Blind Validation
There is something I was thinking about the other day. It’s really important to me to validate other people’s identities, no questions ask. Your name is Adam Rosenberg, you wear a Star of David, and have Jew Fro ™, and you tell me you’re a devout Catholic? Fine. Pope is in the house. You’ve got a bio penis, and you’re shoving in some guy’s ass, and you tell me you identify as straight? Fabulous.
But I wonder sometimes if it makes me completely oblivious to the rest of the world.
When I met J, he told me his was genderqueer. His full name is an extremely common name that I’ve never heard used for a woman…so I’d say that conceptually, it’s a guy’s name. He told me I could use whatever pronouns I wanted; I chose masculine pronouns, solely because it fucked with other peoples’ perceptions. I didn’t want them to think we were an average lesbian couple; he’s not a dyke, and we weren’t a lesbian couple. He’d had top surgery, and called himself my boyfriend, so I saw him as a more masculine entity.
Last fall, he was interviewed and pictured in an issue of Cosmo Girl, an article about the gender spectrum. I was so proud of him, and told my mother to go buy a copy, and read about his thoughts on gender. I mean, this is a national, well read, mainstream magazine, and my partner was in it; wouldn’t any normal parent be supportive and go get it?
When she finally got a copy, we were talking on the phone. Honestly, I don’t even know if she read the bloody thing. Her only remark about the whole freaking article? “It’s going to be really hard for J in this world, because he’s got a very feminine face and bone structure.” Not one word about gender making the teen beat, or about what a cool kid he was; her first reaction was about him passing.
Believe it or not, I’d never thought about it in that way. I mean, yes, I know it’s hard to pass as any identity, really. Whether it’s a trans identity, or in my case, as a Femme who gets read as straight all the time, our society is not open to variation. I do understand that. However, I’d never looked at J and been like “hmm, you have high cheekbones, which will make it hard for you to pass as not a woman” (or whatever my mother saw). He told me he wasn’t a woman, that his identity was a more masculine genderqueer, and I took that at face value (no pun intended), and never looked back.
A friend just begun his transition. Regardless of any medical stuff, he is clearly a guy, no bones (haha) about it. He has this masculine energy that permeates (not in a bad way) all of my interactions with him. It’s just obvious (to me). He told me he prefers masculine pronouns, so I put that in a drawer in my brain, and poof. I’m not even aware that there are any other options, that people might question anything. He’s a guy, I use him/he, voila. That’s all there was to it for me.
And then when talking to a few of my close friends, I realized that life isn’t that way for everyone, that not everyone’s brains work that way. This friend’s current name is a more traditionally feminine name. Which is fine, not an issue at all to me. But I realized I’d really confused someone when I was talking with them, using his name, and masculine pronouns. To me, it was obvious, but the person I was talking to was confused, and was wondering if I was talking to two different people.
In another instance with a friend of mine who was transitioning, I met a mutual friend. She asked about our friend, and I said he was doing well. She stared at me and said “Wow, she’s really going to through with that, becoming a dude? That makes me sad.” I looked at her, ready to start a conversation about being an ally and and friend, and asked her what she meant by that statement. She said “she’s got a really feminine face and head, overall. It’s going to be really difficult, and I don’t want her to have to go through that.”
What she says makes some semblance of sense to me. Yes, it is hard to pass as a guy if you have a more effeminate face. But I’d never considered that. He IS a dude, he’s not really becoming one. It’s who he is. I mean, there are women who are really tall, and some people question their height (a friend told me she’s been mistaken for a drag queen), but it doesn’t make them any less of women. I am a dancer. I’m also a cripple, and can’t really dance much, but it doesn’t make me any less of a dancer that I can’t do all the things I used to/want to do.
Your identity is who you are, regardless of outside issues. There are plenty of transpeople that can’t afford or don’t want hormones/surgery. That doesn’t make them any less of the gender they are if they don’t have medical intervention.
However, maybe by missing things like that, I’m overlooking an important part of being an ally; thinking about all the extra difficulties my friends might have to go through in life. I don’t know.
But I’d rather spend my time having already accepted their identity and moved on to more interesting and important conversations than sit there and pick apart their physical looks as to what is going to be the hardest for them during their transition.
Can you ever validate someone’s identity too much that you don’t see the forest for the trees? Is my automatic validation without questions a strength or a weakness?
I wonder…
-Essin’ Em
PS. After writing this, I talked about some of it with K. His main response was that I’ve lost confidence in my own ability to validate and express things because of my reaction to being told that I wasn’t a good ally, that I wasn’t inclusive, that I was objectifying.
It’s highly possible he’s right.
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Couple of comments, not totally on topic, but not totally off.
First, I won’t validate the identity of a “Jew for Jesus” or “messianic Jew”. You can be an atheist humanist Jew who hasn’t gone to shul in 50 years, and that’s cool. You can be a batshit crazy Haredi Jew (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haredi), and that’s cool. But I refuse, both as a Jew and as someone who understands basic theological principles, to tell you that you can believe in Jesus and have any identity as a Jew. There is definitely a cultural element to being Jewish, but also the element of NOT BELIEVING JESUS WAS THE MESSIAH. So that’s one place where I can’t bring myself to say, “hey, cool, whatever you say”.
