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By Rebecca, May 28, 2010 3:47 pm

No, I'm not pretending I'm the cute blond in the middle.

A few months ago, I was having dinner with some friends after our circus class. We were chatting about relationships – I was bemoaning my lack thereof – and someone mentioned how her boyfriend was an awkward geek. I said, “Well, as an awkward geek myself, I feel obligated to stand up for my fellow geeks.” Both of my friends turned to me, and simultaneously said something along the lines of, “You’re not awkward. And you may be a geek, but you’re a hot geek.”

I don’t say this to toot my own horn, because I didn’t (and don’t) particularly believe them. But I do bring it up to talk about a perspective flip I’ve had over the course of my transition: I’m now seen as the cool, geeky, girl.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this as I’ve been watching The Big Bang Theory. I think the show is pretty funny, as I’m a sucker for a show that makes good, accurate jokes about comic books, general relativity, Lord of the Rings, particle physics, video games and more. It’s funny even if you don’t get all the references, but their jokes are obviously well researched and even funnier if you know what they’re talking about.

At the same time, the gender relationships of the show are kind of predictable: four smart-but-awkward boys befriend their pretty-but-uneducated female neighbor. And I find myself very torn over who to sympathize with when they butt heads.

Continue reading 'A perspective flip'»

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By Rebecca, May 25, 2010 9:21 pm

Hi all! This guest post is from Violet, a regular commenter at The Thang Blog and all-around awesome gal. Enjoy!

Hi. I’m Violet. Rebecca has been kind enough to let me have some of her blog space for a guest post, and let me dip my toe carefully into the world of writing for a wider internet audience. Identity-wise, I am a twenty-something white currently-abled trans-female-spectrum genderqueer and sexuality-queer tomboy geek engineer. Except to the extent I’m not. But this post is about identity labels, so bear with me. Rebecca has previously posted about identity labels as keywords here, which I think is awesome, and I wanted to add another different (and geeky) way of looking at them to the discussion. This post is adapted from something I wrote more personally last year.

By “identity labels”, what I mean are nouns and adjectives that you use to describe people — “woman”, “man”, “goth”, “punk”, “masculine”, “feminine”, “trans”, “queer”. These things are useful for communication. Labels can function as a shorthand to tell people about what your life is like. They allow people with attributes in common to find each other and compare notes. I use them a lot.

The problem is that they’re wrong. Or, rather, not quite right. Any time you have an identity, it comes with a pile of stereotyped behaviors that any given claimant of the identity might or might not share, and it tends to reduce the perception of the claimant down to those stereotypes. Oops. (Rebecca, in her keyword post, also got into the possible confining nature of labels imposed by others.)

Now for the geeking out. Don’t worry — if you don’t speak math, I’ll give an example in pictures below.

I often view labels as vectors in some huge or infinite-dimensional vector space. Given a set of labels — say, {male, female} or {straight, queer} or {gay, lesbian, bi, trans, queer, questioning, ally} or whatever — finding out how you identify is a process akin to estimating the projection of your personal self-vector onto the subspace covered by the basis of labels in the set. Of course, that basis is never orthonormal; that would be too clean. It’s not orthogonal or normal at all. It’s just a mess of huge-dimensional vectors that you have to try to match yourself up against, throwing away all those components of yourself that aren’t in directions available to you in that basis. Worse, the self-vector is a function of time. The way you project on to a certain set of labels changes over the course of your life, sometimes even non-continuously. Even the identity labels change over time. Does being a goth mean the same thing now as it did fifteen years ago?

For an example of how my thinking about labels works, people sometimes ask me “are you male or female?” What they mean is usually something like this:

Continue reading 'Vector Identity Theory'»

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By Rebecca, May 24, 2010 11:10 pm

Am I allowed to read this?

While I was in the hospital, my mom brought me a little care package. It had a stuffed bear, a silly coloring book, and a copy of Glamour.

The stuffed bear lived next to me on my bed. The coloring book was, well, colored in. And the Glamour was put into my bag of things, hidden away from sight.

It’s not because I didn’t want to know about “25 Times I’m Irresistible to Him (And Don’t Even Know It).” Or “My Top 10 Tricks for Sexy Hair!” Or even “59 Cute, Casual Outfits That Look Good On Everyone.” I mean, who wouldn’t want to know all those things?

It was because I wasn’t sure if I would be looked down upon for reading it.

Would the nurses think I was immature? Would my friends think I was silly? Would my visitors think I was….girlie?

Continue reading 'Glamour'»

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By Rebecca, May 19, 2010 12:49 pm

Is there a merit badge for transitioning?

Apparently the left-over testosterone in my system is blocking two important girl-skills:

1. I rarely notice when a friend gets a haircut, unless it’s pretty dramatic
2. I can’t remember where and when I purchased every single item in my wardrobe

I’m told that, of the two, #1 is less forgivable.

