One of the differences

[sacredchao]

It occurred to me just now that one of the main differences between cisgender and transgender is the way in which they're questioned.

Cisgender is never questioned. Even when the assumptions of gender are destructive and restrictive there is no need felt to interrogate the gender of most people. It just is. Immediate and innate and self-evident to such a degree that it's processed without conscious thought.

Trans is always a question. Always a puzzle. Always something that demands interrogation and never something which can just be. And so with each person we meet we must decide what we tell or hide. Our lives are gender studies lessons, our love a fractured, disjointed mosaic of queer sexuality, even for the most straightforward of relationships. And because each new person hasn't had those conversations before, we have them again and again and again to validate ourselves afresh in each new acquaintance's eyes. The need to validate itself is invalidating though. It's incumbent upon us to make ourselves real and it needs effort with everyone who encounters us, just to make us even a fraction as believable and understandable as the person we're speaking to who can so comfortably assume that we will parse their identity and nature that they never even think about it.

I'm not sure where this goes, just a random thought for the evening occasioned by yet another instance of having someone describe the three genders, as they see it - male, female and transgender.

Comments

[f-m-r-l.livejournal.com]

Cisgender is sometimes questioned. Gender and its expression can be complicated, especially when different cultures come into play.