surrogate corpse

It's funny, the ways these stories are different. One of the bits of evidence I used to tell myself that I wasn't trans was that I hated the idea of wearing a dress. I think trying that might have driven me deeper into the closet. Even now, I've worn a dress out in public only once, and felt uncomfortable doing so. My wardrobe update has mostly been swapping out men's jeans for women's jeans and men's t-shirts for tank tops and turtlenecks. And it's also funny, the ways these stories are the same. That persistent sadness, that vacancy, that nothing but transition can relieve. When hungry, eat. When thirsty, drink. When tired, sleep. When dysphoric, transition. It really is that simple.

Sure. I'm 32 approaching 33; I started transitioning in late 2021 (age 30). Family background: My dad cheated on my mother when I was 4-5; they divorced when I was 5, and within a few years my dad married the woman he had been cheating with. I spent most of my time with my mom, who was very dedicated to meeting my material and intellectual needs, but had a very disappointing life (beyond the breakdown of her marriage), and was very bitter and controlling. My dad compensated for this by being the fun, no rules parent. So I swung wildly between feeling totally stifled and being left entirely to my own devices. A big part of the stifling was that my mom needed me to be The Thing She Did Right. Everything else in her life may have gone wrong, but at least she was a Good Mother. Which meant that my attempts to claim independence for myself, to be my own person, generally went unheard. This shows up with regard to my first dysphoric memory, which is of being on a swim team in middle school. I remember feeling intense distress at the thought of changing in the boys' locker room. But I couldn't tell my mother this: she'd tell me to grow up, that there was nothing to be ashamed of, etc. (Would she actually have told me this? Who knows. I didn't trust her enough to find out.) So I would lie and say that I had a headache and couldn't go. (Eventually I learned to give myself actual headaches, so I wouldn't have to lie...) From there, I spent most of the next twenty years just... shut-down. I was consistently depressed. I was unable to imagine a future for myself, so I took the easy life path, the one that didn't involve making decisions for myself, taking the career path that both my parents took. I could feel pleasure, but not really joy—any joys I felt were brief flashes in the dark. I think it's fair to say that for twenty years I did not have three consecutive happy days. (When I finally realized I was trans, and I felt good for a week straight, I couldn't believe it. It was a totally new experience. I was sure I didn't get to keep it...) Much happened in that void (including the rise and fall of a nice heterosexual marriage), but let's skip to 2020. Before then, I'd occasionally encountered discussions of trans people, which raised a weird mix of fascination and repulsion. Sometimes I'd wonder if I was trans, but I always shut that down quickly. In late 2020, I started a relationship with a trans woman. It was a horrible relationship, but in early 2021, near the end of it, she told me she thought I was trans. That loosened something: after that, when I asked myself, "am I trans", the answer wasn't an immediate "no". I was willing to countenance the thought that the answer might be "yes". Eight months later, I had a moment of utter clarity, where I saw my desire shining with impossible brightness, and at the same time saw clearly the complex knot of fear that was keeping from that desire. I've been Rose ever since. Life has been good since then, not because it is constant joy but because both joy and suffering are present to me. I exist, I feel my existence, I don't need to run from it. But when I look back, I feel tremendous sadness. I have a narrative memory of what happened, but I wasn't there for it. My life before late 2021 is a void. I never got to be a girl. I never got to be a young woman. For all the space I took up, for all the things I did, I was a non-entity.

This makes me very happy to hear! My relationship to my past is a rather pained one, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Critique heard and appreciated! I'll take a bookcase photo, unblocked by unnecessary human, when I return home

I have certainly offended my mother before by telling her how I really feel about my childhood. She has, and is welcome to have, whatever fond memories of it she likes. But my memories—when they exist at all—are mostly of a suffering I could not articulate, both for lack of the words to shape it and lack of trust in those around me to understand me if I did find the words.

you are wiser than i...

