There is something about this account of trans* identity that I find deeply unsettling. I feel like so much work is done to decouple gender from genitals, only to reterritorialize gender identity onto some other innate biological indicator tucked deep inside the brain. (1/?) https://twitter.com/delaneykingrox/status/1357147969049423872

Which is not to say that "x in a y body" is an invalid narrative. If someone's experience of being trans* accords with "x in a y body" then of course that's fine. But my discomfort is with the move to universalize it and the investment in this theory as a political strategy.

As a personal matter, I do not find "x in a y body" resonant at all. I was perfectly content with being a straight man for the vast majority of my life. Even as I started to interrogate my gender identity, "x in a y body" was a consistent obstacle to exploration.

I never felt like I was something other trapped inside a foreign body, so I couldn't be trans*. "X in a y body" felt like a gatekeeper to trans* identity, and it was only when I rejected the narrative that I made progress towards accepting I was trans*.

But my gripe isn't that "x in a y body" doesn't account for my experience of gender. More accurately, my gripe is that I don't want my experience of gender to be accounted for at all. "X in a y body" attempts to plot my gender on a universal grid that I want nothing to do with.

My mom once accused Wesleyan of making me trans*. I joked that I didn't learn anything there; it was actually debate. She's not far off. I've never managed to de-intellectualize my experience of gender. Conservatives joke of attack helicopters. I feel more like a line of flight.

By which I mean I experience gender as possibility and that possibility is stifled by the attempt to categorize and define. It's not that neuroscience can't explain my gender, but rather that scientific explanation would destroy it in the process.

Obviously the "x in a y body" narrative has strategic utility. It pushes against abhorrent practices such as conversion therapy, draws strength from analogies to other movements (e.g. race-based struggles), and enlists science as an authoritative ally giving it credibility.

But, the endorsement of this theory ultimately seems short-sighted to me. It comes hand in hand with the medicalization of trans* experience and a variety of gatekeeping mechanisms designed to ensure that one truly has a "trans* brain" before medical transition can proceed.

Moreover, these gatekeeping mechanisms become internalized as self-policing. We pour over fantasies, desires, and memories in search of any indication that we have the right brain, that we've always had the right brain, to match the gender we already know we have.

If not, self-doubt begins to manifest. One common form that this doubt takes is particularly interesting to me. "What if it's just a fetish?" Every transfem who has ever popped a boner after putting on a skirt has had this nagging thought appear.

And while it essentially never turns out to be "just a fetish," I want to dwell on the possibility that it is for a moment. So what if it's just a fetish? What is the fear? There's this innate revulsion towards the idea of a strategic transition that I'd like to resist.

Of course, notions of trans* identity as strategic are often employed by transphobes to delegitimize trans* experience. Blanchard's typologies, under which trans women are either gay men who transition to attract more men or straight men who transition to get off, come to mind.

As awful as these descriptions are, I find them oddly resonant. I knew prior to transition that HRT would make me more sexually attractive. I knew that some of the changes to my body would be arousing to me. These thoughts certainly factored into my decision to start HRT.

And I was right too. I receive far more sexual attention from both men and women (from more conventionally attract individuals no less) and my body turns me on. Oh no! Maybe Blanchard has me pegged and it was just a fetish all along! Honestly, who the fuck cares?

I could invest my energy into producing a "legitimate" explanation for my transition, one that would fit neatly into the narrow, pre-defined categories of acceptable gender transgression. But to do so would just be engaging in respectability politics. Why bother?

The dream is for anyone to be able to transgress gender norms in any way, at any time, for whatever reason. Why capitulate to a model that conditions that world of possibility on brain matter? Who does that narrative benefit?

Anyway, thanks for reading. These are just thoughts that have been bouncing around my head ever since I became trans*. I don't think anything above should be controversial but apparently the idea that queerness should be, well, queer is sometimes a hot take.

P.S. I say I "became trans*" because it's true. I was a cis-hetero male for 23 years and then Deleuze/the internet/debate/cock/liberal arts education/sissy porn/queer theory/memes made me trans*. Scary right? It could happen to you too.