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Dancing free

  • Posted on August 31, 2013 at 11:00 pm

This week’s main blog was a bit philosophical, and stemmed from a conversation I’ve been having about gender essentialism and the determining factors in gender identity.

But that isn’t where my life is at, and it has been a really varied week.

It began in fear of feeling suicidal again. Just that deep gnawing, unrelenting fear that I have arrived in a place where I can never find another who will love me. That there never can be an intimacy again because everyone out there only feels safe with (or at least strongly prefers) a partner of determinate gender with a determinate history. And I shall and can never be that.

It is the most awful feeling of being an utter outcast in the world of love and intimacy. And yet love and intimacy is like air to me. I am suffocating right now, simply for want of love. It is framed in an awareness of friends who know just what to do. They go the places they used to (before the last relationship), they go on dating sites, the other parties know what to expect, and they start sifting. Kiss enough frogs and they will find their prince/ss. There are rules, they follow them roughly, they will succeed.

I have no such place, no such expectations, no such rules. I am not just suffocating, I feel utterly lost.

Even my garbled squeaks for help on Facebook were largely ignored, except a very dear friend actually called me to see I was alright. It didn’t take much, but it meant everything to me.

Come midweek, and I had an interesting and understanding chat with someone over the difficulty I have, in being asked or instructed to dress (mostly) male for a particular reason. In the above context, it might be understandable that I find this psychologically a very risky thing to attempt. But it also transpired that my transsexuality is not immediately apparent to everyone concerned, and despite my willingness to speak of it, the slight feeling of flattery added a hint of a silk purse in this sow’s ear.

I cannot say that this time is an easy one. The anxieties over buying a flat and selling a house without being there, and the last weeks of being married slipping fast away, don’t sit well with feeling the outcast from human intimacy. Believe me, being torn out of the love of someone you’ve spent your life with simply for being what you are, is the most gut-wrenching event you can go through. This blog is no longer a means of communication between us either. Now it is just me and you, continuing the exchanges of ‘life beyond diagnosis’. There is no play, no pretend, no fighting-to-keep, no misunderstanding, no fear of ‘what if I am?’. And no more believing that I could ever live a dual-gendered life, even for the best reasons on the world. This is the certainty of being born with gender incongruence, and the consequences. It matters, it really matters, that I am not a man after all. And yet, despite the fact that I live and move in this world, everywhere, without any question of not being a woman, albeit a different sort, when it comes to finding romance and love, maybe I am not a woman enough. Is everyone just looking for genitals?!

It is a raw time in some ways. And so I was glad to finish the week and head off for a Friday night of dance. Five Rhythms, or similar events in the summer break, means two hours solid of barefoot, expressive dance, with interactions with random other dancers as partners for maybe ten or fifteen minutes before dancing solo again. There is no speaking, only very free dance. I was determined to dance out my anxieties, fears, resentments, and the horrors of being unlovable. It’s that yawning awfulness that maybe some while ago I had the last loving sexual encounter of my life.

And I think if I really did know that, if that was a certain outcome of becoming my very best – as this – I seriously would want to end right here.

But we won’t go there, because it’s a horrible and scary thought, and what I really wanted to say was that someone, out of the blue, touched my spirit after the dance. I had a few beautiful encounters during the dancing, but it was sitting in the circle afterwards when this person, next to me, shared their own sudden realisation that being different was OK. F**king OK!! With a determination to let go of a lifetime’s angst at the behest of others, and be that ‘being of light’ that we all can manifest. That touched me, because I had gone that night to drive out the bad, rather than simply to let it go and move into a place of dynamic living.

We went on to have a long chat about the similarities in our life experiences, and suffice it to say, if she had said she’d been sent by an angel, I would have believed her. It wasn’t sympathy, it was possibilities, out of understanding each other, that life as we each need it, is possible; that it can be claimed if only we let go and trust.

What a week, after returning to my roots last week (A stitch in time) and facing living alone again. I put it down also to hormonal cycles, though it may be coincidence! It reminds me that I still walk close to the edge sometimes, and that I must simply trust that higher powers that may have kept me safe in every other way, can help me find real loving again sometime ahead.

So thank you to three people this week who have helped pull me back from the brink. If any of you are reading this, you make a difference to me just by being a bit more than just accepting. I am strong, but even strong people sometimes fall over edges. It’s the gravity, you know.

Origins of identity

  • Posted on August 31, 2013 at 4:26 pm

Some thoughts towards gender identity and essentialism.

Are we born without identity? Where does it come from? Do we make it? Is it inherent? Is it made by others? We assume so much that we know what we mean by ‘identity’ that we share a common idea. I wonder.

