Tiina Miettinen is a transgender woman from Finland who became one of the main characters of the documentary Sukupuoli X (Gender X), released in 1996. With a lifelong awareness of her gender identity, Tiina began secretly cross-dressing before her tenth birthday and later discovered the stories of pioneering transgender women such as Lili Elbe and Christine Jorgensen. After coming out as a teenager and facing rejection from her parents, she eventually began her physical transition and became involved in Finland's LGBTIQ movement. During the 1990s, she worked for Seta, Finland's national LGBTIQ organization, contributed to the development of its Trans Support Centre, and briefly chaired Trasek, a national organization primarily representing transgender people.
Her participation in Sukupuoli X reflected her wish to challenge the depressing and stereotypical portrayals of transgender people in earlier Finnish documentaries, showing instead that trans people could live happy, ordinary lives. Later, Tiina worked at the National Board of Antiquities, producing detailed drawings of predominantly prehistoric artefacts. Her interest in history also inspired her fascination with the ancient Roman worship of the goddess Cybele and the historical place of gender-diverse people in different cultures. Thoughtful, independent-minded, and deeply interested in the relationship between gender, history, and society, Tiina brings a distinctive perspective to questions of identity, acceptance, activism, and the freedom to live authentically.
Monika: Hello Tiina, and welcome! It is a real pleasure to have you with us today.
Tiina: Hello Monika. I find this project of yours really delightful and appreciate this opportunity to share my thoughts about these important issues.
Monika: Please introduce yourself to our readers. Where does your story begin?
Tiina: Well, to begin at the obvious. This, the trans thing, has naturally been the most characteristic feature of my life. It's been present as long as I can remember, and before my tenth birthday, 1974, I secretly decided I must do something to... to enable it. Namely if by that date, regardless of all my wishes and prayers, God or fate or anything had not agreed to change circumstances for my favor. So I made a conscious decision to begin secretly cross-dressing. I also found the word transvestite in an encyclopedia. Sensationalizing magazines sometimes reported, in a scandalous tone, about hormones prescribed, breast implants applied and genital surgery performed to some magical creatures living apparently nearby Hamburg's Reeperbahn in West Germany.
Monika: How did you learn that there were others like you, and what happened when you came out?
Tiina: I read somewhere about Lili Elbe and Christine Jorgensen, and after I contacted Helsinki's local trans group at age 17, I heard about Cybele's priest(esse)s of the Roman Empire, the Native Americans' berdache, and hijras of India. As I came out of the closet that time, my parents strongly disapproved. After a while, when I had moved out to live on my own, we gradually quit having contact with each other. Being artistically relatively talented, and still largely influenced by the firm sort of advice from my father, an engineer, I tried to study architecture at university. But I couldn't find motivation or willpower or, I don't know what exactly I lacked, to graduate. Proper mental attitude as well as interest in that particular profession, I suppose.
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| Visiting Stockholm in 2009. |
Monika: Your path eventually led you to Seta. How did that happen, and how did the documentary project begin?
Tiina: A couple of years after having begun my physical transition, I was employed as a secretary at Seta, our national LGBTIQ organization. And one day the Seta office was contacted by two young filmmakers wishing to create a documentary concerning transsexualism. That film was eventually to be named “Sukupuoli X.”
Monika: Eighteen years have passed since you took part in the documentary “Sukupuoli X” (“Gender X”). How has your life changed since then?
Tiina: 19 years to be precise; the film came out in 1996 but the events took place in 1995. For most years of the nineties, I was active in gay and trans organizations. I kept in contact with the European TG field, took part in launching Seta's Trans Support Centre, and was for a short while the chair of Trasek, a national organization mainly for transsexuals. I didn't plan to “move on to normal life” as some consider recommendable for transsexuals, but it sort of happened nevertheless. Most of my friends are still queer though, which of course is most fabulous.
Monika: Your career took quite a different direction after your years at Seta. What did you do next?
Tiina: After my Seta years, I got employed at the National Board of Antiquities: the authority protecting and preserving the Finnish cultural heritage, organizing excavations, governing museums, and such. My main task was to make very detailed drawings of (mostly) prehistoric artifacts. Perhaps as a result of doing that for a decade and a half, or who knows, possibly just because of getting older, I've begun to really ponder how civilized it actually was at the southern coast of our good old Europe, when Magna Mater aka goddess Cybele was worshiped in the Roman Empire.
Monika: Cybele seems to hold a special place in your thoughts. What makes her worship so meaningful to you?
Tiina: Even though for some Roman citizens, and later especially for a certain new cult of a crucified man, it seemed like Cybele drove her followers into madness. Sadly the thought of “sacrificing” one's masculinity can be very scary to those who don't understand it is plain gain to people like us. So that beautiful faith, that state-institutionalized way to serve holiness by leading a transgender life, was demonized and suffocated. I can't help wondering if it could rise again, like Phoenix. I'd be very interested to hear of any attempts to revive the religion of Cybele in Europe.
Monika: Your journey to womanhood was captured on film, and I imagine that “Sukupuoli X” was a pioneering project in Finland.
Tiina: A few documents on the subject were produced in Finland before “Sukupuoli X.” But their style was... I must say I found it depressing. A lonely character in shadows, voice altered, complaining of life's cruelty. When the filmmakers asked me to participate in a documentary they wanted to create, I agreed on the condition this one would be done differently. It should present a multitude of trans persons openly leading a happy life, or at least an ordinary one. To demonstrate we are neither rarities nor oddities.
