Categotry Archives: teh tranz

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A Fractured Fairy Tale

Categories: (un)popular entertainment, cis-o-rama, teh tranz

While it doesn’t indulge in the same kind of thematic miserablism of other movies about transgender sex workers, Olaf de Fleur Johannesson’s The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela (2008) still can’t avoid the fact that at least part of its narrative–arguably the dominant part–is constructed from a cisgender man’s preconceptions of who transgender people are. The conceit of the movie is that it’s half documentary and half fiction, mixed together in such a way as to obscure the lines between the real and the fake. The director himself calls this shambolic portmanteau structure a “visiomentary.” You can probably see the flaws in this approach without even seeing the movie, but I’ll elaborate anyway.

The movie begins with its central character, a trans sex worker in Cebu City, The Philippines, speaking directly to the camera and swearing to tell the truth and the whole truth. This is Raquela Rios, essentially playing herself. The filmmakers spend a good deal of time following Rios through her life, which includes interactions with her family, attempts to find employment outside of the sex trade, clubbing with her friends, and generally walking around the city. This is where the film is heavy on the documentary and while it’s letting Raquela speak for herself, the movie is on pretty firm ground. Raquela is bright, funny, optimistic, and gregarious. Were she in different circumstances, she would undoubtedly be a success at whatever she did. The same might be said for her friends, Aubrey and Olivia, who also make their livings as “ladyboy” sex workers. Unfortunately, the filmmakers can’t leave well enough alone. They also start the film with a title card that says, “Raquela is transsexual. A chick with a dick,” and once the movie acquires a narrative, the attitude behind that pronouncement seeps into the whole enterprise. Continue reading →

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Fear and Loathing in my Netflix Queue

Categories: (un)popular entertainment, kyriarchy, let's hear it for the ladies, teh tranz

As a filmmaker (or, perhaps more truthily, an art student who did not receive an F for her sole video project) I feel it is my duty to view as many films depicting trans folk as the doctors will allow me. ‘Tis a quest not without peril. When a visit to the SF LGBT Center brought me face to face with Clair Farley, a subject of Red Without Blue and number three on my list of “people who have inspired me to do make great changes in my life who I hope never to meet in person because I know I’d lose my shit”, spoiler alert: a lot of shit was lost. I stared at the floor, dodged her questions (did I mention I met she was doing my intake for an employment services program? OF COURSE I DIDN’T, UGH SO FUCKING LIKE ME) and when I realized that the chances of me winning that golden ticket that would let me rearrange reality so that instead of giggling uncomfortably to myself I could instead escape to a universe where I was gainfully employed and she and I were bff who played Chu Chu Rocket on the weekends were fairly slim I just made shit up. Dante never specified what the punishment in hell is for people who try to convince their heroes that blogging counts as a form of community volunteering, but I’m willing to guess it involves having something put in your anus that you’d rather not. Oh, and once I was asked to leave a screening of Normal, but it was agreed that if I never stated who I threw my notebook at and why they would keep it off my record and let me squeak by with a written apology.

Dangers be damned, I saw Beautiful Boxer, the biopic about Muay Thai boxer Parinya Charoemphol, or Nong Toom. As a safety precaution, I had Ms. Pacman plugged in just in case I needed emergency escort to my “happy place”. Much to my surprise, I thought it was an amazing film, and my gripes with it were limited and tied entirely with the storytelling and not the portrayal of Parinya (I thought the dream sequences were contextually inappropriate when done outside of her first person narrative, though I must admit they were poetically executed and relevant to the film’s message). So rare do I find films that engage me emotionally while sating my hunger for organically choreographed violence. I feel it served as an illustration of the fallacy behind the notion of transitioning to avoid the struggles and challenges traditionally assigned to men, or as my father put it “acting delicate and weak and girly to avoid having to live up to my responsibilities”. And I thought Kyoko Inoue playing herself was pretty fucking neat. Yeah, that’s all I have to say about it. This isn’t a film review. This is a reaction piece. So yeah, you’re still gonna have to rent it or read the reviews on IMDB if you want to bluff your way through a conversation about it in your little Livejournal group. Sorry.

