This is a follow-up post to my previous post on the nature of authenticity and legitimacy in any sort of transition.
I’m well aware of the tension and fear about not being a legitimate woman when my transition is complete — I think it’s often a constant fear for transsexuals, sometimes one that plagues them and other times something that’s they’re mildly aware of. I’m feeling quite authentic, but I’m anxious about being legitimate.
But what about sexual orientation? Mary Jo and I have discussed the fact that assuming I’m taken to be a woman, then we will be taken to be a lesbian couple. We talk about it from time to time and brainstorm how that social perception is going to affect both of us, but it has not sunk in for me that this identification involves belonging to a category called “same sex couple.” Having just come out to a lesbian couple who are longtime dear friends, though, I felt this morning a sudden pang of illegitimacy.
Not only do I feel illegitimate as a woman, never having been a girl or had a period or worried about being pregnant, but I also feel completely illegitimate as a lesbian. Just as I’ve enjoyed the male privilege all my life, Mary Jo and I have enjoyed the heterosexual privilege all our lives.
What rights do we have to identify as lesbians? How do you get to be lesbians? Is it a simple matter of private practice, or these days is there an expectation of a larger social identity? Helen Boyd often remarks on MyHusbandBetty.com that crossdressers would be a lot more sympathatic if they actually took the time to learn about women instead of imitating them, and I feel something similar about same-sex relationships.
As I look ahead to deeper and fuller transition (we’re only 10 weeks from May 24th, when everyone knows), I find myself anticipating challenges to legitimacy from various directions. I expect to be taken aside and be put in my place by women (you’re not a legitimate woman), men (everything we did together in the guise of a masculine bond was illegitimate), and lesbians (you’re just a straight couple who got thrown an interesting curveball, but you’re not legitimate lesbians).
I don’t know what to to with these feelings except to acknowledge their legitimacy and to engage my friends and colleagues authentically and humbly. I may not have been a woman, or a lesbian, or an activist, or a queer-studies theorist, or any number of categories into which I may transition, but I have an authentic desire to learn.
TransLate 
March 7, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I’m about to engage in oversimplification in a fairly tremendous way, but bear with me.
In a pluralist society, legitimacy only matters if it matters to you. If one social grouping refuses you legitimacy, you can always find another one who will offer it. My experience with churches is an example. There are an increasing number of welcoming and affirming churches who are more than willing to take in people like me who have been refused legitimacy by our former communities.
Which leads me to my question: Do you want legitimacy as a lesbian couple? If so, why?
March 8, 2008 at 7:55 am
I would agree that there may be many, many sources of legitimacy, Allyson, and my own model is oversimplified in that respect. The degree of desire to belong is also oversimplified.
Your question is absolutely perfect: Mary Jo and I are going to want legitimacy as a couple of some sort, without a doubt, and I think my anxiety comes from a concern that as heterosexual legitimacy is lost (and that’s a debatable point as to whether it will be), what will we replace it with? If not lesbian, then what? Roommates? Friends?
Depending on the degree to which I remain visibly and openly transsexual (i.e. my past not hidden), it’s possible that our relationship can remain legitimized via our history and friendships and kids, with the recognition that the husband simply changed. In other words, instead of changing OURselves, we might choose to leave US alone and locate all of the change in ME.
On the other hand, if we were to desire to be seen and accepted as a same-sex couple with two kids (and not as a transsexual family), it seems to me that our identity will be inevitably as lesbians. I think it follows that we would seek legitimacy as such, perhaps from the GLBT community, but certainly (I would think) from our friends and colleagues.
March 8, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Ooo…your thoughts lead me into a very delicate place. (And know that I’m asking myself these questions as I’m asking them of you, as the issues you raise are very much live issues for us, too.)
In order to be seen as legitimately a lesbian couple, do you have to “pass” as lesbians?
March 8, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Well, indeed. Legitimacy is another word for passing, isn’t it? Is there a difference in being a same sex couple and being a lesbian couple? Does the latter imply a certain political leaning or group identification? What would it take to pass as lesbian? Would it involve not only my passing as a woman, but also the two of us passing as card-carrying, lifelong lesbians? This is unknown territory to me, but we might look to stories of long-time heterosexual women who come out as lesbian later in life as a model for acceptance or difficulty.
I have no idea whether card-carrying lesbians (if they have cards) treat transsexual couples who are now same-sex couples any differently than cisgendered lesbian couples. Readers? Anyone? Bueller?
March 9, 2008 at 2:45 pm
You’re welcome in my corner of the (regrettably card-less) lesbian world anytime, Joyce, although I think Allyson’s question is on the mark: what kind of identity do you (and Mary Jo) want to have? Identity is the other term I’d toss in here, along with legitimacy and authenticity.
In some respects, I think the notion of The Lesbian Community is over-rated, although this may be my own social issues coming to the fore. I’ve never had much luck making connections to The Lesbian Community via Community events (like the lesbian potlucks that seem to be organized at bookstores or community centers everywhere I’ve lived). When I go to such gatherings, I just don’t seem to make connections. Rather, I’ve ended up building my community friends and couples at a time.
