This post puts a different—and much sadder—spin on the need for validation: "Can you guys pretend I did something really cool or interesting and make a comment about it using he/him pronouns to refer to me?"
Does this kind of 'validation' help?
I gotcha fam.
Has anybody seen what this guys done recently? He made a post about some art he’s made recently.
It’s not often he posts his art online because he gets very nervous sharing it. However, I think he’s very strong and courageous for putting his art work out there. After all, the way he captures the world through his art is beautiful.
Even though he’s still learning a lot and trying to figure out his art style, I know that he’s going to do great things no matter where he decides to take his art. I can’t wait to see him grow as an artist and post more in the future!
Bro, did you draw this?
Damn! He's got skill~ fuck man, when did you get THIS good?
Hey, come check this out!
Look! He did it all in ink. Even got the cross hatching and shading down.
Good shit Bro Bro.
Dude. You are literally the COOLEST fucking guy I know. You make me doubt that I was ever a man at all. Try and leave some masculinity for the rest of the guys. Jeez. Seriously, bro. Awesome drawing.
[For the avoidance of doubt, there was no drawing and these people don't know each other. I don't know about you, but this kind of empty 'acceptance'—untethered from any referent like talent or personal contact—would make me feel worse.]
It also shows how trans identity can be a substitute for real-world accomplishments that are meaningful to oneself and others, that might provide an alternative—and more resilient—source of identity and meaning.
I think one of the reasons I'm so drawn to this topic is that I know I have that lotus-eating tendency myself. I know that I can live in my own head to an extent that is—if not pathological—at least detrimental to my real life.
When I was a lonely 10-year-old, I needed to be able to escape into my head. Lunch and recess would have been interminable without the ability to get lost in a book or withdraw into my imagination where I could be WWII spy or a witch instead of a friendless little girl. I never mentioned these fantasies to anyone. They were too grand for my little life. They sustained me but they embarrassed me.
As I grew up, I had to move out of my imagination and back into the world as it really was. This wasn't an easy thing to do. I had created those fantasy worlds for a reason. But at least nobody was reinforcing my fantasies or reassuring me that I could live there forever rent-free.
You can't, of course. There's no rent-free fantasy life. There's always a cost and you will pay and pay and pay, even if there are times in life when you know you must pay because you don't know how else to get through.
This really resonated for me. I’m a child psychotherapist and I see a fair few young trans identified people who are clearly in retreat from reality and want to insulate themselves from the harshness of the world. In doing so they never grow or overcome the challenges that make you into a rounded adult. It’s the main reason I think the trans issue holds such an important place in the cultural conversation at the moment. In essence it’s a clash between reality and a fantasy of what life ought to be, as expressed by fragile people who long for it to be different.
We absolutely shouldn’t lose the power of imagination in changing our world but we need to be clear about when we’re in denial because we can’t face the task of facing reality.
I read the Narnia books over and over as a child, and even at 15, still kinda believed I might find a secret world with talking animals. I had a favorite daydream that I had a bottle of magic transformative powder that I could sprinkle on and turn into something else.
I would daydream so much at school the entire room would melt away, I didn’t take in much of that the teacher was saying. I tried to stop daydreaming but it was impossible. I still have this problem, actually. I can be doing an errand and forget where I’m going when I’m driving, and end up somewhere else. I guess it’s not actually that I forget, it’s that I’m lost in my thoughts.
Yes I think a lot of these “trans” kids (as I did as a “trans” adult) will have that in common. Maybe that’s why they’re so mad at JK Rowling. She made the fantasy world many of them inhabit.
I remember saying things to my doctor like, “if you could transform me into an elephant, I would do that, but since being a man is the only option, that’ll do”. And they let me proceed!