Oh, allies, just STOP it: you don’t feel trans inside.
What you feel is a new awareness of the complexities of your own gender – that you are not 100% feminine, or masculine, or whatever.
& It really is great to try to relate to trans people – we do, all of us, have a pretty strong sense of our own genders if we allow ourselves to recognize it – but you do not feel “trans inside.”
I really do love that more & more people are getting hip to trans people, but it’s really painful to brace myself for all the dumb shit they’re going to say in the process.
Trust me: I’ve said all the dumb shit. But really, don’t own someone else’s oppression, okay?
& Right now, proto trans allies, learn how to apologize, and no buts, no explanations, no anything. Just “wow did I fuck that up. I’m so sorry.”
Next?
I feel like I just walked into a room where an argument is going on, and everyone is too excited to tell me what is going on. This post is a propos of . . . what?
Agreed, being trans is about in some way becoming our personally experienced gender not mere musing on our collection of thoughts about it.
Where the experience comes from might never be known, but there is always a powerful invisible force trying in earnest to align the identity the outside world percieves with the intrinsic/experienced identity.
We somehow percieve an inner gender and then we struggle to become that person; no different than anyone else or any other facit of our identity really? Thinking about what that gender comprises of, is an experience common to all, made very complicated by unavoidable cultural interactions amplified by media, advertising etc, which competes with our intrinsic identity as an external force. Being trans is like being the poor little flower struggling to to get into the sun from under a rock, the form we take is a record of that struggle.