"It finally dawned on me that I had not been able to grow up fully because I was never going to be an adult woman. I knew that the only way I could grow up--really be an adult--was to become a man."
"While other men talked about wanting validation as men from their fathers or other role models, I listened to my inner self, recognizing the validation I had received over the years, the connectedness I had always felt with other men, recognizing that my masculinity was natural and real, as natural and real as that of any other man in the room, and that if I had stayed in a female body my masculinity would still have been natural and real, because that masculinity did not depend on the possession of a male body."
"Being true to oneself creates the integrity and self-respect we need to have if we are to extend that respect to others."
"Identity has often been a powerful organizing tool, but it should not be mistaken for the ideal model of community. Identity is not a rigid, monolithic social box into which we can each place ourselves, where we will permanently remain.
We are all becoming something, and we can strongly identify with different aspects of our lives at different times, or new elements may be introduced into our lives that we must integrate into our identity, such as parenthood, chronic illness or sudden disability, falling in love with a person we wouldn't have imagined being with, or finding a new career. These evolutionary events often draw us into new communities and new identities. The tendency to 'fix' people's identities as encompassing only one aspect of themselves, or as being unchanging in their various aspects, is equivalent to expecting a person to only eat apples because he or she was eating an apple when you met."
"For me, community exists when I don't have to be afraid to let others around me know who I am, when I don't have to worry about surviving hostility simply because I am different in some way, whether that way is gender- and sex-related, or because of the color of my skin or my family background or my occupation. I want a community in which I receive the same respect I give to others, and the same level of services and opportunities that others receive, a community that is conscious, caring and respectful of all life and all human expression that is not harmful to others."
"Being a man is more than looking like one. It requires knowing what is expected of a man, and choosing how to go about meeting or not meeting those expectations at any given moment."
"I wanted to change my body because I felt invisible. Inside a female body, I felt as if I couldn't fully exist, as if the masculine part of me was compressed inside me to a degree that was not just uncomfortable, but downright painful. We all have hidden components of our personality or selves that we either want to protect or yearn to have others see. We all also have to find the balance for ourselves, bringing out those hidden attributes or somehow finding that place of comfort in our own skins, in our own lives. We all want to find fulfillment. For some people, that means something as as simple as changing hairstyles or driving a certain car, for others it means serious exercising and buying a new wardrobe. For still others it means giving up a boring job and attempting to change careers, or going back to school to get that MBA or PhD. For some people it means adopting a new religious practice or confirming the one in which we were raised. For others it means adopting an androgynous or overtly confrontational style of dress and grooming. For some of us, it means changing our sex visibly, legally, internally, and externally--fundamentally and dramatically changing our bodies."
"This is what normal feels like."
"I am the one who has to live inside my body. This is my body of knowledge."
"Every time a stranger called me 'sir' or 'Mr. Green' in person or over the telephone--something that had been happening for decades already--I felt as if I was less and less able to laugh about it. It seemed I was becoming a man in spite of myself..."
"Being different from both the girls and the boys, I was reluctant to engage in interspecies contacts."
"As I relaxed into the comfort zone of each new relationship, I privately resumed my own internal concentration on hiding my discomfort with my female body."
"Trans people don't know more about sexuality just because they are trans. In some cases we may know even less because our own confusion and fears have allowed us less sexual experience."
"I finally learned that I really do know and accept who I am, and I don't have to rely on my partner's appearance, sex, or gender to validate or reinforce my own identity."
"The extent to which we convey the truth of our experience is the extent to which any audience will receive us."
"The pain inflicted by the refusal to acknowledge the lived experience of a person if vicious and debilitating."
"It was a great relief to be able to shake off layers of defensive behaviors developed to communicate my humanity from inside my uncategorizability."
"So why tell anyone about my past? Why not just live the life of a normal man? Perhaps I could if I were a normal man, but I am not. I am a man, and I am a man who lived forty years in a female body. But I was not a woman. I am not a woman who became a man. I am not a woman who lives as a man. I am not, nor was I ever, a woman, though I lived in a female body, and certainly tried, whenever I felt up to it, to be a woman. But it was never in me to be a woman."
"By claiming our identity as men or women who are also transpeople, by asserting that our different bodies are just as normal for us as anyone else's is for them, by insisting that our right to express our own gender, to modify our bodies and shape our identities, is as inalienable as our right to know our true religion, we claim our humanity and our right to be treated equally under law and within the purviews of morality and culture. To do that, we must educate--if we have the ability and emotional energy to do so. That is what visibility is about."
"People can argue abstractly about the "real-ness" of my life all they want, but it doesn't change the fact that I exist or the qualities of maleness people observe in me."
"The longer my hair grew, the more consistently I was perceived by strangers as male...There is something about gender--not sex or sexuality--that transcends clothing, hairstyles, body shapes, voices, and even the conscious awareness that a body has a particular sex."
"I also knew that whether or not I ever changed my body, I would always be not completely male and not completely female, even though I knew I would fit in the world better as a man. I would always be different than other conventionally gendered beings. And ultimately, by changing my appearance to reflect my masculine gender, I did not narrow my perspective to obliterate the feminine, but in fact I broadened my own understanding of what it can mean socially to be labeled 'man' or 'woman.'"
"Gender is a type of language, and there are some very adept individuals capable of speaking many dialects, as well as derivative languages."
"As we throw off the yoke of early oppressions and remove the barriers to being ourselves, we are left with--ourselves."
And this is how the book ends:
"Just like anyone else, when transsexual people lie down at night and shut our eyes, helpless in sleep and vulnerable as infants, whether we have someone's arms around us or whether we are all alone, we know that all we have to live for is to be the best version of our most authentic self that we can possibly be. Through our introspection and experimentation we can come to realize how very like others we are. We can come to accept the mysterious, the feared and misunderstood aspects of ourselves, to appreciate the whole self, to recognize our differences and similarities, to rid ourselves of anxiety concerning sexuality, to understand the body as a vessel of the spirit in an intrinsic way. For some observers, our journey seems a step outside the boundaries of society; for us, once we have arrived at our own balance point--no matter what that looks like to others--we can recognize our humanity and understand our connections to other people. Though others may persist in excluding or tormenting us, and though we may be driven initially by anger or eventually by compassion, once we find that balance point of self-acceptance we can experience an inner shift toward a kind of peace. The beacon of that inner peace living in each of us enables transpeople to endure, and once we bring it to the forefront of our lives, the resulting self-assurance will eventually speak to and calm the fears of others."
----------------------------------------
quotes from
Becoming a Visible Man by Jamison Green
