I've heard a fair few people talk about that movie, praising it, but knowing myself it's not something I can deal with watching.
One funny thing I experienced myself, and I know others have as well, is realizing just how much dysphoria you were dealing with once you've been transitioning a while. Before it was an all-pervasive miasma of indescribable feelings. Transitioning made it clear that the before times was not a neutral period. I'd been led to believe that dysphoria consisted of very concrete things, like anatomy, but the mental aspects are just as much a part of it. Being numbed by the constant presence of unquantifiable ~wrongness~ makes that hard to realized. (Very possibly exacerbated by a society that was extremely intolerant of existing outside a very narrowly circumscribed gender role.) Until I took the plunge that is, and was like "holy fuck". The miasma lifted. The internal signals of wrongness quietened. It sure as fuck didn't solve all my problems, but I'd be in a hell of a lot worse situation if I hadn't. Sadly the only way to find out yourself is to take the plunge so you don't die wondering.
Thanks Devon, I loved reading this. I don't identify as trans but always casually wanted to be a boy until my early 20s (in the 00s) and have had many interpretations of my gender dysphoria or desire to be male or desperation to be neutral/escape misogyny (inc my own) over the years. I also related the way you couldnt say why it feels better after knowing you are trans to my knowing (finally) I'm autistic. Nothing really improved but the self knowledge changed everything.
Thanks for your writing, I get a lot from reading your work.
It’s extremely good but also one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen. Some of the scenes near the end were incredibly haunting and emotionally resonant. I’ve been recommending it to everybody, and I’m so glad I saw it and feel it genuinely helped me so much, but I know I probably won’t be able to watch it again for a long time.
Yeah, it's been recommended to me so many times at this point, I know that it'll be good when I watch it but I know that I'm not ready yet. [TFW "is it the demand avoidance?" ...no, I'm just aware of how incredibly raw I already am, emotionally.]
Soooo real, I completely understand, I have hundreds of movies in my watchlist for that exact reason, although for me it’s absolutely ALSO the PDA lol. I saw it in the theatre and there was this asshole seated right behind me who kept laughing loudly at all the serious parts and clearly thought the whole thing was stupid, which was EXTREMELY irritating in the moment, but now I’m also sort of grateful in a way bc somehow knowing that this guy was so clearly rolling his eyes and not appreciating it made it easier for me to enjoy it, if that makes sense? It’s like the pressure was reduced and replaced with righteous anger lol. Anyway all this to say.. Understandable!
Reading this felt like a cross of Leslie Feinburg work and the overlap of Baby Reindeer; especially in my experience of trauma and that loop feeling in gender. I think both can overlap to where I just want to exist without constant fighting
Not transgender. More of an ally and an outside observer who is trying to make sense of the narrative.
One possible way to make sense of the narrative—and I could totally be wrong about this—is that perhaps this is simply too complicated to make sense of in theories or maybe even words?
AFAICT there are a huge number of things in human life like this—love, sexual attraction, the desire for children…all sorts of things people do that they can’t really ‘justify’ in rational terms. It’s just ‘how humans are.’ They can just display a lot of characteristics that we cannot fully explain nor justify. So what if this is just another one of those things?
There have always been these people that we would now roughly call ‘transgender.’ We made up this concept for these people recently. People started to talk about this thing that maybe is one of these deep experiential things, and also a socially salient thing. We don’t really understand very much about ourselves. Humans don’t understand much. We create norms in each society somehow. The norms have various complex social purposes but this doesn’t make them ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Sometimes they are terrible for individuals and good for society. Sometimes they are great for individuals and terrible collectively. Sometimes they are a combination of both.
People roughly start to comply with the norms. Various people do not. Other people freak out about it.
Any kind of trait that has been normed where someone deviates from the norm will seem like it needs more of both an explanation and a justification. But this is very silly. We don’t have an explanation. Maybe we don’t need one. The justifications are always inadequate. Such justifications always are. Where do you start from? That’s already too fraught for us to do this adequately. Something so bound up in the social, as humans are—it’s just never going to be explicable like photosynthesis is explicable. (There are probably still things to learn about photosynthesis.)
Self-understanding motifs arise to help us but they can also leave us more confused. Yes, they help people understand themselves and also one another —but they can be riddled with ideology, they can be manipulative, etc., etc. Humans fundamentally don’t fully understand themselves. We get anxious about this. We put a headtrip on ourselves an others. Often, it has a social purpose—to enforce normed behavior, to create a particular kind of collective reality.
When individuals try to understand themselves, they’re in a similar fix. We draw on the options put out there collectively, thus far. Sometimes it is very satisfying and sometimes it is very agonizing. But there’s often going to be a remainder that is probably too complicated to put into a narrative explanatory form—because a person is just so complicated. It would be great if that one terrible childhood experience was the explanation for whatever-whatever. Embrace the explanation that works but maybe don’t be too hard on yourself if you find out later there was more to it.
