A Different Way to Have Pride
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When I was a senior in high school, my English teacher taught us about the famous pioneer psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and how their theories have been applied to literature. I thought I was going to be a psychologist, so I paid attention to Jung’s theory of anima and animus — the idea that both men and women (and, here in 2024, nonbinary people) have both feminine (anima) and masculine (animus) energies inside of them, energies known as “contra sexualities.” This is similar to the Eastern concept of yin/yang. Even though Jung died in 1961, psychologists still use part of his work and agree that all people need a balance of anima and animus.
These concepts of yin/yang and anima/animus both matter to me as a transman and also show up immediately when someone is dealing with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). One of the popularly known facts about people with DID is that they have both male and female “parts” or self-states. (These are the modern terms for the “personalities” that reside inside someone with DID, which used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder.) And these male and female “parts” might shed light on the complex internal workings of transgender people.
There is actually no way around having both male and female “parts.” Psychologists have known since the 1970s that everyone in the world has “parts” (see Stone and Stone, Embracing Ourselves). It’s not just people with DID. This is the way people are made. For example, a person might say, “Part of me wants to go to the game tonight, and part of me wants to stay home.” Or they might say, “Part of me wants to switch careers, and part of me doesn’t.” The truth is that human identity is more complex that most of us have been taught to believe. The upshot is that a person doesn’t have DID because they have “parts”; a person has DID because their “parts” can’t communicate effectively. The “parts” become disconnected because of trauma. (You can read more about my personal experiences with having DID here.)
But what might DID teach us about being trans?
Perhaps a lot.
You would assume that a person with DID would get skepticism from psychologists when saying they’re trans. You might think that the psychologist would say to me, “You can’t be trans. You have DID. I’m merely talking to a male ‘part’ of you.”
But that is not the reaction I’m getting at all. I’m getting complete and total support.
After four years of therapy, I am—my “parts” and I are—well aware of each other. Some of us are male “parts” and some female “parts.” Once we gave people in our DID System (the word “System” is used for our collective self in clinical settings) the choice of calling themselves male, female, or nonbinary, about a third of us chose nonbinary. So we are 56% male, 34% nonbinary, and 10% female. As you can see, the internal makeup of our anima/animus is overwhelmingly male, not female. The net effect this has on us, collectively, is to be a transman who leans towards being third gender. Our pronouns are he/they.
Also, when you talk to me, the person you will be speaking with is a male “part” or self-state. People with DID often have a self-state who fulfills the role of speaking to people out in public. This self-state is called the “front,” and they stay out in front and interact with the world. For me, this self-state has always been male.
But the front’s being male is not why we are a transman. Our collective self is mostly male. And in our personal experience, it’s that male energy—the animus—that causes us to feel uncomfortable in our body.
Your next question might be, “But how do the female self-states feel about this? Aren’t they upset? Didn’t they want their female body?”
Nope.
Each female member of our DID System has been asked her honest opinion. Things like hormones and surgeries are an enormously big deal, and you can’t afford to make those kinds of gender-altering decisions if not all your “parts” are on board with it. This is true whether you have DID or not. If part of you is hesitant, then wait and ask yourself where the hesitance is coming from. What is the concern or fear? This kind of major life change needs to come from a place of inner harmony, and that’s true no matter who you are.
And here’s the truth: None of our female self-states disagreed.
I don’t know of any psychologist who’s studied gender identity using the lens of having “parts,” and I only have a bachelor’s degree in psychology. But I’m asking some big questions anyway: What if this is the interior anatomy of a trans person? Since everyone in the world has “parts,” being trans may mean the bulk of your “parts” are a gender that your body is not. This would be a different way to view what is happening—one not based on a biological cause.
In my case, I was born with a female body, but 56% my “parts” are male and 34% of us are third gender. And that reality doesn’t bother the remaining 10% who are female “parts.”
In my experience, knowing I have DID and being in treatment, I have an unusual amount of access to talking with myself. I experience my selves—my “parts” or self-states—as separate people inhabiting my body. We know we collectively make the entity known as Patrick Bryce Wright. No one thinks differently. But our ability to consciously talk to each other about issues of sex and gender—our ability to explore our gender identity as transmasculine/third gender—has been a powerful testament to the reality of the anima/animus or the yin/yang inside of every human being. And because we can consciously switch who is in control of our body, we can even alter our vibes between masculine, feminine, and neutral. Part of gender—people’s perception of gender—is the emanation of vibes. Part of it is body language and posture, and part of it is clothing. The rest, obviously, is physical appearance. But the vibes should not be underestimated. If we are in a situation where someone is not taking our trans identity seriously, then we switch in the male self-state with the “loudest” masculine vibes.
Since everyone in the world has “parts” and everyone in the world has both anima and animus, I’m hoping that my openness about the exact gender makeup of my DID System can help struggling trans people feel more validated. Not that many years have passed since the psychological community stopped saying that being trans is a mental illness to be cured. And now an entire ideological and political war is being waged over our rights to our own bodies. In the midst of this psychological assault—the dehumanization of trans people for the sake of political agendas—I think it necessary to speak up and speak out in any way that might help fellow trans people.
The truth is that the human mind is incredibly complex and should never be boiled down to “body looks, body is.” That kind of attitude supports toxic concepts of both transphobia and ableism.
And if thinking in terms of anima/animus or yin/yang can help even one trans person feel more at peace with the naturalness of needing their inner energy and their outer body to match, then my writing this article was worthwhile.
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