NOTHING WORLD THE LUCIFERIAN FEMININE neverenoughdone 4 days ago Once upon a time I wrote an article titled THE REAL WOMEN OF /LGBT/. This article was intended to explore /lgbt/, 4chan’s LGBT discussion board. Unbeknownst to everybody, I created this article at the tail end of an identity crisis that I had lost myself in for a full two years. I was insecure and vulnerable, cloaking my body and personality with adopted masculine dress and mannerisms respectively. I hid like this until I somehow managed to genuinely forget who I was. The article I wrote, while enjoyed, was written with an insecure irreverence in an attempt to seem “cool”. As a result, it was ultimately ridiculous. In a desperate bid to remember her, I’ve been dredging up facets of the person I once was from the ocean; amassing all of her qualities into a collection of disassembled pieces that I have awkwardly attempted to rebuild from. While incomplete, the girl I grew up as now stands by me in some form or another, and I’ve learned that I exist not simply to love her with communion, but to carry her will into the future. I originally wrote THE REAL WOMEN OF /LGBT/ to comfort /lgbt/ with a reality check about cis women, and this article, while certainly maintaining this reality check, will not comfort to the same degree. I am fully of the opinion that with the absence of any unifying cultural narratives, we’re clutching onto anything that proposes the ability to order the stories in our heads into something cohesive, and to this end, I will potentially be critiquing behaviour that you yourself exhibit. The beliefs I will begin to espouse here may seem odd and contradictory; I am a human being after all, not an ideology that will never once make you uncomfortable. You claim to not want hugboxes, so here I am. Since starting this blog, I have received many messages of praise, enough to inform me that I can provide some utility to people. This is my gift to you, as sordid and imperfect as it may be. “I wish I wasn’t a fucking woman.” -The author, May 3, 2021 *** No institution, cultural analyst, or activist seems to know what a trans woman is. Not even the trans woman knows herself. The question demands we first define “woman”; a philosophical debate that has raged in flux throughout feminist history, cursed to never be agreed upon. I have no definitive answer myself—nevertheless this does not dissuade me. I love to write about trans people; not strictly because two of my closest friends are trans—but because trans people hold the unique ability to wordlessly deconstruct many of society’s gender paradoxes simply by existing. The most hidden trans people of the internet carry comedic aphorisms and self-aware in-jokes that expose how truly asinine all gender debates are—and I have come to love this. I believe the observation of society’s treatment of trans women is an excellent source of knowledge for feminists—and that the Venn diagram of misogyny vs trans misogyny deserves to be understood by all of us, trans exclusionary or not. One does not even have to believe the trans woman is a woman in order to gain utility from observing her, and here I intend to explain why. While I want to combine my experiences as a woman, with yours, into something utterly total, that type of undertaking requires the creation of an entire compendium—something I will never achieve with this simple article. I can however, make vague suggestions in the direction of this idea. This topic is not the whole of my being and I wish to move on from it eventually, so consider this article a single brick in a wider foundation. A footnote in womanhood’s tome. *** AN EMOTIONAL INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANS WOMAN Each trans woman represents the calamitous end of a bloodline. Entirely unable to plant maternal roots because the ground has shifted from underneath her since birth, she cannot sew her story into history’s tapestry as her body lacks the means. For guidance she searches the past for women that were like her, but she finds no solace—as all such women were all considered stains upon humanity; subversions of the divine that were written out of records. Man embodies totality. Woman embodies nothing. Pre-transition, the trans woman embodies less than nothing. She is, in essence, a symmetrical inversion of femaleness that’s pulled inside out from within itself. The trans woman is utterly unable to reach out from within this black hole until she transitions; the entire journey representing an unmaking of her trans identity—a forced reversal of the vacuum into the white blankness of womanhood. She has no true social role. A passing trans woman is taken as a woman, not because society thinks trans women are women, but because she is assumed to be biologically female. The trans woman must assimilate into the role of “assumed female” because no other role exists for her. We view binary transition as the ultimate form of transition; the zenith of trans validity against which all transness is compared; but when the transgender girl stands at the summit of trans identity, she also stands at the foot of womanhood’s cordillera—surrounded by newborns. With her shed skin buried in snow, she steps from one plane to another, an action that represents the apocalyptic finality of trans identity: to unbecome. Members of her queer community run towards a trans identity, advertising it to the world; while the binary trans woman is destined to ascend from her trans origin until she can no longer remember it. At all times, she swims under fishing boats. She must religiously conform to the movements of her shoal—for any drop in her adherence to the feminine ideal alerts the watchful gaze of several hundred fishermen. In signalling herself to be an entertaining catch, she is reeled in by frenzied hands; her body displayed in next day’s paper, held by smiling gentlemen who ate well that night. Until she commits a crime, acts like a fool in public, or dies—the trans woman does not yet exist. When one finally commits such an action (preferably all three), the streets explode with confetti and festivities—her actions extrapolated to the entirety of the trans population as evidence this is who they really are. Even trans women themselves take part in this celebratory ritual, jeering at the idiot as she’s paraded; for if society hates you, the only way to gain acceptance is to agree. If it is shameful for a cis woman to express her sexuality, the femininity of the trans woman will be considered a fetish in and of itself. In-fact, the asexual trans woman will always be considered more fundamentally a fetishist than the cis female BDSM enthusiast. I am reminded of the more alternative scales of feminist art like vagina cupcakes or even menstrual blood paintings; such art is considered shameful, but when a trans woman dares pay artistic respect to her own respective anatomy in similar fashion, it’s not simply shameful—but a twisted