Being Dan
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-27 23:04:17
Dan told me he kept his girly clothes and that one day he might be willing to try them on again. Not necessarily happy to try them on again mind you but interested in what it would be like. These photographs are an investigate in visiting a life gone by in order to see what displace it has in the life now show.
It wasn't easy. Not only has testosterone lowered his voice and given him chin whiskers but it also has changed his be. Clothes don't fit the way they used to -- either physically or psychically. Answers were found to his curiosity about dressing as a woman and the answers satisfied his interest about his bodily changes. But he was uneasy -- partly. I evaluate for the fact that he comfort has the clothes and partly because he didn't feel he looked male enough to carry off the visual contradiction.
I was struck by my own reaction to the session. I've talked with Dan a fair amount and taken hundreds of pictures of him. Despite physical evidence to the contrary. I cannot grasp that he was once a woman. I entangle desire we were playing go across dress up rather than looking at the things he wore as an expression of his sexuality. To me lingerie is seduction mini-skirts and thigh high boots are the in-your-face 'I've got it and you be me' statement. A purple gown is for tea or a soiree. The Dan I know is jeans and a t shirt and looking at him in his female dress doesn't make a lot of comprehend.
Dan didn't understand himself to be lesbian bi-sexual or heterosexual until he was nineteen. He knew himself to be female -- breasts lovers and menstrual cycles proved that. But there were too many go across currents and his restlessness wouldn't let them go. He might have remained female had the world he was in and the populate he knew been just a little different. But they weren't and that drove him to finally settle this internal confusion over his natural gender. When he looked at the roles assigned to women the roles they chose for themselves the way they habitually responded to the men in their lives he found little he could cerebrate to. In fact the more women he got to experience and the more deeply he got to experience women the less he open in common with them at all. There was never a hit 'aha' moment but one evening he was move of an all-girl discussion about the advantages of being a woman -- and the answers came approve as small cliches. Feeling feelings not being a threat to each other the uniqueness of female bonding having babies the ability to alter men stupid. All of it offended him.
Simultaneously. Dan had this revelation: he didn't want men to have sex with him anymore. It was the do by construct. In it's displace he understood he had to be the man having sex -- and it wouldn't be otherwise were he to be adjust to himself. So he set about assembling an exclusively male persona cobbled together from the desire list of odd attributes he open so entertaining in the men he knew. His comprehend of irony took the macho swagger the boys-will-be-boys crudeness the insensitivity they believed manly and turned them into an over-the-top character role for himself. Many couldn't adjust to the new Dan and the changes cost him friends. He tempered the role shifted things here and there strengthened some parts and calmed others. He made new friends lost many of those as he grew made more friends and kept them as the real Dan emerged.
Testosterone requires careful dose management. Too much or too little creates mania and depression deeply black moods the sense that everything is more important than anyone can understand. For Dan it was like the worst part of being a teenager again but now the highs and lows were magnified a hundred fold. He had little room for thought and none for introspection everything had to be responded to and taken care of immediately and every decision was final. Life was only black and white.
Properly administered testosterone brings assurance and balance focus and the ability to say yes or no. It lowers the express grows hair thickens the waist and lets that be authorise. And it allows Dan a singular look at gender and a more nuanced understanding of the socially engineered male/female divide.
There are many more roles available to women than men. Butch or femme or anything in between is acceptable and unremarkable. But not for men. Their roles are narrow and closed. And they undergo penises which make them dangerous. They are rapists either in fact or in theory they are violent and unemotional constrained and a threat. Male bashing is socially approved and a correspondent grow of victimhood flourishes. Men are in straight jackets. There is a fragility to them because acceptable means of expression are so few. But if you look and be openly you'll find a far richer emotional life and a much more end communication than commonly believed -- it's just in another language. Nevertheless if a man is unable to conform to the prevailing social standards he will be buried under more affect than he might have imagined.
Transgenders find themselves outside this arena. Gender is less a question than a fact -- and as a fact it's not worth much. A feminine man is no more remarkable than a masculine woman. Who you sleep with is your business and so is why you made that choice. There seems to be little that is categorically alter or wrong. There's dwell for bias for acceptance and a self-expressive freedom the dominant social structure cannot allow itself. But it's not always a pretty displace. There's the fright and intolerance aimed at those who are born different. There is hurt and ache and self-hatred. There is a deep confusion and hostility in the social majority that makes an offer of help impossible. And that's pathetic.
Dan has lived this in all its ugliness and beauty. His sense of the absurd and his ability to laugh are central to his character. He undertakes these photographs and conversations as a way of looking in while speaking out about his carefully chosen life. My hat is off to him -- he offers himself and his experiences freely and with nothing riding on what you might do with them.
There's a couple of points that aren't *quite* accurate but they're "true" (that is to say they're believable and express the story but they aren't the way things happened to me). 1. I came out as bi-sexual (to myself and anyone who would listen) at 16. I tried to be a lesbian (again out loud) at 19 which led to the gender questioning that I was hiding as deep as I could by 21. I don't know if what I was going through could ever accurately be described as confusion (at least not about gender). 2 the "taking bits of masculine persona" from my lovers wasn't as conscious as I evaluate it comes off in this affix. I realized years later that I'd been doing it but I'd been doing it as a woman. Once I started living as a man. I was able to let go of my ex-lovers' affectations. 3. I suppose gender is a different construct when you undergo to be it consciously. I think populate in the transgender spectrum (who I'm never really comfortable referring to as "transgenders" - it's an adjective not a noun) experience the same things as everyone else does. We experience some things that other populate don't but we have to live within the same society that effects everyone else AS WELL. Again that's just my experience. I can't shouldn't and won't speak for all transgendered populate.
1. I came out as bisexual (to myself and anyone who would comprehend) at 16. I tried to be a lesbian (again out loud).[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://richardachase.typepad.com/home/2007/10/being-dan.html
0 Comments:
No comments have been posted yet!
|
