Part 4 & 5: Building a therapeutic narrative for gender dysphoria
CHAPTER 5: The healer narrative The happiest non transitioner I know is called Toni – a spiritual individual whose transgender narrative is also spiritual. And let’s use that to remember what I said earlier: that you can’t create blanket narratives for non-transitioners: by nature, they tend to be trans critical and in need of an explanation that fits their personality and outlook on life. So, while an empiricist may find Toni’s spirituality completely disqualifying – it’s the base upon which his narrative relies. As a spiritual person, it would be impossible for his narrative to be anything but spiritual. For Toni, the imporant thing is the historical position of transgender women in certain indigenous cultures, most especially a native American conception of gender variance that is called ‘two-spirit.’ In some Indian tribes the two spirit was considered as having the soul of both a man and a woman and was…