I don't know if this is the path I'll stay on forever, but I feel like I owe myself to at least try. If I never committed to anything just because it might not last forever, I wouldn't be having the amazing life I have today, if I was even still alive.

So that's where I stand. Sorry about the insanely long ramblings, now you know everything you never wished to know about my inner workings, but I don't quite know how to explain this in any other way than the extremely winded one.

I miss you. I wish we could hang out and I could be, you know, not an absolute wreck for once :D I swear I'm a way funner person these days than I was when we used to hang out.

Lots of love,

Dae

P.s.: I guess this DID turn into a novel, sorry about that again! :$ xoxo

#open letter #explaining gender is long and complicated #one step at a time #positivity

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awohlwen · 4 years

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Feminism Around the World

Anna Wohlwend

Feminism Around the World

When I found out this was one of my options of online English classes to take, I was hesitant but intrigued in this choice. I had never taken a feminist based course before, nor had I found myself to be a huge feminist. Like I said, I never thought of myself as a huge feminist, but I definetely believed in equal rights, equal pay, stereotypes, gender inequality, etc., I just never saw myself as what everyone else sees as the stereotypical feminist who never shaves their armpits. Looking back at my preconceived notions of that stereotype, it only makes me laugh now because there is so much more to being a feminist than having hairy armpits and hating men, and not only that, but there are so many different levels and perceptions of feminism someone can have. I am proud to say that I support feminism stronger than I did before, and I am not ashamed at all to tell people that. This course gave me so much knowledge I did not have before, and I am eternally grateful. The material that stuck with me the most was learning about all the different women all over the world. I would have never been able to acquire so much knowledge about so many different cultures, countries, and religions from any other course or experience. It gave me a chance to understand and sympathize what women different than myself must endure, and it is extremely interesting to find out.

I did not realize how little I knew about other women of different cultures, countries, and religions until I took this class. I had my assumptions and guesses, but never anything factual. After reading, watching, and annotating all the class material, I only realized how little I knew, but loved how much I was learning. From the very beginning when we watched the TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” I learned about a woman from Nigeria and some of the stereotypes surrounding her and her country. She stated, “I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family. My father was a professor. My mother was an administrator. And so we had, as was the norm, live-in domestic help, who would often come home nearby rural villages.” The only things I feel like I know, or thought I knew, about Africa and the people that live there are that they are poor and don't have everything here that we do. But obviously from the video, I was very wrong. I feel as though we are taught that Africa is this weak, poor, distraught country that constantly needs help, when in fact it may not be. After watching the TED talk, I felt compelled to learn more about Africa's truths, rather than what the media tells us. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie continued to go on and explain her experience when she came to the United States for school and how her roommate reacted. “So, after I had spent some years in the US as an African, I began to understand my roommate’s response to me. If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from the popular images, I too would think Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner.” This portion of the video really opened my eyes because as an American, the media is a huge component of daily living. While as a nation we can make decisions on our own, the media plays a large part in how to sway it. The roommate did not even realize, nor do I think we realize, that unconscious judgements were made immediately as soon as she heard Adichie was from Nigeria. I think because we are fortunate, uneducated, and brainwashed that Africa is this country in need, we see third world nations as incapable without our "help."

One of my favorite reads from the semester and one that gave me some incredible insight was the Introduction to Global Women’s Studies. I felt really excited to learn about global women, especially all the factual and proven evidence behind gender inequality in the world, because then I will have a more knowledgeable and educated basis when talking to people about it. Along with learning more about gender inequality in our own country, I was probably even more intrigued to learn about other countries. I knew very little about cultural, social, religious, and traditional expectations of women in different countries, but I did know that it is completely different than the US. One interesting point the book made was about intersections in gender, the author stated “Global women’s studies also examines intersections between gender and other variables such as race, class, and sexual orientation.” I had never even thought about that aspect of feminism, but there are definitely different expectations for women of different color, race, religion, etc. “The global study of women is rich and rewarding because it requires that we learn about different customs, religions, and forms of government and that we imagine what it would be like to be a woman in another culture.” I thought this was a great aspect of the class, especially for the females, to understand what other women in different countries go through. Many of us will not have the opportunity to see first hand what they go through, so this is a close second.

Another one of my favorite articles we read was Under the Western Eyes by Chandra Mohanty; it gave the reality of western literature and the idea it portrayed of women. Before reading her article, I had never thought about or realized the truth behind her points. Western literature was written to portray any women besides white women as inadequate. Monanty states, "Western feminism is an exclusive and convoluted model which does not apply to women globally. It imposes the idea that white, affluent women are the norm of perfection and that all women should be envious of them and cannot achieve the same status without the same appearance and privilege". Europe has predominantly been white and glorified white women as being the "ideal" look and even thought that the paler/whiter you are, the more attractive you are. Which that in itself is quite disgusting, along with the fact that any other woman that is not of this expectation should be jealous of the "perfect" western woman. She also explained how there are so many stereotypes and preconceived notions about third world women. “What I wish to analyse here specifically is the production of the “third world woman” as a singular monolithic subject in some recent (western) feminist texts.” Monolithic means a large, powerful, and intractably indivisible and uniform. The point that she made about the need to talk about the production of a "third world woman" is so important, especially as women from the United States (a first world country), because we categorize women from "poorer" countries to automatically have completely different problems than the women, like us, do. I felt like as a nation we still saw women from third world countries as poor, weak, little women that needed our saving because they have so little power and rights, when in all reality, I had no idea the things women had to deal with and struggle with for their own feminism. The average person does not know factual evidence or statements about what women from other countries experience, and yet it is so common to act like we do.