bastardization of the human form to the highest degree; a sign that god is not only dead, but rotting. Gwyneth Paltrow famously released a candle supposedly bearing the scent of her own vagina; this is considered funny and perhaps odd, but her entire identity as a woman will never be judged by the existence of this gag. There is only one possible way for a trans woman to exist without upsetting these sensibilities: she must be entirely asexual, physically weak, mesmerizingly beautiful, and entirely complacent with any abuse dealt towards her. She must boast an impeccable boldness of style that all women see in our dreams. She must be famous, and the talk of the holy pantheons themselves. She must relinquish the totality of her humanity to the tides of media and metamorphose into a magazine cover for a book without pages. If all women must sand down the sharp edges of their personalities with an entirely disembodied elegance—the trans woman must go beyond, and kill the personality itself; preferably to an audience of hundreds. She is not permitted to exist until she apologizes for having the gall to exist at all. For “any self- assertion will take away from her…” If one wishes to get a quick assessment of how much social acceptability a demographic has in society, I believe the simplest metric is the frequency at which people from that demographic refer to themselves with their respective slur in a sincere and honest manner. *** THE VENN DIAGRAM OF CONTROL The feminine ideal is a temple, and at its centre stands a solitary altar adorned by offerings that reach up towards the altar’s pinnacle: a statue of a mother and child. When we reject the trans woman for her infertility, we merely partake in a prehistoric, sanctified tradition that existed long before the advent of the first trans woman. When we teach her that her infertility renders her not a woman, but a thing, the cis woman observes, knowing full well who these words are truly for. I am going to list a number of instances in which a woman may taught to feel shame for herself, and you’re going to discern whether or not I’m talking about cis or trans women: Having un-shaven body hair Refusing to have children or being infertile Being a lesbian Not being fashionable enough Not being desirable enough Possessing masculine mannerisms Being masculine in appearance Raising one’s voice Losing one’s composure Expressing assertiveness Being taller than one’s own boyfriend Being in a male dominated field Taking a liking to “masculine interests” Possessing physical strength Having poor cooking skills Not being curvy enough That which enforces the feminine ideal sees trans women and cis women as a singular blur —the trans woman merely held to a stricter standard. To survive, misogyny has feigned many defeats. It wants us to turn our backs, to believe its fangs have dulled with age as it adapts and metamorphoses into a more abstract enemy out of sight. Its taste for the cis woman has become difficult to maintain; she’s become too conscious, too resilient. But the trans woman? She can be bitten into without her even realizing what’s attacking her—and how delectable her panic tastes. The misogyny the trans woman faces is an anachronistic remnant, breathing its last gasp as it salivates for any naïve flesh to sink its teeth into. The wounds on her body are simply traces of an apparition that we never truly exorcised. When I suggested that transgender women can provide utility to us even if we don’t believe they’re women, this is what I referred to. The weathering she faces exposes aspects of misogyny that we once believed were behind us. Merely they were simply hiding, and desperate for new victims that didn’t know any better. When you want to enact control upon a population, you steal their humanity and then tease them with it. The only way for a trans woman to escape this pressure is to trace the steps of other women from history—to learn from their trials. Until then, her only out from judgement (much like the cis woman) is to adhere religiously to the feminine ideal. The transgender man faces far less scrutiny than the transgender woman because society’s idea of what a man can be is enforced not simply under looser measures, but by maleness onto itself. While he ascends towards that which society sees as the pinnacle of being; the trans woman is taken as a symbol of regression and debasement. The transgender man wages war upon the sky itself in a heroic bid to usurp empyrean fire; while the transgender woman watches, naked, from the centre of a quiet snowfield. “We’re in a double bind, because if we conform to feminine standards we are seen as misogynists, and if we reject them we are seen as men.” -Anon In trans-exclusionary radical feminist communities online, it is not uncommon to see people upload pictures of trans women to scrutinize and dismantle as a group activity. Surprisingly, they do not always choose to post un-passing trans women; they choose beautiful trans women. Models—all bearing faces that most women could only dream of owning. They take these women, scrutinize their cheekbones, their collarbones, their noses, and all sorts; utilizing the same surgical misogyny that is used against… themselves. In the name of what they believe to be a feminist cause, they break apart these trans women, scolding them for having not adhered to the feminine ideal strongly enough. One could just as easily throw a picture of a lesser-known cis female model down into these forums, shouting “by the way, she’s transgender!” from over the railings—and watch from above as she’s dissected into paste. Our world slips further and further into an extreme feminine idealism. One cannot deny stories of cis women being removed from women’s bathrooms due to their appearance, or cis women receiving harassment because people believe they’re trans women. Cisgender women are being pushed up against an eerily familiar bloodstained wall; prodded by the same bayonet that the trans woman’s skin bears numerous marks of. With the further normalization of face tuning, photoshopping, and cosmetic surgery, alongside the chrysalis birth of a new misogyny, some facet of society is beginning to slowly lose concept of what an actual woman looks like. As our window for female acceptability veers further into ridiculousness, passing as a woman will become a concern even for some cis women. On some level, it already is, and when we put the blame for this on trans women, misogyny observes from its front row seat; transfixed. Few women who aren’t children possess mathematically 100% feminine faces. If we search any woman’s features for qualities we choose to define as “masculine”, we’ll always find them; and the fact that we’ll always find them means this could theoretically be used as a weapon against nearly every woman in existence if we so choose. *** SOLIDARITY THROUGH FEMININITY? I live with a transgender woman. I was incredibly eager to move