A technical writer friend of mine likes to talk about the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar. Prescriptive grammar uses rules to guide how sentences are constructed and words are used. Descriptive grammar instead prefers phrases and words as people use them in common parlance, and deemphasizes the importance of underlying rules in favor of clarity to a greater audience. I think that a shift I’ve been experiencing in my transition has been from prescriptive to descriptive gender embodiment. When I started transitioning, my efforts were all about doing woman “right” - voice training, dressing femme, being critical of my gestures and movements, etc. Essentially, I was following the transnormative prescriptive approach to transition. Now that I’m over two years in, I’m more interested in what kind of woman I already am. I use what I learned from my prescriptive period to help shape how I express my gender now, but being open to my natural tendencies is feeling a lot more comfortable.
I think I approached transition at first with the intention of fixing an error, and now I’m realizing that transition is instead a process of self-actualization. One recent example of personal growth along these lines is how my “cave girl” moment challenged the stereotypical femme standards I was holding myself to, and gave me the kick in the pants that I needed to start working on my body positivity. Now I’m trying to allow myself to take up more physical space, and I’m working on stressing less about my weight. I’m dressing more “soft butch” at times, and at other times I’m garish and colorful - very queer, very obviously not cishet. My newfound appreciation of my body has also shaken my assuredness in my desire for vaginoplasty, and I’m having second thoughts on whether full depth is for me, much less any additional bottom surgery. I realize that I need to chase after what I want for myself, and not what’s “correct,” and if I do that my womanhood will follow. I’m having to accept what that implies in terms of my responsibility in acknowledging my wants and needs. And having wants and needs, ugh.
It’s tricky, because when you’re trans people expect you to know what your wants and needs are right off the bat. I don’t know anyone who can confidently say that they stepped into transition with a clear picture of an outcome, or that their desires didn’t shift over time. Attaining some wants and needs often reveals deeper desires, like how for me beginning physical transition “gave me permission” to desire further modifying my one-and-only-precious-body-given-to-me-by-god, so I dyed my hair purple and started getting tattoos. All sorts of unnecessary medical and legal gatekeeping bars the way to meeting certain desires, and we have to balance those wants and needs with the time and effort that it takes to approach fulfilling them. On top of all that, trans people are a population who have been essentially raised to hide and minimize our gendered needs by social pressures. It takes time to undo the internalized behaviors and stories we tell ourselves to stay safe.
Following the prescriptive path can in many ways seem easier: here are the things that you need to do, do them and then you’re a real girl. There’s no need to wrestle with your feelings, just run down the checklist and you’ll be done. I’m exceedingly lucky to be a part of a community of trans people who have rejected this approach in favor of carefully considered self awareness, and I attribute a big part of this shared ethos to the large presence of nonbinary trans people. Without a transnormative checklist with which to approach their gender, enbies have no choice but to actively engage with the desires in their hearts in order to discover their own gender embodiment. I don’t think I would have found the self acceptance that I have now without many, many deep conversations with friends who have fae, monstrous, or enigmatic genders, to name a few. Older trans communities were often binary-centric and homophobic, and so I suspect this is a new development in the cultural evolution of transition.
One last piece that I’m sitting with is how the prescriptive outlook is often structured around waiting for things: waiting for HRT to do its magic, waiting for consults and surgeries, deferring dreams until one has “transitioned,” never able to live life to the fullest until the checklist is complete. While I don’t want to downplay the challenges I face in attaining my wants and needs, I don’t want to spend my life in Dr. Seuss’ Waiting Place either, treating my transness as something that only eventually will I fix. I am already whole. I accept and acknowledge my desires, some of which may require waiting and hard work and pain, but I try to live as a complete person whether or not they are fulfilled. “Doing the work” every day is challenging because it requires a great deal of vulnerability with myself, but it allows me to live in the present. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to finish the checklist and then ask “now what?” after living a life predicated on waiting. Or to wait and wait and never make it at all.