Hi,
Not so long ago, I was talking with a (trans) friend about their worries about their gender and where it might be taking them. As with any conversation about emotions and where are experiencing difficulties, often – or may it’s just me :-)- we use metaphors.
Firstly, I need to say that any metaphor you use, is one that works for you. This doesn’t make it wrong if you use it and I don’t. Indeed, it may be that we need to respect a phrase or story someone uses, rather than dump our own interpretation on top. The risk, otherwise, is that we break the flow of the other person’s story or sharing, as we draw them into explaining. Indeed, maybe there’s an element of Active Listening and some playback, when someone is sharing something with you.
The above aside, the conversation was around their struggles with finding the right level of balancing around their needs. Their needs around being who they are, how they felt inside, and how they appeared to the world. The latter isn’t just about clothes and makeup, but how a person is perceived: pronouns, respect for who they are, etc. It is, with no judgement or comparison, quite a complicated thing for a person.
The metaphor that was used, was the idea that they were on a slippery slope. One that took effort to stay where they are, even though they are not okay with the currently place, and also that the slope has one destination: being full time. Staying put required a lot of emotional effort and the idea that having to drag yourself back up the slope felt too much.
How we look at things
As I listened and reflected, I wondered if certain metaphors – or more accurately, ways of thinking – trap or limit us. Which brings us to the point of this post. 🙂 The slippery slope – as explained above – feels like a binary… and you know how I feel about those 😉 On the slope, you can not move, but you can climb, or slip. Downwards has only one outcome. I feel that’s quite the stall/win/lose option, and thinking about it, I’m not sure that helps us emotionally. What I mean is, if our options are fighting to stay still or sliding downhill, there doesn’t feel much room for nuance or indeed success. That, IMO, is a tough break.
Instead, thinking about the Transgender Umbrella (see image), that’s more an open and inclusive term, in which a number of different identities can exist. I think I’ve written before about flags rather than labels. The idea that you can wander away from a flag, stand by it for a bit, or just look at them. People are complex.
Likewise with the idea of ‘new map of the landscape of gender. A rather celver diagram showing a mythical land of the different ways to be.
The thing with the idea of a map is, and other than the obvious idea of a journey, is we get to wander around a bit. There’s no fixed destination in mind, no route we must take, and how a person got to where they needed to be will vary. It’s also not a win/lose situation. It’s okay to take the long way. It’s also okay to ask for directions, change your mind, or even sit down and stay put for a while.
I feel the idea of a map allows us to explore and experience different ways to be. Yeah, I’m mixing things up at the mo, sorry 🙂 The option to move between states means we’re in a growth mindset. We’re not fixed on win/lose, but open to new ideas.
Yeah, you could argue from a reductionist point of view that all I do is wear a dress twice a month. However, the truth of it, and indeed my personal experience, is not like that at all. It’s taken me a long time to get out of the Swamp of Shame. I’ve wandered into the Dark Woods of Depression, and with help & love, made it back out. Sure, I’m not sat on the Bench of Wonder, where everything is awesome, but life is okay, good even. Where I am now, I am okay with who I am.
So, if you want a takeaway from today, it’s try to avoid thinking in win/lose options. Instead, think of things as a map, with you trying different places as you learn and grow.
L x
Interesting post Lynn.
Ch I like the map idea and the Swamp of Shame and Dark Woods of Depression are places I’ve definitely visited.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Lotte. I wouldn’t recommend either location for a holiday. 🙂 They might make a good background for a metal video, though. 😉
I added the two zones on a whim – creativity is funny like that. I was going to say I’ve probably missed a few.
The idea of the Thorn Trees of Passing. You get pricked, cut, hurt, etc as you get hung up on focusing on passing.
Another to do with self denial / unfulfillment. Possibly a desert or a cave?
Odd that the unpleasant ones come to the for quickly. Perhaps it’s because we remember them to stay away.
Better locales might be the Hill of Contentment, Stream of Acceptance, but I feel I may be headed into parody 🙂
I used to draw fantastical maps in my childhood – arranging metaphysical via physical references and concepts is an excellent way of doing things and one I always seemed to fail to get students to try earnestly (though I eschewed it in my teens). Which is to say: I love me a map of the metaphor. There was a human sexuality map I found helpful too, many years ago, for much the same reason.
I discovered then that some people take it futrther – that physical size on such maps is also supposed to be inerrant. The suggestion, that on your linked map, the cis part ought to fill the screen followed. I find this unhelpful. Your map? I find that helpful. One day, I shall draft a map of my own.
In short and in closing: thank you.
I think having something down on paper, PostIts on a wall, or stuff on a table; all of these things help put the idea into a space we can all see. I think that helps us avoid the heavy lifting of keeping everything in our head, lets us share it with others, and make new connections between points/objects.
I think a map can help a person get the noise or if their head. A way to draw those loud or fluttering thoughts, putting them to paper, and maybe helping someone see a structure, perhaps even a pattern, rather than the maelstrom….
Maybe size does play a part (ooer, missus 😉), but I think that we need to be wary that one thing doesn’t dominate the page. If so, it may not leave room for later connections or ideas.
There’s Purging Pass too, I’ve been through there several times!
Good shout. 👍
Is it near Memory Falls, where thoughts of what was lost tumble over the edge?
I suspect we can each draw a different map of our own – and perhaps it would be useful and instructive to do so. Who didn’t sully their school exercise books by drawing geographically suspect maps of fantastic places they had invented or read about. Nowadays you only find them inside the front covers of fantasy trilogies. And maps – in all sorts of contexts – are useful, from Google Maps and the street name A-Z to the London Underground map and Tony Buzan’s Mind Maps.