in with her at the start; she was an old friend from school and had stood by me through hundreds of my tribulations, visiting me in psychiatric wards as a teenager, and then visiting me in homeless hostels as a young adult. However, I eventually slowly began to develop extreme feelings of disgust towards her that came from an unknowable source, and it drove me to the point of insanity. On the internet I’m often asked why women become TERFs, and this is the story I always tell. I scolded my housemate relentlessly. Each and every one of her mannerisms were heretically, disgustingly, girly in ways that I simply had to eradicate the fakeness of. From her twee vocal affect to her performatively delicate disposition, I hatefully deconstructed every fraction of her being, insulting her under my breath repeatedly. I have never felt such disembodying disgust in my life—disgust that made me twitch and scratch away at my own skin. “Being a woman isn’t just about painting your fucking nails!” I shouted from across the room on one occasion. I knew everything about this was childish, ridiculous, and stupid; but I couldn’t act rational—I simply had to hate her. There was one friend I trusted to give me advice, and for several months I effectively made him my therapist. This transgender woman was my friend, and the disgust didn’t just simply regard her, I felt disgusted at myself for having these beliefs in the first place. I wasn’t even anti-trans. I possessed multiple transgender friends beyond her and even considered myself a supporter of the movement, so why did I hate her so? I stood at road’s end, having buried deep every aspect of the girl I grew up as. Nothing lay before me besides waves lapping at the sediment of old memories, crushed to bits and utterly indiscernible. I truly never contended with my hatred for my femininity. It was a hex. I was cursed to forever be circled by inward audiences where half the faces are my own, cursed to look through a thousand eyes each day with most of them mine, cursed to forever be alone behind a shop window, to only ever sleep under stage lights, to spiral further and further into a frothing delirium—a stain upon the tracks of time as the train barrels towards a finality that is cataclysmic beyond summation. I could never cloak myself behind masculinity; I am, and will always be, a woman of feminine character—and it was my fate to be undone by it all eventually. I could not possibly fathom why somebody would ever want to be that which I have only known suffering for. When I closed my eyes to search for the woman I used to be, suggestions of her would dart in and out, eventually coalescing into a recognizable face if I focused. Yet as soon as we made eye contact, my inner world returned to nothing and not even a hint of her was left. “Neat trick”, I said, standing on my little empty beach. I stood on this beach for about two years, staring at absolutely nothing until sight itself held no purpose. Eventually, I realized that aspects of my previous self were washing up along the shore—things I had truly, entirely forgotten. I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life, and I doubt I ever will again. Old photographs, artwork, clothes, hobbies—all carried in by the tides with an ever increasing speed. At first it was one old interest, then two, then ten, until eventually the horizon was eclipsed by a mountain of waterlogged memories, touching the sky like a monument. A memorial to the hopes and dreams of a young girl. What had my femininity truly achieved besides making me vulnerable? Growing up was an experience that forced my psyche to absorb numerous narratives of passivity and women’s lack of agency, all in the name of convincing me that I would only have worth as a human being if I stuck to the script. We tell women they can only be human if they are feminine, and then that this same femininity is what makes them subhuman. As I wrote elsewhere: even as children, girls must be acquainted with the hierarchy of female inferiority before they even know the definitions of the words. There comes a point where a teenage girl recognizes that her school uniform—a mandatory outfit that she wears every single day, is also considered fetish-wear. Merely a child in the first steps of life, and yet you are already associated with genre of pornography. This does something to you. From age 19-21, I shared a residence with somebody else; my boyfriend. I did his shopping, did his cleaning, and provided any emotional support I believed he required. I mothered him in ways that were, to myself and onlookers, incredibly harmless and unremarkable. He was a heroin addict and schizophrenic after all; if not me, he needed somebody to be there for him. Slowly and without my realization however, he began to symbolize the altar in which I should give myself. I broke off little parts of my body and soul and offered them like gifts until I was no longer unified. This process was entirely subconscious—undetectable. Eventually, I walked the road to its conclusion. Without my genuine consent, I let him take the last thing I knew; the final piece not yet given. I let him take her. Rootless, and carried downstream by forces beyond her comprehension, I believed I would never see her again. I followed this stream thinking I would one day find her; the stream became a river, and the river became an estuary. She was gone. When I said that womanhood isn’t about simply painting one’s nails, I meant it. You all asked what makes a woman become like this, and the simplest truth is that the women who suffered for their femininity the most will always be most susceptible. Not all women into these things are traumatized like my personal anecdote implies; I have at length described how it all functions as a distractive, entertaining internet movement, but my journey was one entirely removed from the internet, so I hope it provides some utility to somebody. Remember one thing: when she expresses disgust towards the femininity of the trans woman, it speaks to how she has been taught to view the femininity in herself. If you have known what it’s like to truly internalize this ideal and have it be your undoing, we are allies. I don’t care what you believe. “TERFs claim to want to deconstruct gender but they just replace classic essentialism with an understanding of womanhood defined by bodily trauma and anguish, and then get angry at trans people because transition blasphemes their persecution complex of an identity.” -Anon However, am also hesitant to reduce womanhood down to this form of trial by fire. The issue is that in the modern era, womanhood has no unifying roles—so the only unifying aspect of womanhood left is the hardships. “Woman”, as a concept, has been splintered into such fragments that it’s no longer defined by one’s social role, but an assortment of sufferings. What is the modern woman’s role in society currently? As it stands she is expected to