It’s not unsurprising that this is kind of a mess. But if you go back to the fundamentals—people just ARE some way, and there will never be a full account of this. It probably has some explanation but so far we lack one—for all kinds of stuff, not just gender—I think maybe there’s less pressure on individuals to explain and justify. And also we can resist the ideological attempts to manipulate others for various social purposes because —-we don’t really know that much. We are often wrong.
Anyway, I have no clue but I have been wondering whether things such as this can be bad candidates for ‘reasons’ both of the explanatory and justificatory type. But we’re reason-giving creatures. We’re going to feel desperate to give reasons. That is the kind of beings that we are. But maybe they will always be provisional reasons. Or another option is to be playful about the reasons, especially as regards to oneself. Not having reasons can be disorienting for humans. And maybe that’s a good thing, given what the search for explanations and justifications has done for us—gotten us to try to figure out the universe, for one. Gotten us to challenge injustice when it can’t be justified. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s good to try but maybe don’t be hard on yourself if it just seems like an endless quest rather than irrefutable and knock-down.
thank you, Devon. some of your recent writing has been really helpful. Bilateral Dysphoria confirmed some suspicions I had of the manhood-adjacent position im moving toward, and this one reaffirmed my decision to press forward with medical transition in spite of my trepidations and conflicting desires. may we make the world a little less awful or, at least, our lives!
This was the most refreshing text I've read in a long time. Thank you so much ♥️ I believe I came out as non-binary to be able to say "I am not a woman" in all of those bullshit situations you describe you also hated, while at the same time not having to put myself into the frame of masculinity either. To have some space which is only my own. But also for the joy of people looking quizzically at me trying to place my gender. PS. Your reflections reminded me a bit of "My Life in Sea Creatures" by Sabrina Imbler. Highly recommend it to everyone here!
Glorify a surgery done on females is not cool. She Devon, is still a woman. She should be proud to be a woman instead of acting like tits are something to chop off. What.... she needs to be a man because women can't be masculine? She cant accept the fact that she's female. Rather than push the notion of strong women, she destroys that idea like she performs body modification and self mutilation, to which its obvious she will regret and hasn't admitted it yet.
No wonder her mental health problems shine through so clearly in her posts.
This hit me hard, in ways I can’t articulate right now because I feel so overwhelmingly tired with this daily internal and external battle. Thank you for writing about it so eloquently.
I've heard a fair few people talk about that movie, praising it, but knowing myself it's not something I can deal with watching.
One funny thing I experienced myself, and I know others have as well, is realizing just how much dysphoria you were dealing with once you've been transitioning a while. Before it was an all-pervasive miasma of indescribable feelings. Transitioning made it clear that the before times was not a neutral period. I'd been led to believe that dysphoria consisted of very concrete things, like anatomy, but the mental aspects are just as much a part of it. Being numbed by the constant presence of unquantifiable ~wrongness~ makes that hard to realized. (Very possibly exacerbated by a society that was extremely intolerant of existing outside a very narrowly circumscribed gender role.) Until I took the plunge that is, and was like "holy fuck". The miasma lifted. The internal signals of wrongness quietened. It sure as fuck didn't solve all my problems, but I'd be in a hell of a lot worse situation if I hadn't. Sadly the only way to find out yourself is to take the plunge so you don't die wondering.
Thanks Devon, I loved reading this. I don't identify as trans but always casually wanted to be a boy until my early 20s (in the 00s) and have had many interpretations of my gender dysphoria or desire to be male or desperation to be neutral/escape misogyny (inc my own) over the years. I also related the way you couldnt say why it feels better after knowing you are trans to my knowing (finally) I'm autistic. Nothing really improved but the self knowledge changed everything.
Thanks for your writing, I get a lot from reading your work.
Chelsey
Yeeeeap that's why I've been afraid of watching this movie
It’s extremely good but also one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen. Some of the scenes near the end were incredibly haunting and emotionally resonant. I’ve been recommending it to everybody, and I’m so glad I saw it and feel it genuinely helped me so much, but I know I probably won’t be able to watch it again for a long time.
Yeah, it's been recommended to me so many times at this point, I know that it'll be good when I watch it but I know that I'm not ready yet. [TFW "is it the demand avoidance?" ...no, I'm just aware of how incredibly raw I already am, emotionally.]
Soooo real, I completely understand, I have hundreds of movies in my watchlist for that exact reason, although for me it’s absolutely ALSO the PDA lol. I saw it in the theatre and there was this asshole seated right behind me who kept laughing loudly at all the serious parts and clearly thought the whole thing was stupid, which was EXTREMELY irritating in the moment, but now I’m also sort of grateful in a way bc somehow knowing that this guy was so clearly rolling his eyes and not appreciating it made it easier for me to enjoy it, if that makes sense? It’s like the pressure was reduced and replaced with righteous anger lol. Anyway all this to say.. Understandable!