As Joanna points out, and several of those examples show, maps do not have to be geographically accurate to be useful. “The map is not the territory.” (Those little storm-tossed sailing ships in medieval maps would be size of Yorkshire). And a map of the internet would surely be peppered with warnings of “Here be Dragons.”. And everyone would have their own different centre of the world and unknown or Debated Lands at the periphery.
So perhaps we could, or should, draw several maps, interlocking or overlapping. A map showing “You are Here” in the land of identity. (The gender book has its own world map of identity spaces, which has a particularly nice touch that notes “new island are being discovered all the time” in the Sea of Gender Nonconformity, and elsewhere that borders change over time in other places. Just like the real world (and just like the real world, probably not without a fight).
A map of places we came out, met people, were accepted or suffered setbacks. (For me, it’s quite a tight local map, but across the river is the Parish Ladies of St Mary’s who took me in unquestioningly one afternoon, my only ‘foreignness’ being that I had come all the way -about a mile – from a neighbouring village to meet them.)
Sorry, I seem to have rambled on. I didn’t mean this comment to be almost as long as the your post when I started.
No worries about the long comment, Susie. TBH, I do love to see well thought out reflection, new ideas, and/or sharing experiences. IMO, a good way to learn.
“…perhaps it would be useful and instructive to do so…”
That sounds a good way to spend some time doodling, IMO. Either for yourself or to share. If enough of us did so, I wonder if any patterns or unknowns might come out.
As we explore the idea about maps, I feel we’re moving into diagrams and maybe more abstract processes. However, I feel that all help build a shared thing, where we can point at an element, and add context or detail to add to it (or simplify as well).
Top marks to the St Mary’s massive for being so accepting. 🌟
Sticking with the slope idea, a change of state between high and low, 1 and 0 – society and all it’s systems do seem to be geared towards absolutes in terms of gender.
In my opinion there doesn’t seem to be as much acceptance or understanding towards the infinite fractional values between 0 and 1. It seems to confuse and upset some people more than a full change.
Even some support groups assume that you are on a journey that will inevitably take you from one to the other (not chams obviously).
I’ve not consulted with anyone in a gender clinic as yet – may never – but I would assume it’s similarly weighted in expected outcome – if you are sure enough to go to a clinic you must want only one thing ?
Obviously with some safeguards in place.
The map does seem a more useful way to represent things, as there will be more than one valid destination. Also depending on what state of mind you wake up in,
you might choose to have a day trip to another place, or stay there for months or years or forever if you fancy it.
Very interesting points, Izzy. Yeah, I think there’s a mix going on about the gender binary. The old school model – can we call it ‘pre trans terminology?’ 🙂 – seemed to be two options: transvestite or transsexual. In the 80s, the dictionary definition said the former was someone who wore the clothes of the opposing gender for sexual reasons*. The latter was someone having a ‘sex change’. Oddly enough, that model didn’t fit a lot of the Trans community 😋
(* No judgement from me if dressing for those reasons floats anyone’s boat.)
I wonder if now we’ve more of a voice, the new terminology is more in keeping with what we actually experience. Maybe that, and the old view of “there are only two genders”, means acceptance and medical systems are geared up to operate for X and Y. Anyone who’s a medical professional, scientist, and/or Intersex may wish to step in and explain people are so much more that A or B 🙂
On listening to friends who attend trans support groups around the UK, it does seem that some have a leaning towards transition as the end goal. I do think that is changing (no pun intended), as the idea of transition is changing too.
It may be a while before the medical systems and society catch up. Right now we seem to have a lot of media/political…. noise… around trans people. Unfortunately, little of that reporting is actually from trans people, but more often those who seek to oppress, discriminate, and exploit us a ‘wedge issue’ for political gain. Meanwhile, Jo & Joe Public are more live and let live, worrying more about food on the table, paying their energy bills, or the climate emergency.
If some people can’t get their heads past the binary integers to cope with the world of real numbers, how are they going to feel when some of them turn out to be irrational?
I see what you did there 😁
I want to have my pi and eat it.
Careful with too much pi. It may affect your circumference 😉
‘or to share’. That’s an intriguing thought. I’ve always thought of mapmaking as a solitary hobby, but it takes two people to do the surveying, and sometimes a small army of them to get accuracy by triangulation. Maps are also interesting not just for what they contain but what they leave out, or distort. (When does a map become a graph? Interesting thought.)
Does a map imply a destination? Or just places to explore. I’ve resisted the idea that the trans/NB map has an actual destination (the City of Living Full Time as your femme/masc self) which is some sort of goal for everyone on the gender pilgrimage and whether that should lie at the bottom of a slippery slope (for those who want to stay as they are) or at the top of a difficult and perilous climb (for those that do). And look at all those roads marked ‘Not taken’ that lead off into unknown and uncharted places.
Love this post, and everyone’s comments on it. It’s really set me thinking.
That’s a good question. Well, more than one 🙂 I guess, the creation and subsequent sharing of a map may depend on the author’s intention. There’s a difference between “this is how it was for me”, “this is how I see it for us”, and “here’s what I think, but how can it be improved?”
I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable talking on behalf of others, but I could say “I’ve been here, here, but not there”.
“Does a map imply a destination?”
I think it can do. I am… and this is a bugbear of mine… not a fan of roadmaps or rivers as a metaphor for change. There idea you visit each stop, climb over a few barriers, and you are sorted. I’ve written before that such change is more like a garden: it needs care, attention, and one spring clean does not fix things.
There will almost certainly be a Pool of Self Reflection with all the attendant dangers and warning signs about how deep it can get and of falling in. It is, of course, surrounded by beds of narcissus.
Comfy chairs and neck braces for all the navel gazing.