gender identity, sex, and the body politic
Like many awkward teenagers, i wore a lot of baggy, nondescript clothes. I was quiet and did my best to blend in and not stand out too much. I never approached anyone that i was attracted to (one because of my Queer identity, but also because if they didn’t reject me then one thing may eventually lead to another and i may find myself topless or even naked). I didn’t know who i was in terms of gender and sexuality in my teen years. All i knew was that i didn’t fit any other definition i had heard in the small town where i grew up. I wasn’t homosexual. I wasn’t a man. I wasn’t a womyn. All i knew was that i feared having someone else define who i was. So i tried to ignore the topic all together and pretend that i was a mind with no body.
As i got older and began to become involved in sexual relationships, i felt uninspired, even repulsed, by sex. But what i came to realize as i began to have a better understanding of my gender identity was not that i was not repulsed by sex in general, but rather by sex that enforced a gendered belief upon my body. I was subconsciously disgusted by genital sex in “heterosexual” positioning. I felt as though certain types of sexual activity denied or marginalized my trans identity.
My realization wasn’t an intellctual one; it was physical, very physical. One night, an innocent conversation with a friend started about our sexual desires. One thing i learned was that i never really thought about, let alone expressed, my desires. I just went with what i was programmed to believe i would like. Over time and more conversations, i began to open up a bit in terms of what i tried sexually. Recognizing how much i loved to push my body to the limits of pain (like running in 200-mile relay marathons) and how excited i got when a fingernail scratched against my skin, my partner at the time asked if i liked pain. With my knew appreciation for sexual honesty, i said yes. I did. I do. Pinching, scratching, slapping, you name it. As long as its pain on my terms, it turns me on. With this realization, i began to enjoy sex. Gential sex no longer became a necessity.
This didn’t all happen in a vacuum. I became more confortable with my body as i became more comfortable with my gender identity. And being comfortable with my gender identity allowed me to begin to recognize my body as a part of me. Maybe not a part that i was fully comfortable with, but a part that i could make fully me. As i became more comfortable, i came to love pain. No longer as a punishment against my body, but as a way to feel its every limit, its every particle of being.
Now, through BDSM, body modification (as in tattoos and scarification), and hormones i’m coming to terms with my body. I can’t say i’m all that comfortable with it yet, but i no longer deny its existance. I no longer punish myself.
[tags]Carnival of Bent Attractions, transgender, body image[/tags]
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That’s beautiful, difficult, layered, satisfying and beautiful. Thank you for this account of your development.
And thank you for the kind words. Indeed, it is difficult and layered. Far too much so to really get into it in one post.
Wow. What a wonderful post. I think about how I like to push my body to its limits, especially as a kid. For me it was about feeling alienated from my body, too, though not in the same way. It was feeling as if it didn’t belong to me but it was everyone else’s. So, working out — alone — was about getting into a meditative rhythm to the point that it was just me and my body.
I wrote this big long meditation on that and how it was related to the sexism I was recognizing as a very young woman.
What would be nifty is a book of essays on how people are alienated from their bodies and ways we’ve addressed the issue, doncha think?
Well, we can dream anyway!
i hear ya on that, bitchlab. I’ve also come to recognize how, especially when i was younger, i viewed my body not as mine, but as everybody else’s. This is in part due to how young folks are taught that they have no autonomy, no real independence from the authority of family, religion, experts and so on, but it has a particluarly stinging effect on those who are victims of sexual assault. One potent lesson of sexual assuault is that your body is not yours but someone else’s to use and abuse.
I’d really like to read your long meditation if it is up for public viewing. And i think a book (or at least a zine) is a great idea! Now how do we go about collecting essays…?