I disclose a lot about myself. (SEE: The blog you are reading right at this very moment.) My performance pieces may not be entirely disclosure-based – there’s some storytelling and fantasy, too – but they are entirely built around my experiences with gender and identity. I’m speaking to a class of middle school students soon, and it’ll be about on the same topic. I fully and completely appreciate disclosure as a cathartic, rewarding, and empowering act.

And yet certain types of disclosure – the type of disclosure that my brand of self-narrative work apparently evokes in certain people – makes me quite uncomfortable.

I realize my work is often the first time some audience members have heard honest narratives around trans experience. Perhaps the first time they’ve met an (out) trans person. That’s what I was thinking when a tall individual came up next to me after I finished my show and sat back at the bar. He (this person was presenting as male so I’ll use male pronouns) introduced himself as Joe. He wasn’t dressed particularly well, his hair was unkempt, and he was missing two or three teeth. He said he enjoyed my show, said I was beautiful, and told me he had “had thoughts like that.”

I never know what to say to that statement. It’s not a question, so there’s no obvious response. It’s not enough information that I feel like I can make an intelligent response, but it’s way too much for me to not say anything. This particular situation was made more uncomfortable because Joe then gave me intense, unyielding, unblinking eye contact.

I’m not proud of how I responded: some sympathetic noises and a turn back to the musicians playing on stage. But I was uncomfortable by the intense amount of focus Joe was sending my way, and could see him continue to stare straight at me even after I’d turned away. I got up and went to the bar to get another drink.

Joe followed, asking if he’d made me uncomfortable. I lied, and said no. The  bar was crowded, Joe wasn’t making me feel unsafe, and I wasn’t yet willing to be explicitly rude. We made polite small talk and Joe then asked, “Promise you won’t be angry?”

Those types of questions are obnoxious and unfair. I think they should only be allowed (maybe) by close friends, along the lines of “Can you keep a secret?” But coming from an almost-complete stranger, it seemed out of line.

“Well,” I replied, “it depends on what you say. I’m not going to promise anything.”

“I have masochistic tendencies.”

At that point, I walked away.

Later in the evening, someone told me that he’d had sex once with someone who he was “95% sure was post-op.” He quickly clarified, “I mean, I’ve slept with men, women, I didn’t care. I just wanted to know! When her top came off she’d had these scars under her breasts, from implants. And her clit was bright pink. Like, bright pink.”

Why did I need to know those things? For Joe, I can understand – assuming he was honestly trans or questioning – the desire to connect with another trans person. I’ll even give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his closeted life has led to a tendency for awkward and uncomfortable social interactions. But I didn’t need to know, didn’t want to know, and wish I didn’t know that he had “masochistic tendencies.”

And I know people have a desire to identify their own experiences with something they heard from another. “I have a black friend!” is the easiest example of this behavior. But I don’t like it, even though I’ve thus far been too polite to say “Why the hell are you telling me this?”

It’s particularly hard because I know my show has exactly that type of disclosure: my experiences being sexual, exploring my identity, figuring things out. That’s presumably what makes people feel entitled to the same sort of disclosure. But I don’t know how to respond. Where to draw the line between being a supportive and engaging activist, and keeping my own personal boundaries secure.

I think, in the case of the “did I have sex with a trans woman” guy, next time I will speak up more. Say that I’m not sure why it was important for him to know if she was trans.

But if someone like Joe comes up to me again? I don’t know what I’ll do.

1. Cut open my penis.
2. Remove the spongey erectile tissue. Make sure to leave the nerves and blood supply intact! We’ll need those!
3. Invert all that stuff up into my pelvic cavity.
4. Use that tissue and blood supply to make me a brand new clit.
5. Shorten my urethra – won’t be standing up to pee anymore!
6. Take the extra scrotal tissue and shape me a good labia.

Perfect! Now that’s what I want to see when I look in the mirror.Vaginoplasty, the surgery described above and what most people mean when they say “gender reassignment surgery,” is terrifying. My cock is a sensitive thing, even more so since going on hormones and getting more in touch with my sexual self. Even if I’ll be under anesthesia, the idea of all that happening to me – the cutting and the slicing and the moving about – is scary. Terrifying, even. Violent. Bloody-sounding. The type of thing out of a horror movie, not a consensual and desired and medically-accepted surgery.

