Gender Totems

Introduction

That the world in general, and America in particular, is in the throes of an identity crisis is beyond obvious. Modernity erased God as True North on the topo map of identity, and postmodernity eliminated any destination to be arrive at. This means wherever you happen to find yourself is the destination. Yay! You’re here! Becoming yourself in this world is thus a process of convincing yourself this bleak and weary wilderness is where you always wanted to be, and to get to work on making some form of wattle and daub identity.

Everyone deals with this loss differently. Some get religion. Others fashion an identity from a pile of their accomplishments. Still others solve the problem of identity by playing around with gender. The clearest manifestation of this last example is the transgender bubble that has been expanding exponentially, and what I want to talk about here.

Step back for a moment and take in the panoramic scenery of what is actually happening. Men believe themselves to be women, and women feel as though they are men. Can we all acknowledge for a moment the strangeness of this? Can we also acknowledge that our present darkness is not passively allowing these this oddity but actively pursuing it as an intrinsic good? Transgender individuals were considered to have significant psychological dissonance until about 15 seconds ago, when the entire narrative shifted to complete and unconditional surrender acceptance by the wider culture. Now gender fluidity is considered an immutable law of nature, taking its place next to Newton’s laws of motion and general relativity.

What need has gender identification met? And how can we understand the savageness that one is met with if this identity is questioned? Most of the conversations I have had with men who have identified as female have the sentiment that they always “felt like a woman.” What it feels like to be a woman (as opposed to a man, a cat, or a beetle) is an interesting avenue of thought which I would like to take up in the future. But for today I want to stick with something simpler. My intention is to offer a metaphor to recast the transgender predicament of the self and offer another way to understand what may be going on.

Totems

Native Americans and other shamanistic cultures operated in a world replete with totems. Totems are animals or natural phenomena in the individual’s world which the person finds resplendent in some way. Often totems are called tutelary spirits – guides who act as tutors for an individual or group and introduce them to the world as it is meant to be understood. A magical connection is formed between an individual and a totemic spirit which offers protection, guidance, and help. Through totems they are inducted into the world, bestowed an awareness of the self and provide for the expression of it. Practically, totems also solved the problem of identity. In a wide world where everything seems to have its place and purpose, the individual feels misplaced, or superimposed on reality; totems help to solve the mystery of the self.

Who am I?
I am the eagle.

To the young warrior who revers and adopts the Eagle, it becomes to him a teacher, helper and friend. He becomes familiar with himself as he familiarizes himself with it’s ways. It acts as a mentor for his life; he will act in concert with the spirit of the eagle – majestic, keen, deadly, far-seeing, untouchable – and all his life will be filtered through this lens. Totems provide meaning and purpose, but exogenously, coming from the outside and moving in. They are donned as a cloak or a sheet that gives shape to the ghost.

Transgender as Totemism

Can we understand the phenomena of transgender through the lens of totem adoption? Does a young woman find identity in the totem of Masculinity or a young man in the bosom of the Female?

Consider a young man. Maybe he is dispossessed of masculinity through early childhood trauma, lack of attachment to male authority figures, or genotypic disposition which precludes him from stereotypical masculine activities, and these experiences are galvanized in a culture that shames true masculinity. He feels awkward around his peers, fearful of his ability to perform the masculine role, and hobbled by the throbbing wound of wrecked masculinity. He feels like a squatter in his body.

He is not stupid. He will naturally avoid pain. No one walks on a broken ankle. Pressing into masculinity causes the broken shards to cut deeper. He knows he cannot compete. And given the culture of deifying the oppressed, of which transgender has a special protection status, there is little incentive to reconcile his wounded gender with his body. This leaves him in a strangely shaped body which provides no direction or purpose. His body is a spring of shame, double deep and burbling.

But there is now an escape. He sees the Feminine – soft, accepting, maternal, non-aggressive, safe, and the polar opposite of the source of his pain. The feminine exists abstractly – a platonic ideal, untouchable and unalterable, whole, real and certain. It is mysterious, and because of its mystery it is holy. Compared to his dark, chaotic and bottomless psyche, this Other is salvation rimmed in light. Maybe that’s the explanation: the answer to his disintegration is that inside he is female, and the dissonance he experiences is from trying to make his a male exterior match a female interior. Anyway, he has tried everything else.

Totemic adoption of the Female is simultaneously an escape from the badlands of masculinity and an entrance into a fertile sanctuary of Edenic femininity. His roiling soul is calmed by this divine vision. Just as a young brave venerates the Eagle, so this young man sees the resplendent sign of the Feminine as a perennial source of identity. A contract is made between the spirit and host for protection and guidance.

He now has a blueprint for identity. Bodies are easier to tinker with than souls. The choice is made to abandon the body. He terraforms the flesh to make himself in the image of the totem. Using the totem as his guide, he now balls up all the feminine stereotypes and weaves a fabric to cover himself with. A flick of the wrist, a lisp of the tongue, a softening of the voice, a sassy sashay, and elusive identity is finally within his grasp.

Furthering his belief in the power of the totem is the applause from every mainstream media outlet, social media provider, major corporation, Hollywood elite, a majority of politicians and the United Nations. Where he lacked personhood, he now is praised for bravery and authenticity. He is hailed as an inspiration, a pioneer. The feminine totem has not disappointed.

Taboos

Since totems provide a resource more valuable than life itself, identity, they must be protected. This is why all totems come with taboos. In cultures where totems are used, there also exists taboos which prohibit killing or damaging the totems. Regulation of some kind is needed to make sure these sacred identities are given their due reverence. Defacing or killing an eagle is nothing less than an identity attack on the young warrior who hosts the totem; sacredness must extend beyond personal esteem. The strength of a cultural taboo is a factor of the number of people who uphold it. Furthermore, the more endemic a taboo, the more it is practically avoided, but also the more even thinking of offending the taboo is considered unconscionable. Thus taboos become a means of policing thoughts. I will leave it to you to draw the parallels.

Individuals who have already experienced one shipwreck of identity will not suffer an insult to the rescue boat. The best defense to the extreme measure of mutilating flesh to match feelings is a bristling disposition coupled with a confident exterior that things have all worked out according to the plan. Which is why personal pronouns, the referencing of the individual’s gender-self to the world through the eyes of outsiders, is presented like a faberge egg. The validity of the totem is verified by the testimony of others.

Conclusion

I am not making any kind of anthropological assertions here. Transgenderism as totem is a metaphor, a means to flesh out the external nature of transgender identification and place it back in the realm of compensation for brokenness and loss of identity. It highlights the “outside-in” function of transgenderism as oppose to the “inside-out” it purports to be. When a man believes he truly is and has always been a woman, he starts to work on making the “false” outside match the “true” inside.

Of course, there are any number of avenues by which humans manufacture identity – this is not a phenomena limited to transgender individuals or even gender. But it is by far the deepest. Our masculinity or femininity is a gift from God, apportioned to us, one or the other, as He sees fit, and this gender is nothing less than His image. It is the first great bifurcation a human has to indicate identity and purpose.

This should be a cause for compassion and sympathy. When the inner world is so wrecked that the only feasible solution is to terraform the flesh to escape the pain within, Christians of all people should come alongside, invite them to church, engage them, have them for coffee. But not congratulate them. To congratulate a man finding an identity as a woman, which is a product of pain and trauma, is to seal them into an identity forged from pain. It is golf clapping to the slow suicide of the self.