Bigger than the body

Contrary to popular belief, being gay is not the same as wanting to dress in the opposite sex’s clothing and wanting a sex change. What is it really like to be a transgender?

MANILA, Philippines - Gender is a tricky thing to understand, a little trickier to talk about. For so long, gender had been understood as a binary thing — either you’re a man or a woman, and the way you live your life, including how you dress to what people you’re allowed to love, must be dictated by the gender you’re assigned at birth. Boys wear blue, girls wear pink, boys have to act tough at all times and girls have to act dainty. But as Geena Rocer said in her TED Talk about her life as a transgender model, “What we now know (about gender) is (it is) actually more fluid, complex, and mysterious.”

I’ve found that when talking about the transgender community, things get a little trickier and certain nuances have to be accounted for. A man who chooses to go through a sex change operation to become a woman in the bodily sense is not the same as a man who dresses in drag, but there’s that tendency of society to generalize, and these people who don’t gibe with the gender binary end up getting lumped in the same category. Notice that both transsexuals and transvestites are accused of “pretending” the gender they choose to be.

But whether it’s transsexual men, or transsexual women, or men dressed in drag, or even people who identify themselves as agender, these people dislodge common understanding of what it means to be a man or a woman. Notable figures like Austrian singer Conchita Wurst and Laverne Cox, the first transgender woman to be on the cover of Time magazine, perhaps most well-known for playing the character Sophia Burset in Orange is the New Black, use their celebrity to fight for LGBT rights. One can even say that it’s their celebrity that helps move everyone else into a state of ease, letting others know that trans folk aren’t so different from everyone else, and want to be recognized for other facets of their identity, instead of letting others zero in on just their gender.

That’s the whole point of it, really. This is normal. We’re told that we can be whoever we want to be. That we should always be true to ourselves. That some find it hard to apply these principles to gender is unfortunate, and that ends up with people uncomfortable with their sexual bodies becoming more insecure and scared.

In her essay “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” Judith Butler gives an example of how the way we perceive different people can be filled with contradictions. “Indeed, the sight of a transvestite onstage can compel pleasure and applause while the sight of the same transvestite on the seat next to us on the bus can compel fear, rage, even violence.” Members of the transgender community face a unique but nonetheless crippling form of discrimination. Biological males who identify as female, who dress in female clothing, or who have gone through a sex change operation, are often caricatured by the media for those characteristics. Their sexual identities are often considered their defining traits, portrayed as though to say that the only thing that makes them interesting is their gender.

“Media representation is limited to exoticism,” says Thysz Estrada, recounting her experience with popular media as a transsexual woman. “You’re different, you’re the other sex, you’re something new — Ha! You must be funny! Can you dance? Sing? Tell a joke? There are trans people in practically all fields and all we’re seeing are the entertainers.” Xtina Superstar shares another example of media misrepresentation. “The common misconception in the Philippine media is that transgender means gay. Hindi po ako bakla. Babae po ako!”

Another form of discrimination faced by transgender people is that a big bulk of society views their way of thinking and decision to transition as some sort of mental problem. To be biologically male and feel that one doesn’t belong in one’s body isn’t always portrayed as a plight but a case of craziness. “My struggle isn’t so internal because I know and I love who I am,” shares Xtina. “External factors beyond my control are what bring me pain, such as the fact that I cannot change my name and gender marker in all my official documents because Philippine law does not have provisions for the LGBT community. On paper, it reads that I’m male when I am actually a woman.” While it’s true that some trans people have different relationships with their bodies and identities, whether they’ve always known who they really were or took a lot of time to really be sure, to look at them as mental cases does nothing but aggravate the situation.

This is all kind of aggravated by the nuances of local culture. In a predominantly Catholic country, the LGBT community constantly comes under fire. Homosexual orientation is condemned. And even though being transgender doesn’t always have to do with sexual orientation, transsexuals are often attacked and accused for not being thankful for — heavy air quotes here — what God has given them. “The Filipino society is shaped and informed so much by religion that by default it will discriminate what they’ve been taught as evil and immoral.”

At the heart of discrimination against the transgender community is the common notion of what “natural” means. Some would say it’s unnatural to want to go through a sex change operation, that it’s unnatural to behave in such a way that doesn’t really fit society’s expectations of what a man or woman should be like. “Bigoted people love to think we’re not here, as if we’re invisible. Our mere presence irritates them,” says Thysz. “Our continued existence, our presence, just being there, living and thriving continues to disprove what they claim as unnatural.”

But you know what is natural? Being uncomfortable in one’s own skin. Wanting to be comfortable in one’s own skin. Making certain changes to love one’s self more. And if that’s a wrong thing, I guess we’re all doing the wrong thing. Either that, or we’re all normal.