The film is very clear with presenting and expressing a common criticism levied against Parinya and those behind her career: she was a gimmick and novelty act that mocked the sport of kickboxing and her trans identity was exploited and paraded about for profit. To this I say “eh, that’s one way of looking at it, where I come from we call that the wrong way”.

To suggest that the Thai boxing establishment’s acceptance, support, and promotion of Parinya’s gender expression was somehow more profit-minded than the minds behind Manon Rheaume (the first and only woman to play in the NHL)’s stint with the Tampa Bay Lightning or fuck, let’s just go for broke here, Jackie Robinson playing in the MLB, is to contribute to a the ignorance of the machinations of the kyriarchy. The underdog from a troubled, prejudiced life who’s talent just has to be shared with the masses regardless of their latent bigotry is a noblie lie disguised as a marketing ploy disguised as a human message. The real tragedy is not, I believe, in the tokenization of one’s identity to be part of the majority’s broadway production, but in the refusal by those who have benefitted from your sacrifice to acknowledge the good you may have done for your community. Without the scream queen, there’d be no ass-kicking Whedonverse heroine. Without the Hays Code-era sissy, there’d be no Brokeback Mountain. That’s just how hiearchy works. When we break free from our cage in the kyriarchal circus, they’ll just find someone else to fill our place, and then we, sitting in the audience, will have to decide between shutting the fuck up and eating our kettle corn or bum rushing the stage and burning the tent down.

In a society where hierarchies exist (i.e. all of them) the minority takes on an air of mystique and curiosity. Thus we are forced to ask ourselves, as minorities, whether it is better to be an attraction or risk being unseen by society. The answer will be different for each and every one of us. Parinya played the game, made enough money to afford SRS, is a successful model/actress, and could probably break every bone in the body of any asshole who thinks they’ll “teach this shemale a lesson”. If you could play the system like that and win by that much of a margin, you’d have already picked out your stage name. But you can’t. The minority underdog is the bizarro affirmative action: they meet their quota once and then it’s closed to everyone else. Personally, I prefer my chances against the system as opposed to with it. But fuck, ask me in a year or two if and when Comedy Central is looking for a caustic plus-sized trans woman with no indoor voice. For now, I find it more efficient in the long run to just be happy for her success and hopeful that it will start a trend of acceptance of trans people in professional sports and instead direct my rage to those instances where people are being played by the system. The bearded lady, the conjoined twins, they know they are part of a sideshow. The microcephalic (or “pinhead” for those of you who fear Wikipedia) does not. Try, if you can, to fight and prevent the greater injustice of the two. The famous and successful can take care of themselves.

And they’re giving me the sign to wrap up, but I do want to point out that Parinya Charoemphol is often credited with pulling Thai kickboxing out of its slump and re-establishing its popularity in Thailand.

Me-1 You -0.

Get used to this.

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Me and My Vagina, Special Anniversary Edition: Part II of an Infinitely Reductive Series

Categories: adventures in transition, all about me, me and my vagina, my pussy my self, teh tranz, travels with CL

Today is the anniversary of my surgery. In fact, as I type this now, I am about a year removed from my first full day of having a vagina–Thailand being twelve hours ahead of my local time, and the six or more hours of my surgery having started at noon Bangkok time. (I don’t remember how long the surgery lasted, as I slept through it and for a long time afterwards, only waking up for a brief moment to say goodnight to my significant other of variable and often fabulous gender.)

In fact, there’s almost a week of time that I have very little recollection of–the five days I had to stay immobile in bed, according to my surgeon’s regimen. Not everyone does this; had I gone to the Canadian surgeon I first considered, I’d have been up and walking around after about a day or so. Everybody does things differently. But I’m somewhat glad for being immobile; during that five days I only moved once, and that was because I’d thrown up on myself the first day after my surgery–juice boxes and opiates don’t agree all that well. The only way to get me clean sheets was to move me to an entirely new bed. Which meant I had to crab walk over to it. Now, even under normal circumstances, that would be both uncomfortable and ungraceful; but I had to not only contend with the pain from my brand-new down there, with the attendant catheter and surgical drains, but since I’d also opted to have my boobs done at the same time, I could barely move my arms; the surgeon went in under my armpits, and to be honest that pain was more omnipresent and inconveniencing than the other.

