my life as a white hetero male

[sophiaserpentia]

"Teach him to play Monopoly, not to sing in the rain." -Jethro Tull, "Thick as a Brick"

Though I yesterday characterized my voice as "that of queer-fat-trannie," I shouldn't neglect the aspect of me that still remembers what it is like to be a white hetero male.

I'm still white, of course, and it's arguable whether or not I was ever "really" male or hetero, but that's how I identified, and that's how society saw me. When I first began to examine critical and feminist thought 13 years ago, I was soon to be married, and the world was my oyster. I wanted to learn about oppression and social stratification, but I was hindered by the problem of how exactly to relate to the issue or to literature about it.

The assertion that I was privileged didn't gel with my experience. I never questioned exploitation or discrimination, but personally, I felt anything but 'privileged.' My life had been mapped out for me by my parents and by society; I was to excel in academic pursuits and then settle into a suitably bourgeois white-collar life with my wife and the kids we would have.

As a teen I was extraordinarily angsty because I had no way to articulate how constricting this life-plan felt. As I wrote a few months ago, "Have you ever pondered that what it means to be an adult, might mean to finally have your spirit broken?" A lot of you challenged that, but that was how it felt to me. Three years before I became a Women's Studies student, I had told my parents that I was transsexual and their reaction was harsh and unapproving. The tension was released (or I should say, went back inside me) when a year later I retracted, and I started dating women shortly thereafter.

I also felt that my emotional and creative expression was terribly stifled. The range of things you're allowed to express as a white hetero male, especially emotionally, can feel very constraining. Your expressions, your mode of dress, and so on, are critically examined all the time to make sure you "stay in line." I don't recall being explicitly told that "boys don't cry," but it was more than obvious that crying was forbidden. "Being a man" requires a lot of effort and other men are always examining you for signs of insufficient masculinity. I went from living with a family that expected me to be stoic, to a marriage with a wife who expected me to be stoic.

I often felt that the only emotion I was free to really express was anger, and when I was young, I had a LOT of it.

The mythopoeic men's movement fascinated me. It was the first time I had ever heard anyone say that lots of men felt just as constrained by their gender roles as I did. The "voice with the microphone" in this culture may be that of a white hetero male, but that doesn't mean it speaks their experience, but often offers instead only a constructed facade, the experience that they "should" feel. If white hetero men stop acting as the footsoldiers in the hegemony of domination, the elites in the upper echelons will lose their privilege, and we can't have that.

Now, my own experience might not actually be that of a white hetero male. I don't know the answer to that.

But in any case I felt that it was plainly obvious that the forces which constrained me were the same as those forces which constrained women and people of color, and it hurt when a few of the feminists I tried to say this to told me that discussion about how patriarchy hurts men is not appropriate in a feminist forum. (I didn't understand then what I do now, about how bringing up men's issues in feminist forums reflected male privilege.)

Now I see things from a different perspective. If I could speak to my younger self, I would counsel him to learn how to listen to other people's anger, because learning that enabled me to see the ways in which I was truly privileged and kept myself from seeing it. I would also counsel him to listen to perspectives without presuming an agenda.

Comments

[sable-twilight.livejournal.com]

i always chaffed under that role. i refused, in many subtal and subverive ways to conform to that role. maybe that is why i am more comfortable with aspects of my masculinity and letting it peek through from time to time, something which some of my trannie sisters don't seem to get.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

For a while I toyed with presenting as an "unconventional man," but I never got very far outside the lines doing that, never far enough to feel like "myself." It takes more bravery to be highly genderqueer than to transition from one gender to another. Sometimes transitioning actually feels like cowardice, but it also feels like survival, like being able to breathe a little more.

[touchyphiliac.livejournal.com]

Sometimes transitioning actually feels like cowardice

Thank you for saying this. I am still really young and I am trying to give myself time to explore what it means to be a woman, how I can express myself from the body of a woman, what it's like to live as a woman, etc. before deciding to leave this behind. One of the things that I have felt several times when I was so sure I was ready to transition was this sense that to do so would be taking the "easy" route (as if any of it is "easy"), or that I had to make sure that I was doing it for reasons other than cowardice, and I haven't really been able to express that to anyone. Because that is only the way it feels inside my own body, but that can feel like betrayal to someone else.

