The First Person You "Other" is You

"Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being...Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.’ And she is simply what man decrees...She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential aopposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other."  Simone de Beauvoir

"Jesus healed these women as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out." -Luke 8:2

I was in my early-20s when I began to confront the reality of systemic racism and my role in it, a confrontation that will continue either until systemic racism ends or I die. Like a lot of white people faced with the truth of how the world works, I cycled through familiar stages: denial (I have Black friends! I've never said the n-word in my life!), guilt (How can I make it through this very day when everything I do is privileged?), bargaining (I had no idea what mutual aid funds were back then, else I'd have drained my loan money). But mostly I wanted to know: why? Why did I have these unconscious biases? I certainly would not have selected them had I known what they would entail. And I know these thoughts didn't just come out of the ether. So why are they there and how do I unlearn them?

I also had the unique gift of being able to process these feelings and emotions in Seminary. Seminaries are far from perfect but spending time with people not like myself in the context of studying theology helped me learn and grow as both a person and a Christian. I could ask the "why" many times and get answers that were wrapped in tough love, pedagogy, and thoughtfulness. This is not a gift many white people have had and I have realized that over the years, causing me to evolve in how I address systemic racism with others. 

One of the cornerstone classes of my Seminary experience was Church and the Holocaust. I did not want to take it; I had a notion that I'd be staring at videos of corpses and skeletal figures for fourth months. But as far as available senior seminars, it was either that or Paul...and I was already taking a class on Paul. Paul is annoying as is, I didn't need 10+ hours of him in my life on a weekly basis. 

The class time of Church and the Holocaust was not composed of looking at horrifying videos for four months, though we saw plenty. But most of it was nuts-and-bolts lectures and discussions on how this happened, how the church was complicit, and what are the ramifications for today. Almost everything I do in terms of my public witness is undergirded by what I experienced in those four months, for it truly was an experience. And it was in Church and the Holocaust where I learned how an Other is created. 

First somewhat encountered in studying Girardian philosophy* on mimetic desire and scapegoating, Church and the Holocaust revealed that what happened to Jews and others was not just marginalization that went too far, it was criminalization of personhood. It was creating a definition of the individual whose existence made all of society's problems a reality. This definition often turns into a moving target depending on who the powers are angriest at in the moment but fascism is not noted for being the province of intellects. 

By having an Other to blame everything on, two groups are formed: the ins and the outs. If you're in, your entire existence comes with all extant privileges and blessings. If you're out, you are at best cast from the center of societal living and at worst targeted for state-sponsored murder. As the old South American saying goes: For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law. 

What makes oppression possible is humans repeating these patterns in their daily lives, specifically children miming the exclusionary nature adults have of others and grafting it on to their contemporaries. Who wears the right clothes, has the right shoes, speaks the right language, looks the right way, etc. I was no different. I could alternately be bully and bullied, my empathetic side coming out when the right people weren't looking and my nasty side revealed when I needed confirmation that I could be "in." And God forbid anyone come down on me: I would cry in my room for hours.

But perhaps more than most kids, I took to the practice of Othering because I needed comfort in being who I was assigned to be: a white male. Yeah we were a few bucks north of poverty and yeah I had a mangled accent and a badly overdeveloped lower jaw but I could fake it as much as possible as long as I felt in. As long as I wasn't one of those people. Already beginning the act of psychic self-mutilation common in male youth. 

It was not until years later that the person I was injuring-with-intent was my very own self. 

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I've written before of how once I believed Allison Whitney existed as an outlet for dysphoria and not Deadname Deadname in my former cis male existence . To rehash the part germane to this post...

It was the girl I had imagined time and time again. The girl who became my coping mechanism, that I buried every feminine instinct within me into. An inactive invisible best friend who could take on what men and boys told me I should not be.

I imagined for a long time (because becoming a girl was not a real thing to me) that this fictional female would be my ideal girlfriend. My ideal wife. That she would mimic the gestures, the loves, the radio glows in my life. I imagined this because I wanted to be understood. Because I did not have the language to be understood. Because you could explore what sports you liked and what shows you watched and what you wanted to be when you grew up. But you couldn't explore gender.