I don’t want to be academic about this. Academic is OK, but it gets tied up in its own words sometimes, and always has the danger of building foundations on the work of others that isn’t. What are intellectual foundations? Even Newton’s laws of motion are provisional and conditional. Psychoanalysis is built as much on best-fit and presumption as truly scientific principles, and even science is in some respects a philosophy. So forgive me if this all seems less than rigorous. I’m just thinking.

The problem of language

We can only meaningfully communicate ideas by using language. I write, you read, we communicate. Well, that’s our intention. I write clearly, you read carefully and thoughtfully and we come to an understanding. I write carelessly, and/or you read cursorily, and we misunderstand each other.

What happens inside our minds? How can we think about ourselves without using language? We analyse ourselves, have internal conversations, rehearse dialogue with others, and all and only using language. Sometimes we make words up, use a misunderstood word, or use words with adopted meaning or subtexts, and still understand ourselves. But if we speak these words to others, we are misunderstood. So can we misunderstand ourselves too? Of course we can. Language also binds us, but can be our only means of explanation, because ideas have no other expression.

Tell me about your childhood …

Have you ever wondered what you thought, about yourself, life, others, anything, before you had language? What did a food you recognised as likeable mean inside a mind without words? What did you think about that look in your mother’s eyes that made everything alright? Was it just a feeling? And as you learned language, what did that add to your experience? What did it feel like when your words weren’t right and you knew you weren’t being understood? And then when you learned enough to say things that were rewarded and understood well enough?

Later, as you learned the right words and the right way to say things, and then the best time to say them, how did it feel to realise that your self-expression only worked when it fitted in with that of others?

And then, as you found acceptance and rejection as a consequence of self-expression, how did you experience the difference between sense of true self, and being what was expected? And as behaviours become those that made you fit, be ‘normal’, acceptable, likeable – lovable? Were you, indeed, left with a good, secure sense of self at all? To varying degrees we have all struggled with this.

Language, as much as learned behaviours, is responsible for dissonance between sense of self and living according to others’ expectations. This is not to say that having social mores, shared ethics and ways of integrating as a society is bad! I am only offering an introduction to sense of self, to identity and authenticity, and the role of language.

The bottom line is, if you give me too few words to describe myself, I have no internal alternatives to understand myself, once my mind is working in terms of language and ideas. What if the best words to use are just the least wrong ones? I can also have novel ideas, but again, I can only share them by using a common language. Together we can reconstruct language and vocabulary to suit new ideas better, but I can’t do this on my own, least of all just about myself! We can imagine a knowledge that is retained without language – animals do it all the time by learning in addition to instinct, but how do we distinguish intuition-about-self from ideas, when both end up expressed in language?

What is sense of self, once I try to explain it to myself? Because then I am explaining it as an idea as if to you. And how much, in reality, do I create a sense of self that concurs with social convenience, accepting compromise because it is more expressible, or indeed more understood or comfortable?

I am me, only because you are you?

Supposing you were abandoned at birth on a remote island, surviving with the co-operation of animals from whom you gained safety, food and warmth. They would not speak to you, though you would learn their licks and growls, and interpret their behaviours. In this context, with only your instincts, how would you describe your identity? Would you need to in any way at all?

Or would your language centres in your brain kick in, and you would develop a language of your own? (I am sure that long and worthy books and articles have been written about this, and I’m not about to undertake a research project!) But even so, that language would have no communication value other than with yourself for future internal discourse and value in memory. And then, imagine you are discovered. What questions might those first ones be (that you would not understand)?

’What is your name?’

’How long have you lived here?’

’What country do you come from?’

’What is your tribe?’

’Are you a man or a woman?’

I dropped the last one in because, like all the others it is referential, but it would never be asked. This is something that humans have a habit of deciding for others, not for themselves. Living alone, maybe you picked something up from your animal friends, but that would only be that your bits were like those bits: a baby me might grow/not grow inside me.

I see identity therefore as being referential: I am only this/that because by being compared with you, I know I am the same or different in these ways. I don’t need ‘identity’ except in reference to you. Identity is only a locator. I don’t need to describe myself to myself, only as a means to show commonality and difference within a place or among a group. We use identity to distance ourselves, as much as to find inclusion. It is a mask on self that ensures comfortable location, sufficient inclusion, and acceptance. But identity is not ‘who we are’.

