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

[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.