We pretend surgery isn’t violent. That knife-to-flesh is an act of healing, of care. We need to, to get through it. I need to, anyway. And I will admit that surgery is controlled. When it’s done right, it’s not messy. But cutting and blood and pain and recovery necessitates an act  of violence. To recover, to have recovery time, means that there is something to recover from. The scars on my stomach, from my gallbladder removal, are the result of an act of violence. Pain-relieving, potentially life-saving (had the infection spread), and absolutely necessary violence.

The Surgery requires about a week in the hospital – a week, in this day and age of outpatient surgery – and months of post-op recovery. It costs tens of thousands of dollars, plus travel and assorted fees and random expenses. There’s a possibility, albiet a very small one,  that Il’l never be able to orgasm again. I know the general consensus – from among surgeons, post-op trans women, and my therapist – is that the ability orgasm is extremely common with modern surgery, and even more likely if the woman is orgasmic and actively sexual pre-surgery (which I am).

But still, the possibility of never being able to cum ever again, and paying twenty thousand dollars for the privilege?

So why am I doing this? Why am I researching surgeons, with the hope and intent of having The Surgery in the next 12-18 months? What the hell am I thinking?

I hate the cliches surrounding The Surgery: That it makes trans women feel complete. Whole. Like themselves. At home in their body. All the things you hear on talk shows and newscasts and radio and best-selling tell-alls.

And yet, for all the pride I take in my ability to use words to communicate how I feel, I’m struggling to come up with a better justification or explanation for why I’m planning to have The Surgery. Gender reassignment surgery. A vaginoplasty. To have my cock turned inside out, and become a cunt. I’ll go into a magical sleep, the vagina fairy will fly through the window, and I’ll wake up with an innie instead of an outie.

In some ways, it’s a logical and natural continuation down the path I’ve been traveling: hair removal and hormones and growing my hair out and makeup and dresses and presenting (and usually being perceived as) a “real” girl. Perhaps the question I should be asking is “Why wouldn’t I want The Surgery?”

(I want to take a moment to clarify that I do not think all trans people “should” or need to have any sort of surgery or medical intervention to be trans or to be happy or to be “real” men, women, or anything else. I am speaking only of my own experience, and my own journey.)

What frustrates me is that there’s something of an inability to fully feel something if you can’t express the feeling. George Orwell knew this:

In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.

Language matters.

Lets try this: I want surgery because….

• …when I imagine my idealized or ideal body, I imagine it with a vagina and not a penis.
• …I want to feel someone, something, myself, you, us inside my cunt.
• …I want to be able to wear tight clothing and bathing suits and dresses without resorting to tucking.
• …it would make me feel less different from other girls.

(Yes, I know that last sentence is problematic. Some of my favorite “other girls” in my life have cocks, too. But I’m trying to be honest with this list, even if my emotions or desires don’t always match my politics, and not self-censor.

Perhaps we use such cliches – at home in my own body, whole, complete – because language simply fails us. Difficult as it is to contemplate, maybe I don’t have the words to explain or justify why I want The Surgery.

But there is beauty in transformation. Flowers, butterflies, the changing of the seasons, growth and strength, the rush of blood and tightening of flesh. Of making myself who I am. Chipping away at rock until the final sculpture is made clear.  Hopefully I’m going in the right direction.

I think I am.

“When was your last period?”

“Do you think you might be pregnant?”

“What medication are you on? Are you on birth control?”

Those questions, most recently (and repeatedly) asked when I was in the hospital in 2010 to get my gallbladder removed. Doctors came in and asked. Nurses came in and asked. More doctors. More nurses.

To some extent, I accept the medical necessity of such questions. From one perspective, they’re affirming: the person asking assumes I’m a cisgender woman, complete with uterus, ovaries, and the ability to menstruate and get pregnant. From another perspective, they’re oppressive: they are making assumptions about my body, my identity. And for trans men, the opposite may be true: they may be menstruating, pregnant, have gynecological problems that doctors won’t or don’t know how to acknowledge and treat.

