I Don’t FEEL Delusional
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m kind of feeling kinda’ crappy about being trans lately. It’s like we are more reviled than ever. We are white-hot news lately and I don’t really like it. I think it’s too much, too fast. More and more people are calling it “a choice.” More and more are saying that we are delusional and living in a fantasy. It’s really hard to hear.
If I had my choice, I would not be trans. Sometimes, I actually get scared that I am. If I think about it right now, I feel like a freak of nature. I question my own mind. I ask myself, “What the f##k are you DOING!?” Why me? Why, out of all of the people in the world do I have to be like this? Maybe I don’t want to be reviled. Maybe I just want to live in peace.
More and more, I start to understand the trans folks who get their surgery, and then disappear into society. It’s exhausting to be trans. I used to think that they were turning their backs on the community. Now, I’m thinking that they don’t want to have to think about it anymore. They just want to be “normal.”
It’s a constant battle when you are trans in this society. Yes, I pass well and don’t have issues related to passing. I am a lucky one. Still . . . it’s a hard pill to swallow every day that you are a reviled minority. There is a whole quarter or more of the U.S. that just wants you to go away or preferably, die. This is tough to live with and process. Maybe I don’t want all of this.
Did you ever have those quiet moments? You know the ones. You read something in the news or something horrible that some Southern Baptist or Evangelical preacher said about “transgenders” (shudder). You are in your room or home or car, and that feeling wells up. It whispers . . . “What if they are right? What if I am just a autogynephelic, or I am imagining all of this? Am I taking a fantasy too far? Was I subject to the power of suggestion by my community?:
I suspect we all have these moments no matter who we are, how long it’s been, how much of an activist, or how much we integrate into society. I’m sure Jenny Boylan, Laverne Cox, and Carmen Carrera have had moments. I’m sure that Buck Angel, Jamison Green and Chaz Bono have had them. In the dark of the lonely night, that’s when the thoughts come.
Why are we this way? There are so many theories. All of which are considered “liberal agenda” to the people who revile us. Why won’t people just accept that there are “birth defects” of the mind/body connection? Why do they have to be so closed off?
They accept that the world is not flat anymore, that there are other planets, that we visited the moon . . . Okay, MOST of them do. People can grow a bad arm or a club foot or even be co-joined twins sharing a heart. That is accepted. But dammit, if you have a penis and your brain is female — EEEEENNNNNNT!!! The sound of The Family Feud buzzer goes off in their heads. They just can’t possibly accept it. “Gawd does NAWT mayke mistaaaykes!!” they cry. The club foot notwithstanding, of course.
I know how I feel. Either someone brainwashed millions of people through the ages, all around the world, to feel like their mind/body connection is not congruent — OR — this is actually a real condition. Which is more plausible?
I am heartened by the kids and young people. How can a child of say, 3 know what gender is? They are in a bubble of toys and protection from outside influences. They just feel it in the purest of ways. They are yet unfettered by the jaded society that we live in. They are raw emotion and of the purest thought. They will be the key to the future.
I am wearing leggings today. I love leggings. They make me feel good and “right.” I like seeing my hair in my peripheral vision. It makes me feel “right.” Are these fantasies or delusions? Or are they just my identity? Do I feel good from them because I KNOW they are female things? Or, do they feel good because they are MY things? These are the burning questions. Maybe someday smart people will find a conclusive answer to these questions. Hopefully, someday, the people who revile us, will not anymore. Someday . . . .
In the meantime, I just go about being me. I don’t feel delusional, but yet, I don’t know what delusional feels like. As in the great words of Van Halen singer David Lee Roth, “I don’t FEEL tardy.”
Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion
About the Author (Author Profile)
I am a transwoman originally from Pittsburgh, PA. I have been living full time for 5 years. I work in retail but am an artist/Graphic Designer and aspiring writer. I tend to address the controversial in my writing. I would love to change the world one article at a time. I moved to The San Francisco Bay Area to start over, again. But recently moved back to the East Coast. The adventure continues...Subscribe
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You are not delusional. By definition delusional means that a person cannot see that their belief is false, i.e., a delusion. I do think that perhaps many of us are experiencing a common reaction to sustained psychological abuse. Much like the spouse of an abusive husband or boyfriend who is repeatedly blamed by their abuser for his abusing them. “Look what you made me do”, “I’m sorry baby but if you weren’t so … I wouldn’t have hit you”, “If you’ll just … I won’t have to treat you like this anymore”, etc., it’s all a kind of psychological manipulation. In our case it’s “You’re delusional”, “You can never be a real …”, “You’re sick”, “You’re a freak”, etc. Eventually the abused person begins to internalise these ideas, they start thinking, “Maybe it is my fault” and then, “It is my fault” or, in our case, “Maybe they’re right. Am I delusional?” and so on. Basically these haters are borrowing from Hitler’s playbook, the idea that if one repeats a lie often enough to enough people, they begin to believe it. It is psychological warfare plain and simple.
What helps me is to understand that these haters are trying to destroy us and will lie and use clever but invalid arguments and intimidation to accomplish their goal, remembering how hard I struggled to deny who I am and make it go away, how many avenues I pursued to explain it away, how the growing body of science actually supports the idea that there are real physical differences in our brains versus the brains of the so call normal people, how history reveals that we have existed across time an cultures, and how biology suggests that we are a naturally occurring variation within the species, and most of all, the internal peace I received when I stopped all the fighting and accepted who I am. I remind myself of these things all the time as a means of inoculating myself against the influence of these repeated attacks and lies.
You, we, are under attack by people who hate us and think that they are actually working to make the world a better place when what they are really doing is making a hell on Earth. C. S. Lewis said is that otherwise good people working to impose what they believe is good, would act as “cruelly and unjustly as the greatest of tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse”. He went on to say:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
While I question his idea that such people may be more likely to go to heaven, I do not doubt the rest.
So no my sister, I do not think you are delusional.
My sincere apologies to all! I did not realise until later that the Lewis quote I pasted in my original reply uses a term that, though is was a clinical term in psychiatry and psychology in Lewis’ time, is nowadays considered deeply offensive. Since I cannot edit the post, the best I can do is to call myself out and apologise.
Hi
You are most definitely not delusional, your points are so valid at a time when society believes it accepts people as they are.
You are very beautiful
Andi
Thanks. Feelings are easy to write.
At some point in life we all have the choice to say, sorry that does not represent me.
I am of a Hispanic and Native American background from the American Southwest. In that part of the country there are many who hype a Latino, Chicano, or Indian being wiped out by evil white European mentality, or other politically correct nonsense that does not focus on achievement.
Transgenders are now at a point where we have our own Al Sharptons, BlackLivesMatter or own Sarah Palins, Jerry Falwells. Not in that we share their views but we say sorry I am black and you don’t speak for me, I am a woman or Christian and this is not my doctrine.
Now it is important to use the visibility and new equality we have each been given in our own space to demonstrate or exceptionalism and strength as an individual away from what is currently being seen in the media.
Many gay men and lesbians have learned and accepted this and will distance themselves from what they see as irresponsible individuals claiming to speak or being viewed as representatives of the community.
America is now listening and learning from us each as individuals. Don’t choke on that opportunity to distinguish oneself.
I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
Love your article, because you pose some of the same questions and issues i have grappled with, for much of my 66 years. Just because I have been working on this (myself) and living as I please for longer than many here, I can’t say that I never experience doubts. And while these days, doubts and self-questioning is less a bit less severe, I must agree, that the rise in “Anti-Trans” sentiment does affect my thinking.
Being semi-retired, I enjoy alot of freedom to be, “Who I Am” and until recently have had a tendency to just fade into the background, with the exception of being an ally for some Trans youth. My close friends family know who I am, and some of my more casual acquaintances, either know, don’t know, don’t care, or some combination of that, and I have come to take that acceptance for granted.
I must say it is quite nice to have reached a point where I never have any second thoughts about being in the restroom I choose, or wondering if someone will question whether I belong in a particular environment or situation. According to my beautiful wife, I pass not so much because of how I dress, but because if my attitude and the way I am, and the things I do.
Makes me think. in my comfort zone, I have become “Comfortably Numb” as Pink Floyd asked in their song? It is great to have achieved that level of comfort, but have I become numb to my own feelings?
Carla
I love that song.
You are NOT delusional.
You are Amanda, a beautiful woman and a dear friend.
And a fantastic writer! 🙂
Thx Sophie. Now if I can just write that best selling novel.