be both provider and caregiver, while there is an increasing number of men in society who find themselves unable to be either. “In my grandmother’s generation, girls didn’t go to higher education. She was a dressmaker and people from the town asked her father why he didn’t just marry her away instead of letting her do the apprenticeship. If you are a trans woman at this time, and you marry a man, welcome! You are now perfectly integrated into womanhood. Today womanhood is more and more an abstract concept, and there is no perfect integration which is distressful for all women, cis and trans, but the trans women seem especially hurt by this.” -A friend “You’re drowning me in facts.” -Me, in response *** WHAT IS A TRANS WOMAN? “In all of human history there has never been a more defiantly beautiful artistic pursuit than that of the trans person trying to figure out why they exist.” -A friend What even is trans desire? Not gender dysphoria or the causes of it, no—what does trans desire itself desire? The social construction of the opposite sex? Or do trans people carry a deep cerebral link to the opposite sex, entering the social roles of the opposite sex as a consequence? Gender critical feminists often misunderstand this desire, believing that because “woman” is a socially constructed ideal, trans women adhere to a book of feminine identity authored by men—because in not being female, this is all they can seemingly be. Yet there are many trans women who feel that which you do. They do not feel like women, they just inexplicably are. “I don’t know, there’s obviously a biological basis for body dysphoria, but when it comes to my desire to conform to some feminine gender stereotypes I don’t know what to say except that this is probably the result of socialization. My body has to be female, which makes me identify with women over time, which makes me feel like I need to be the way I’ve been taught that they should be, which unfortunately involves some stereotypes. But then again.. cis girls constantly conform to stereotypes and people don’t ree at them, while trans girls are not so lucky.” -Anon The following words are from a transgender woman in response to this post when I originally published it. If you are the woman who originally wrote this and would like to be credited, please message me. I’m disheartened by the extent to which the non-consensual formative experiences that are foisted upon AFABs and denied trans women, make it seemingly impossible for us to form meaningful platonic bonds with each other—which would ultimately aid us in the fight against misogynistic paradigms. Men have cast a shadow over everything I’ve ever tried to do or be with other women. Even when it’s supposed to be about us, it’s about them. trans women are basically the canary in the coal mine of sex relations, and our suffering is largely ignored as cis women march forward into the dark. I just don’t think transition is about wanting to experience any particular arbitrary experience of womanhood at all though. At least not inherently. Yes, we get brainwormed into wanting to experience everything that cis women do—but realistically, I didn’t choose to be a woman and it’s been extremely shit for me. In a context where cis women were no longer defined in terms of bodily trauma and anguish, of course my life would be a lot better; there would no longer be any justification for denying us the right to physically transition, and I probably wouldn’t care about experiencing periods or anything. In a real post-gender society where people are only contextualized by their sex to the same extent to which they are currently contextualized by their blood type or handedness, I would just wear whatever I wanted, present however I wanted, and use whatever pronouns i wanted. I actually envy that freedom which AFABs have to still be recognized as essentially female regardless of “gender” presentation; although that freedom is currently being eroded by the backlash against trans women, which has increased the extent to which conformity to the feminine ideal is policed, and exacerbated the increasingly insane standard to which successful conformity is held. Being a woman is such a personal experience that I don’t see how anyone can monopolize it. “Woman” already encompasses like 10 or more distinct genders in terms of how people are actually socially contextualized. I feel like yes, I am a woman and yes, more importantly I’m female in the sense that I have AFAB-style dysphoria. but my “gender” which is supposed to be the thing trans people are all super attached to, is like…. I would say, I’m a type of woman? Like an adventurous, princessy type? But I wouldn’t say every woman has the same experience as me; we’re just connected via all the more tenuous shared experiences, and the one primary overarching experience of needing to have a female phenotype to like, not want to die. That’s probably the only thing which fundamentally defines “womanhood”, but of course, AFABs already have female phenotypes and their lives have been unfairly contextualized by that reality, so they will never recognize this fundamental need under normal circumstances, and so it’s difficult for them to understand us. But every other shared experience of womanhood is an ultimately ephemeral product of an arbitrary, contemporary, and patriarchal reality in my view. It will all erode, and probably soon. Hopefully soon. I don’t want womanhood to be defined in that negative way, and it pains me to see people hold onto that definition under the guise of progressive values. If anything, I see myself as being more “female,” in the sense that i have a strong internal sense of sex, rather than being a woman, because “womanhood” is just something that is unfairly foisted on AFABs and made inaccessible to trans women in order to make us feel like shit about ourselves. It’s been nothing but trouble for me. I promised myself that if i didn’t pass after HRT and turned out to be one of “those” trans women, that i would kill myself. This was when i was like, 13. I already saw it as a personal failure on my part, even though it was never in my control, and was never my fault. Ultimately, i did “fail” in the sense that i was afraid of, since i didn’t end up passing back then, and I still don’t pass perfectly even now as I’m recovering from FFS. My pretentious little girl self would probably hate me if she saw me now. I don’t know how to retain faith in the goddess when, even after doing everything “right”, DIYing at 15, trying to uphold respectability as a trans girl as best I could, to the point of neuroticism which ironically lost me many people and probably painted trans women in a very bad light to those people; even after trying so hard to be “one of the good ones” that I developed a complex around it, around being seen as inherently dangerous or harmful in relation to cis women, around being excluded as a peer by cis women in the subtlest