Fitting in makes other people’s lives easier. We live in a culture that says “You can be anything you want! If you can dream it, you can do it! Reach for the stars!” But when you’ve reached, when you’ve become that thing you want, can only be that thing. Not more than one thing. Not one thing one day, and something else the next. Self identification is one thing, but ambiguity (perceived or real) is something else entirely.

Being queer – and especially being trans – is in part an act of redefinition. At least I’ve found that to be true. From the most obvious “gay sex act,” anal, there’s a reappropriation of what body parts mean. Asshole only for waste? Nope! For pleasure, too! That type of redefinition makes questions like “When did you last have sex?” somewhat silly in a medical context. Well, I always reply, define sex! Oral, anal, vaginal, hangs, toys, straps, harnesses, what does sex mean?

More abstractly, my trans-ness allows (requires) some redefinition of my body. My penis isn’t male, in spite of being the “male sex organ.” My penis – my body, my identity, my self – is female, inherently and completely. Even if/when I have penis-in-vagina “real sex,” it’s a lesbian, queer, subversive, redefining-my-body act.

I’ve drifted from healthcare. I’ll try to get back on track. Sex is just so distracting! ::grin::

I’d argue queer healthcare is the same type of thing as queer therapy or queer theatre or queer anything. Queer is the adjective, modifying the noun: healthcare, therapy, theatre. The healthcare service needs to fundamentally be good healthcare, before it can be queer healthcare. If there isn’t knowledge, comfort, caring, it can’t be any kind of good healthcare. There needs to be a knowledgeability of what ‘sex’ can mean in the queer community. How bodies and body parts are defined. An acknowledgement and understanding of the existence of spousal abuse even in same-sex couples. And yes, knowledge of how queer sex acts and/or populations can lead to STDs.

But, at its core, it needs to be healthcare. Care relating to one’s health. Lets start there.

During the workshop, however, something came up that I had not previously considered. Specifically, someone asked about how trans youth are (medically) treated. I said that it varies, but that there’s an increasing use of hormone blockers to delay puberty. This allows a twelve or thirteen year old to age a few years and – hopefully – be able to make a more informed decision about transitioning. In my I-am-not-a-doctor opinion, it’s a good compromise: simply doing nothing can result in spending thousands of dollars to undo puberty, but launching fully into hormone replacement therapy opens the door to a twelve year old realizing they weren’t really trans at thirteen or fourteen.

Ultimately, I said to the questioner, there isn’t a perfect solution. Once a child realizes they’re trans, it’s a matter of picking the best choice from some bad options. Which, to be very clear, doesn’t mean that being trans condemns an individual to a life of misery. But it does, as far as I can see, necessitate some tough decisions and a difficult journey.

The questioner then posed something that has been bouncing around my brain this past week: Could allowing fifteen and sixteen year olds to be making informed consent decisions about their healthcare lead to the criminal justice system saying they were able to make informed decisions about crimes, and should thus be tried as adults?

I don’t think she was talking specifically about trans youth committing crimes, but looking at things from a more general question angle. That is, how do we as a society determine in which areas teens are able to make life decisions, and in which they’re not?

For the record, I am very against youth being tried as adults or sentenced to death.[1] At the same time, I do think teens should have some say over their healthcare. In particular, I know what my decision would have been had someone asked, “Do you want to go through puberty as a boy, or wait a bit and go through it as a girl?” There wouldn’t have been any question in my mind. But how do we – or can we – distinguish those areas of judgement?

The first thing that leaps to mind is the difference between “this decision impacts myself” and “this decision impacts others.” Transitioning, at its core, is about changing the self. Crime, at its core, is about impacting others. Which is really why crimes are, well, crimes.[2] So there’s a difference between a teen saying “I know enough about myself and my actions to change my body” and society saying “a teen knows enough about how their actions will impact others externally, so their crime should result in prosecution as an adult.”

