Narratives are a very efficient way to convey most of a complex topic to your audience - a relatively simple encapsulation of the topic into a standard story that covers the fundamentals. If I wanted to explain how beer was made to someone only aware of beer's existence, I might say:
- You malt barley, then boil it
- You add hops to that mix at the end of boiling
- You ferment that mix with yeast
- Voila! Beer
Of course, this is glossing over a lot and oversimplifying, but it captures the essentials. Or does it? What about hefewizen (wheat beer)? Continuously hopped beers? Unhopped beers? (Gross, I know, but they exist.) Your narrative conveys the basics to a naive audience, but it also may leave them with the impression that some beers are not, in fact, beer.
The consequences of this confusion would be minor at worst, ranging from nothing to mild embarrassment. But other confusions due to simple narratives can be more pernicious. Which brings me to the narrative I really want to talk about: the standard transgender narrative. It goes something like this:
A young trans* person realizes early in life that they are, or at least feel like they are, the opposite gender¹ from their birth sex. In their teens the body-feeling mismatch grows increasingly distressing. They may repress the feelings, whether due to external pressure or expectations, or due to internalized anti-trans beliefs. Eventually they embrace who they are or the distress exacts its ultimate toll.
It's a fairly straightforward narrative and is completely true for many transfolk. But not all. The knowledge or feeling that one is a gender that doesn't match their body is not at all a necessary part of the trans* experience. Some may conceive of it normatively: I should have been born a different sex but, as much as I wish that were true, I am not.
And then there are those like me who experience the dysphoria as an excruciating longing to be the other gender, combined with the despair that this is never to be. I very rarely thought I should have been born a girl; before coming out and living as a woman I absolutely never felt that I was female. Instead, I wished I had been born a girl and despaired that I hadn't.
Which brings me back to beer and failing to understand that wheat beer is still beer. I was aware of the standard narrative, and based on that I knew I wasn't transgendered. After all, I never felt like I actually was a woman trapped in a man's body; I merely wished I was a woman. Persistently wished for that, to be sure, but it was still a mere wish. The closest thought I could entertain was "transsexual ideation."
I understand the utility of the single, simple narrative. It helps people understand and consequently helps in the push for tolerance and rights. But it can also do a great disservice to those experiencing a struggle that doesn't match the narrative. It can convince us - and make no mistake, there are many of us whose experience is closer to mine than to the standard narrative - that we aren't who we really are and that our experience is invalid. The narrative marks out a space that from outside feels rigid and even exclusionary. "I'm not like that, so clearly I'm not trans."
The standard narrative isn't a universal. This is pretty much universally true (heh), and sometimes the implicit universality of narratives excludes the complex varieties of human experience. This can hurt our ability to understand both ourselves and others, though I'm not really sure there's a solution which doesn't sacrifice broader empathy.
tl;dr: I'm a hefewizen.
Which brings me back to beer and failing to understand that wheat beer is still beer. I was aware of the standard narrative, and based on that I knew I wasn't transgendered. After all, I never felt like I actually was a woman trapped in a man's body; I merely wished I was a woman. Persistently wished for that, to be sure, but it was still a mere wish. The closest thought I could entertain was "transsexual ideation."
I understand the utility of the single, simple narrative. It helps people understand and consequently helps in the push for tolerance and rights. But it can also do a great disservice to those experiencing a struggle that doesn't match the narrative. It can convince us - and make no mistake, there are many of us whose experience is closer to mine than to the standard narrative - that we aren't who we really are and that our experience is invalid. The narrative marks out a space that from outside feels rigid and even exclusionary. "I'm not like that, so clearly I'm not trans."
The standard narrative isn't a universal. This is pretty much universally true (heh), and sometimes the implicit universality of narratives excludes the complex varieties of human experience. This can hurt our ability to understand both ourselves and others, though I'm not really sure there's a solution which doesn't sacrifice broader empathy.
tl;dr: I'm a hefewizen.
¹ I am assuming the standard gender binary here. Genderqueer identities are beyond the scope of what I'm discussing and even more complicated AFAICT. I also have minimal knowledge of the genderqueer experience.
