Categories: uncategorized
Date: 03 June 2012 16:37:42
Ok so I was going to carry on with the Greenbelt revisted series uninterrupted but having just read the latest updates on the whole Radfem 2012/ trans debate I have to write this. (For the lastes updates I direct you to Lashings of Gingerbeer's blog, Unquiet Slumber , Resist Radfem 2012's blog statement and this article by radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys).
For those of you who may be new to this blog this post from a few months back explains something of the beginning of the journey and what is effectively my partners coming out link. Therefore, I come to this whole Radfem 2012 thing not as a neutral observer but as the partner of a transgender person.
Having read all the stuff I was wondering how to respond and decided that I would actually not get embroiled with the debates about free speech vs. prejudice but would reflect on my experience over the last few months of being in a same sex opposite gender relationship. I am doing this because I hope it will explain something of the journey I am on as well as the journey my partner is on.
In the initial post I wrote in February the language I was using with expressed some of the struggles I was having in trying to process things. Since that time I have had to handle others reaction to me within the situation as well as supporting my partner on the continuing journey. I am not going to pretend all this is easy...it's actually quite hard - mostly because of the lack of understanding most of us have on the issue - me included.
So what have the reactions been? Well everybody has been quite positive about my partners decision. I have had a number of people express concern about me though. These worries tend to be coming from people I really respect and whose wise words in my life I have valued - some for many years. They take various forms of wording based around how I am going to reconcile being in a relationship with a man, moving from a realtionship with TOH as female after a long journey of coming to terms with my own sexual orientation and then moving back to be in what is effectively a heterosexual relationship.
The answer I have to give is that it is not an easy situation and that I am still getting my head around it. For me it is enough at the moment to hold on to the fact I love TOH and that it is the same person I am in love with. Whilst I have been using female language - focusing, as I have been culturally been bought up to, on the body the brain of the person I am with has always been a male brain. Thus I have for almost 3 years actually been in a realationship with a man; I just saw and referred to him in the female form. The journey we are taking is about getting the body and brain to match - in part. The character, personality and soul of my partner is the same however I label it with a gender and it is that which I believe is the part of him which is made in the image of God. What I have seen as we have gone through the journey is that the more my partner is able to admit to himself and others who he is the more he is expressing the types of virtues that the bible suggest are shown when we are being honest ourselves and others and being the true self God intended us to be.
Going back to Jeffrey's comments my experience with my partner would suggest that what is not going on is some kind of self-denial on his part but rather in recognising the body dysmorphia caused by body and brain not matching and doing something about it he is becoming more fully human because alot of energy is not being spent on repression of his true self . Thus, the medical profession and others are recognising that what is going on is genuinely what he is explaining it to be - rather than some kind of delusion.
That takes me on to another part of the experience. Within the last month my partner has been to see his local psychologist and has gained the diagnosis that he is indeed a man in a woman's body; gaining the next referral which is to the London hospital dealing with gender reassignment in the South East. When he gets to that hospital there are 3 more appointments until he gets to start treatment. I was teaching up north and unable to go with him to the appointment recently. This was difficult for me because I was not able to directly share the experience with him. I found myself some days later having to do the sitting and probing and discussion which inevitably follows this type of thing. One thing I did find disconcerting as a result of the conversations was apparently how rare I am. Apparently many people by this - relatively early- point in the journey have already split from partners for various reasons. My partner was told at this appointment I needed a hug because the transgendered person tends to get lots of support but very little is available for partners. This I think underlies the wider issue of people may understand why the trans person "chooses" this type of route but may not understand how a partner can decide to forgo part of their own identity in making the decision to stay and support. For me it comes down largely to love and to wider theological understandings of sacrifice and such like. I have asked myself if my partner were to have an accident which changed him beyond recognition would I stay with him - I like to think I would. It may involve sacrifice but that is what love is a situation where both partners in the relationship make sacrifices to enable the other to be all they can - without making themselves passive doormats.
All that said it isn't easy. I would love to be able to discuss the issues involved with other Christians who get it because they have been involved in similar journeys. So far I haven't been able to do that. I have emailed a group I am waiting for a reply from, but to be honest I'm not really into going via the professional charity or self-help org route. The journey we are on is different to anything most of my friends and those around me have experienced and it is very lonely at times particularly for me, but it is at times like this I realise how much more lonely it might be if I were not part of a church community (or communities). There are people I know are ready to compassionately listen even if they don't understand....although strangely enough I have also found this to be true of the hairdressers that TOH and I go to. The staff in there are aware of the situation, and have been great in helping my partner with the hair aspect of the change. They have also been great in asking me, when I have gone in on my own, how it is all going - which has just given me space without any expectation of angst - to just talk about it normally through updating them.
Could I be going through all this and would my partner be entering a process which will see him undergoing major surgery and a life time of hormone treatment if there were the merest hint that there were really a choice involved? Simple answer is no. There are socially constructed and environmental elements that feed in to all this but the essential aspects relate to biology. So although I would hesitate to suggest that Jeffrey's remarks are actually hate based I think that she does need to pause and consider the hurt they give others who are living difficult journeys which require understanding rather than prejudice. Ironically, what she is doing is exactly the same as the ex-gay and post-gay movement are doing and saying in relation to debates around sexual orientation. Should these debates be stifled? My own view is no, but the consequences of the airing of these views should be considered in the same way as the results of public airing of racist or sexist remarks should be. Thus, public debate should be carefully handled with those who make comments which are offensive and prejudiced being called to account for what they say with the "evidence" they give being countered by strong critique and the use of much more academically rigorous evidence as well as personal testimony.