Categotry Archives: below the belt

…well, every other Wednesday.

We interrupt your obsessive Nestor Carbonell marathon for a new post on Below the Belt:

One of the more difficult aspects of talking about transness is how many facets it can encompass. Because transness is more than just an internal sense of rightness or wrongness with your body: it catches up so much else in a whirlwind of confusion.

Take, for example, sexual identity. It is now a commonplace in queer communities–well, most queer communities–that a transgendered identity is separate from a gay or lesbian identity; that is, trans women are not “gay men who can’t deal” any more than gay men want to be women. And yet: it is the rare trans person who has not had to confront issues of sexual identity as part of understanding their trans identity. A MTF trans person often has to confront the fact that many of the things that are markers of femaleness–high heels, makeup, skirts–are also markers of straight sexuality, and exactly what adopting those markers might mean for them when out in the world and attracting the attention of men. So, too, do many FTM trans people have to deal with the complicated issues of butchness in the lesbian community, and where, if anywhere, the the line between boi and boy lies.

However, an even more complicated relationship exists between the transgendered and drag worlds.

Sashay over!

Oh, yeah, you know what time it is…time for REALITY TELEVISION:

OK, I’m dense: but “I Want to Work For Diddy” wasn’t on my radar two years ago, and anyway, having a trans person on a reality show isn’t that big a deal anymore; we’re like the gay folks in the “Real World” reruns from the ’90s, only with a lot less flannel shirts and Hole albums in the background.

So I don’t know much about Ms. Cox, except I admire her for her success and for turning her 15 minutes of fame into a full half-hour. Kudos, ma’am, kudos.

But: is it good for teh Tranz?

You go, person of any gender!

If it’s Wednesday, then it must be Belgium. Wait! No! Below the Belt:

Something interesting happened recently in the Michigan Secretary of State election race.

Now, before you tell me that the word “interesting” and the phrase “Michigan Secretary of State” syntactically can’t be in the same sentence together, bear with me, and let me introduce you to Representative Paul Scott:

Seems a charming enough fellow! Step right up, sir, and let us know what you’re planning to do for the people of the great Wolverine State! Let’s see, I have his website right here…

  J?ie!

New Below the Belt content!

I recently had an encounter with our mental health system. (I’m fine. Now.) I don’t have to tell you that almost any encounter with our health system is embarrassing; that seems to be the state of American healthcare. But what do you think the frosting on my mortification cake–the little extra bit of humiliation to go with the spongy cake of being put in a room with no sharp corners and the delectable pudding filling of despair that having them take my belt away proved to be?

Having to out myself. Three times–once to the triage nurse, once to the nurse who took my vitals, and once to the doctor.

 Avanti!

Hey! I have a new post up at Below the Belt!

So did you hear about how the Bilerico Project ran a piece from their brand-new contributor Ron Gold last week and the internet caught fire and burned down because it was so smugly transphobic? (No? Then you should be reading my blog. Seriously, people, I have a life outside of here you know.)

Now, Bil Browning ultimately did the right thing and took down the offending post and rescinded Gold’s contributor status. I’m not going to rehash the particular reasons why this post was incredibly wrongheaded and stunningly insulting. I’m more interested in a phenomenon illustrated by this fracas: what happens when allies do something you find profoundly hurtful.

On y va!

Yanno, these days I guess I’m lucky to be able to even write these damn things, let alone tell anyone about them: but I have a post up at Below the Belt about the tragic death of Mike Penner, and transition in general:

Transition, as you may have heard, is really hard.

There is the actual physical nature of it: the hormones, the changes to your body, the surgeries (if you want them), the hair removal (if you want or need that too), the way you look in the mirror, the way people look at you. There is the long period when you may look like you could be either gender, or neither, when passing as your birth gender is as hard or harder than passing as your new gender.

Enjoy.

Hey! It’s time for another Below the Belt post.…..this time, on DRAG!

Nowadays, Halloween isn’t much of a holiday for me; I rarely make special plans for it or bother to get a costume–and considering the average woman’s costume–Sexy Ninja! Sexy Vacuum Cleaner Salesperson! Sexy First Lady!–that’s maybe for the best. (I may not be a radical feminist–they won’t take me–but come on, people–Amanda Hess at the Sexist has done yeowoman’s duty on this subject.)

This Halloween, however, I was out in San Francisco and went to see a friend’s performance in a drag show. So I donned my homemade ironic vampire disguise–fangs, pvc duster and dress, boots, and my “…And Then Buffy Staked Edward. The End.” tee shirt–and caught some decidedly non-vintage drag.

 You know the drill!

That time of the month again:

The first person I knew who told me they weren’t transgendered was a crossdresser I’ll call Gene. He (and he did later come to insist on male pronouns, and stopped calling himself Gina on the message board we met on), decided that he really was in it for the clothes, and didn’t find himself aligned with the other crossdressers on the board, who all thought of themselves as transgendered.

It was a little jarring to me at first; I had naively assumed that crossdressing=transgendered, so having someone overturn that conviction was surprising. But as I reflected on it, I could see his point. And since that time, I’ve met other people like Gene, some crossdressers, some genderqueer, and even some transsexuals who identify completely as their post-transition gender and have no desire to continue with any kind of transgender identity.

There exists, however, a group of trans women–at least, they seem to be exclusively trans women–who resist being placed under the transgender umbrella. Some refuse to even call themselves transsexuals, preferring the term Harry Benjamin Syndrome instead. They claim that transsexualism is a case of being “neurologically nteresexed” by which they mean that they have a “female brain,” and therefore a medical, not a psychological condition.

Finish up over here.