I did end up sending an email to my friends, along the lines of what I discussed in this post:
Hey friends!
This is kind of an uncomfortable email for me to write, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about and need to address:
Please don’t out me. That is, please don’t tell people I’m trans.
I love you all. I’ve said this over and over again: I’m privileged, blessed, and really fucking lucky to be surrounded by friends like you. In a world that isn’t too kind to people outside the norm, you all pretty much shrugged your shoulders when I came out. Not because it wasn’t important to me, but because it didn’t change our friendships. I really value that. I love being able to have conversations and debates, to share joy and sorrow, with people who I’ve known for years, and who have known me.
But staying in Chicago after high school and college has also made transitioning occasionally more work than I’d like. To pick a really easy example, I went to the bank yesterday and the teller was the mom of someone I went to elementary school with (and not someone I particularly cared for, at that). She knew she sort of recognized me, but totally didn’t know how to respond to my presentation as Rebecca. It wasn’t a problem, and she was respectful, but it kind of threw me out of my stride to have to say, “Yeah, I’m going by Rebecca now…” Even though I love Chicago, and am glad I’ve stuck around, having to be reminded of that pre- and post-transition disconnect takes its toll.
Continue reading 'You don’t get to out me'»
CC or BCC: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous ‘Reply All’s,
Or to take arms against a sea of emails,
And by BCCing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The inane replies and the thousand “Re:re:re:re”s
That email is heir to, ’tis a communication
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to hibernate or shut down: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that shut down of death what screensavers may come
When we have shuffled off this electronic coil,
Must give us suspend of so long uptime;
For who would bear the viruses and trojans of time,
The spammers wrong, the forwarder’s contumely,
The pangs of un’friended’ love, Amazon’s shipping delay,
The insolence of bosses and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy tweets,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare mouse? who would ZIP files bear,
To blog and Digg under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after shut down,
The undiscover’d OS from whose bourn
No emailer returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those outdated computers we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus fear does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of 800×600 resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of VGA,
And enterprises of great programing and moment
With this regard their currents and volts turn awry,
And lose the name of email. – Soft you now!
The fair Steve Jobs! Nymph, in thy orisons
By all my forwarded emails remember’d.
(With apologies to Shakespeare. And anyone who read this through to the end. I’m going to literature hell for this one.)
One of my roommates, Alice, had a friend over last night, Bob. The three of us were joking about Passover and Easter, and how none of us really practice what are ostensibly our respective religions. Alice was saying that she attended church enough at her (Catholic) middle school, so doesn’t need to attend now: she’s built up a quota. Bob replied, “Nope. You’re going to hell.” (He was joking. Don’t worry.) I laughed and said, “Well, I’ll be there too: I’m Jewish.”
Bob, chuckling, gestured to me and said, “Right. He’s going to hell because he doesn’t acknowledge the big JC…” And continued talking, using the incorrect pronoun, to the point where I started to wonder if he maybe wasn’t referring to me; most people catch themselves earlier than Bob did.
But no, I finally had to correct him, “She. Not he.”
He apologized, corrected himself, and the conversation moved on. Shortly thereafter I left and went to bed.
And realized I’d never actually told Bob I was trans.
Continue reading 'Who gets to out you?'»
Judith over at A Lesbian & A Scholar is hosting the first blog Carnival on Privilege, with links to blog posts from around the Internet on the topic of privilege. I submitted a post of mine from September, A Loss of Privilege, or a Gain?, which discussed different perspectives on what ‘privilege’ has meant throughout my transition. Other topics covered by the carnival are Christian privilege, heterosexual privilege, white privilege, and more. Check it out!
It has been quite a while since I’ve done a post on trans fiction, hasn’t it! The LGBT literary site Lamnda Literary had a post a while back by Cheryl Morgan titled Is There, or Should There Be, Such a Thing as ‘Trans Lit’? The post has lots of interesting links to authors who have written on or about trans issues, including links to various trans comics and trans fiction sites. (Some of which I’ve linked to from this blog, and some of which I’d never seen before. Check out both the main post and the comments.)
But I have to admit, I was (and am) a little confused by the question Morgan is asking. It seems self evident – even in the links within her post, not to mention those in the comments – that there is trans literature being generated. (Morgan seems to define ‘trans lit’ as ‘fiction,’ a definition I don’t have any problems with.) More broadly, she seems to be creating divisions where none need be:
Yet what would “trans literature” be like? When we talk about the literature of an identity group we mean that members of the group want to read about people like themselves. African-Americans want books with African-American protagonists; lesbians want books with lesbian protagonists; and so on. But the trans community is very diverse, and different parts of it have very different needs. Cross-dressers, for example, often read, and write, erotic fantasies about cross-dressing. Pre-transition transsexuals reportedly read memoirs and theory voraciously in order to find out if transition is right for them, and how to survive it. Post transition, however, they often settle happily into their preferred gender and have no further need for trans books. They are often content identifying with characters of their preferred gender and don’t want to be reminded of what they see as a painful past life.