But other than that, and my SOOVAOFG saying goodbye to me to fly home–we’d spent ten days together bumping around India and Cambodia prior to my surgery, and vacation time is precious nowadays–I really don’t remember much. I slept a lot; I was too out of it to even watch TV. Every so often, they’d bring me a thick creamy soup and some juice boxes to eat and drink. I rarely ate the soup, but I drank the juice. (As an aside, Thai sweets of all kinds tend to be sweeter than American sweets–probably because they use real sugar.) I’ve come to realize that it wasn’t so much that I was drugged out of my head–Thais don’t practice American pain management, and I didn’t even have a morphine drip–but because nothing changed. There was me; my bed; my room with the blinds drawn; and the occasional ministrations of kind Thai nurses who spoke little English. (My Thai was suspect at its best and no match for my pain and grogginess.)

But eventually they packed me up and sent me home, after giving me a huge, cumbersome, old-fashioned bra. It was trimmed with lace and looked like something from the “18-hour bra” commercials I’d seen as a kid. And then I was dumped back in my hotel room, just me and my catheter bag–they didn’t take the catheter out until the next day, which was a little scary and gross. On the other hand, it was pretty convenient for lying in bed and drinking stuff, which was about all I was up for.

But it’s surprising how quickly you can heal. I was moving around the hotel room that, night, had enough energy to make breakfast the next day, and even hosted a pizza party for some of the other patients of my surgeon a day or so after that. (We had a couple of these affairs. They were interesting; we’d have a great time for about an hour, and then everyone would be in too much pain to continue. But they were fun while they lasted.)

That was all a year ago.

Things have changed. For one thing, I now only have to dilate once a day for about 30 minutes. That will mean I can actually get up at the same time but still get to work earlier, which will help me have more time and energy to write in the evening. I’ve had sex, by which I mean–this being America and all–PIV sex, so now I know how much I’ve been missing. My recovery has been remarkably hassle free, even with the UTI I developed a month after getting home.

There’s more, of course, much more. But how can I put it all in words? There are days when I forget that I never had a vagina, and there are days when I forget for a second that I do. There are many days when I am astonished by the miracle of it all, and many more days when I simply take it for granted. And most of all, I feel like what I am supposed to be. I feel like a woman.

And I felt that way before. I am not going to play pussy politics with you and engage in zero-sum games about the proper anatomy a woman needs. It’s reductive, and cruel, and ignores the economic reality of far too many trans women.

But there’s no question that I like myself better this way, that I feel a peace with my body I never felt before. That I had to wound myself to heal.

Not that I’m completely healed. None of us, I suppose, ever really can be–and I’m not just talking about trans people. If we measure lives by ideals, then we’re all a little broken, all in need of some kind of healing. And I’ve come so very far.

But there are still times when I resent that passage; when I resent all the things that were taken from me, all the things that I never had–even the bad things, even the things that in a sense I was fortunate enough to miss: if I feel the omnipresent judgment of every damn TV commercial on how I should look, act, think, and feel simply because of my gender, can I really long to have had that drummed into my head from the moment it poked into our world? Do I really feel sorry for myself for not having spent three and a half decades as a victim of sexism?

No. Not really. But I do regret the necessity of it all, the long slow struggle to find out who I am, the summoning up of awful reserves of energy just to survive each day, and then the ultimate effort to make myself into the person I desperately needed to be. And so I regret that passage; but I am grateful, oh so very grateful, to have survived it.

And you could say, maybe, that my vagina is a symbol of that: a physical manifestation of not just my womanhood, but my struggle to achieve that womanhood, a signpost showing how far I’ve come and how much I had to undergo to reach it. I suppose that would be fine; I’d hardly be the first woman to eulogize my vagina, and I doubt I’ll be the last, cis or trans.

But I don’t really do that much. Because most of the time it’s just a vagina. And believe me, that is more than enough. In fact, it’s perfect.