of ways. It traumatized me, and on the plane trip back after my FFS, I realized that I legitimately have PTSD, or at least C-PTSD. But even after all that, I still don’t pass perfectly as AFAB, and I don’t really know what to do with my life now. I can’t face the people I thought I would be able to face. I can’t reconcile those past experiences. I can’t feel completely safe going outside, dressing or presenting however i want. I’ll still feel afraid, and neurotic, and paranoid. I’ll still be mirror checking constantly. What kind of life is that? I don’t know if the goddess is still looking out for me. Maybe I deserved this. I have lashed out in really messed up and immature ways in the past, but anyone in my situation would end up doing that right? It’s hard to be a good person if you’re trans. I don’t think cis women have anything special inside them that I don’t, besides a uterus, but that’s not really special because it could have always been different. If they were in my shoes, of course they’d be shitty people too. There’s nothing inherently “good” about them that would have protected them from that. The men who “valued” them as partners would see them as a joke, and the women who “valued” them as friends would see them as creepy, cloying, sad, pathetic, pitiable non-women who fail to suffer gracefully enough for the sensibilities of good people. So maybe it has nothing to do with being deserving. Maybe I was just unlucky where cis women are more lucky. So really, I shouldn’t feel bad at all, at least not about myself being “bad” or a failure or anything, because I tried my best to prove that I could buy everything that they have, including goodness and happiness, and even if it didn’t work out, the principle is still sound. But despite knowing that I shouldn’t feel bad, I am fucking pissed. I am so sad and mournful and just filled with grief and honesty, a resentment and something close to hatred for this world and my circumstances, and the unacknowledged reality of our collective trauma. I don’t really know what to do with these feelings yet, but i don’t think they can be snuffed out by anyone anymore. Maybe I can channel it somehow, or maybe I’m just gonna burn out. The psychology of the human race escapes all reason. That which is in our minds and nature will never be able to conform to our prudish sensibilities—and we can either accept this fact and treat the matter of gender dysphoria ethically, or we can fruitlessly pretend it will all go away with hands on our ears. While the current conceptualization of transgender politics and identity is definitely new and cause for examination, the base concept has been around for far longer than anybody would like to admit. “Before transitioning, I definitely did grow up internalising female beauty standards and applying them to myself. I was actually anorexic in middle school because of it.” -Anon It all begs the question: are trans women real women? As it stands, the human race has constructed a world that we were never designed to exist within. No definitions exist for what our species has become anymore, let alone what women are. If—devoid of all other understandings—the answer to what a woman is can now only be found within art, one must become art themselves. I repeat myself: the trans woman exists within a void in all senses of the word. Cis womanhood is a grand narrative that provides consolation as to what one is, but no grand explanation exists for the trans woman. Instead, she is met with a platter of little frameworks that she can pick from; from “born this way” narratives to self- identification ones, each of these stories is personalized for the individual. In reality, none of these frameworks can hope to explain the totality of trans identity, meaning each transgender woman must define her own womanhood from within a vacuum that’s remote from time itself. “I just feel like, or maybe have been made to feel like, I can’t really objectively philosophically prove that I’m a woman (and what a ludicrous task that would be), and if it’s subjective and up to interpretation.. what right do I have to force my views on others? So.. I go on and on about theoretical frameworks which, if accepted, would justify my womanhood, but I feel like I can’t stand up and say: I am a woman. I don’t know if I can even believe it, if there is no more basis for the belief than for alternative and equally valid systems that do not count me that way.” -Anon I wholly reject the notion that all trans identity is about “feeling” like the opposite sex. Consider your traditional transgender woman: your April Ashley, your Lucy Hicks Anderson —your trans woman who announces that something is terribly wrong with her body in childhood before she knows how to count. Waves carry her to the shores of the feminine without her permission; if she tries to swim away, the current drags her back. Something primordial demands she be here; a voice she holds no power to question. Truthfully, I believe that those of us who describe feeling no connection with our gender identities, lie. I think we all experience a connection—but lacking dissonance, the connection is imperceptible. You never stated a desire to be a boy or girl in childhood because you have known home since birth. “I don’t care if I was born trans or became trans. “Transgender” itself is a largely western, 20th-century way to consider gender variance, and covers a huge spectrum. What matters is whether being openly trans in our society can still provide opportunity for a life filled with joy, or dooms you to one saturated in misery.” -Shon Faye *** CONCEPTUALIZATION “I will never be a woman.” -Anon It’s not uncommon for one to witness various trans groups online split trans identity into a “good trans/bad trans” dichotomy; likely as a performative distancing response to the magnitude of vilification transgender people receive. However, I do wish to explore what I believe is an actual dichotomy; not one of good vs bad, but one of internal validation vs external. In most corners of society, trans woman’s identity is held under the microscope in a process of media dissection that divides her being into various pieces that others may steal, and one of these pieces is her inner conceptualization of her own identity. Womanhood is a narrative in and of itself—and while I have written about the effects rejecting this narrative has on cis women, I have never once explored what it means for a transgender woman to feel as though she is outside of womanhood. What I would like to establish is that there are trans women for whom their conceptualization of their own identity comes from within, thus shielding them from the worst of transphobia’s psychological ramifications—and then there are trans women for whom this inner conceptualization has been either taken away from them or never existed in the first place, meaning their identity hinges on external validation at all times. This is not