I always thought that being transgender was such a hindrance to my humanity. It seemed that all of the time, money, energy, and emotional faculties that I invested in the tenets of survival reduced me to nothing more than needs and a contempt that turned every act of improvement into a hybrid of new beginnings and an abyss that would never be filled.
Over time, the extra steps that I had to take in order to assert who I really was became infused with a skepticism that dampened my passionate response to existence. The Dionysian spirit of self-empowerment decomposed as the methodical certainty which I so desperately sought receded with the distance of a repeating decimal. I knew exactly what I needed to do in order to live. But every fiancial barrier, primary care protocol, and suggested guideline (note how they are promulgated by cisgendered people, never trans folk) which demanded that I be soluble in someone else's standards and more palpable to the masses only served to reduce me to a set of criteria that could be used by others in order to discern the authenticity of my identity.
Within the constraints of the contemporary Trans Rights movement, I was always made to feel as though my gender identity and the perennial struggle to achieve the secondary sex characteristics that my brain mandated I develop at all costs was a burden. The great lengths, the hurdles, and the leaps and bounds seemed to detract from who I was-or rather, who I could have been-and necessitated that I be a pioneer before I was a person, a patient and a diagnostic category before an individual.
My feelings have changed entirely. Today, after assuming a name that I paid for with my own hard earned money and imbued with rich personal significance and history, I realize more than ever that being transgender is a source of pride and a uniqueness so profound that I cannot help but rejoice at having been...well, born this way.
While many people spring out of Zeus's forehead, their gender identity fully-formed and intact, I had to work ten times as hard simply to be recognized as male. I realize now that I am a stronger person, a more resilient person, and a more empathetic person precisely because my armor germinated as a product of hard work and sacrifice.
Every dollar of my own money that I put towards transitioning and every doctor's appointment, counseling session, and support group that I attended by myself enriched, rather than poisioned, my character.
This journey forced me to be dependent on other sources of identity, ones that decorated a previously untrodden path, and I am so much better for it.
My unique journey has afforded me the opportunity to earn, and I mean REALLY EARN a title, an affirmation, a symbolic gesture. I call myself "Jordan" after "Jordan Todessey," the person who plays the transgender character "Adam" on the show Degrassi. He was introduced to the show during the summer when I realized that the term "transgender" applied to me. I decided to assume the middle name "Wayne" after my grandmother's brother, a beautiful human being who founded the first gay synnagouge in Manhattan and whose humor, charm, and kindness radiates our familial history with the light of his life in spite of the darkness and inner turmoil that emanated from his closeted status. Enamored by the type of man that he was and firm in my conviction that this was the type of man that I aspired to be, I chose to assume his name as part of my own so that I could carry him in my heart, always.
By choosing a name, I am able to disseminate a fundamental facet of myself to the world.
While others are fixated on finding the self, I, and countless other trans folk, are at liberty to CREATE a self, from scratch, devoid of even the most trivial of preconceived notions.
In a previous blog entry that I posted the night before I started using testosterone, I evaluated my transition through the lens of The Overman, a figure who, according to Friedrich Nietzsche, overcomes his humanity by creating a new set of morals under which he decides to live. The Overman is a self-creating figure, one who derives power through self-empowerment.
This is what I wrote:
"For a split second, I curse the scientific method, and that avenue in which we are analytic at every turn, because it has become more of an alleyway than an asset. It is a scene that incriminates, deprives us of blood, bruises us when we rebel, infringes risk upon us, and paves our road with regret instead of who we really are.
I am afraid, but I am also the Overman. I am, not less than a biological male, but something more than, something in addition to, and that in-addition-to is the implication of strength, courage, and empathy that I would not possess, had I not been born something other than a biological male.
The Overman. I have decided to challenge the gender binary. We are taught to leave the world a better place than when we found it, to venerate those who live in a manner that is consistent with altruism. But I venerate those who live in a manner that is consistent with entropy, those who leave the world in an increasingly chaotic state. It would be a privilege to add disorder to the universe, to expend from the system every iota of wisdom that we take for granted, to compel other people to mark up and annotate the nuanced gender spectrum, and ask that they leave it acronym-laden."
I spoke so highly of these ideals without fully believing that their weight resounded inside of me. I now understand that it was only by experiencing life in a transgendered body that their true value could be actualized.
I wrote,
"My beliefs will rub their decibels against each other like diamonds that don't have the heart to tarnish the surface of something that they can sympathize with. Everything that is important enough to define me will endure."
I wrote that. I wrote about being so steadfast in who I was that inner conflict could only make me stronger.
Now, I BELIEVE that.
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