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The Dilemma Of Having a Long Tail

Categories: all about me, bobbing for ducks, ducking for blogs, teh tranz

Now, ducks, before you think that I mean that my surgeon had some, er, interesting ideas about anatomy, by a long tail I just mean: I have a past. It was not particularly unaccomplished, although–duh–it wasn’t exactly fulfilled. But I did some cool things, was on (syndicated) TV a few times, got married, got divorced, wrote a couple dozen books, learned to speak French, even learned a little aikido.

Oh, the books? Yeah, you might have guessed that’s what I wanted to talk about.

Now, before you search the ISBN catalog (and begin speculation that I am actually John Irving, finally over his castration issues), let me hasten to say: as writing goes, this was pretty assembly-line stuff. I wrote, mostly as work-for-hire, not-quite-textbooks. For 8th graders.

I say not-quite textbooks because they weren’t text books: that is, you wouldn’t teach a class using them. Instead, these were the books you’d read to do a book report on, say, Gold. (I didn’t write one on gold, but I kinda wish I had–it was more interesting than some of the stuff I did write about.)

Now, I’m telling you all this because a few months ago I got something from my publisher. I was rather astonished–it couldn’t be a royalty check, those dried up years ago. But I was even more surprised when I read what was inside:

Fan mail.

It seems that a young boy had read my book about a famous sports figure of the previous century, and written me a letter.

Well, not me exactly.

Me, just before. The other me. The…aw, you get the picture.

So, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with this: it was a nice letter, though it asks some interesting questions (did I play football as a boy, for example), and rather charmingly lets me know how cool it would be for an author to write back to him.

But–and this is the dilemma of me and my tail–how on earth do I go about this? Write back using my old name? No offense, but I hate having to do that; I still have a few accounts under my old name and I never call their customer service anymore, because I’d have to….it’s too gruesome to contemplate.

Or do I write back and say that Old Name was a pseudonym (not exactly a lie) and I’d be happy to correspond but I am, you know, a girl. Not super honest, but maybe more palatable.

Or do I do evangelism? Say, hey kid, here’s an update about me: and maybe open his mind up to queer and other possibilities? Is that too heavy to dump on a kid? Sheesh, I don’t even know how old he is!

(Hmm, maybe I could write to his parents. Hadn’t thought of that.)

Anyway, I’ve been going back and forth about this; I’ve kept the letter pegged to my apartment door, so I see it every time I leave. And it was a nice letter, and maybe deserves a response.

Then I realized: hey, I have a smart readership. Small, but smart: you guys are like the elite core of my future dominance of a tiny little corner of the trans internet! So, I thought I’d ask you all to weigh in, ducks: I put it up as a poll at the upper right. Or answer in the comments. Or ignore the question–trust me, I sympathize.

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A Room of One’s Own: ID Required For Admission

Categories: don't get your panties in a bunch, gender oh eff me, Humorless Tranny™, invasive kyriarchy, teh tranz

Well, ducks! It’s been a week since I did my little UK stomp and kicked over a fair-sized, even by Guardian standards, ant hill! Such fun!

Let me be serious. For a change. A surprise! A first! C.L. serious on her own blog!

I want to talk about one of those very tricky things that come up when trans folks, and most especially trans women, get talked about. Pretty universally, I should hasten to add, when cis folks talk about trans folks; but then I said people, and don’t we all know that people means cis people? Silly ducks.

The bugbear in the room is, of course, “women-only spaces.” In its most extreme form, this resolves to the old “bathroom libel“: the idea that, say, allowing trans people to use the rest rooms that match their gender presentation will open a flood of rapists donning drag in order to rape unsuspecting women. That no trans person has ever done this, and that women get raped in women’s rooms by men not wearing dresses, never seems to make a dent in this argument; but then it’s held by only the most set in their way anti-trans folks.

Sadly, this includes a large number of otherwise noteworthy feminists. Google it; I’ll wait.

A less extreme version of the “women’s spaces exclusion” doesn’t have a problem with trans folk in the ladies’, (perhaps because being booted from your stall for looking too masculine can happen to cis women too), but still make an exception for other spaces: women’s spiritual circles, social groups, and, most–notoriously isn’t the right word, but bear with me for a second–rape crisis centers.

Yes, that’s right–I’m bringing Kimberley Nixon into this again.