I'm glad that it's spacious for you. <3

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

I see evidence of men constrained by this facade they are supposed to meet all the time. And I find myself much more comfortable around men who allow themselves to cry, to be outside of the white hetero male formula. (I mean, I have two of them who are willing/able to let me have more than one man in my life, and are willing to sleep together, so it's kind of a GIVEN I'm more comfy aorund men not conforming to the mold!) I find men who recognize their constrictions and are willing to try and escape them are more likely to recognize the constrictions of others and try to not reinforce them, or try to be supportive about people breaking free of them.

On the other hand, my father whined constantly about the persecution of the white male (he never specified hetero - it was understood) and worked his ASS off to conform. And had immense amounts of anger which would surface, sometimes explosively, as a result. He may be an invalid example being clinically psychopathic, but he seems to be getting worse with time - it may perhaps be a result of the system wearing him down.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I've often railed against fears of "becoming my father" because I watched what happened to him, what the system did to him, and what he in turn reflected outwards, often in the form of a stony silence, sometimes in the form of road rage (I remember a time he nearly got into a fistfight on the side of the road) or other bursts of anger. His anger simmers beneath the surface and even though it doesn't come out much, you can still feel it there.

I fear my own anger and do exactly the same with it.

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

so do my boys, despite the extra freedoms they allow themselves. One of them dented a wall just last week by punching it (his anger usually being a manifestation of fear).

Not trying to be smart-alecky here

[trannyboi-lb.livejournal.com]

but to misquote Monty Python, "you got better."

I think the point that a lot of people miss when they examine themselves and the changes that they have made is that they DID indeed change. "I" am no more like my 'rents than I am like Pat Robertson. I CHOSE not to be like any member of my family and have for the most part succeeded much to my betterment I do believe. The thing is that you are becoming you. THAT is a lot more than many others in this "sheepy" world can say.

Congratulations

LB

Re: Not trying to be smart-alecky here

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

:) Thank you.

Sometimes it feels to me like I am changing. At other times it feels more like I never really changed and am only changing my outward self or what I allow to slip past the censors. How else should I interpret the feeling that I am becoming more honest with myself, more true to my nature? If I was less true to my nature before, but am more so now, does that mean I am progressing from "deception" to "honesty"? It makes me nervous to view my transition in terms of salvation.

Re: Not trying to be smart-alecky here

[trannyboi-lb.livejournal.com]

I have been through a lot of different phases in my life journey looking for the "place" that was right for me. Each time I thought I hit upon it, I was sure that I was becoming more me. Then a very wonderfully special friend helped me to kick myself out of the trans closet and admit to being the man that I am. I now am living every day as the me that I have always known was there. I do not look at being raised a girl as dishonest, in that, "I" wasn't being dishonest..I told people I was a boy. I look at being raised a girl as a learning experience because I learned how to be a better man by learning what hurts women and by learning how women want to be treated not just from observation but from living it. So, I suggest you look at your life as a male with the idea that you take what you learned from it good and bad and find something in it of value. You see, it is my spiritual philosophy that we choose these types of experiences for a reason. So, perhaps there is something there for you to mine out and use.
Also, any time a person becomes more in touch with their true nature, they are becoming more honest and therefore, more honest with themselves. It is easy to delude oneself on any topic until you are faced with hard facts. If you are viewing your transition as salvation then perhaps that is what it is. Perhaps it is saving you from a life in a socialized gender that would be hell for you and perhaps it is saving you from years of self-delusion and teaching you what honesty with yourself is all about. I am not preaching, just suggesting. As honest as I am with other people and believe me, I am honest with others to a fault a lot of the time...I tend to lie to myself still. Stopping that is the hardest thing I have yet to do but I am learning to do it and the more I look in the mirror every morning and see a man, the easier the lesson gets.
You are remarkable for your courage and strength to face society and cry out in as loud a voice as you can who you really are. I support you and everyone else who is trying to break away from the flock and become more honest with self and I include myself in there.

