cycles

Ended up worrying some after seeing a person claim gender variance is a trend and social contagion, a generational narrative. This is not how I see things (responses to the world are, but class structure existed before marxism, war before the peace movement, sexism before first- and second-wave feminism, and gender before third-and fourth-wave feminism), but got stuck on the question on whether I would have been the same, transitioning in the same manner, in another era. Somehow the naïve image is that since that would seem even more statistically improbable than who I am now, perhaps I would not have; this together with how definitely there were things I would never have known of or dared if I had not seen others do them.

So who would I have been earlier in history? This is somewhat useful to ask.

In early childhood, my home had little explicit gender separation and this was probably part of why I felt home was such a conceptually safe place compared to the rest of the world. If explicit gender had been enforced on me there (if my parents had not been laidback deconstructed hippies), it’s hard to say, but possibly I would have shown childhood gender dysphoria, or greater mental health problems as I claimed to be fine with what I was becoming. My attachment might have been less secure. One cannot really say, but past-eras me equivalents in that regard would perhaps have been even more bullied sissy boys, or later disappeared into mental health statistics. Such people certainly existed, they just didn’t become public trans people.

In teenage years, I discovered feminisms that were about the deconstruction of gender roles and they became a great refuge for me, a way to feel I could relate to the world in a way which made more sense. That lifeline eventually became a very leaky boat I had to paddle constantly to keep afloat, but it took long to get there. Similarly I became an androgyne, because that was the only way I could feel comfortable socializing while intimately observed, such as with partners. What if I had not found it, where would I have gone instead? Probably I would have withdrawn fully into fantasy, distractions, antisocial nerdery, withdrawn from the world and focused, melancholically, on specific hobbies and ideas and interests, even more than I now did. Such people certainly have existed – loners, monks, nerds, hermits. I would not know I was trans, I would just live very detached from the world. Less happy and less fulfilled, and less visible, but there. Here perhaps I might have differed from those trans people who need transition to live, or who would go for some version of it no matter what. I am not a trans early adopter, I have some options, but that does not change that not all options are equally good.

In adult years, my defenses gradually became overwhelming to maintain, and also to some extent I now recognize, I felt more clearly saddenedly apathetic over the absurdity of my body, like how it felt like just a thing whenever not femininized. Things felt banal, it was hard to feel for myself as a person like other persons. Those two things I did not connect. Visible trans people outside previous stereotypes – trans woman hackers and scientists, for example – those made me consider that if I were trans, I would be myself, only I would be a woman, and then everything would somehow be OK. If I had not found that, in a previous era, I would not have transitioned, but stayed a nerdy semi-hermit dealing with mental health issues, perhaps escalating such issues that I’d constantly be fighting. Such people also certainly existed in the past.

So where does that take me? It highlights how that for me, indeed I would not perhaps live as trans in another era (whereas many other people still would), instead that aspect of me would manifest in having a sad, isolated and unhappy life. The politics of my day informed and affected what I did about the way my mind works and how it mismatches. There still is the fact of how much more alive this can make me, and how much not alive my states otherwise made me. So I am lucky this is when I get to live.