For those of you who don’t know, a precis: Ms. Nixon is a trans woman who lived in Vancouver. She applied for a volunteer counseling position at Vancouver Rape Relief, and passed their initial phone interview. When she showed up for training, however, she was read as trans and told that she could not be a counselor because of VRR’s woman-only policy. Ms. Nixon eventually sued the center, won one trial, but the decision was overturned on appeal.

That’s the basics. VRR claimed that the legal fees put them in danger of closing. Julie Bindel and many other trans-exclusionary feminists castigated Ms. Nixon.

But when you go deeper, it gets a whole lot more complicated.

For starters, Ms. Nixon herself had been raped and battered by her male partner. After receiving help from a different group for battered women, she entered their counseling training course, and did very well; she would later be described as a “superior” counselor. But the first group wanted her to wait a year to heal before she became a counselor, which led her to VRR.

Now hearken with me to the little lower layer. Above, I linked to an article about a butch cis woman who was unceremoniously tossed from a restaurant bathroom for looking too masculine. This is precisely what happened to Ms. Nixon. Yet Ms. Farmer would be allowed to counsel for VRR, and Ms. Nixon wouldn’t. Even though they both looked “masculine.”

Ponder that one in light of feminist principles, if you will.

Dig even deeper: it is a misconception that Ms. Nixon was demanding a spot as a counselor for VRR; what she wanted was the chance to prove herself on her own merits, and not be judged by her appearance. Furthermore, VRR claimed that her presence might traumatize other women, who might harbor fear or resentment or hatred towards men. Fair enough, I suppose, though one would think that this could apply to very butch cis women as well. But the thing is, we’ll never know if Ms. Nixon would traumatize people; we’ll never know if she could have fit in, if she could have provided healing services to women. We’ll never know, because she never got the chance.

And neither did any of the women who might use the shelter; VRR made the decision for them.

I don’t think there’s any way to slice this that doesn’t come up as prejudice. They could have done any number of things; had her help in the office and get training from the counselors, so that even if she didn’t work out there, she would gain experience; have her act as a liaison to the trans community (one would assume that VRR would also turn away trans women who were the victims of rape as well); any number of things.

But instead they said, you look like a man. You are a man. You cannot come here.

Now, it may surprise you to know that I am ambivalent–very–about these situations. I can see many sides to these issues, and they’re always tricky. And I do not dispute for a second that there is a very real difference in the background of trans and cis women, especially trans women who transition after, say, their twenties (present company included.) We, I, don’t have the experience of growing up female; we don’t have the same bodily experiences as the majority of cis women. (This is why I will never be teaching a class on Your Period and You.)

But–and this is so important that in needs to be said, again and again–the question remains: is that condition unredemediable? Is it so impossible to think that a trans woman who has spent 25 years living as a woman might have insight into women’s lives approaching that of a 25-year old cis woman? Think on this: you could transition as soon as you were of age, have been on hormone blockers so you never experienced male puberty, spent your teens and twenties living as a woman, majored in women’s studies, gone on to become a social worker specializing in the problems of battered women and rape victims, worked for ten years in public health–and you will be less qualified, in the eyes of VRR, than a high school drop out who happens to be cis.

That is to say, that not judging a person on her merits is discriminatory. Unless, of course, you’re trans. Then it’s totes feminist.

Next: I’ll take this to Tiger Beatdown and do some feminism and gender analysis.

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In Unexpected Delights

Categories: (un)popular entertainment, cis-o-rama, gender oh eff me, i get around, kyriarchy, let's hear it for the ladies, teh tranz

Hey, the takedown of that London Times article I did over at Tiger Beatdown got included in the 13th Carnival of Feminists! Drop by to read the other stuff, you know it’s good!

And in other unexpected pleasures, I haven’t been flayed to pieces in the comments section at the Guardian. And Julie Bindel replied to me! And I replied back! Wow!

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And Other Stories in Transphobia (Yawn)

Categories: don't get your panties in a bunch, media tool kit, silly blather, teh tranz

Hey, I haven’t said anything about David Letterman yet!

I mean, not that there’s often much to say about David Letterman, besides he’s mostly a jerk. It’s, you know, what he’s famous for.