But I know it’s not that simple. I can – looking back – say with 100% certainty, “I wish I had transitioned earlier, and I really wish I hadn’t gone through  puberty in the first place.” I know lots of trans people who would say the same thing. At the same time, as an educator who works with teens, it’s scary to think of a student of mine (let alone a child of mine) making such big decisions. Kids’ identities change so much from day to day, that – as an adult – believing something can be that constant feels like a leap of faith.

I suspect that one’s sense of gender, however, is fundamental enough and develops early enough for most people that – by fourteen or fifteen – they do know who they are. Or, at least, they can. Even if they don’t know how they’re going to express themselves, who they’re going to sleep with, what they want to do when they grow up. They can know who they are.

We can know who we are.

[1] – I’m also against the death penalty, period, but that’s only tangentially related to this topic.
[2] – This is why, in my opinion, drugs and prostitution should be legal, regulated, and safe.

I really transitioned to get into bars for free, without having to pay cover.

I really transitioned because I heard there weren’t enough women in science, and I wanted to do my part.

I really transitioned so I could drink sweet pink drinks at bars without being judged.

I really transitioned because when I paint my toes pink, I want to be a boy with pink toenails!

I really transitioned so I could wear tight pants all the time without looking like a member of an 80′s rock band.

I really transitioned because I wanted to save on car insurance.

I really transitioned because the clothes are *way* better (so i still wear BDUs and t-shirts most of the time)

I really transitioned because I was born on Stonewall Day.

Thank you for joining the Cocks of Love team! Through your contribution of time and energy, we are able to offer our award-winning service to transgender and transsexual (trans) clients around the globe. In this time of economic downturn, our services are more important than ever.

What we Do

Cocks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides body parts to financially disadvantaged trans individuals suffering from misaligned physical development for any reason. We meet a unique need for trans clients by using donated body parts to create the highest quality replacement body components

Our mission is to provide a sense of self, confidence, and normalcy to transgender and transsexual individuals by providing proper body parts for physical completeness. Our clients receive body parts free of charge or on a sliding scale, based on needs.

Our Process

Take two hypothetical clients: John and Jane. John is a trans man. He has breasts, a vagina, and reproductive organs he will not be using. Jane is a trans woman. She has body hair, muscle mass, and a penis she will not using. Cocks of Love allows us to match John and Jane and provide expert medical care for the safe and lasting swap of unwanted body parts. John ends up with the cock he’s always wanted, and Jane sports her new breasts with pride.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Where do I go for my body part swap?
A. Cocks of Love works with a network of healthcare providers to provide the highest quality of service. When you are ready for your body part swap, contact Cocks of Love and we will discuss the next steps.

Q. What body parts can I swap or donate?
A. As every client is different, we do not maintain a comprehensive list of swap-able body parts. Past clients have swapped body hair, muscle mass, penis, vagina, breasts, buttocks, vocal cords, and more.

Q. Is my body part swap or  donation tax deductible?
A. Please check with your tax preparer. We cannot  place a monetary value on a body part.

Q. If I send in pictures, will you post them on your website?
A. We do update our donor gallery from time to time, but cannot guarantee that all the pictures we receive will be posted. We also use photos in our newsletters and post them around our office.

Q. Do you help both men and women?
A. We do not limit our clients’ gender identity. As such, we accept clients regardless of whether they identify as male, female, genderqueer, or otherwise.

Oh hush.

These have been sitting in a draft for a while, so some are a bit dated.

Being the Visible Femme – Thoughts from Autostraddle on how to be a out, visible, lesbian femme.

How to be a fan of problematic things – Amazing! A must read for fans of Lord of the Rings, anything Robert Heinlein wrote, 99% of comics out there, Orson Scott Card, or anything else that is both awesome and really problematic. The comments are also well-worth a read.

A 13-year-old hits a slam-dunk on why slut shaming is wrong - If you have a bad taste in your mouth after Taylor and the Girl Scout transgender thing, WATCH THIS VIDEO! She’s my hero.

Stuff cis people say to trans people – Part of the “Stuff ____ people say to ____ people” trend, but still hilarious. “So what’s your real name?”