It is going to vary by person, but err on the side of referring to them by the gender they are, even when speaking about their past. In terms of the "metaphysics" of it, there is a sense in which I "was once a boy" and a sense in which I "have always been a girl"—it's a complex messy history and which way I choose to speak depends on which aspect I want to highlight and what mix of feelings I'm having about it at any given time. You can fairly well predict that any trans person has complex feelings about the time they had to spend living out a false gender. Better to be on the safe side and affirm your recognition of the gender they are, without calling attention to that history. (You can also, of course, use a gender neutral term like "kid" or "child")

always a sinister little tinge of pleasure when a cis woman asks me for my skin care routine. sorry babe... i don't think it's available to you...

fwiw: starting estrogen takes about five years off your apparent age (source: two and a half years in, i look about two and a half years younger than when i started)

I'm thinking carefully about what to say, because I feel likely I am saying X fairly explicitly, and yet I am being heard as saying Y. Let me see if I can put my finger on it. I am trying to say: Human anatomy is just an arrangement of flesh. A wide range of meanings can be (and are) imposed on these arrangements. Some fit traditional ways of thinking about gender. Others don't. None of them are incompatible, so let's make space for all of them. Incompatibility only arises when one set of meanings is imposed on everyone. But that imposition is optional. I am being heard as saying: Cis men should not see and treat their dicks as masculine. Cis women should not see and treat their vaginas and breasts as feminine. The meanings that make sense of your life for you: those are bad. You must give them up, and replace them with the correct meanings, which I shall tell you. If you don't give them up, I will take them away. — — What causes this mishearing? Maybe this. There is one thing I want folks to give up: the idea that one set of meanings placed on our anatomy is privileged because it reflects "objective reality". This indeed removes a certain validation of one's chosen meanings, the validation that comes from the feeling that nature herself approves them. Is that loss of external validation being felt as the loss of those meanings themselves? I would insist that the meanings can stand without it!

my main aim here is to make room for the odd, the vast, the beguiling, the wily, the freak

@liminal_luke Thanks for the pushback. I want to reply (more briefly this time (editor's note: lol)) to one of your points, because I think it expresses a real concern, and I want to allay that concern. I'm not doing what you think I'm doing. I'm not wanting to take anything from you. Well, maybe one thing I'd gently suggest you'd be happier without... ; ) You talk about the importance of having a dick to your maleness, and express concern that I'm taking that meaning away from you. But I assure you I am not. It is wonderful for men to use their dicks as powerful symbols of their masculinity. It is also wonderful for women to use their dicks as powerful symbols of their femininity. There is no contradiction between these. Both can be affirmed. (Zhuangzi would call this 因是, yinshi, adaptive affirmation, as opposed to 為是, weishi, contriving affirmation). What I am asking for is an opening up of the space of conception that makes both of those possibilities equally available and equally culturally acceptable (along with a whole range of other possibilities). Doing this does involve a certain "decontextualization" of the dick, and here your concerns arise. It is important to you that it is not a "choice" to regard your dick in the way that you do. Here is the one thing I want to take from you: I think it is a choice for you, and for everyone. The alternative to it being a choice for everyone is for a certain way of meaning-making about dicks to be standard and normative for everyone, and for the people who go against it (trans women, in this instance) to be marginalized. You worry: My contention is that any sort of standard cultural meaning for dicks is an imposition on the dick-possessing world (and an imposition that we have chosen—we could do it differently). I entirely share your aim of making "room for all of our messy and contradictory human experiences"; this is purely a disagreement about how to go about it. As for my thoughts being a minority or majority opinion, I don't know anything about that. I just think they're true, and that more widespread recognition of them would make a happier world for cis and trans people alike. : )

