I just moved to a new place where I have to go outside to smoke (this is a good thing – it will help me cut down). The other night, every time I went outside, I accidentally tore down a web that a spider was building right across the door. I would tear it just by opening the door. He would start to build it again. I would tear it. He would start to build it.
Something similar obviously happens to a lot of people, because writers love to use this spider-web thing as a metaphor for perseverance – the spider never gives up. Every time his web gets ruined, he just starts it back up again.
Sure, that’s inspirational and all, but actually, I was not particularly impressed by this spider. In fact, I thought he was being kinda stupid – or at least exhibiting a form of learned helplessness. When it’s obvious that what you’re building is being destroyed, when do you stop trying to build it in the same place over and over again and move on to a better, safer, or more comfortable place? When does a perseverance metaphor give way to a self-preservation metaphor?
Almost everyone – trans and non-trans – has a habit of staying too long, trying too hard, putting up with too much, going along to get along. But I think that trans people can sometimes be at higher risk of sacrificing our self-interests because we might not know where else to go or what else to do.
Obviously, not all of us are in a position to leave a toxic town, job, or family situation. But we often are in a position to stop trying to build our self-worth, self-esteem, and very identity in a tear-down zone. For example:
Relationships: We know the relationship is dysfunctional – even destructive – but we stay, often out of fear that we will never find another. “Who else will love me?” we wonder. I was guilty of exactly this kind of thinking when I first started to transition. I met a trans woman who was frustrated because she couldn’t find a relationship. She actually had two men in pursuit of her, but when she came out as trans to one, he couldn’t handle it and left. The other didn’t care at all – she actually left him because he didn’t share any of her important interests and hobbies.
At the time, I thought, “Wow, you had a guy you liked, who liked you and didn’t care that you’re trans, and you dumped him because he didn’t share your interests?” I’m embarrassed now to admit that I ever thought like that – as if being trans meant having to compromise your own wants and needs just because someone wanted you.
Friendships: You gotta have friends – but unsupportive friends are sometimes worse than no friends at all. Friends who refuse to accept your transition, who misgender you, or who don’t take you seriously are a huge threat to your sense of self. When I first started transition, I told my very first trans contact, “I’m afraid that I’ll lose all my friends.” She said, “You won’t. But even if you do, you’ll make many more wonderful new friends.” She was right on both counts. There are many great people out there who just aren’t your friends yet.
Support Groups: I plan to write more about support groups in a later post, but unless they are run well, these groups can be anything but supportive. Whether it’s a face-to-face weekly meeting, an e-mail list, or an online chat group, if you feel ignored, attacked, belittled, or devalued, this is not the group for you. Support groups are intended to build you up – not tear you down. Find another group or even start one yourself. If your current group isn’t working, as the leader of a new group, you’ll already know what not to do.
Being trans isn’t always easy, and it definitely presents some unique challenges. There is no question that the ability to persevere through the worst of it all is a strength and an asset. But so is acknowledging when it’s time to move on and rebuild your web in a better place.
Thoughts?
(Ask Matt Monday will return when I get more questions – I don’t make them up. I had a flood for a while and wanted to get to them all within a reasonable time period. Now I have a drought!)
Roommate situations-
Staying in one that I would’ve left long ago pre transition because it’s hard to find decent roommate’s as it is, never mind adding the trans factor into it (I’m pre top, don’t bind at home).
Great timing, Matt. I needed to see this today.
Freak yes. I live in an ostensibly extremely liberal area with tons of “queer-friendly collective” houses, but when I actually tried looking for houses recently I was floored at how much of that was self-congratulatory hype. Ended up staying in my current tense living situation, just because I know what I’m dealing with.
When I first started out on this trek, I was friends for too long with one guy. That is, I tried to have a friendship with him because he was also trans and I felt a need to build a community for myself. But in the end I realized that we had absolutely nothing in common besides the trans thing and he was such a narcissistic asshole and insufferable bore, so I finally gave it up and moved on. Lesson learned.
Still, I could probably use a bit of that spider’s perseverance. My sister is as stubborn and relentless as that spider and I bet she could get people to use a different door and stop destroying her web.
All true.
Just wanted to add comments about two ‘biggies’ that you didn’t mention how to deal with – family & employment/jobs.