Reading this felt like a cross of Leslie Feinburg work and the overlap of Baby Reindeer; especially in my experience of trauma and that loop feeling in gender. I think both can overlap to where I just want to exist without constant fighting
Your writing is just so beautiful. I can't tell you how much I appreciate and enjoy it.
Not transgender. More of an ally and an outside observer who is trying to make sense of the narrative.
One possible way to make sense of the narrative—and I could totally be wrong about this—is that perhaps this is simply too complicated to make sense of in theories or maybe even words?
AFAICT there are a huge number of things in human life like this—love, sexual attraction, the desire for children…all sorts of things people do that they can’t really ‘justify’ in rational terms. It’s just ‘how humans are.’ They can just display a lot of characteristics that we cannot fully explain nor justify. So what if this is just another one of those things?
There have always been these people that we would now roughly call ‘transgender.’ We made up this concept for these people recently. People started to talk about this thing that maybe is one of these deep experiential things, and also a socially salient thing. We don’t really understand very much about ourselves. Humans don’t understand much. We create norms in each society somehow. The norms have various complex social purposes but this doesn’t make them ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Sometimes they are terrible for individuals and good for society. Sometimes they are great for individuals and terrible collectively. Sometimes they are a combination of both.
People roughly start to comply with the norms. Various people do not. Other people freak out about it.
Any kind of trait that has been normed where someone deviates from the norm will seem like it needs more of both an explanation and a justification. But this is very silly. We don’t have an explanation. Maybe we don’t need one. The justifications are always inadequate. Such justifications always are. Where do you start from? That’s already too fraught for us to do this adequately. Something so bound up in the social, as humans are—it’s just never going to be explicable like photosynthesis is explicable. (There are probably still things to learn about photosynthesis.)
Self-understanding motifs arise to help us but they can also leave us more confused. Yes, they help people understand themselves and also one another —but they can be riddled with ideology, they can be manipulative, etc., etc. Humans fundamentally don’t fully understand themselves. We get anxious about this. We put a headtrip on ourselves an others. Often, it has a social purpose—to enforce normed behavior, to create a particular kind of collective reality.
When individuals try to understand themselves, they’re in a similar fix. We draw on the options put out there collectively, thus far. Sometimes it is very satisfying and sometimes it is very agonizing. But there’s often going to be a remainder that is probably too complicated to put into a narrative explanatory form—because a person is just so complicated. It would be great if that one terrible childhood experience was the explanation for whatever-whatever. Embrace the explanation that works but maybe don’t be too hard on yourself if you find out later there was more to it.
It’s not unsurprising that this is kind of a mess. But if you go back to the fundamentals—people just ARE some way, and there will never be a full account of this. It probably has some explanation but so far we lack one—for all kinds of stuff, not just gender—I think maybe there’s less pressure on individuals to explain and justify. And also we can resist the ideological attempts to manipulate others for various social purposes because —-we don’t really know that much. We are often wrong.
Anyway, I have no clue but I have been wondering whether things such as this can be bad candidates for ‘reasons’ both of the explanatory and justificatory type. But we’re reason-giving creatures. We’re going to feel desperate to give reasons. That is the kind of beings that we are. But maybe they will always be provisional reasons. Or another option is to be playful about the reasons, especially as regards to oneself. Not having reasons can be disorienting for humans. And maybe that’s a good thing, given what the search for explanations and justifications has done for us—gotten us to try to figure out the universe, for one. Gotten us to challenge injustice when it can’t be justified. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s good to try but maybe don’t be hard on yourself if it just seems like an endless quest rather than irrefutable and knock-down.
thank you, Devon. some of your recent writing has been really helpful. Bilateral Dysphoria confirmed some suspicions I had of the manhood-adjacent position im moving toward, and this one reaffirmed my decision to press forward with medical transition in spite of my trepidations and conflicting desires. may we make the world a little less awful or, at least, our lives!
This was the most refreshing text I've read in a long time. Thank you so much ♥️ I believe I came out as non-binary to be able to say "I am not a woman" in all of those bullshit situations you describe you also hated, while at the same time not having to put myself into the frame of masculinity either. To have some space which is only my own. But also for the joy of people looking quizzically at me trying to place my gender. PS. Your reflections reminded me a bit of "My Life in Sea Creatures" by Sabrina Imbler. Highly recommend it to everyone here!
Glorify a surgery done on females is not cool. She Devon, is still a woman. She should be proud to be a woman instead of acting like tits are something to chop off. What.... she needs to be a man because women can't be masculine? She cant accept the fact that she's female. Rather than push the notion of strong women, she destroys that idea like she performs body modification and self mutilation, to which its obvious she will regret and hasn't admitted it yet.
No wonder her mental health problems shine through so clearly in her posts.
This hit me hard, in ways I can’t articulate right now because I feel so overwhelmingly tired with this daily internal and external battle. Thank you for writing about it so eloquently.