Empathy

The only experiences I can ever inhabit and access directly are my own. Empathy enables me to engage the experiences of others: Through a lens of observational comparison of similarities, commonalities and parallels or a lack thereof that are assessed for accuracy largely against my existing basis of my own direct experience. The greater the number of reference points I come to identify through empathy, the greater my engagement of another’s experiences through my empathy may potentially be. The greater my analogous identification is, the more potential exists for assuming a position of understanding.

It is the potency of this assumed position of understanding to permit connections of engagement that may lead me to a presumption of inhabiting the experience of others as a direct experience of my own. Connection, through the commonality of empathetic identification feels predominately beneficial to me. It provides a basis to commence personal interaction, eliminating the sense of personal isolation while increasing personal awareness. But it is incumbent on me to remember that empathetic, analogous identification to an experience is not equal to the direct experience that another inhabits. I cannot claim to inhabit the direct experiences of another as my own.  I have no actual basis to assign or impose a definitive value or validity to any empathetic identifications.  Access to such differentiation is appicable solely to my own actual direct experience.

Empathetic identification is a significant factor in helping to clarify for myself various dilemmas of being trans gender identified. It is often the sole external resource I can access or reference as a contrast for my own internal feelings.  Although I have always had some sense of what is normal in relation to myself specifically, without the addition of such empathetic identifications, the pressures applied by established normative standards against a specific individuated expression would become unbearable.

 

Tarot #15  (hard & digital mixed media painting)    Copyright Emma G, 2008

My direct experiences and their entailed feelings, do not present a clearly defined boundary of separation along gender lines. I would account for the majority of my internal experiences as being femininely focused. Empathetic identification plays substantially into this account. And rational thought raises further questions regarding the accuracy of internal perceptions achieved as contrasts against the existing normative gauge. A formal diagnosis has merely confirmed that my internal feelings are not an entirely irrational flaw. It has not resolved many outstanding questions of my own thought on rationality. And imposes a more strigent and restrictive demand for conformity to the existing normative standard in exchange.

Many of my external experiences however, were male bodied, irrespective of the apparent clarity of my own internal focus. Though such experiences often felt like surviving with imposed and involuntary biological limitations, the conflicted experiences themselves were sustained nonetheless, through participation.

My first experiences of my own sexuality were male bodied, yet internally conflicted experiences. My participation in such experiences (with either gender) was passively received, not self-initiated. A singular emphasis on purely physical gratifications, equally achievable through masturbation, provided nothing to sustain the repetition of such experiences.

It was largely through the degree of empathetic identifications I felt with females (and the lack of such with males) that my own sense of having any sexual preference was consciously concluded. Sexual gratification as a means of intimate connection could only hold additional significance for me with such identifications. Somewhat contradictorily, such empathetic identifications also often directed my relationships with females towards a role of confidant/best friend as the most productive and gratifying expression of mutual intimacy.

I initially came to regard my early expression of sexuality as bisexual solely because of the openness, as lack of preference, inherent in passive receptivity. I regard these experiences now as asexual; devoid of real connection to sexuality itself, of any kind.

Though it may be hard for me to admit, my own rational thinking applied to my experience of internal feelings can result at times in self-deceptive rationalizations. Biologically, I will never be female as that biological designation is normatively defined. I understand this as rational thought. Yet I continue to pursue an outward expression which attempts to convey such biological femininity (as ascribed by normative standards) necessitated by inner feelings/needs of disharmony, imbalance. There is no rational thought basis for restricting such expression of  these feelings/needs.

Without the empathetic identification of others, the best I will achieve through these expressions is to deceive that normative expectation in my relationships with people who subscribe to the validity of that normative definition. The efforts I exert to expand the options of my own personal gender expression may/will be variously perceived as appropriation, betrayal, subversion, perversion, delusion, deception,mimicry and even mockery when viewed against that normative standard. My expression of my gender is only marginally and minimally acceptable under the conditions of an imposed physical or mental disorder of abnormality.

The highest common denominator of our species, as I see it, is the potential through our empathy to acknowledge and allow access for variation in expressions of our individual humanity within our species. The lowest common denominator is that specific direct experience, focused solely on self-interests withoutl potential access by connection through empathy, can reduce each of us to a commonality of self-justifying fools.

 

~ by emma on April 28, 2008.