The Bible and other texts that teaches spiritual awareness usually uses pride as a sense of boastfulness or bragging as the word probably meant this in ancient cultures; however due to the "evolution" of the word, other meanings came from it.
It can be innocently used for example, "I am going to a pride parade" or "I take pride in my job."
It can be scornfully used for example, "I am better than you" or "I'm in the 'right' religion and you're not."
In the Transgender world, the word "Pride" can convey both polar meanings as well and I want to focused on the bad things that we can consciously and unconsciously act on when the negative form of pride is used.
Since transitioning, I have witnessed the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It isn't anything uniquely tied to the transgender world but it is tied to any facet of our existence. But since this is a blog for transitioning, I want to focus on transgender.
We need to be really careful on how we present ourselves to other transgender people...especially the "younger" crowd who are either thinking about transitioning or brand new at it. Since I started to transition, I have noticed some trans who are particularly prideful and boastful. Of course, everyone is not like this but I need to focus on the ones who are.
If we are not careful we can present ourselves as "trannier than thou" to other people. If you are not familiar with "trannier than thou" it is a phrase that is used towards trans people who have a type of mentality that they are better than other trans. For example, a trans person who has been at this for years may look down on someone who is just starting as if the "new" trans person does not really have a say unless she or he passes certain types of milestones that the prideful trans person has in their mind. This can be anything from being fulltime, passing, having SRS, etc etc.
There are others who will even state "you're not a real trans because you are not fulltime" or "you're not a real trans because you want to be non operative" Non operative meaning that the person has no desire to have surgery to change their genitals to match their gender identification.
These examples can be very dangerous to a trans person just starting out. It can damage them or give them second doubts about the way they are planning their transitioning.
One example was last July of 2010. I asked in a chatroom if I should come out as Annah at school. One person said "no, you'll never pass" She gave me no explanation or any other ways in which I can take steps in order to pass. If it wasn't for my therapist and my close friends telling me this person had no idea what she was talking about, I probably would have taken her ill advice. To this day, I am grateful I did not take that advice and I transitioned anyways. This girl's pride in her accomplishments had blinded herself to the fact that everyone starts from scratch just like she did and everyone deserves the ability to be treated equally.
Another example was just last week. I was observing another website and a girl who is living part time in her gender was telling the chat room that only girls who were fulltime were true trans girls and the part timers were crossdressers and men. The ironic thing about her conversation was that she is only part time as well but considered herself as real trans...but when it came to everyone else, they were men. She was so prideful in herself that she did not realize how silly her convictions were and how hypocritical they were. Her comments were very damning for new girls listening in and many of them were naturally very confused. Thank goodness her account was promptly banned.
Pride can happen to anyone if we let our guard down. Everyone has been guilty of it and I have been guilty of it numerous times. The most important thing is to realize the issue at hand and correct them.
We can only do what we can and not beat ourselves up about what we can't do. I think being as natural as you can be helps you pass because there are all kinds of men and there are all kinds of women. We become discordant with ourselves when we try to become a stereotypical male or female. When we become firm in our gender identity and let it become the dominant force in our lives the physical characteristics we have which are in variance to that identity become blemishes or physical problems which many people will ignore at a glance and identify us by our gender identity which shows through.
ReplyDeleteIn life there is no "you are ok committee" which rubber stamps our choices. There is no public gender licensing committee which rubber stamps our gender. The state register's a sexual identification for legal purposes and legal officials there can be complications when physical presentation does not co-inside with official sexual label. Yes we can make physical and legal changes so our body and our legal identification appear to be the same, but this may not help with the public's acceptance of our physical presentation of our gender which may still be at odds with our legal id and our physical characteristics.
We can project our gender id and our physical presentation to agree with our gender id and never change our body or our official id to agree and if we have few discordant contacts with legal officials we may be accepted by our gender id by most public contacts with no problems what so ever.
So who know what path to follow. Where we are in our lives may be the most important issue in our gender presentation and body physical and legal alignment. So we must do what we must do for ourselves. But we can't live with what others will think, because we can't control that, we can predict that, it changes, and we can't guess 100% of the time what that will be. Besides what others think doesn't matter unless they are the personal director of the business we are trying to get a job with; or the jailer deciding what jail to send us to or who is to be our cell mate; or the cancer surgeon trying to decide if we need our cancerous prostrate or our uterus removed. So what does it matter.