a dichotomy of “good trans and bad trans”; this is a divide between those with self-sustained autonomy, and those without. A strange phenomenon I’ve come to notice is that the most sternly confident transgender women I’ve read about lived during decades prior—back when trans femininity was considered not simply shameful, but luciferian. One would expect modern trans people to represent the happiest transgender population that history has ever known; yet today there exists a vast contingent of modern trans women who—even in passing—are profoundly scrutinous of their own status as women; specifically as a form of self-hatred. I originally believed that the difference between these two groups was a symptom of modern transgender narratives getting out of hand—and while I do believe this describes many trans people—much of the difference likely lies in the dichotomy of identity conceptualization. Let’s look at an example: contrast these two quotes from Andrea Long Chu, author of “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy” and Corinna Cohn, author of “For 30 Years, I’ve Tried to Become a Woman. Here’s What I Learned Along the Way” … “There are no good outcomes in transition. There are only people, begging to be taken seriously.” -Andrea Long Chu “The women we see in our lives—that’s the standard we’re trying to match. And that’s not possible. There’s always going to be dissonance, because we’re not women.” -Corinna Cohn … with the following quote from April Ashley, a trans woman who was the second British person to ever receive sexual reassignment surgery (the operation was conducted on May 12, 1960). When you read the following words, please keep in mind that the operation took such a toll on her body that her very hair fell out. “When people ask me if I’m happy, I still say listen: every morning I get up out of bed, I still retain a little bit of that joy I had the day after I was operated on. I never lost that. It’s always, always with me—and I never forget it.” -April Ashley I once believed that the answer as to why this divide in attitudes existed was to be found in the differences in each respective time period’s attitudes towards transgender people—but now I believe there were historical transgender people who expressed such similar sentiments to Chu and Cohn—and the reason such sentiments fail to be unearthed is likely down to the fact everybody who felt such a way committed suicide before they had a story to even tell. Even April Ashley—my positive example—would create “suicide deadlines” as a child, praying to God that she may wake up a girl. In order to stay alive, trans women such as Ashley were forced to lock their internal sense of conviction behind impenetrable mental bulwarks. This confidence isn’t simply natural; it’s learned. “>your mom telling you that you’re not pretty, but disgusting. Yeah, it’s called The Look. It truly hurts. Other girls are called pretty by their respective mom when they follow in the way of femininity, but our respective mom called us disgusting. It’s one of the deepest scars that can be inflicted to a young transgirl, as it’s betrayal by someone close.” -Anon A person’s internal conceptualization of their own identity is a very tangible facet of the psyche. When I described the notion of having this internal sense “stolen” from oneself, I was speaking in literal terms. When a trans woman loses her ability to conceptualize her own identity—to have it originate from within her—it’s surgically partitioned from her being and placed into the hands of someone else. This someone can be a family member, a friend, or greater society at large—and when it’s stolen, the trans woman has no hopes but to beg the thief to give it back. Hence, she needs her identity to be validated by external stimuli —and when she pursues such validation, she essentially begs the world to return her stolen humanity back to its rightful owner. Above all, the most potent form of external validation is acceptance from cis women. When a trans woman lacks the ability to conceptualize whether or not she is a woman anymore, acceptance from a cis woman has not simply the potential to rejuvenate her—but to rebuild her inner world post-apocalypse. However, what happens if the opposite occurs? A portion of trans women online possess a life-consuming fear of cis women that often exceeds their fear of cis men by several magnitudes. As somebody who had read through many cases of trans women being killed by straight men, this was surprising news to me. What I am about to discuss is an aspect of trans identity that I have only seen discussed in the most hidden trans communities online. As a progressive, this topic rarely reaches the surface of my world. I would like this to change. “I’m scared I’m not a woman because it would mean I’m not anything.” -Anon The difference lies in that the threat cis men pose is along physical lines and therefore tangible—but the threat cis women pose is entirely psychological. In not knowing what the cis woman’s mind contains, the transgender woman may only assume; her conceptualization of her identity so fuelled by external stimuli, that her entire inner world can be shattered by a single errant thought from a cis woman’s mind. A cis man can punch you; a cis woman can unmake you. Transgender men struggle with this self-doubt much less; a consequence of the fact society sees men as lone entities. Women, on the other hand, are a team. Consider the differences in single sex locations: even going to the bathroom for women is a social experience. When a transgender woman has her inner sense of identity stolen, being accepted as a member of this team can serve to temporarily regenerate the wound. However, if her admittance is rejected, the wound is ripped until her body lies in two severed halves; one that questions whether or not she truly ever was a woman, and one that knows, deep down—she really was. “Cis women get to decide what happens to us. Whether we get included or not. They get to decide whether we are safe, or people, and they have plenty of reasons to not want to be seen as equals, because who wants to be on the same level as the scum of the earth?” -Anon Not all trans women are at risk of losing their sense of self upon being told they aren’t a “real woman” by a cis woman. Immunity is granted to trans women who possess either many female friends, or have aligned themselves more closely with girls since childhood. But if these traits fail to describe all cis women, then it serves that they will also fail to describe all transgender women. The difference is that for cis women, being disconnected from other girls does not have the potential to contribute to a cataclysmic rupturing of your internal world to the point you no longer have any conceptualization of what you are. An empty trans woman needs validation from acceptance into cis women’s “team” in order to be a real human—however if she happens to be outside of