A return to ‘what’ and ‘who’ and relating

It seems ages ago that I started to realise and write about only being loved for what I am, not for who, and as divorce comes to conclusion in the next few weeks, this is the thick black line inscribed under my marriage. Insofar as I can fairly understand it, I was loved for what I made my wife: a respectable married and normal woman, healing in many ways a childhood of dislocation of identity. I was the ordinary man putting a lot right, creating success and normality. In a number of ways, I believe that I was a missing part in her self-perception, her referential identity.

So imagine my diagnosis: that from birth my innate being was indeed female. To love me, it was said, would now require lesbian love, and my love was surplus to requirement, if it was to be properly understood as a female love. (Well, it always was, but that was masked by my identity.) She could only ‘respond’ to the right identity, the right outward form, not to the self, the person, expressed through an identity that had to be the right one.

So this is an interesting place to be in, and an interesting realisation. I (who) am not the same as my identity (what). So why do I get so hung up on ‘identity’? Gender is more about sense of self than about identity. It only becomes dysphoria in reference to other people. An identity is thrust upon us, and it isn’t right. I don’t have a problem with self, with intuition, with pure awareness. I have a problem when people tell me that my sense of self doesn’t fit, and that I cannot be what I say I am.

Identity is about recognition. Others locate you, and feel more secure with their location of you than your own. The trouble is, the observer says ‘man’ (with parts present) and I say ‘woman’ (with parts missing). The whole process of observation takes place through language with its building blocks of ideas. How can I express adequately my sense of self, without using a shared construct, when even the word ‘woman’ is in contention? So I have a need to be recognised in line with my pre-language self-perception, and therefore I have a need to create, shape, and present an identity that corrects what others perceive.

And the real bottom line is, on what basis might someone love me again? By liking my ‘identity’? By being comfortable not just with it, but with it in the presence of others? Because they are only what they want to be seen as, with reference to me? How can I find that one person who says ‘fuck the identity, I love you?

When I do, they will understand this essay.

Eating alone

  • Posted on August 26, 2013 at 10:49 am

Is it that you should be here?
Or is it just the empty seat
that is an absence at my table
the unspoken ‘is your meal alright?’

There’s nothing leisurely in silence, no
eating interrupted by constant
exchange, no reason for
any chip not to chase the last.

And yet time drags as if
the silent chair is patient,
waiting for your arrival, your smile,
your weight, your choice, your sigh.

There is no hand across the table
no eyes to meet, no tender words.
No plan for the morning or
understanding of shared desires.

My bones are picked clean
the chips are downed, the chair
a final statement on the meal
you no longer wish to share.

 

2013 © Andie Davidson

Bats

  • Posted on August 26, 2013 at 8:52 am

Do you remember the bats in the park?
By the pond, near the house, where we sat in the dark?
Before we had kids, when time was our own, when
we worked and we played and were never alone.

You don’t? I remember it clearly now.
I’m back, on my own and thinking it through.
The pond is all silted, a tree has been lost,
the ducks are still walking; but that is the best.

Some of my childhood was spent playing here.
The grass was much wider, the river was clear.
I grew and returned, and then I brought you,
it was smaller, romantic, some parts were new.

I once came on a stag night; he was tied to the tree
that’s as lost here today as where you find me.
I hated that evening, I was stray as a cat
when its owners have left and locked up the flat.

It’s the bats I remember, the speed of their flight
in peripheral vision and only at night.
There was privilege in seeing them, in being with you,
with the ducks and the pond, and a love that was true.

And do you remember the bats in the field
where we leaned on the gate and would not be healed?
When the hurt was withheld and we struggled to find
some way to express without being unkind?

You do? You remember it clearly now?
You’re back on your own—are you thinking it through?
Our flower has wilted, the three of you lost and
at least we are talking; but that is the best.

I may not return there, to the field, to the gate
where the bats are still flying all night until late.
But I have come home as a cat lost at night—
alone in the moonlight—but my memory’s alright.

If your thoughts ever turn with bats in the gloom,
and you recall times that we shared in our home,
when everything around you has changed, not improved
I hope you remember—I still held my love.

 

2013 © Andie Davidson

Unnamed

  • Posted on August 25, 2013 at 10:13 am
Monsal Dale and Viaduct

Your name is carved in the high vaulted arches in Monsal Dale where the viaduct runs, trackless, still. It is woven into the river, meandering, finding its slow rhythm in a wide plain, lying with the cattle. It is spoken in the wind, by the wings of swifts, caught in the trees and on every familiar track, played, replayed. Like the summer heat, cupped and held in this green bowl, you can never be absent, because you have been so present. And here I am, a guest. Why is my name not known, as yours? Not spoken with love in…