Is the Protective Energy I’m Getting from that Man Juice Healthy?
A trans man’s musings on toxic masculinity and white knighting
This writing was inspired by reading Emma Holiday’s post in Prism & Pen called “Where is My White Knight?”. This is an interesting perspective that is well worth a read.
It made me think about my own fantasies, beginning in childhood.
I wrote the following in response:
I think I craved both…to rescue and be rescued, though there were elements of depersonalization even in the ways that I thought of being rescued. It was always a bit more as an outsider looking in.
The rescuer side of me had their own problems, though. I used to invent characters for myself in every book I loved. The characters were always tomboys, as that was the closest conception of myself I could access. My imaginary character doppelgängers were always disposable, never surviving to the end of the stories, because I couldn’t believe that I’d be a competent enough rescuer to survive the attempt.
My new challenge is to rewrite those childhood fantasies with myself as both rescuer (of myself) and survivor.
Though it’s probably healthiest and safest to imagine rescuing oneself, if I’m being honest, I see rescuing as a social act, something that plays out constantly in books, movies, and television shows.
Since I began taking Testosterone, I’ve begun to find myself more in touch than ever with that protective energy that I dreamed of possessing in my childhood. I’m a little scared of that though. I know enough about walking through the world as a woman to know that the protective energy of white knighting, or even its feminine equivalent of being the mother hen or the mother bear, can be deeply toxic, undermining autonomy.
It’s certainly an energy that feels both good and affirming, being useful and needed. That said, it’s something that I want to challenge and consider carefully. It’s not that it’s inherently bad to be protective, but it’s important to think about whether one’s use of protective energy is helpful, wanted, and safe. We need to center the person that we are helping when we channel this well-meaning energy their way. Did they ask for our help? What form do they want this service to take? We also need to search within ourselves to determine what we can offer safely. Do I really have the capacity to help? Do I have the resources to do this without harming myself or others? If not, what steps can I follow to channel this protective energy in ways that are safe and healthy both for the person I’m helping and for me?
As a trans man who is only 8 months into the medical portion of my transition, I sometimes still feel like a German Shephard in a Teacup Yorkshire Terrier’s body.
I certainly felt that while desperately seeking a little gender affirmation in that year of socially transitioning, before I began to go the medical route. That perspective is a dangerous one to have playing out in one’s subconscious mind, while his girlfriend is picking fights with rude strangers. Luckily, things never escalated, but they easily could have become violent in a situation like that, leaving me to consider what role those protective white knight instincts could have played in my response.
One benefit of getting on Testosterone for me has been that it gave me enough perhaps over-confidence in my increasing strength to allow me to more critically evaluate some of these emotions rising in me, even as they intensify from the biological changes to my instincts.
Do I really want to rescue someone?
Should I ask them first?
Should I ask myself first what I’m capable of offering here?
I like the way my wife and I handle these instincts by talking about it.
When we enter a space that we believe may be dangerous, a space that would likely be mundane for anyone not transgender, we talk about what roles we ideally want each other to play if something goes wrong. Sometimes ‘rescuing’ doesn’t have to take the form of playing the knight in shining armor, when that’s not physically possible. Sometimes, it’s being there for the other person as support afterward. Sometimes, it’s texting friends or calling a hotline on someone’s behalf to find someone who is better able to give that support, when recognizing the limits of one’s own power to provide adequate emotional assistance.
These crucial discussions help us prepare for the spaces that are unexpectedly dangerous.
It also helps me prepare for the understanding that my body doesn’t necessarily match my brain enough to be the knight in shining armor. That’s okay. There are lots of ways that I can feel affirmed without dressing myself in masculine stereotypes that fit on my body about as well as donated clothes from an ogre.
Realistically, my wife is much more capable of rescuing me, anyway, since they’re my warrior princess.
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