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Noelle Odessa's avatar

I'm still baffled by the intensity surrounding this debate within trans spaces. When I first began connecting the dots of my inner experience through a "trans" lens, AGP seemed a natural, if partial, heuristic to gravitate towards. Yet I encountered taboos and vehement dismissals of AGP theory in many trans communities. But conversely, when exploring trans discourse from an AGP stance, I found that there seems to me an equally rigid dogma among some that forbids regarding AGP as anything less than a comprehensive explanatory model.

To me, this dichotomy reveals the reflexive need for certainty and ideological fortressing at play in both camps. Which makes sense, I suppose: this is a common feature of many communities, and these are especially deep and slippery realities to try to grasp hold of. Yet as my own journey moved from the phase of rigid compartmentalization that dominated most of my life into an existential unveiling that caused me to think differently about the whole data of my experience, I came to realize that my patterns of erotic desire, abstraction from my body and emotions, gender transgressive ideation, and embodied experiences cannot be disentangled from the totality of my selfhood, philosophical tendencies, spiritual longings, and psycho-social situatedness in the world. AGP elucidates certain aspects, but I find that it fails to account for the holistic dynamics at play in my lived experience.

Perhaps the virulence arises from a shared fear of acknowledging the fluidity of our histories, and the protean character of every persona. Loosening our grasp on neat, coherent narratives feels like it will plunge us into abysses of chaos and unintelligibility we instinctively recoil from. But I've found the opposite to be true. In surrendering to the irreducible mysteries at the core of my experience, I've found access to deeper resonances of integration, creativity, and tender self-compassion. I guess we'll see how long and how well that holds together.

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