I’m also curious, and keep meaning to ask, why you capitalize “Femme”. Is it different than “femme” to you, or just sylistic, or…?
Abby –
I used to have the same opinion about J4J (as a Jew myself). However, I’ve really gotten to the point where they’re welcome to identify as such, and I validate it; I just have to realize that it’s not MY type of Jew, because MY identity doesn’t include Jesus in a Jewish sense. But I totally understand where you’re coming from; and it took me a long time, and a lot of classes on cultural competency to get where I’m at.
To me, Femme is an identity, and while not all identities, I capitalize it to differentiate it from “oh, she’s so femme.” (when talking about a feminine woman) I am *A* Femme, ergo, the capitalization. It may be silly, but it makes sense to me :)
Abby –
I used to have the same opinion about J4J (as a Jew myself). However, I’ve really gotten to the point where they’re welcome to identify as such, and I validate it; I just have to realize that it’s not MY type of Jew, because MY identity doesn’t include Jesus in a Jewish sense. But I totally understand where you’re coming from; and it took me a long time, and a lot of classes on cultural competency to get where I’m at.
To me, Femme is an identity, and while not all identities, I capitalize it to differentiate it from “oh, she’s so femme.” (when talking about a feminine woman) I am *A* Femme, ergo, the capitalization. It may be silly, but it makes sense to me :)
I think that “straight” “gay” “trannyboifag” and such are much more socially constructed than “Jew” or “Christian” or “Hindu”. For one, you can choose your religion; your sex, gender, and sexuality are in general more innate. “Straight” has no real meaning; it was created to describe an arbitrary group of people. “Jewish”, however, logically describes “one who follows Judaism”. I’m willing to agree that there are a zillion different ways to follow Judaism, and that it’s changed. But there’s a special word for those who believe in CHRIST, and that is CHRISTIAN. How one can believe that Christ is the messiah and not therefore be a Christian is something I’m unclear on, both linguistically and theologically. You don’t get two religions, particularly when one of them made a point of splitting from the other a couple thousand years ago.
I guess I view a construct of people who don’t need to be grouped together (such as “gay” people) and a construct of those who voluntarily choose to be grouped together, and in some sense do need to be (gotta get a minyan, if nothing else), as different sorts of constructs. I, a girl, can look up from between another girl’s legs and announce that I’m straight, and who’s gonna stop me? But I’m fairly certain that if I said, “I’m a Christian but I think Jesus was actually just a guy, and not holy at all, or even a prophet, but a charlatan”, no one (except you :-P) would say that’s okay.
I’m not just arguing; I’m interested in what you (and anyone else) have to say. Did you tweet this post? I don’t remember seeing it, but I missed a few.
The other question of course is: can I reject one identity–and I really can’t think of another possible time I’d say “that’s not valid”–and still call myself open-minded?
i’m so with you here. with the taking people at face value – and also with this concern:
“However, maybe by missing things like that, I’m overlooking an important part of being an ally; thinking about all the extra difficulties my friends might have to go through in life.”
and, while i think it’s important not to ignore that fact, i think focusing on it reeks of tokenizing.
abby dabby – i think you’re approaching religion as if it has only one aspect (the strictly religious god/spirituality/rules/tenets one). but i think there is an extremely strong (and socially constructed) cultural aspect as well. of course, i was exactly that “I’m a Christian but I think Jesus was actually just a guy” person for years. so maybe i’m biased…but maybe i can explain.
i identified as a christian because it was an integral part of my culture. i, really, can’t see how i could put that much of my self into something and not take it on as part of my identity. and, while i didn’t believe all of the religious tenets of my church, all churches [religions, denominations] have a lot of tenets that are completely non-religious as well (i mean, they have religious roots, but they are essentially social and moral rules, not faith-related rules).
so, no, not really of the christian faith, but morally, socially and culturally i was definitely christian (in my eyes).
oh, and as for open-minded: hell yes you can. and i don’t just mean that if you say you’re open-minded, i’ll validate it ;D (’cause…i so won’t when it comes to that). i mean that there’s not two boxes – closed and open minded – that you have to fit in; there’s a spectrum. and also that open-minded is not the same as accepting absolutely everything as fine and dandy (’cause that’s just creepy).
sorry. long. i got rolling.
Hmm. It’s interesting. I certainly understand your point of view and cannot argue with it but I think perhaps it’s just hard for people to accept things like that. I have a friend who’s sister is now her brother and it’s really difficult for me to think of this person as a guy because this person hasn’t always been a guy in my mind, they were once a female. Now, I have nothing against sex change or even.. some sort of in-the-middle self identification but I guess I cannot readily validates these thoughts and feelings because they are not my own.
And I suspect when someone says something about it being hard to “pass” that they’re really indicating a difficult they have with validation as well.
I’m not trans or even bi, much less queer. BUT. Imagining I was, I would think I would, after a while, get really REALLY sick of having to go over things like what pronouns I prefer and people’s faux sympathy at my ability to pass. Like, really sick of it.
From talking to my trans friends, it seems like what they want more than anything is to simply be accepted as who and what they are. I would bet your automatic acceptance is a huge relief to most trans people.