the feminine narrative or has only known male socialization, then she’s entirely outside of woman’s world and unable to attain such validation. Even if one or two cis women accept her as a woman, it will never be enough for her to feel free. If she lived through an identity fully established in the male world before transition, then she attempts to enter a class of people for whom share an unspoken solidarity, communicated through a silent language she doesn’t yet comprehend. If a trans woman possesses an internal conviction in her own identity as a woman, this is no cause for concern; but if it’s sustained externally, a fracturing dissonance occurs. She enters womanhood from its opposite polarity, ascending through its various divisions and trials before reaching a locked gate behind which lies her final Elysium. She checks her person for a key she does not own; a key she believes represents the source of her anxieties. Perhaps she’s a late transitioner and it represents female childhood, or perhaps she’s paranoid that her brain isn’t “female enough” and it represents female socialization—but you and I know the truth: the real key is neither of those things. The only key that will ever open this gate is for one’s conceptualization of their own identity to come from within. Without this ability, she is left to pummel her fists into the gate’s rivets at the quiet end of a spiralling trail of sacrifices, believing this is her eternal fate. I disagree. I believe that the trans woman should not try to steal her sense of identity back from its thieves; for their hands will have dirtied it beyond comprehension. No, the solution is for her to cultivate this inner sense of self from within her once more—for when it’s truly rooted in her soul, not even God himself can rip it out. Every single trans woman has the potential to enter this gate. *** WHY IS THE TRANS WOMAN? I have written about the female de-transitioner, the alternative non-binary teenager, and the pervasive identity fetishization that has consumed progressivism—yet one thing I’ve not discussed is why the concept of gender transitions have become something so many people find comfort in. Because my previous exploration of gender dysphoria’s pervasiveness was in relation to de-transitioners, I have not yet tried to discuss any wider societal reason for the popularity of trans identity. “I remember that Kat Rosenfield once mentioned that once people could figure out a baby’s sex while it was still in the womb, childhood suddenly became a lot more gendered. This was the real advent of the pink toys vs blue toys divide. Anyways, in this type of world, you see a lot more transgender people than you did before.” -Me, in conversation “I think that the hyper-gendered capitalism and the destruction of communal families with clear gendered tasks are two of the main reasons why transgender identity is much more widespread.” -A friend, in response In an age of individualism that is without any unifying cultural narratives, we gravitate towards anything that offers the ability to organize the stew of feelings and disconnected stories in our heads into any type of continuity. Identity, more than anything, has become the focal point of our times; the solidification and subsequent advertising of one’s inner self to the world now representing the journey of the modern human. In being sold more than a hundred each day, we select from these narratives in the changing rooms of our minds—and transness, I believe, is no exception. During this article, I have tried to capture the emotions in people’s heads with little attempt to do much else because I lack the ability to understand how economic systems can affect human psychology. I am not an intelligent person, evidently—but neither am I so unintelligent as to claim all gender transitions are conducted in pursuit of social clout. Our world is one of social instability. We cultivate our identities through the medium of technological machinations whose true nature eludes our perception; our personalities and appearances existing only as a language in which to communicate branding. Gender has become an increasingly ineffective means of providing structured order between the sexes, as living under gendered social roles no longer serves an economically viable lifestyle. When you remove all of gender’s social utility, all you’re left with is the image. I repeat myself: the human race has constructed a world it was never designed to exist within. In such a fundamentally image driven world, the skyrocketing rise of transgender identity is a natural occurrence, as the trans person only wishes to communicate utilizing a different palette. Trans identity is not shallow and image-based; our world is. I consider transgender identity to be a natural expression of human identity within all societies—yet throughout history it was much rarer than it is today, begging the question as to why. Once again, we’ll brush aside de-transitioners and minority identity fetishization to ask, simply: why are there so many genuine trans people today? It’s simple. Modernity’s current structure has pushed this rare, yet natural, human compulsion into the mainstream. Perhaps by some strange paradox, being transgender is one of the most instinctually natural things one can be today. If you wish to read more about this idea, a trans friend of mine wrote a short essay on the topic. *** REALITY CHECK Because the vast majority of people who will ever come to read this article will be /lgbt/ users, I feel I have a duty to include a section like this. I’ll write briefly and without embellishments. One of the general pervasive beliefs amongst the trans women of /lgbt/ is the idea that “real women” do not want them in their spaces. The problem is that woman-centric communities that are indifferent to trans women are the current standard, so this is where most regular people find themselves. One must go a step above to desire a community that explicitly makes an effort to exclude all trans people regardless of their character or passing ability. You must go out of your way and delve into bigotry first, which requires one to waste ludicrous volumes of time staring at a screen. As a result, every cis-only community has selectively filtered out most people without a serious anti-trans political investment. Everyone in them has had to forcibly disconnect themselves from mainstream lines of thought; the consequence of which is that many cis-only communities spend more of their time talking about trans people than any other topic. Due to the filter, that’s all any of them are truly there for. As somebody who has been in such communities over the years; I find them utterly insufferable. Most cis women are either indifferent to trans people, or they’re or politically engaged individuals who are acutely aware of the stigmatization trans women face and don’t care to perpetuate it. Straight men are everywhere, meaning it’s