But I guess you might have heard about this…

Yeah. OK. Wow, a show hosted by a known jerk (of the douchey, cheating on his wife with interns in a bedroom he had built at the studio just for that purpose kind of way) engages in some cheap-shot transphobia. Yawn. Hand me the remote…

But what’s that you say? Speak up, Straw-Reader-I-am-making-up-for-this-piece! Are you saying that Dave at least sort of respectable towards Ms. Sampson? And that the joke is really on sidekick douchebag Kalter? That I should not, you know, get my panties all in a twist about things, you hysterical trann–sorry, you like to be called a transgenderdamajig now, right?

Sorry, Straw Reader, you’re wrong! A transgendamajig is a drink, not a gender identity, one of the many fascinating cocktails I dreamed up while vacationing on painkillers in Thailand! But you’re also wrong about the joke.

Sure, true to his straightdouche persona, Dave didn’t say anything spiteful about Ms. Sanders. (He also called her a transgendered person, not woman. Asshole.) But the joke wasn’t on Kalter–it was decidedly on Ms. Sampson.

Because, you see, at heart this was a gay joke. (Amazing! Letterman homophobic too? Whodathunkit?) Kalter is upset because he slept with a “man,” not a transgendered woman. At heart, this bit was calling Ms. Sanders a man.

Which is pretty much the definition of transphobia.

I of course, don’t watch any of the talk shows myself–I really could care less about the latest vapid anecdote or stupid plug a celebrity comes on to talk about. (And even The Daily Show is wearing thin on me these days.) Instead, when not reading Russian novels in French or French movies in Russian, I watch Monty Python reruns. Because our world is so surreal nowadays that they seem positively normal.

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WTF, Bilerico?

Categories: don't get your panties in a bunch, failings, Humorless Tranny™, teh tranz, the transsexual empire strikes back, transphobia: now in blog format

I really like the Bilerico project–it’s a great place for queer and trans folks and their allies to meet and discuss things. And it’s never shied away from controversy.

Bilerico recently added a new contributor, Ronald Gold, and reading his biography he’s just the kind of person you want to have there–a long time gay activist, one of the founders of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and a man who was instrumental in getting homosexuality removed from the DSM.

So it’s an enormous disappointment to read his first post, officially titled “‘No’ to the notion of transgender” but if you look at the url it must have been called “Transgender: a disease that doesn’t exist” at some point. And, well, let’s see if you, Gentle Reader, can understand why I was shocked to see it on Bilerico:

What is transgender? Well, there are two sorts who seem to be covered by the name, the drag kings and queens so good at portraying cartoon imitations of straight people, and transsexuals, the folks who report that from an early age they’ve felt themselves trapped in the wrong bodies. Despite the equipment they were born with that belies their assertions, they say they are really men or really women.

 Holy fuck. Did I just read that at a queer site? Seriously? Please tell me this is some kind of horrid fundamentalist satire…

I recall reading something by Jan Morris in which it seemed that he thought he needed a sex change because he wanted men to hold doors open for him and kiss him goodbye at train stations. For starters, I’d have told him that I’ve had these nice things happen to me and I’ve still got my pecker.

Oh ye ghods.

Oh, but he isn’t prejudiced against trans folk! See, this is how he ends the piece:

Perhaps it isn’t needless to say that a No to the notion of transgender does not excuse discrimination against cross-dressers or post-op “transsexuals” in employment, housing and public accommodation; and I strongly support legislation that would forbid it. I would, however, get after the doctors – the psychiatrists who use a phony medical model to invent a disease that doesn’t exist, and the surgeons who use such spurious diagnoses to mutilate the bodies of the deluded.

 See? I just think you’re deluded, C.L.–but that’s no reason for people to be cruel to you. That is, for levels of cruelty beyond calling you a man and a “transsexual.”

If I was to be charitable (I am reliably informed that for some reason December is a month we’re supposed to do so, here in Merka; the media says so), I guess I could scratch out some kind of “hmm, he’s really against gender essentialism, which I’m down with so…win?” Except, oddly enough, as I write this he’s sharing the front page with Autumn Sandeen, the transgender barista from Pam’s House Blend, and whom I’m sure enjoys having her identity crumpled up in front of her eyes and tossed away.