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| In Sukupuoli X (Gender X). |
Monika: Is “journey to womanhood” the right phrase for your own path, and how would you define your identity?
Tiina: Whether it's a journey to womanhood, well, that might not be my first choice of words. I mean, I'm not that insulted if someone tells me I'm not a woman in a sense they consider authentic. I say it's a matter of opinion then. But, if they claim I'm in reality a man, that absolutely bugs me. Because what more can one even do to prove otherwise, than discard that silly piece of meat, bloom a bosom, and be happy with the result? So when it comes to defining my identity... a “cis” lesbian friend once stated she doesn't know how to specify her personal gender except by saying male it is not. That's how I'd also express it.
Monika: In the film, you do describe yourself as a woman at the hospital. How does that fit with what you have just said?
Tiina: Now some alert Finnish-understanding viewers may point out that in “Sukupuoli X,” at the hospital, I do define myself as a woman. Yes. But at that time I believed it was the smartest policy to simplify the educational message. Not to mention satisfying the sorry-ass gatekeeper shrinks who require the flawless Harry Benjamin storyline. To be perfectly honest though, there are also times when I ask myself if I'm needlessly overcomplicating the issue by this habit of avoiding calling myself a woman. Because after all the shoe does fit... like a glove. This indeed isn't black and white, but hey, why the heck would it even need to be? Besides, I bet a typical cisgender experience is not constant by its intensity either.
Monika: A transgender man, Jiri Taleva, supported you in the documentary. Are the two of you still in touch?
Tiina: We are in friendly relations but don't have more than occasional contact. Jiri moved to the countryside several years ago, I still live in Helsinki.
Monika: Think back to the time of your transition. Was there a transgender role model you looked up to?
Tiina: Well, Lili Elbe and Christine Jorgensen I already mentioned. But maybe I've all along appreciated them more as honorable pioneers than actual role models. So I guess the answer is no, not exactly. Still, the more I've come to realize being trans, in general, is a phenomenon ancient, frequent, and often even status-elevating (unlike the cis establishment tends to claim), the better I've felt. Naturally, because it means that explanations of physiological or psychological dysfunction are biased crap, and this is quite simply about people being of different sorts and nothing else. So I'd say that, rather than any single individual, my role models are the numerous generations of transpeople who have already left their mark in history. (Not to mention those whose mark has been deliberately erased by insecure, hostile, or ignorant cis rulers, or even researchers.)
Monika: Coming out is rarely easy. Which part was the hardest for you?
Tiina: The prediction that my parents wouldn't accept me and I wasn't going to have many friends for a while, if ever. Which turned out to be quite an accurate estimation, except for the friends. But if your family loathes you unless you pretend to be someone you simply are not, they hardly were that excellent company in the first place, were they? Mine also warned I was going to face lots of bigotry, but so far no one has treated me more judgmentally than they themselves did.
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| Enjoying a campfire place I built at an ex's summer cabin around 2000. |
Monika: How would you describe the current situation of transgender women in Finnish society?
Tiina: It's not great compared to our western neighbors, but at least the public atmosphere seems to be steadily improving. The law we have about gender reassignment was advanced at its time, nowadays it's obsolete. The UN Human Rights Council is pressuring Finland to stop requiring gender reassignment seekers to become sterile and unmarried. Some insecure politicians have quite obviously on purpose procrastinated with handling the matter, but certainly, it can't be delayed infinitely.
Monika: Is the situation the same for transgender women and transgender men?
Tiina: I don't know how to specify my answer genderwise though. The ratio of MtFs and FtMs seeking hormones and surgery is very much in balance here, so the situation is by large the same to the transmasculine as well as the transfeminine. Which, I believe, tells something positive about equality, at least about equality between the two genders recognized by the mainstream society. But of course, the usual unfortunate misogyny still prevails to a degree, causing transitioning to the feminine direction to be regarded somehow more foolish by, well, by the less civilized part of the population I must put it.
Monika: A few weeks ago, Jared Leto received his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for playing the transgender Rayon in “Dallas Buyers Club.” How have transgender stories and characters been portrayed in Finnish films, newspapers, or books so far?
Tiina: This is a bit awkward, but I can't recall a single fictional trans character in the Finnish literature or movies. A recent film Kerron sinulle kaiken (I'll tell you everything) is a story of a TS, and I've heard it's pretty good. Unfortunately, I just haven't seen it myself yet. So, I can only answer your question by saying there's definitely room for more, and the less bizarrely the persons are written, usually the better. Even though I must admit my favorite fictional character ever is Bernadette in “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” in spite of her slightly caricatured ways.
Monika: Transgender issues are usually presented together with those of other LGBT communities. As the last letter in the abbreviation, is the T able to promote its own cause within the group?
Tiina: But the T is still always there, unlike I and Q. Not to mention A. Over the years, I've had several more or less heated discussions about whether it's a good idea to combine gay and trans (as well as TS and TV) agendas, since their goals seem different. Well, they don't seem different to me. When the society sets unreasonable and inflexible sex role-based demands to its citizens' appearance and behavior, it oppresses all these groups alike, and that's where our firm common ground lies. Interestingly enough, there has not been a phase in Finnish queer history, where T would have been excluded from the agendas of our gay organizations. While that's apparently a necessity of our population being small, I think it's still something we have a reason to be proud of.
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Tiina Miettinen.
© 2014 - Monika Kowalska
