Dissonance

I saw a play. I beautiful piece of theater that slammed into my head and exploded like a pipe bomb amongst my perceptions. Eric(a) at Plan-B Theatre in Salt Lake City is a profoundly moving piece about the nature of identity, gender, and what it's like to fall in love for the first time. I had fully anticipated that it would be good. Plan-B does solid work. And Matt Bennett, Jerry Rapier, and Teresa Sanderson are truly fantastic thespians and artists. I even began writing my review of the play in my head a few days before I even saw it. I knew it would be worth watching.

What I didn't expect, what I couldn't have expected was what it would help me see about myself.

The transsexual experience is something that I've spent time thinking over, but ultimately always came to the same conclusion. I don't get it. You accept your meat for what it is. You learn to love yourself as you are. Now, I never saw any problems with cross dressing or dressing as masculine and feminine as you please. Hell, I once wore a gold tu-tu to school in highschool, and was infamous for randomly wearing a skirt during my college years. I love playing around with gender stereotypes. In my writing, in the games I play. A character I played in a tabletop roleplaying makes some of my old friends to this day swear that I was somebody's african american grandma in a past life.

So I sincerely have no qualms with the core idea. The part I can't understand is once you reach the surgical cosmetic level. That's the point that just makes me sad. For the same reasons that all cosmetic surgeries just make me sad. Being a little unhappy with your meat is fine as long as it drives you to better yourself. As long as you're healthy it shouldn't matter what you look like on the outside.

Now there's been a comparison I've heard before comparing the need for surgical modification to things like cleft pallet or reconstructive surgeries after accidents. They've compared the emotional pain of the cognitive dissonance to the physical pain of the people who have suffered these accidents. I'm not one to say either way. Just the point that's brought up. I don't see them as the same thing, but I'm not going to judge. I think that cosmetic surgery is cosmetic surgery. Sometimes it's needed for quality of life, more times it's not. It becomes a manifestation of self-loathing many times I've seen.

I can respect that it's an attempt to cope with the dissonance of their existence. An attempt to silence the pain of feeling like society is tearing you apart from within. If the meat reflects the spirit, then that dissonance will stop seems to be the thinking.

Now, I'm not sexually dimorphic. I'm genetically male, and identify as such. So I don't get the gender identity component. However, internal/external dissonance? That I have in spades. That part I understanding. Feeling like if only this one thing was different than everything else would fall into place has been my average Tuesday since I was a little boy.

I see spirits. I interact with a world that others can only sense and many more don't think exist at all. In this era, I'm a madman. A few hundreds of years ago? I'd have been a Shaman. I'd have a place of honor in my community and could devote my life to making things better for those I could. I have felt like I was a relic of a bygone era for most of my life. I was born into the wrong time. And I see a bit of a synergy with those born in the wrong body. That play pointed me to it in a way I would never have anticipated.

I feel joined with them, not by a profound harmony, but by our mutual dissonance. A paradox of existence that out of its necessity I have embraced. I have learned to love the delightful tension of things not being quite right. I recognize that few would be willing or able to live their lives like this, and they shouldn't have to. I just have found a way to be balanced, and healthy, within my own contradiction.

And I sincerely wish I could share the beauty I see in the asymmetry, if only for the moment. And let my brothers and sisters see how beautiful they are regards of anything the world or themselves demand of them.