Ok, got a free moment... There's two issues here, first about the status of the categories related to "biological sex", the second related to what is required to make sense of transition. I'll take them in turn. 1. Biological sex categories It's true that there are two biological poles of human sexuality (there are interesting biological/mathematical reasons for this!). These poles involve traits along a number of dimensions (chromosomal, hormonal, behavioral, external-appearance, etc.), which tend to covary but don't necessarily. And, again, some of them are more mutable (with current technology) than others. (None are absolutely immutable.) My point is precisely that our ability to socially recognize "males" and "females" is a simplification imposed on a biological reality that is more complicated. I am absolutely not denying that we can do it. But what we're tracking directly when we make these distinctions (external presentation) is not what anyone takes to be essential to "biological" sex (chromosomes and/or gametes), and the mapping between them is complex. And, indeed, very nearly every aspect of sex classification that feeds into this classificatory ability is mutable with current technology. So I don't take this classificatory ability to speak strongly in favor of realism about immutable biological sex categories. 2. Making sense of transition You say: "if "maleness" or "femaleness" didn´t exist there would be nothing to transition away from" I think this is gets transition very importantly wrong. Transition does not need to be understand as moving away from one category toward another category. For example, I really want bottom surgery. What does this involve? It involves replacing one set of genitalia with another. That is a concrete change, motivated by the fact that my current genital arrangement causes me significant distress. You can understand it as it presents itself: as a desire to replace genitalia. To then call it a change from "maleness" to "femaleness" is a conceptual imposition. Many trans women are quite happy with their "male" genital arrangement. It is, in fact, a choice to deem the penis "male"—a choice that, I might cheekily say, suggests a lamentable unfamiliarity with the pleasure of getting dicked down by a girl. (One can say similar things about boypussy.) This holds for transition-related changes in general. They all deal with particular points of discomfort. One can group those together into more encompassing categories if one wants, but doing so is not required for making sense of transition. And, indeed, I think recognizing this is really important. It is a major barrier to trans people figuring out that they want to transition that we think about it in terms of these nebulous, ill-defined categories. Do I want to be a woman? What's a woman? How does one know one falls into that category? I have watched so many girls trap themselves with this—it just functions as an unnecessary entry barrier to transition, when the reality is very simple. As I said in my first post in this thread: Hungry? Eat Thirsty? Drink Want tits? Take estrogen Want to be called "she" instead of "he"? Change your pronouns And so on The desires are always more particular than the categories, and the categories are more a hindrance than a help. Long reply so I'll stop here. Hope something in this resonates : )

can't type a response now, but I'll try to do so in the next day or so. feel free to bug me if i forget

for what it's worth, i'm rather in favor of confusing sex and gender, so long as you do it the right way ; ) biological "sex" is very complicated and very messy, subject to a massive range of variation. some sex characteristics are changeable, others are not (with current technology). none are universal among those we call "men" and those we call "women". biological sex encompasses a broad range of phenomena, sorted differently depending on particular research projects. ("sex" isn't special in this regard; biological categories are generally like this) to seek to find simple "biological sex" categories that neatly sort individuals into "biological males" and "biological females" is to impose greater simplicity on the range of human variation than can actually be found. in the background of this, there always lie normative judgments—always an implicit teleology. (sometimes people will make this explicit, talking about what the body is "organized around"). indeed, the very desire to have these categories be fixed and unchangeable is already a normative judgment about category construction—a judgment that lacks biological motivation. so much for the difficulties with biological sex, considered in its own right. but even supposing we find some straightforward biological characterization that sorts (the bulk of) people into two sex categories, to then put these categories to social use is to impose further normative judgments. (it is impossible, for example, to have bathrooms segregated just by biological sex, without considering gender, for the simple reason that that very act in itself has brought us into the realm of gender) the sex/gender distinction can be useful, but it's risky: the more we rely on it the more we risk reifying both sides of the dichotomy, separating them in ways that ignores their IRL inseparability. there has never been "biological sex" untainted by "gender". almost as if the warring states daoists were onto something with their cautions about naming and dividing...

sure! i have a proper dao-bums-relevant introduction thread in the welcome forum, so i'll do the trans-specific one here i'm rose. i started transitioning in late 2021 because i thought it would impress zhuangzi. i'm only half-joking. (before 2021, i spent rather more time than the average cis boy thinking about the zhuangzi as a trans-inclusive text) i do think that 無為 (wuwei) provides a good model for understanding gender. we tend to think of transition as a goal-directed set of changes away from Received Gender toward Desired Gender. but that misses its heart. Received Gender isn't something that comes "for free": it requires lots of active maintenance, both through active performance (為) and actively holding oneself back from behaving as the Desired Gender (不為). i don't think it's useful to define "woman", but if forced to, i would say: woman is what happens when i do nothing. 無為而無不為 (wuwei er wubuwei)—non-doing and non-not-doing.

in my experience there is usually a dramatic upward tick in Desire To Appear In Photographs post-transition

