Definitions, Labels and Other Hindrances

Articles in TransGender Forum always get my attention – I read them all.  However, recent articles there by Veronica Smith, Roberta Angela Dee and Beverly Barnes all were somewhat in the same vein and really got me to thinking.  The following isn’t a point-by-point reply to any of those articles specifically, but instead simply addresses a couple of the issues that they raised in my mind

“Who am I?”  All human beings ask this question, both of themselves and of the world at large, and I would imagine that transgendered human beings ask this question a lot more often than others do.  However, I’ve always thought that answering this question is basically futile.  If everyone knew for certain just exactly who they were, what could they do about it?  What difference would it make?  They would still be exactly the same as before they knew what term to apply to themselves.  Applying a label to something only covers up the thing itself, and the more labels that get applied, the more the actual contents are obscured.  Instead, it’s my submission that the real question should be, “How can I learn to accept myself, and by extension of that, everyone else?”

Unfortunately, I don’t think that there is any single answer to that question.  We might all be lost in the same woods, but we all have to find our own way out because we’re all going to different places.  I know it took me a relatively long time to get past my guilt about being different and gain the self-confidence to accept myself in the face of what I had learned to be “wrong”.  I realized that while I might be a little kinky, I’m not perverted.  (Side question: What’s the difference?  See below.)  I realized that regardless of what I thought others might think about me, I was in actuality a pretty nice person.  And I realized that while my gender or my sexuality or anything else are all fairly important aspects of who I was, they are individually simply another facet of the jewel of my life.

Existence is not binary.  The world in which we exist is not composed of black and white, clear-cut divisions, and I think we all realize this fact.  Yet, we insist on applying that sort of segregation to all sorts of things in our lives: If you’re not gender dysphoric, you must be gender euphoric. If you’re not happy, you must be sad.  If you’re not all man, you must be all woman.  If you don’t have an answer, you must be confused.  We need to accept that the fact that our world is infinitely colored, and that each of us may perceive those colors as different shades.  Embrace our variety, revel in your own uniqueness and realize that not all questions have answers.

(OK- the comedic answer is: Kinky is using a feather during foreplay, but perverted is using the whole chicken.)