This girl was my Other. With her sacrificed existence, I could pretend my feminine tendencies did not exist. I wrote off my emotions as weakness. I grasped every masculine straw I could, seeking the approval first and foremost of men. I rejected the very real truth that I felt more comfortable around women. 

My Self was my scapegoat. There was something wrong with me in how depressed I was and how my depression caused me to interact with the world. As many humans do, I would take my pain out on others. And I would feel shame in my heart. If I could kill what was inside of me — in full denial that what was inside of me was me — I could be accepted by the world, believing that I was doing it right. 

As my views on humanity changed, I learned to give grace to everyone, save for myself, of course. I was the problem if someone was mad. I was the problem if the world was f-ed up. My only conversations regarding myself with God in my 20s were around my sinful, broken nature. Nothing about gratitude for love, for friendship, for enjoyment. I did not deserve those things. 

The easiest thing to do was to pretend that the solution wasn't real. The Other couldn't be the answer because the Other signified weakness. She signified failure. For my fellow humans, everything. Depression was my Law. 

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I recently came out to some people in my life who I knew in advance would not accept me. Religion and culture were the reasons for sure and I'm not going to dive into it all because it causes pain for too many of us. Even as the conversation was relayed, they spoke of how they now felt like they never knew me, that I had lied to them.

But it is impossible for them to understand that the person I lied most to was myself. 

Every one who has needed to "grieve me," or "process," or "figure out their feelings" thinks that they are somehow wronged because their concept of me is not what they expected. Their image has been shattered. But there is no pain they can feel that I have not felt more acutely by Othering my personhood. By making myself, my existence a sin. A crime against humanity. 

One of the many satisfying feelings of transitioning is showing photos to skeptics who knew me pre-Allison Era. Until they see the photos of me smiling in a genuine manner, they assume I am cosplaying femininity and that all of this is in my head. And then they see me femmed up, look genuinely happy. And when they do, the look on their face is always the same: defeat. They must confront the fact that I am doing the right thing for myself, whatever they may think of that. And then they must reconcile my newfound existence vis-a-vis their own feelings on gender. 

The bravest of them must confront their role in it, which I imagine is quite painful in a similar way confronting my role in systems of power is painful for me. 

But no one feels it worse than the Other, especially when they have put themselves there, freely handing folks the nails with which to pound a body on a cross. 

In the hours before coming out to the folks I mentioned above, I felt a weight on my chest that had not been there pre-estradiol. I did not doubt what I was doing but I was still afraid of the reaction. They would need to confront that The Other they have created in real life around gender: blessed by their God and approved by the country, is a loved one. This would surely provoke something strong. 

Yet once they knew, I was surprised at how free I felt. I wrote on Instagram that it was like being a trapped animal whose cage was suddenly open. All I could see around me in Central Park was space in all directions that I could run to. I could run to. There was no reason to see myself as less then. The problem of Othering me has become someone else's burden to bear. I am done giving out nails. 

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The advice I was given was to let them go in angst. "F them" or some variety is what I heard over-and-over, both from people who knew them and for those whom they were an abstract concept. 

But in running free from the cage of other's expectations, I am confident at last that my decisions, even if they eventually are recognized as mistakes, must be my own. And my decision is to love. Because I do love those people, as much as their rejection hurts. Because I know what it means to love everyone but myself. Because if a broken and contrite heart is good enough for God, then it must be good enough for me. 

I cried tears of course but these tears were different. These were not the tears of a tormented teenage girl, stuck in her room, waiting for life to begin, but a fully grown woman grieving the loss of loved ones. These were also tears of relief, for the loss I grieved was not a loss of my choice. I am The Other to me no more. I know the cost of hating The Other. I do not envy those who pay it.

(Art credit: The Mystic Mary Magdalene — Patron Saint of Contemplatives by, Sue Ellen Parkinson)

*I hate how this man's work has been co-opted by the Right but that's another story for another day.