Those who regard themselves as in a third gender, as gender-free or gender-fluid, and those who are intersex, will probably want books about people like themselves. Obviously there is a real need for a literature for them. However, they are only a part of the trans community (and apologies to any of them who do not want to be regarded as part of it), so the market is even smaller.
Continue reading 'Trans Lit – searching for our reflections'»
The saga continues!
- Are there advantages to being a woman as opposed to being a man?
Advantages for who? For me, yes: I’m happier with myself and with my body, enjoy wearing clothing and makeup, enjoy being perceived as a woman.
For someone who identifies as a man? Probably not. I think women – in general – have more clothing and presentation options today than men. That is, a woman can present from relatively butch (even going so far as to wear mens clothing) to super-femme, and still be a ‘woman.’ Men, on the other hand, have fewer options for clothing/makeup/etc without having their ‘man’ status questioned. But those are all subjective; being a woman isn’t “better” than being a man, just different.
But it is better for me.
- Are there advantages to being trans?
Being trans gives you the opportunity – hell, forces you – to think much more in detail and at length about your own identity and gender than being cis. I feel like the choices I’m making about presentation and how I gender myself are a lot more conscious than for many of my friends, and I’m doing so with more intention. They haven’t had to think about their own gender, and so many of them haven’t. (Or, hadn’t until I forced them to by transitioning and talking about it at great length!)
Being trans has given me the opportunity to dive into the trans and queer communities both on- and off-line, this blog being a big example of how I’m doing that.
Is all that worth the pain and difficulty of being trans? I’m not sure yet; I’m still too much in my transition to make that call. But I’d be lying if I said there were no advantages to being trans. At least, I’ve had a few places where I’ve been able to make lemonade out of lemons. I’m just hoping that I’ll ultimately feel that way all the time, not just every once in a while.
Maddie at xoros.net recently wrote a post, Passing Fallacy, on the idea of passing. That is, being perceived as the gender you are presenting as, rather than your assigned-at-birth gender. I really like where she takes her definition, though:
[passing] is a struggle to over ride what others impose and imprint on you in order to win the right to assert one’s self image, one’s self. It’s trying to win the right not to be made to feel like a failure, an othered, degendered oddity. It is trying to be “convincing” enough (read – meet enough of their stereotypes) that people are prepared to accept what you say. Rather than just listening to what you say.
That idea, of passing being an issue of whose reality ‘wins,’ is the main reason I try to say “perceived as a woman” rather than “passing as a woman.” Because it turns around passing and makes it about what it really is: a problem created by the gaze-er, not the gaze-ee.
Continue reading 'Getting past passing'»
A post over at Jez
ebel caught my eye: Beauty 101: Which Basic Beauty Skills Did You Never Quite Get The Hang Of?
“There’s something somewhat embarrassing about being almost 30 years old and not having basic grooming methods down, though not having nails for the majority of my life may account for part of my cluelessness. I’ve watched the manicurist at work, watched YouTube instructional videos, and read articles on proper shaping, but I always end up looking like a mess. My nails, I’ve realized, are best left to the professionals.”
She goes on, though, to talk about how most of the women she she told about her problem also had some aspect of makeup or feminine self-care they weren’t confident in: “Several friends, for example, admitted that they still couldn’t apply eyeliner without stabbing themselves in the face.” She goes on to ask readers to leave comments about places they lack confidence.
It made me think about my experiences pole dancing. In talking about it with my therapist, I said that I felt this inadequacy as a woman, and linked the emotion to being trans. She laughed and said, “You don’t feel inadequate because you’re trans. You feel inadequate because you’re a woman. There are all these skills and modes of expression you’re ‘supposed’ to know as a woman, but most women feel just as inadequate at them as you do.”
Continue reading 'It’s a ‘woman thing’ not a ‘trans thing’'»
What I came home to on Thursday:
Dunno who did it, but it made me laugh.
I spoke to a high school health club on Friday – the one who emailed me the questions I’ve been answering the last few days – and had a really good time. They weren’t too knowledgeable about queer/trans issues, but I much prefer well-intentioned and open-handed ignorance to feigned understanding… And they were all willing to learn, which counts for a lot in my book.
Most of the chat was pretty expected, with me going over my (abridged) life story and transition, talking about how hormones have changed my experience of emotions and sex, and so on. I did have one student ask, “So, if you did get…the surgery, and you like women…how would you have sex after?”
One of the other students waved her fingers in front of his face, which made me laugh. I also directed them to Early to Bed, which is actually only a few blocks away from their school. I hope, for the sake of his current and future partner(s), that he learns about the options available beyond penis/vagina.
Continue reading 'Talking to high schoolers'»
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coming out, queer, theory
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coming out, friends, queer, theory, trans 
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