On blanket answers

Earlier today, my friend Laurie posted a new entry to her blog, talking about how great it is that recently she, Christian Taylor, and I have all seemingly arrived at a similar place in our transgender-tinged walks with Heavenly Father:

1. Each of us has some measure of gender dysphoria / feelings of feminine gender identity.
2. Each of us was born & raised male, received the priesthood, married a woman, had kids, and is active in the Church.
3. Each of us would likely lose all of these things if we were to pursue gender transition to live as a female.
4. Therefore, we have each decided to remain with our spouses, remain in the Church, and remain primarily male, finding ways to embrace and express our femininity from this side of the gender divide.

I agree with this characterization of my thoughts and feelings today, as well as my agreement with my wife (I know, I still haven't blogged about how I came out to her! Next post, I promise!). But I confess to feeling a little bit uneasy with the overall message that appears to be coming from Laurie's post (I'm not going to ascribe this to her directly, because this may not be her intent at all, and just my interpretation * I'm positive that this wasn't her intent, and she has since said as much, but someone might still get that impression in reading over our blogs without the proper context).

It reminded me of a conversation going on over on Josh Weed's blog right now. The gist of it goes like this:

1. Josh Weed is a self-declared homosexual man.
2. Josh Weed is happily married to a straight woman.
3. Therefore, some argue, these so-called "mixed-orientation marriages" can work and are the solution for all gay men (and women) of faith.
4. "Not so," reply others -- Josh & Lolly's situation is unique. It works for them, and though there are other charter members of Club Unicorn for whom mixed-orientation marriages work, saying "wow, I can't wait to show this blog to my gay friend!" is harmful, because there are many gay Mormons (perhaps most?) for whom such a marriage wouldn't work at all (or who have tried one and failed).

I think the same can be said of our mutual position on our transgenderism. It works for the three of us, and we can rightly rejoice in having found a way forward in our lives that preserves the things we hold most dear, but there are other transgender Mormons for whom this wouldn't be a solution at all. Like Christi said a few weeks ago, our thoughts and ideas should NOT be taken as the official position of the Church, or the One True Way(™) for transgender Mormons to live their lives. Just as gender identity and expression is along a continuum, so too I think are the ways each of us has to come to grips with it.

* I edited this parenthetical to clarify my intent. I'm not trying to criticize Laurie here at all, I just wanted to make sure not to make things harder on transwomen for whom our solution isn't the right one.

On the Internet...

© 1993 Peter Steiner / The New Yorker (Vol.69 (LXIX) no. 20)

I saw this famous New Yorker cartoon a while ago that I thought was kind of funny, about how everyone on the Internet can basically craft their own identity to be what- or whoever they want to be. The other day something kind of interesting happened that reminded me of that cartoon.

For the past 6 months or more I've been playing Wordsmith (like Words with Friends or Scrabble) with a few people on my smartphone. It's a fun little diversion, and keeps my mind (relatively?) sharp. Anyway, recently one of my regular opponents, with whom I've been playing for many months, sent me a surprising little chat message through the game: while I don't remember the exact quote, she said something to the effect of "please don't be offended, but are you a man or woman?"

I think my jaw might've dropped.

My game username is pretty much gender-neutral, so I guess that could be confusing, but the funny thing is, my avatar in the game is VERY masculine: shaved head, dark power suit... cosplaying Lex Luthor, basically. So was it my word choice? The way we interact when we chat? I have no idea. But even though I answered "male", I have to admit that Arcee preened a little.

The Incredible Hulk and the Transgendered Mind (an Avengers Review. No, Really!)

So I want to see the Avengers movie with my kids a couple of weekends ago. To say we loved it would be a significant understatement... It. Was. Awesome!

(At least for those of us who like superhero bash-ups)

A lot of the conversation about the movie has involved Mark Ruffalo's role as Bruce Banner, alter-ego of the Incredible Hulk — rightly so, it was really great, both in person and via the Gollum-style motion capture that drove the CGI character. The script, written by geek icon Joss Whedon, is really great at balancing a lot of characters, giving everyone's favorite their chance to shine — I love Captain America's line about flying monkeys, for example, and of course Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man is something of a smart-alec. That said, I think Hulk did get some of the best/funniest lines. One in particular really jumped out at me, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Okay, first a brief comics history lesson for those of you who aren't up on your Marvel history. The Incredible Hulk is Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's take on the old "Jekyll and Hyde" dichotomy: a peaceful man of science trapped inside the brutish body of a man of action, updated for the atomic age. In most incarnations, Bruce Banner is a genius scientist who gets accidentally exposed to massive amounts of gamma radiation, which has the effect of turning him into a rampaging monster (unchecked id, basically) when he gets angry. Over the years, the comic has covered this basic premise from a bunch of different angles, from psychological horror to straight up superhero action. It's always at its most interesting, though, when the stories do something to contrast the man inside versus "the other guy," as he refers to his hulkish alter ego in the recent film.