Will some lesbians treat transsexual couples differently? Probably. And the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival wouldn’t accept you (it’s a festival for womyn born womyn, they say). You’re our first friends in this particular situation (our other coupled trans friends here in town have FTM and the MTF friend we see most often isn’t currently in a relationship). I think of my trans couple friends as queer friends, not straight friends, and that is how they identify. Whether I think of you and Mary Jo as a lesbian couple or not will depend on whether you want to claim that identity (and will some of that depend on Mary Jo?). I don’t think it’s my place–or anyone else’s–to say you can or can’t be a lesbian couple (although I realize not every lesbian will take such a laissez-faire attitude about it).
The issue of legitimacy as a couple is another interesting thing, as lesbians out in the world don’t always code as lesbians to others. When we’re out and about as a family, people sometimes assume I’m the grandmother (what a grey streak will get you) with my daughter and grandchild (to be fair, I’ve also been asked if that’s my granddaughter when i’m out alone with my young daughter). People sometimes assume we’re sisters, or friends. So the legitimacy of couplehood takes some interesting forms. Sometimes, if I’m out walking with a male friend, or at a restaurant having a meal with a male friend, I feel a sense of couple legitimacy that’s completely ridiculous given the lack of couple-ness. Yet people assume a man and a woman are a couple, and I sense it perhaps more strongly given the ways my couplehood is invisible to so many people around us in public spaces.
Interesting material here, which I’m still pondering and talking about, but I wanted to leave a brief–well, not-so-brief-at-this-point–comment here.
March 9, 2008 at 3:09 pm
It’s not Bueller responding, but “Khloe” here to ask/make, once again, oversimplified questions/comments, so here it goes:
Firstly, as I’ve already opined, does anyone ever feel legitimate? Hasn’t the idea of a “true self” or a “legitimate, authentic identity” been thrown out, dismissed as an outmoded, romantic ideal? Poststructuralism has at least given us this liberation model, and it’s a good thing, isn’t it? Indeed, instead of walking around feeling like imposters, we just now recognize that this is the most honest admittance to our identity as it’s under constant construction and in constant flux, because there is no authentic, true mode of being (in whatever category or group). And so? And so we just do the best we can. If our friends say we’re being honest and consistent, then that’s all that matters, right? Fuck the others who are namecalling, or forcing some kind of identity politics on you, or asking you to prove yourself. You have nothing to prove to anyone. You and MaryJo are you and MaryJo and we all recognize you and your relationship as good and true and consistent. That is the most important labeling and mode of legitimization needed, right? Why would you want to fit in some generic categories, anyways? So it’s easier for you and MaryJo, or so that it’s easier for outsiders and strangers?
And remember, as I’ve already mentioned, in reading something like a Cosmo magazine, I ALWAYS feel unwomanly, unfeminine, like I’m not living up to the “standards” of woman. And then every woman I know says the same thing. Or, given your post is about authentic relationships, I can tell you that I often feel like others are questionining or delegitimizing my relationship with Miles because we are not married and hence we are unauthentic, or not as serious, as a so-called legimitate married couple. People ALL OF THE TIME remind us that we aren’t actually married, as though that throws into question our commitment to each other. But we know what our relationship is, and what it entails, and so do our friends and our families, so again, who cares about the establishment or the strangers, really? I could go on, and on, of course, but the thing that rings most true for me is this ending of yours:
“I don’t know what to to with these feelings except to acknowledge their legitimacy and to engage my friends and colleagues authentically and humbly. I may not have been a woman, or a lesbian, or an activist, or a queer-studies theorist, or any number of categories into which I may transition, but I have an authentic desire to learn.”
That’s what counts, dear Joyce. This humble, ardent desire to learn is what people, I think, respect, admire, and respond to. It rings true and authentic and legitimate and is wonderful. The rest–fuck it.
ox,
Khloe (who lost an hour of sleep and so is inarticulate today, hence the rambling response and the vulgarity…)
March 10, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I think that you’re definitely right about there being a certain level of privilege among heterosexual married couples. There’s the obvious state-sanctioned benefits that come with the territory (which was actually why we decided to get married instead of living together as we had before.) There’s also a gorgeous level of silence that you get to enjoy. When John and I got married, the level of snarky comments that we got went away…. or if they didn’t go away, they went somewhere I didn’t have to hear about it anymore, which worked for me!
I kind of like the idea of you and Mary Jo picking a new or enhanced word or definition for your relationship. Something that rings true to you both. For your friends, I suspect that you’ll still just be Joyce&MaryJo (or MaryJo&Joyce)… the hybrid creature that couple-friends tend to become.
As for your authenticity as a woman, I might be inclined to argue that having your authenticity or authority questioned is a big part of being a woman. There’s always someone telling women what is or is not feminine, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that being a mother or giving birth makes one a real woman.
take care!
“Shanna”
(Thank you, BTW, for not naming me “Sharon”… I’ve never liked that name.)