I just…can’t understand why this of all things should be the first post this guy makes at Bilerico. Didn’t somebody tell him there are actual trans people who visit? Or even, you know, write stuff there? Holy cow.

Grumble…gotta write that “how to take an ally to task” post that everybody is writing nowadays…sheesh.

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The Times, They Are A-Draggin’

Categories: double bound, milestones, teh tranz

Several years ago, back when I was still a crossdresser myself (and working as a man), I came across a picture on an old hard drive of my boss. Wearing tight leather pants, a low-cut blouse, and makeup. And written in a pink script on the picture was a feminine name that shared his first initial.

I was caught somewhere between completely weirded out and strangely relieved to know I wasn’t the only trans person in the office.

Which leads me to events in East Cleveland, Ohio, where mayor Eric Brewer was recently defeated in a primary election. Unremarkable, right?

Well…except for the fact that like me and my boss, somebody found pictures that seem to look like the ex-mayor on his computer hard drive. Wearing lingerie.

I’m not going to reprint the photos here–you can find them easy enough, ducks–except to say that they do look like the mayor, and that they “vibe” crossdresser for me. (When you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve seen this sort of thing before.)

And speaking of seeing this thing before, it reminds me of another crossdressing pol who was outed before an election: Sam Walls, a conservative Republican in Texas who lost a runoff election for the state House in 2004. Now, in Walls’ case, you just have to wonder how he didn’t think this would happen: not only (as the pics showed) had he been out and about while crossdressed, but for Pete’s sake he seems to have been the treasurer of the local chapter of Tri-Ess, the national crossdressers’ organization.

Cases like Walls’ and Brewer’s show some of the disturbing inequities of life under the transgendered umbrella. One may point out that people like Walls or Brewer retained substantial privilege and did not face everyday transphobia–something that MtF transsexuals often have to deal with every day. But. Even in Oklahoma, a trans woman can run for office and be open about her history, whereas neither of the crossdressing politicians felt comfortable doing that.

And that shows the relatively large gap in both visibility and acceptance between transsexuals and crossdressers. Television shows, news reports, books–all concentrate on transsexuals, not on crossdressers; and the leadership of many trans organizations is dominated by transsexuals. Now, again, some of this is because there is a greater incentive for transsexuals, especially trans women, to push for their rights. There is too what helen boyd once called the “fear of queer”: crossdressers can look “normal” in their everyday presentation and can fear (or feel no need) to lose that part of their gender identity in service to activism.

But that obscures–just as crossdressers themselves are obscured; no one is really sure how many there are, since so many are relatively closeted–the very real pain and angst of being a crossdresser, of not having the comforting narrative of transition–a story that seems, at least, to have a beginning, middle and end. If people now seem to understand, if not accept all the time, the transsexual narrative–“you’re a woman on the inside” or “born wrong” or whatever the current popular meme is–but how do you explain that you only need to be a woman part of the time? That you only seek temporary solutions? That you live in the shadow of, as helen has also said, the other shoe never dropping?

A crossdresser I used to know wrote about this once*:

[…]my transness will always be subordinate to other people’s experience of either womanhood or transhood. Women can look down at me because I’m a “part-time” woman, who dresses in costume and “doesn’t know what a real woman’s life is like”; transwomen can throw the same criticism at me, with the added vector that my transness can’t be serious because it doesn’t manifest itself constantly or as urgently as it does for a transsexual.

But it isn’t true; I’m trans all the time, and there are a lot of times that I feel trapped in an endless cycle of oscillation between femininity and masculinity with no way to end the cycle.

Sure, compared to transitioning, my problems are the difference between jumping off of a cliff and riding the kiddie roller coaster. But who the hell wants to ride on the kiddie coaster for the rest of their lives?

But let’s not stay all doom and gloom…courtesy of Joe My God, here’s Donna Sachet performing the national anthem before a Giants game in San Francisco–the first drag performer to ever do so! Rock on, Ms. Sachet!

*She later transitioned, so take it with a grain of salt. Still, it’s a good sentiment.

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