Over the summer I intend to drive myself a little mad figuring out just how deep in the GSLz weeds the Qiwulun is. Here's a preliminary report of the references motivating this planned folly: 1 GSLZ (白馬論): 以黃馬為非馬，而以白馬為有馬，此飛者入池而棺槨異處，此天下之悖言亂辭也。 To regard yellow horses as not horses, yet regard white horses as horses, this is to take flying things as entering pools and to reverse inner and outer coffins, this is Under Heaven's disordered nonsense-speaking. Zz (逍遙遊): opens with a passage where a flying thing exits one pool and enters another 2 GSLz (堅白論): 循石，非彼無石，非石無所取乎白。 Inspect the stone: if it's not that there's no stone; if it's not a stone there's nothing selected as white. Zz (齊物論): 非彼無我，非我無所取。 If it's not that there's no me; if it's not me there's nothing selected 3 GSLz (指物論): 物莫非指，而指非指。 No thing is not a finger, yet a finger is not a finger. Zz (齊物論): 物無非彼，物無非是。 No thing is not that, no thing is not this Zz (齊物論): 以指喻指之非指，不若以非指喻指之非指也；以馬喻馬之非馬，不若以非馬喻馬之非馬也。 Using a finger to show that a finger is not a finger is not as good as using a not-finger to show that a finger is not a finger; using a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a not-horse to show that horse is not a horse. note: also indicates a reference to GSLz's white horse discourse — — So that's clearly 3/5 treatises in the Gongsun Longzi text being referenced by the Zhuangzi, with two of them being directly riffed on right as the Qiwulun enters its central argumentative passages. This suggests a couple interesting things to me: (1) There may be more unity to the GSLz text than is commonly supposed; at least, the QWL (ch. 2) author seems to be treating it as a unit (2) The QWL is probably a product of the later warring states period rather than of the historical Zhuang Zhou (there's other textual evidence supporting this as well, such as the fact that Huizi seems to appear in QWL as already dead, plus all the evidence Esther Klein has marshaled) Anyway, this is all preliminary for the moment; I'll be adding to this as I get deeper in the weeds and (I hope) find new things). Feel free to chime in if you have thoughts or (this being a Zhuangzi thread) if you don't. : )

Toshiya Tsunoda's magnificent field recordings, especially his collaboration album with Taku Unami, Wovenland 2, especially the final track. https://erstwhilerecords.bandcamp.com/album/wovenland-2

hehehe, if you like intellectual concussions it's a fun one

For what its worth, the general reception of GSLz by his contemporaries (and later Chinese generations) was that he was anything but pragmatic. But it is clear, I think, that he and other "school of names" figures were, ultimately, putting linguistic paradox to broadly pacifist purposes. So perhaps more practical than it seems.

Ah, well, what they mean is just the issue! I don't feel I have a grasp of the GSLz yet. But in brief, his essays seem to be technical works in the philosophy of language and metaphysics. "Finger" is a metaphor for pointing out or indicating. So "no thing is not a finger, but a finger is not a finger" may mean something like "no thing is not capable of being pointed out, but pointing out cannot be pointed out." (What's the one thing my right index finger cannot point to? Itself!) In the white horse discourse, my preferred reading, at this early stage, sees it as a technical critique of the later Mohist theory of predication. I don't yet know enough to work it out in more detail than that. The discourse on "hard and white" looks to be something about how properties inhere in objects. I haven't read it yet. All to say: at this stage I am still as lost as anyone—I know there is a territory to explore here but not yet quite what it contains...

when hungry, eat when thirsty, drink when tired, sleep when dysphoric, transition

It appears I need to make a post to have my account approved, which I hope will allow me to access basic functions like editing my profile. So I shall abandon my original intent of just lurking for a bit. Name's Rose. I'm rather partial to the Zhuangzi, so I'll probably be mostly engaging in discussion of that. Or at least that's where I'll have the strongest opinions. In other areas I'll likely be more of a questioner and listener. I have many particular interests in the Zhuangzi but the one that's especially capturing me right now, and which I can see sparking my next obsession, is the depth with which it's intervening in the Mojia/Mingjia linguistic disputes. Time to master the Mohist canons and the Zhiwulun... Oh yeah, and: « Though the cook does not order the kitchen, the surrogate corpse does not leap goblet and tray to replace him. »