Know Thyself

This semester I decided to require Jamison Green's book Becoming a Visible Man in lieu of Jason Cromwell's text Transmen and FTMs in my Introduction to LGBT Studies course. I thought that Green's tone would appeal to students more, and hopefully engage them in ways that Cromwell's text didn't always. We'll see, it's too early in the semester to say just yet...

In the mean time, I'm re-reading Green's text for myself to prepare discussion points. This morning, I was struck by the following quotation by Green:

What's more valid: your feelings and your certain knowledge of yourself, or your body, the thing that other people see which signals to them what they can expect from you? (7)

It appears in the course of Green discussing the differences between sex and gender, and his introduction to notions and experiences of transgender and transsexual feelings.

I know that given the structure of the question Green poses, it is fairly obvious that what's more valid is what you know about yourself. But I don't know that I always feel able to distinguish between these two things--my feelings and my body and what it signals to others. What I know about myself does not come about from me being a vacuum/on an island. The two seem to me too inextricably connected.

And it's true, too, that what I know about myself and trust about myself are fortified when they are the very things others see/are signaled. (This isn't to say that our bodies can't/don't betray us--with their urges, desires, movements, etc...) But it certainly isn't simply a matter of what I know versus my body, as this quotation might lead some to believe--my knowledge and my body are both part of me.

But where does this leave us...especially when faced with the task of trying to make sense of (for ourselves and others) transgender feelings?

It's no wonder, really, that I've been struggling with coming out as trans. *sigh*