This is one of those things that I’m not sure how to ‘fix.’ I’m learning (slowly) how to put on makeup. I’m getting better at seeing what outfits work together. (Though my date outfit from last night was the result of my roommate vetoing what I was going to wear.) I’m having tons of fun making and wearing jewelry. I’d even say I’m slowly adjusting my voice to something that feels more feminine and ‘right’ for me.

But all of those are things that, to one extent or another, you can practice.

Continue reading 'Important Girl Skill #473'»

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By Rebecca, May 18, 2010 5:12 pm

I’m going on a date tonight (oooh) and a coworker was joking with me about it. “Don’t put out! By which I mean do put out. Or hopefully she’ll put out.”

I laughed, and shot back, “You suck!”

Which of course made her respond, “I don’t, but hopefully she will! Wait, that doesn’t work…”

I almost reminded her that, no, the parts I have does let that joke work. But just kept my mouth shut and smiled.

(And don’t worry, I’ll do a post on how the date went.)

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By Rebecca, April 30, 2010 2:28 am

I wish I remember who recommended Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men to me.  It may have been through this blog, but…oh well! The book is written by Lori Girshick, a “sociologist and social justice activist,” and is an exploration of 150 interviews she conducted with individuals who responded to a survey looking for “gender transgressors.” Much of the book directly quotes these interviews, with Girshick interjecting her summarized opinions and conclusions throughout.

The book is divided into 6 chapters, with multiple sub-headings in each chapter. The chapters are:

1. The Social Construction of Biological Fact
2. Self-Definition: Birth through Adolescence
3. Constructing the Self: Options and Challenges
4. Coming Out to Community, Family, and Work
5. Gender Policing
6. Inner Turmoil and Moving Toward Acceptance

There is also an epilogue, “Gender Liberation,” and an appendix with the survey-advertising flier and the survey itself.

As you may be able to guess from the book’s subtitle, “Beyond Women and Men,” and even more so from the chapter titles, I generally agree with the politics of Transgender Voices. Girshick does a solid job of representing a very wide spectrum of people, and (for the most part) she interjects her own thoughts only to provide context or summarize how aggregate groups felt, rather than impose a specific definition of identity or gender.

However, in the introduction, “Identity Boxes,” Girshick lays the groundwork for a view I’m not 100% comfortable with:

My own bias in this book is to advocate for liberation from the binary gender system, which for many people artificially restricts the fullest expression of self. At the same time, though, I deeply respect those who wish to identify with “male” or “female,” “man” or “woman,” and are willing to undergo expensive and painful medical treatments to achieve physical correspondence with who they feel themselves to be given the current gender system.” (Pg 11, Emphasis in original)

Continue reading 'Review: Transgender Voices'»

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By Rebecca, April 27, 2010 1:34 am

“I need to pee I need to pee I need to PEE!”

I came running into the apartment, dropping my purse and jacket on the dining room table and yelling a brief “Hello” to my roommate in the kitchen. She yelled back, “We’re out of toilet paper!”

“So?” I replied, “I’m peeing.” I almost instantly realized what had happened, and laughed. When I came out, I said to her, “Yeah, I’m still a shaker, not a wiper. Standing up to pee is awesome. But I think it’s really sweet you forgot that!”

Her reply, “Well, I don’t know your routine!” just made me laugh harder.

(I make no apologies for my utter fail at French. It’s one of the many languages I was unable to learn in school.)

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By Rebecca, April 25, 2010 3:04 pm

From Angry Feminist Doc, via The Abortioneers. Feel free to copy the questions to your own blog.

Do you Agree or Disagree with the following statements:

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By Rebecca, April 21, 2010 11:53 pm

I’m looking for some 1950s sex ed videos as part of something I’m thinking about for my next show, and thought I’d share. The restrictions on square dancing are near the end, around 4:30. (You can picnic while men-stru-ating, thank goodness!)

Continue reading 'Don’t square dance while menstruating'»

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By Rebecca, April 15, 2010 10:40 am

A few weeks ago I posted It’s a ‘woman thing’ not a ‘trans thing’, prompted by a post at Jezebel. I realized that a lack of confidence in ‘feminine’ skills not being a feeling of being a trans woman, but a feeling of being a woman. It doesn’t make you trans, it makes you…normal.

There was some great discussion on this site (and lots more at Jezebel) so I wanted to make sure everyone knew that  Jezebel has continued their Beauty 101 series with posts on waxing and shaving, hair, makeup, and more. Me? I’ve been reading tips about eyeliner.

I’d rate eyeliner as the top ‘feminine skill’ I’d like to acquire. I bought some liquid eyeliner earlier this week, because a few comments said it was easier to apply. Well, I definitely think it’s easier to apply. It sure as hell went on my eyelid with less effort. Dunno that it was easier to apply well, though. But maybe practice will make perfect.

Continue reading 'Beauty tips from Jezebel'»