Family is important, and we give a lot of slack to our family members that we wouldn’t give to anyone else. But toxic family is not better than “no family.” The reality is that people who are not close to their families as adults for various reasons find ways to find family-like relationships with friends or neighbors. It’s not just trans people. If you are in this category, it’s important to live in places where this is more common & seek out these relationships with other people.
I think the hardest scenario is if you have toxicity in your employment or job situation. You can’t just quit or walk away & pay the rent with the positivity and good vibes of having done so. If the problem is with a job, it’s important to isolate what is making your work situation so unbearable – whether it’s dealing with specific people or with transition-related stuff or something else. Is the job itself toxic or is there something in your environment you can change?
Remember that very few people have the “perfect” job and that even people who love what they do often don’t love having to do it every hour of every day that they are obligated to be working. That’s why it is called work. So learn to tell the difference between toxicity and general unpleasantness, stress or drudgery. And if you’re really in a bad place that tears you down, slowly look to get yourself out of it – whether it means applying for new jobs & interviewing or learning new skills that would allow you to shift positions or industries, and so on.
I had a problem with my friends, but the opposite problem outlined in this post. My friends didn’t care that I was trans, but they also didn’t care about respecting gayness as an identity, not telling rape jokes, not slut-shaming, or not being racist. I ditched them real fast. It’s important for trans people to realize that just because someone accepts you as a trans person doesn’t mean you are obliged to love them forever or any crap like that or forgive all their other faults.
“Support groups are intended to build you up – not tear you down.”
<- this
Sadly an all too common experience– I'm looking forword to your post about support groups
I agree. I recently left a “support group” that was becoming a lot more like an “endurance group”. If I wanted to deal with transphobic bullshit, I’d do it in a cissexist space, not on a trans “support” group that is anything but supportive.
There’s an analogy in activism (I’m not sure how prevalent it is) about avoiding becoming like Che Guevara, and bleeding when we should hang up our gloves. Kind of stark and visceral, I suppose.
This is sort of off-topic and sort of not.
One of the earliest pieces of advice I received when starting activism years ago was to recognize how we really do need to move on eventually. I see it now, in that so much of my past has grown distant that it almost feels like it was someone else. Cerebrally, I know it happened, but I just don’t feel that fear, that anger, that displacement, anymore (which is a privilege of a sort, and it’s time to own it, I suppose). On those occasions when I return to a support group, some of the discussions seems worlds away, and I realize there’s things I can’t even really relate to, anymore.
Which isn’t the same thing as persisting in trying to persist in the same harmful surroundings and such, but I do think at some stage, we reach a point of having to move on altogether — or else trying to stay fixed in those things we’ve come out of can become harmful too.
I say that sort of regretfully, because I still remember how important people who’ve transitioned are to the community and how much of a loss it is when they disappear.
Appreciate the post, but wanted to point something out—images of spiders can trigger severe panic in people with arachnophobia. My bf constantly has to deal with TV commercials and films that slowly pan across close ups of spiders without any warning whatsoever, and I get to watch him suffer through it :/
Sometimes we are too proud, too stubborn, or too blind to see the truth.
When I transitioned 5+ years ago I was adamant that I would neither hide nor run staying in the same community and in the job which I had had for 27+ years. After 2 years and in-spite of the company’s “commitment” to fully support me in my transition the reality was very different. I stayed because I thought that to do otherwise would mean I was weak, a quitter, be like going back in the closet. Two years after coming out the company fired me.
I was very upset at first, I mean I was 63 and for the very first time in my life I had no job, the career which had been such a critical part of life life was history and I didn’t have anything other than a boot mark on my hinney to show for it. But then a very strange thing happened 2-3 months post firing. I realized just how much more relaxed, calm that I felt. It took me that long to realize what a toxic place my place of employment had become. Gone was SO much stress, tension, it was unbelievable.
In the end I had the satisfaction of knowing that I did my very best, that I had given it my all but in the end my toxic employer had really done me a favor, in more ways than one by firing me.
I now have a new, incredibly rich and wonderful life. I have made many new friends not only in the LGBT community but my community at large. I am now very happy “just” being a volunteer in my community, one which I define in the broadest sense, I am definitely not bored. I absolutely do not feel or think that no one likes me or loves me. I am after all is said and done, just me, a woman who has significant experience pretending to be a man. A woman who is now finally learning to love myself and has found peace..
Life is wonderful indeed.
Cheryl