There is no Spoon
As usual I start with quoting movies and thinking about food. Actually it’s just a metaphor – and remember, to make the spoon bend is impossible. However, besides messing around with spoons there are also other things where this metaphor applies – even some of the everyday trans-stuff.
Most people get stuck with the question about whether they could/should transition or not. Actually this can give you quite hard times as many of you may know. But sooner or later the larger part of them chooses to do it – for quite simple reasons. Of course you might lose friends; but if they put gender above loyalty they were never real friends but just some sort of people that surrounded you for entertainment. And to stay with our bad vision: your family might abolish you. Of course you have bad luck for genetically they stay your relatives – but in the end they didn’t care about you as a person either so they are not worth to worry. You might be bullied – but hey, these guys are really just jealous of you because you in opposition to them dare to be yourself instead of getting in a group with other guys who need self-affirmation by annoying other people. So metaphor number one: there is nothing really good so far you have to lose. Except that you might gain weight (somewhere my twenty more kilograms come from – let’s blame estrogen) and have some more threaths to your highly beloved health. Not fully comforting news but at least a useful point of view.
There is some really good news as well and our second metaphor: when there actually is no real spoon but just the one in your mind you can do with it whatever you want. Let’s say that the spoon is your gender. It can be in any possible way, not just this or that. But sometimes a spoon can’t be bent all too much – it could break or not been bent back. So it’s sometimes also necessary to accept its shape instead of bending it to what someone just feels like.
It is really fascinating what you can all compare to one single spoon – although I normally eat with a fork which can be used as a weapon as well. But coming out to people involves actually a lot of spoons too. A spoon full of courage, a spoon full of understanding (as much as I hate to say this but even we transsexuals need to waste times to understand our average and anyway boring relatives as they try to understand us) and a whole cup of cynicism which is the real fun part. Well, as I already mentioned, a whole lot of food – or patience if you don’t want to get fat – is also involved. However, when we are already with spoons and trannies, we really have a hard life. If we want to appear halfway normal, we need to learn a lot back from scratch – how to walk, how to talk, how to hold cutlery and a cigarettes. There I was actually quite a happy one – I never passed as a man and was pretty often asked from confused people because of my “girlish” attitudes even when I sometimes tried to throw spoons at other people.
Your Liz, off to eat with a fork
The worry over losing friends and family is certainly one of the most difficult aspects of the decision to transition. While someone is likely quite sure of themselves and what they need, the question mark around those who are closest and dearest are often frightening.
My own experience is that as one approaches transition, make sure you do two things. First, spend some serious time and energy cultivating the relationships you value the most. Show people that you care about them, and they will be more likely to reciprocate later on when you need it most.
Second, approach your own transition with a degree of respect for those around you. In other words, as you start to broach the subject with them, make sure they have a safe place to respond as they need to; and be graceful with them – acknowledge the effort to get names and pronouns rights; and be generous when errors happen. (and they will!)
My own experience has been amazing in this respect. I have only had a handful of negative responses, and even those have been relatively mild.