Through most of Avengers, Banner almost always refers to his brutish alter-ego only indirectly, only actually calling him by name once, before immediately correcting himself. This mirrors the "Jekyll and Hyde" theme commonly seen in the comics, where Banner and the Hulk were two distinct personalities, mistrustful of one another, only rarely working toward common goals. The last two feature films to focus on the Hulk have tread this ground, but began to hint that Banner was trying to use meditation and other self-mastery techniques to get control over his "anger issues." This bears fruit in the movie's climactic battle scene:

(pay special attention around the 0:35 mark)

So (spoiler alert!) the big secret is that Banner has learned to control his anger, and thus control his transformation into the Hulk! Pretty heady stuff, and a great 11th-hour reveal. Here again, the comics actually went down this road for a while, with a psychotherapist helping Banner integrate the various splintered aspects of his psyche into what the fans typically call the "Professor Hulk," which reconciled the Hulk's strength and pride with Banner's intelligence and compassion. (full disclosure: the "Professor" era's stories were my favorite to read, so I may be gushing a bit)

So what does all of this have to do with being transgendered? I'm glad you asked, Dear Reader. :)

For a very long time (most of my life, actually), I've seen my feminine side as my Hulk, my "other gal." For quite a while I paraphrased King Benjamin, calling her my "natural (wo)man" (and, therefore, an "enemy to God"). None of this was healthy, and it led to a lot of cognitive dissonance and years of emotional whiplash as I swung wildly between indulging and ignoring that voice inside me. It has really only been these past few months, when I finally realized that Arcee is a part of who I am, and accepted that there were positive ways to listen to and validate that part of myself, that I've found something approaching inner peace.

Are there still metaphorical supervillians in my life that need fighting? Of course there are. But I feel like, having made peace with myself, I'm finally equipped to meet life's challenges head-on. For me, beyond the epic superhero fights and struggle for freedom against a seemingly unbeatable foe, my enduring memory of the Avengers will be that scene: Bruce Banner, calmly accepting the duality of his nature, and turning to face his challenges with confidence. I hope to do the same.

"I used to be a man"

(I got this picture from Google Images, but the site it came from, ironically enough, belongs to a fellow trans-sister! Her story, while still unfolding, is pretty eye-opening, but probably not appropriate for all my readers, because Nikki's a former sailor, and swears like one.)

Last week, I blogged about where the first part of my pseudonym comes from. In order to explain the second part, I need to tell you something about my Mom.

I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but my Mom wasn't. In fact, even though my Dad was a member of the Church as a kid, he wasn't super active until years later either (but that's another story). I remember Mom telling me once shortly after my mission that I was "her first convert," because she got interested in the Church via her mother-in-law (my Grandma) when I came along. So Mom took us kids to church every Sunday, and Primary every week (what day was it on before the unified block schedule, Wednesdays?) I owe my testimony, faith, and trust in God to her in more ways than I can count. She's amazing. (Not to take anything at all away from my Dad... he just wasn't spiritually there yet)

So let's skip ahead a few years. I must've been about 12 or 13 at the time... my gender issues were in full swing at this point, and thanks to the public library, I had a vague notion of what it meant to be transsexual. We were in the car, driving out to visit my grandparents, when out of the blue she nonchalantly says to my sister and I: "You know, I used to be a man."

I was stunned!

Really?!?! My amazing mother was born a guy?!? I couldn't process this. These crazy transgender feelings I was dealing with? My Mom knew what they felt like...? This might change everything!

After a beat, though, clarity (I don't remember if she told us, or if it just occurred to us on our own): her maiden name is MANN! So Mom was born a girl, but before she got married and took my Dad's name, she was a Mann! Not a "man".

D'oh!

So this was just a corny joke, completely innocent on her part, and not at all what I had read into it. It certainly didn't help my dysphoria, but years later, it would make the perfect pseudonym: one that says something about who I am and what's important to me (i.e. my awesome family), while yet saying nothing at all. So now, you know.

"Club Unicorn" goes viral

If you haven't seen this yet. My wife shared this couple's story with me yesterday, and it's worth spreading. It's very quickly making the rounds in the LDS blogosphere, and their story is pretty awesome. Obviously gay issues aren't the same as trans issues, but the fact that people are even openly talking about these kinds of issues represents a huge step forward in my mind. And the fact that my Sweetheart thought to share it with me is significant as well, but that's the subject for another post.

What's in a Name?

It should come as a shock to exactly none of my readers that Arcee Mann isn't my birth name. So, where did it come from, and why did I choose it? Read on to find out.

First, a little background. I said way back in my first post that I was a big Transformers fan as a kid. A good friend of mine collected GI-Joe figures as well, since they both kind of inhabited similar universes and their comics (and cartoons, I think) occasionally crossed over with each other. The thing is, though? I never liked GI-Joes. Like, absolutely no interest at all. So thinking about it now, it occurs to me that there must have been something else about the heroic Autobots and nefarious Decepticons that appealed to me, beyond the whole struggle between two paramilitary groups and the big guns and such.

Thinking about other toys I collected, the other major group that comes to mind is my Star Wars toys. Like Transformers, the Star Wars movies were about this epic struggle of good versus evil, and there were certainly blasters and lightsabers and so forth, but it wasn't the violence itself that appealed to me: instead, it was the richness of the worlds that were created! Indeed, as I grew older, I became fascinated with science fiction and fantasy stories, to the exclusion of almost everything else — because it wasn't the conflict inherent in fiction that caught my attention, it was that ability to escape into a whole new world, so unlike the one outside my window!

Please understand that I had a happy childhood (for the most part). My family loved me, I had a few good friends, and I could pretty much ignore the kids that teased and made fun of me (which was most of them, including most of the kids in my ward at church). But still, there was something really magical about these stories that could take me away to worlds where good would always stand up to evil in whatever form it took, and though sometimes there would be cliffhangers, good would always triumph in the end.

Anyway, that's way more analysis than I had intended to put into explaining my Transformers love, and it was all leading up introducing this particular Autobot. Meet Arcee:

That's right, Arcee is a Transformer. Originally the only female Transformer, to be exact. Eventually the creators added other female robots, but for that first generation of stories, she was the Autobot Smurfette. I never owned her toy, but nevertheless, I always knew of her, and she carries a special significance in my heart.

Sometime I'll tell the story of where my last name comes from, but that story's pretty interesting in its own right, so I'd better leave it for another day.