easy for one to learn that not all of them are disgusted by trans women. The problem is that lesbians are a much rarer demographic, so a small few can speak for the entire group. Human beings are much more inclined to vocalize frustration than to express contentment. As such, few cis lesbians are going to feel a sudden urge to post online about the fact they are indifferent to transgender people. The opposite, however, is much more likely. If you genuinely find yourself unable to take a single trans supportive cis woman at her word, you have reached a point where your perception of the world is highly warped by the internet, likely exacerbated by the fact you probably have zero female friends. If you perceive this as an insult (at least one person did) and it’s true, then I’ll pry no further. I don’t insist that you log off, but I do insist that you recognize how your concerns are exaggerated and tantamount to a form of self-harm if you find yourself rejecting any positivity a cis woman brings your way. *** A FINAL MESSAGE: WHO OWNS WOMANHOOD? THE REAL WOMEN OF /LGBT/ read as though it was trying to bludgeon the reader with sad quotes and anecdotes in order to farm sympathy. This irritated me as it made me feel like I was using your stories as emotional ammunition when I interspersed them amongst my various political opinions. I believe this not only made my opinions look weaker, but also robbed your quotes of any dramatic power they held. I have compiled the quotes here, separately, if you wish to send them to others. The fabric of womanhood changes from era to era, country to country, class to class. When we ask if trans women can fit into womanhood, we ask if trans women can fit into an abstract concept. There is no true answer besides the simple word: you. You own your own womanhood. One entirely unique to yourself, that nobody can truly take from you no matter how hard they try. I once wrote that the male puberty represents a boy’s metamorphosis into society’s most supreme form; while the female puberty simply transforms one into a woman. Many people believe that transgender women are never truly women because they never grew up as girls; yet there are many trans women who, in transitioning during adolescence or even childhood, have never known the life of a man. Such trans women never develop the male secondary sex characteristics that offer them a place amongst men; rather, like all other girls, as a teenager they instead develop a series of female secondary sex characteristics such as a smaller body and breasts—with all social implications. Yes, the lessons of girlhood represent a large foundational part of most womanhood, but is all womanhood defined by what we went through in childhood and adolescence? I do not believe trans girlhood and cis girlhood are exactly the same; I have written about issues specific to cis female biology previously, so don’t assume this of me—but neither am I so eager to reduce girlhood down to a series of potential medical concerns and period cramps. “When people was sexualized me as a teenager it was because I was a girl, not because I was a trans girl.” -Anon Many trans women and cis women come from a similar world, and they comfortably relate to one another not vaguely as humans, but specifically as women. I have known relationships like these, and they are partially the reason why I choose not to split all experiences of womanhood into a purely cis/trans divide. But do all women relate to one another however? Of course we don’t. There are cis women I find myself utterly unable to connect with, just like how there are trans women I find myself utterly unable to connect with, and vice versa for both. You loathe it when I’m nice. You’ll never accept anything a woman has to say unless her words are slathered in disgust, so let me exercise some brutality. Do not, under any circumstances, gleam your worth as a human being from external stimuli—and do not, under any circumstances, try to survive off of the validation of cis women. You must learn how to survive emotionally disconnected from these things; for even if you attain them, the validation you feel will only offer a temporary respite if your sense of conviction does not come from within. For those of you on the board that have had this internal conviction stolen, you must help each other cultivate it together as a collaborative effort. After I posted the original version of this article, this thread appeared. You people have managed to transform all these ridiculous Blanchardian terms into universal board-wide knowledge. Well, make the notion of internal conviction, how it can be stolen, the consequences of lacking it, and how to grow it from within you, part of the /lgbt/ lexicon. Essentially, I’m asking that you memeify this notion. Think of a better term for it, for I surely can’t. I’ve been asked why I choose to write about trans women. I choose to speak with you and absorb your world because I believe all women share a cosmology and a struggle that is greater than any of us will ever come to comprehend. For every single one of you: understand that a woman’s hands are a holy instrument. Ascend from whatever hell you’re currently in and bury your palm into the very chest of God himself. As you displace every little bone in his ribcage, do not stop until he is utterly hypnotized by the very fountain of your being. Clutch at his heart—tell him that you were made to be greater than what you were born as—and rip it out. I said that you must give people no choice but to see you as a woman. A soppy sounding notion; rich coming from the words of someone like me. But by god, I meant it. After reading many stories, watching many interviews, and even skimming a few autobiographies here and there, I have come to know that there is clearly a place in the world for post-transition trans women for whom their chromosomes are something that can be acknowledged comfortably whilst knowing they have little bearing on one’s life. One day you’ll be in your sunset years, and by then, the shape of your body or the sound of your voice will cease to contain but a shred of weight or meaning. Eventually, you’ll be empty- handedly willing away your keepsakes as you sign off whatever portions of you be assignable—and by then, you’ll be left with nothing but the knowledge of whether or not you lived your life authentically. In the last few moments of one’s life, this simple kernel of information is the last thing a person will ever own. Living life true to oneself is the only way in which a single human being can raise a weapon against oblivion—and you can either draw this instrument in defiance, or die knowing your existence meant nothing, drifting down into limbo as other—more well lived souls—swim past you in their ascension; holding hands, and singing. Painting by a lion from a dead world Categories: The World NOTHING WORLD Back to top
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