You are most welcome, by the way.

LB

[lorrraine.livejournal.com]

Hi,

I do think that the socialization and experiences of trans women pre-transition do differ from those of men and resemble those of other women although the degree of difference and similarity varies from person to person.

I know that growing up I was caught in a double bind, restricted inwardly by society's rules for female behavior which were ingrained in me from my earliest socialization, while also constrained from outside by society's rules for male behavior which were imposed and reinforced with violence. I got attacked a lot, both verbally and physically. I suspect that if the inner rules hadn't been so deeply seated in my psyche that I perhaps could have found some way to fit in and find acceptance among men at least until I got to a point where I couldn't deal with the difference between my body and my propriaceptive sense of my body any more.

The fact that I grew up poor compounded the problem because as a poor child I received many of the messages of oppression that are very similar to those which other girls recieve for being girls. I was othered, excluded, and rejected for being poor by some and othered, excluded, and rejected for my inability to live by male standards by others. In fact I saw no real difference between the messages that girls around me got from the ones I got except that their messages were seldom reinforced with public violence.

On the plus side, these experiences, combined with a body which was reasonably close to the female range pre-transition, made transition amazingly easy (except financially).

In transistion I didn't set out to "become a woman", but only to escape the restrictions that kept me from being myself. For years I tried to think of myself a genderqueer, but my socialization kept kicking in and pushing me toward feminine behaviors. I finally had to accept that if I was dealing with the same internalized oppressions as other women I knew and I was now dealing with the same external oppressions as other women I knew, and my life resembled that of other women I knew with differences no greater than are found between other groups of women, then I am a woman.

That acceptance of womanhood helped me find feminism and locate the tools that I can use to dismantle my own internal oppression as well as fight external oppressions.

So I think that my experience is at most only tangentially connected to that of white hetero males.

(continued)

[lorrraine.livejournal.com]

(continued)

I find the assumption that everyone labeled male at birth has male privilege very troubling. (An assumption not made here by you, but often made elsewhere.) Male privilege as I understand it involves society being structured in ways that reward males and oppress females. One component is that men are taught their superiority and entitlement while women are taught their inferiority and obligation to serve others. In that sense I was raised as a traditional female and still struggle with that internal programming. Another component is that men are given many opportunities denied to women. While I can't say for certain that I was never given an opportunity that would have been denied me if I had been seen as a woman, I do know that being seen as a gender variant unacceptable male left me very few opportunities to begin with and that all of those opportunities that I remember (my memory of childhood is understandably hazy) were shared by other girls. A third component of male privileg is that women are encouraged to display signs of femininity and not masculinity in clothing and behavior while men are encouraged to display signs of masculinity and not femininity in clothing and behavior. Here is where the double bind hit most strongly. I was violently discouraged from displaying signs of femininity while I was inwardly constricted from displaying signs of masculinity, which left me in a genderless no-person's land. While that differs from the typical girl's experience I would hardly call my experience a privilege.

The thing about male privilege is that it can't be disproved only proved. I may have had male privilege at some point amongst the oppression, but I don't know when or how.

It's funny that I can often clearly see the male privilege of the women who dismiss me because of my presumed male privilege. I see the wealth that their fathers earned thru male privilege and bestowed upon them which payed for their education and otherwise benefitted them, while my father was poor white trash and an economic drain on my mother until he finally left. I see many of them working in male dominated fields, which while it is a great thing means that they are benefitting from the salary differential that fields traditionally associated with men have over fields traditionally associated with women. Caveat: My current post transition job, security guard, while low paying, in unlike all of my previous jobs, traditionally associated with men. That said, in many ways I am little more than an underpaid receptionist most of the time in practice, but I do have a traditionally male job title.