Finally, I’ll be in Indianapolis tomorrow and Thursday, performing at Butler University. More info is at their website. Hope you can check it out if you’re in the area. Let me know if you’ll be there!

She can't even read that! It's facing away from her! Stop looking so shocked!

I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine, Rose, about pornography and acting. She is involved in the sex industry, has worked as a prostitute and escort, and occasionally does both photographic and film pornography. She mentioned she’d recently finished a shoot where she had earned more in five hours than I’ve yet to earn in all of January.

Curious about her experiences, I asked what being in porn was like. Specifically, whether she viewed it as a sexual experience or a ‘this is an action I’m doing because I’m getting paid’ experience. Rose said that it was the latter: really not much more enjoyable than serving coffee or collating copies, just quite a bit more lucrative.

The conversation got me thinking about what we – as audience members – ask of actors. Because going to a play almost always involves some suspension of disbelief.  Perhaps Chicago’s Neofuturists toe the line  of theatre which requires no suspension of disbelief, but they’re in the minority. For the most part, going to a show involves allowing ourselves to believe that the actors are their characters. That they’re falling in love, planning for battle, forging alliances, destroying relationships, and on and on and on. When I go to a play I could sit there the entire time thinking, “Well, she’s not really in love with him. He doesn’t really find what she says so funny as to laugh out loud.” But that would make me miserable, so I suspend my disbelief and allow their actions to read as true.

That’s not how viewing porn seems to work, however. For whatever reason, audiences want to believe the people they’re watching are really attracted to each other (even if only on a physical level) and do reach a real, satisfying, climactic (natch) orgasm.

Why is that?

This isn’t true for every porn. There’s a great movement of feminist porn that attempts to portray actual, pleasurable, orgasmic, sex (links obviously NSFW): Crash Pad, No Fauxxx, and Doing It Ourselves, to name a few. (Please share more in the comments if you know of any.) But those are the minority. Most porn is filmed the same way any other film would be: actors are told what to do, and they do it. Regardless of whether or not they really cum. That’s what I’m talking about when I use the word ‘porn’ in this post, even though I know it’s a subset of all porn.

I’m also talking from my own cultural understandings and assumptions about porn and American gender dynamics. This is a topic for a 300+ page thesis, not a little blog post, so I’ll be making a lot of unsubstantiated and unresearched claims about why people (mainly men) watch porn, and what they think while doing it. I’m also not focusing on kink or fetish porn. Feel free to correct me if you think I’m way off base at any point.

PORN!

The place to start in answering this question may be the perceived audience. This type of porn is primarily produced by men, for men. There are cultural expectations and understandings around the ease of the male orgasm and the difficulty of the female. Porn feeds into the first, but somewhat contradicts the second: a woman is going to get off because that’s how the audience wants to be projected into the story. The (male) viewer wants to imagine himself with the woman in the porn, easily and handily getting her off.

So there’s no desire for examination of the actors’ ability to portray getting off. Someone might come out of a theatrical production saying, “Wow, you could really feel the emotion on stage.” But – if they stop to think about it – they don’t assume the actors were all actually mad at each other, or in love with each other, or whatever. In porn, though, similar examination leads to questioning one’s own partners: If that porn actress was faking that orgasm, how do I know my own partner wasn’t doing the same?

There also seems to be a parallel with the use of stunt doubles in Hollywood. Audiences are impressed when there aren’t any stunt doubles. “She does all her own stunts” is a high compliment to pay an actress. Because we know what they’re doing is fake. There isn’t really a Nazi chasing Indiana Jones. Salt wasn’t really running from those assassins. And for sex scenes, the love interests aren’t really having sex.

In porn, though, there is actual sex happening. Someone is being penetrated, and someone is penetrating. Or licked/licking. Sucked/sucking. You get the idea. But why go that far if you can’t go the step further? Why aren’t they actually achieving orgasm? It seems more difficult to separate the fiction from the reality. Or to even want to separate the two.

