The other day on our boards someone mentioned how everyone saw her former partner as “an FTM in denial.” I don’t like that. No, more than that, I can’t stand it.
I find it especially frustrating coming from anyone trans, since trans people are so often referred to as being “really” their gender-assigned-at-birth instead of their target gender, or they’re seen as “really” homosexual, etc.
But what bothers me about it is that it’s know-it-all laced, clever, condescending. The idea of knowing someone else’s gender identity/sexual orientation (since the whole “He’s really a closet case,” is one I hear a lot, and always have) better than they do themselves is just aggrravating to me.
& I think it’s mostly mean-spirited. Not everyone is – some are sympathetic, or bemused, especially when they themselves struggled with bringing a subterranean identity to light for a long time – but I think it quickly turns to gossip and cattiness.
Just say no. The next time you hear someone do it, object. People are so quick to judge, and sometimes I think they should spend a little more time looking at their own shit than calling someone else on theirs.
I think some people’s eagerness to label others’ assertion that they’re “X” as “denial” that they’re really “Y” is simply the “pop culture” version of the same kind of attitude, and style of argument, that’s long been present in certain psychiatrists and psychoanalysts — for example, the idea that if you say you’re gay, you’re gay, and if you say you aren’t, that proves you are. It’s childish, in addition to all the characterizations you give it. I’ve recently been re-reading some of Havelock Ellis, and he had something very similar to say nearly 80 years ago:
“There are some psychoanalysts who when they see acknowledged signs of homosexuality, accept them, as most other people do, as the signs of homosexuality. But when they see the reverse, even a strong antipathy, they accept that also as a sign of homosexuality, the reaction of a suppressed wish. ‘Heads, I win,’ they seem to say; ‘tails, you lose.’ This is rather too youthful a method of conducting mental analysis.”
Donna
Amen.
“My beliefs about what goes on inside *your* head are more legitimate than your beliefs.” Can there be a more arrogant statement than that?