If I could speak to my younger self I would say, "Transition sooner, don't be so afraid, it will be a lot better than you think."

Thanks,
Lorrraine

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I do think that the socialization and experiences of trans women pre-transition do differ from those of men and resemble those of other women although the degree of difference and similarity varies from person to person.

Yeah. It's next to impossible for me to know what are the implications of knowing that my experience is fundamentally that of a transwoman who was forcibly socialized as a boy -- IOW, how much can I speak for men from my own experience?

I think I can speak for men at least a bit. Maybe more than a bit, but that's what's debateable.

I am loathe to speak of my perspective as a woman's perspective though. It's... well, it's my perspective before it's a transwoman's, man's, or woman's. I'll wait and see how many men, or women, or transpeople can relate most closely to these comments. So far it seems the trannies are ahead.


In transistion I didn't set out to "become a woman", but only to escape the restrictions that kept me from being myself.

That is close to how I see my transition. I see it as a survival tactic, a way to preserve my happiness and sanity. Female is not the only alternative to being male, and so becoming "pointedly-not-male" does not automatically default me to female, but in terms of what society will accept it's what's left.

I'm fond of quoting the line from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, with regard to my feelings about gender transition: "It's what [we] have to work with." It's not an ideal option, and for me at least it doesn't necessarily mean I will ever feel like an "authentic" woman, but presenting as female feels more authentic an expression of who I am, than presenting as male.

[pretzelsalt.livejournal.com]

I can already tell adding you to my list was one of those "great moments in livejournal" - I only wish I had sooner.

Thank you for writing this - I plan on spelunking through your pages a little bit.

I am currently in a situation with my partner of the last 4 years - who by far is the most open feminist man I have ever been with. As a radical feminist heterosexual female the search for a relationship with a man is so exhausting I am constantly questioning my decisions. I am currently at a place where I feel there are some very legitimate power over issues I am having with him. For the first time I feel like I can't bring something up to him because he will see it as an attack - when it is really both of us trapped in our boxes crashing into eachother.

Crap - I can't adequately explain myself right now. I just want to say again - thank you for this I look forward to getting to know you.

-Sarah

[touchyphiliac.livejournal.com]

I am currently at a place where I feel there are some very legitimate power over issues I am having with him. For the first time I feel like I can't bring something up to him because he will see it as an attack - when it is really both of us trapped in our boxes crashing into eachother.

Thank you for this.

[pretzelsalt.livejournal.com]

now to find a solution....

just preserving my secret privacy ;p

[touchyphiliac.livejournal.com]

I found myself experiencing something similar to that, but the men involved weren't very feminist or conscious and there were other problems with the relationships, so it was easy to know what to do---I broke off the relationships and eventually stopped dating men because the same issues kept coming up.

Things sound more complicated in your situation.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Well, I've said it before but I can say it again - it seem men (and those who were raised as men) believe they are the only ones who arforced into a societally constrained form of emotional expression. Women are not allowed full emotional expression either. Angry women are mocked, told they are insane, vilified, and ignored. Women who are not always being charming and happy are told to "smile" by random strangers. Women who are depressed because of their limited options are told the problem is their depression and not the situations which make them depressed. I completely agree that men have a limited form of socially allowable emotional expression, but no more so than women.

[touchyphiliac.livejournal.com]

Women who are not always being charming and happy are told to "smile" by random strangers. Women who are depressed because of their limited options are told the problem is their depression and not the situations which make them depressed.

Yep.

[pretzelsalt.livejournal.com]

I left the note in the wrong place.

I swear I shoulda been born before the industrial revolution.

WELL before.

The blinking and beeping and button pushing makes my brain hurt.

[touchyphiliac.livejournal.com]

It's fine, fuck the industrial revolution, and no, that's not mine. ;p

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I have a better appreciation for that than I did then. Back then, I didn't really know what women experienced, because I hadn't really learned how to listen. I mean, I could understand the structural and economic aspects of oppression, but the subtleties, the emotional control and so forth, I didn't. So all I really understood was the restriction on me.