Not only did we learn about large-scale global feminist issues, but I learned and was fascinated about the minute facts about all the different countries, cultures, and religions we read and watched about. I had very little knowledge about any traditions of religions besides my own, so when we watched the “Radical women, embracing tradition” and “What it’s like to be Muslim in America” TED talks, along with reading Do Muslim Women Need Saving by Lila Lughod, I had the opportunity to learn a fair amount about other religions. For example, I learned from Kavita Ramdas’ video that when having children in India, having a boy is more desirable for a couple. I also learned that when an Indian woman becomes a widow, there are several different traditions that the woman must face, one being that the widow must wear white for the rest of her life because white is the color of mourning. Also, the bindi and the bangles are usually marriage markers, and by removing them, widowed women mark the end of the part of her life she cannot repair. Within Ramdas’ video, she also talked about her encounters with feminists different than herself, one being a Muslim woman who was in her late age but had not been married off, even though that is tradition in her culture. “...Women were running underground schools in her communities inside Afghanistan, and that her organization, the Afghan Institute of Learning, had started a school in Pakistan. [The Muslim woman] said, ‘The first thing anyone who is a Muslim knows is that the Koran requires and strongly supports literacy. The prophet wanted every believer to be able to read the Koran for themselves.’ Had I heard right? Was a women’s rights advocate invoking religion?” I loved this excerpt because Ramdas caught herself in awe when she heard this Muslim feminist trying to explain how two topics that usually do not go together, actually do belong and coexist. In Dalia Mogohed’s TED talk “What it’s like to be Muslim in America,” she gave her side of the 9/11 attack on New York, and her experiences of being a Muslim in this country. She began, “What do you think when you look at me? A woman of faith? An expert? Maybe even a sister. Or oppressed, brainwashed, a terrorist. Or just an airport security line delay.” Many of those assumptions would be thought of as true by some people, regardless the fact that being Muslim has nothing to do with Mogohed’s personality. Granted I was born the year of the attack so I didn't have my own previous knowledge, but from what I could tell, I feel like (white) Americans didn't have any problem with Muslims before the attack, it was only after when the real issues began. I honestly didn't have a lot of knowledge on the Muslim community and what their beliefs are, but I have been told before things exactly like this, that the women are oppressed and brainwashed. I'm not sure why people feel the need to go about spreading unnecessary and untrue things about a community they truly don't know much about, but it happens frequently. She continued to speak about the 9/11 attack, “Not only had my country been attacked, but in a flash, somebody else’s actions had turned me from a citizen to a suspect.” I cannot imagine how hard it would be to be a Muslim during and after the 9/11 attack. The amount of hate, distrust, criticism, and stereotyping you would receive on a daily basis would be so immense. Because of 9/11, Muslims will always have "the blame" for the attack, and they will always endure harsh stereotyping because of one incident. Not saying that 9/11 was not horrific, because it was, but the fact that one attack by a small group of people now determines how everyone else in that community is treated seems a little harsh.

It was alluring to learn about a concept I had absolutely no first hand experience to, and it is one of my biggest recommendations after taking this course. Lila Lughod spoke in her writing, Do Muslim Women Need Saving, about the hypocricies around stereotypes of Muslims. She wrote, “What is striking about these three ideas for news programs is that there was a consistent resort to the cultural, as if knowing something about women and Islam or the meaning of a religious ritual would help one understand the tragic attack on New York’s World Trade Center and the US Pentagon…” Shd is completely correct, learning about Islamic traditions or beliefs to better understand the attack on 9/11 would be like learning about Christianity to understand the KKK. There is little to no correlation! I could have understood if someone wanted to research ISIS to better understand the thinking behind the attackers, but Islam makes no sense. To add on top of that, they were interviewing the women to try and comprehend the attack. It wasn't even a woman who was part of the hijacking, but somehow the need for answers and explanations was thrown onto Muslim women, who weren't involved what so ever. “In other words, the question is why knowing about the “culture” of the region, and particularly its religious beliefs and treatment of women, was more urgent than exploring the history of the development or repressive regimes in the region and the US role in this history.” I think when we want to learn more about Muslims or the religion we often think we are educating ourselves somehow on why 9/11 happened. What we should be focusing on instead is how repressive regimes even come to be and why they do what they do. Repressive regimes and Muslims do not have anything in common unless we talk about them like they do, which often happens in the US and especially in the media. The experts should have been looking into our international relations with the country where the hijackers were from, along with political and historical issues in the country where they were from. There was no reason why they turned this into a religious and female "investigation." The only thing that came out of going after Muslims and Muslim women, is that now there is a huge social divide between pretty much everyone and Muslims. There is also a highly seen stereotype about Muslims and Muslim women. After reading the whole passage by Lughod, I learned so much about Islamic and Muslim culutres, and realized that some Islamic symbols, like the hijab, that we associate so heavily with deep oppression are in fact free-willed choices. It is important to start detaching these negative associations and start focusing on other ways to make social change.

Overall, this course let me attain knowledge and perspectives about women from other countries that I would have never been able to achieve without seeing first-hand myself. The minute to large scale details I learned about India, Muslims, Nigeria, and many other women across the globe was amazing. Feminism means different things to different people around the world, but there is one idea that is in common everywhere: we are strong and want to be heard.

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