Porn also generally serves a different, more (ahem) utilitarian purpose than non-sexual film or theatre. While audiences certainly view actors to evoke an emotional response, the expectations are generally more open ended. When I go to a comedy, I may laugh at the actors or with them. Likewise, a drama may evoke my pity or tears at love-lost or happiness at love-found-at-last. I don’t always know going in, except in the broadest of fashions. Porn, though, is different. The viewer is expecting a specific physical response.

Justifying any of these assumptions would take research that I don’t foresee doing anytime soon. But thinking about when and why I’ve watched porn, all of the above makes sense. I don’t watch much porn these days, but when I have I wanted where the women looked like they were enjoying themselves. Something I could imagine participating in, either causing the woman’s reaction or having the woman’s reaction (a whole different topic). And if pressed, I’d admit most of those women – perhaps all – weren’t actually enjoying what I was watching as much as they portrayed enjoying it. As much as they acted like they were enjoying it.

I guess my final thought is about whether or not this – the shared desire to believe women in porn are actually cumming – is a good thing. No one says “Dexter sucks! He’s not really killing people!” At the same time, women faking orgasms in porn seems to feed into all of the second wave feminist ideas of why all porn is inherently bad for women and creating unrealistic and overly-sexualized expectations around women. And – both as an occasional viewer of porn and a friend of people who work in porn – I don’t buy into that.

So I’m left not knowing what to think. I’d love to see a move toward more actual orgasms in porn, but some fantasies viewers want to see may simply not evoke an orgasm in the actor participating. And I’m hesitant to say that there should never again be porn of Situation X simply because they can’t find an actress who cums from it. But I don’t know how to balance that with encouraging healthier views of female sexuality. And male sexuality, for that matter.

Any thoughts?

And a short-but-adorable video:

In other news, the original video from Taylor has been taken down. A troop in Louisiana disbanded, even though the trans scout was in Colorado. The latest response I can find from the Scouts is still that “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

The class quickly devolved into discussions of how to defeat their robot friends, when my friend asked “Wait, couldn’t they be good robots?” The class clamored NO, the only good robot is a dead robot. Over drinks, however, my friends were able to come up with some counter arguments.

1. Roomba

Roombatoombababoomba

This should go without saying. Roombas (and other cleaning robots) are awesome. They clean. They beep. They look adorable and invite slightly condescending names like Jeeves and Cinderella. A firm entry in the ‘robots are good’ camp.

2. R2-D2 and C-3PO

I’m counting them as a pair, and while this Star Wars duo isn’t always effective they are definitely good. ‘Nuff said.

3. Terminator

Sure, the name may throw you. “Terminating” isn’t exactly a warm and fuzzy job. But he was trying to save the future, so we’ll excuse his occasionally rude and destructive techniques.

4. WALL-E (and the gang)

Poor, lonely Wall-E. Cleaning up humanity’s mess. But a robot that can feel love? The first lesbian robot love story told in a Pixar movie? And the gang did save the day, eventually.

Johnny 5 is alive!

5. Johnny 5

Please tell me you’re familiar with the classic film Short Circuit. How can you not love Johnny 5? Sure, he’s a weapons platform that achieved sentience and probably should have been destroyed immediately, but he’s so CUTE! He has EYEBROWS!

6. Data

Star Trek provides lots of ‘the future is awesome’ messages, and Data (technically an android, not a robot) is at the top of the pack. He can’t laugh, and isn’t able to use contractions, but he’s still firmly good.

7. Rosie (from The Jetsons)

I want my apartment cleaned by Rosie, especially if it’s with the ‘vroomvroomvroom’ noise all Jetsons technology seems to possess.

8. Autobots

Fine, Transformers aren’t robots, they’re transformers. But the Autobots (like Data) still fall firmly into the ‘good’ camp even if they might not self-identify as robots. There’s a topic for another post: The self-identification of non-organic lifeforms, and whether it’s imposing identity on Data and Optimus Prime to include them on this list…

I’m sure you can come up with more in the comments, but I feel comfortable with my friend’s original assertion: Not all robots are evil. And if you got turned into a robot, I wouldn’t immediately reach for the baseball bat or EMP cannon.