Sarah Bates I waffle, therefore I am

Gender Identity

I apologise for this post in advance. It's here because I want to explore my own understanding of being transgendered, and what I've been trying to understand about the feelings and confusion around the subject. I've reread it and rewritten it several times and I still feel like it comes off as a badly written daily mail article, which I hated the idea of. If I've written something offensive, or inaccurate or simply stupid and ignorant, please leave a comment or email me to correct me, and be as mean and as nasty as you want. Thank you ON TO THE POST!

It'd odd how life sometimes throws you things to think about and understand. I've recently been really interested in gender identity, and a whole heap of things all relating to that subject sort of fell into my lap.

There's a comic I was recently introduced to, Khaos Komix, which is about a group of teenagers, most of whom are gay / lesbian, and two of them are transgendered. Then, an online friend started posting about their own gender confusion. His posts helped me better understand the feelings of not feeling comfortable in the body you were born in. And then there was a documentary on Channel 4, "My Transsexual Summer". I took an interest mainly because I didn't completely understand how it must feel to be transgendered and I wanted to get a better idea. At the end of the documentary, I came out feeling a lot more confident about my own gender identity and sexuality, but also frustrated that so little people really seem to try and understand it themselves.

I know so many people who think being trans* has no point to it if you're also gay (ie, a MtF who likes women), and people who think that all trans* people are just unhappy with themselves and need to gain more self esteem in order to be more comfortable in their own skin. I have to admit that before I really explored gender identities, I also thought trans* people were uncomfortable in themselves and worried that if they had surgery done to modify their bodies to become their most comfortable gender, they would still find themselves unsatisfied and later come to regret the decision, feeling more like the gender they assigned at birth the more comfortable they became in life in other ways.

That also made me think about when I was growing up, and my first encounter with homosexuality. I'm ashamed to admit that before I had any real understanding of it, I thought gay and lesbian people were, again, not entirely comfortable with themselves. But then a few of my friends came out, and that got me thinking about their feelings more in depth, and I started realising that, hang on, they're perfectly comfortable with who they are. They are truly confident, wonderful people, and also people who are incredibly brave. They shouldn't need to  have to be brave, by the way. Coming out shouldn't be something to fear. But that's a topic for another post.

Going back to the aforementioned TV show, My Transsexual Summer. After the first two episodes, I was feeling pretty upbeat about the show. It seemed to really give people in the trans* community a real voice, showing the real struggles of the "cast". Wanting to find out about the reaction to the show, I looked around online and was surprised to see that, while a great deal of every day people really liked the show, loads of transgendered folks hated it. A lot of people who took part in the show hated it, even though they really loved the experience of the show itself. They downplayed some stories, up played others, and exaggerated some personalities more than was necessary. I learnt that there was a lot more issues surrounding transsexuality and transgender other than just "feeling like being born into the wrong body", none of these were really looked into.

However, after watching the final of the series and reading the blogs of some of the participants (most of whom I've grown to love deeply, and I have a serious crush on Lewis), I've come to the decision that the program was a good first chapter into the issues of being trans*. Perhaps in another series they could expand into deeper issues, deeper than just the simple every day problems people have.

But ultimately, I think acceptance of transgendered people is the next big transition that will need to happen in the UK. The last one we had was for gay and lesbian rights and acceptance, and while that still has a great deal of issues surrounding it, the trans* community has waited long enough for their own issues to start being addressed. The fact they have to wait at all... but... yes, that's another blog post.

Even though we all have to go through issues and suffering in our lives, nobody should go through the rejection of being shunned by your families and friends just for being who you are. At the end of the day, whatever you identify as, whether that's male, female, a little bit in between, no gender at all, or even not even human at all, you're a living, breathing creature who has been put on this floating rock. And that means you deserve to walk down whatever path you choose.