There's a new term which I've seen in the past couple days, designed to criticize and/or belittle transsexual women like me. If you go over to Jenny's blog, she's coined a new one... "Serious Transsexual." A somewhat tongue-in-cheek phrase to describe women like me, I suppose women who go through the Standards of Care, women who take their transitions seriously. I'm forced to guess at what she meant since she didn't define the term. Jenny is one of the contributors to T-Central. A little surprising that one of those women shows such obvious bias. She's also the one who came up with the idea of the "sin bin" a month or so ago. A concept which went over with a resounding "thud" with the T-Central community. They never did say how the poll turned out. Nor did her post on the sin bin concept allow comments. I would have commented on her blog about the "Serious Transsexuals," but she moderates comments, yet another red flag, so I'm writing here instead.
Anyhoo, back to the "Serious Transsexual" thing. I suppose that I am a so-called "Serious Transsexual." In fact, it's so serious, that my ex-wife has filed a motion against me in court to have all of my parental rights revoked. It's hell. I can't sleep at night and I constantly feel like I am going to vomit. All of my remaining savings, thousands of dollars, went to my attorney in the form of a retainer check. One of the things that could be used against a "Serious Transsexual" like me are things from online. For example, avatars. Here's a line from Jenny's post:
So have I just shot myself in the foot, destroyed my credibility to Serious Transsexual eyes as surely as if I had changed my avatar to a picture featuring myself in a rubber French Maid outfit?
Hmmm, I wonder how a picture of me in a rubber French Maid outfit would go over with the judge? Probably not all that well. I wonder how that might impact a judge here in Virginia, a Republican state with mostly conservative judges. Yeah, if anything, it would make my chances of staying in my children's lives smaller. One wants to plaster pictures of herself all over the Internet in costume, knock yourself out. Criticizing those who do not because they're trying to get through this portion of life with minimum collateral damage is another thing altogether.
I had a post featured on T-Central yesterday. I had two thoughts when Halle asked me if I was OK with that. Thought one was "how nice, I'm glad she saw something in the post." Thought two, and I am not making this up, was "I wonder how long Jenny will allow it to be featured, before she features something else?" Turns out the answer was just a shade over 24 hours. The shortest amount of time for which I've seen a post featured. I'm a little bemused by it, frankly.
So anyway, Jenny. Yes. My transition is deadly serious. And before you go on writing posts grouping people without any consideration for their lives or their transitions, and coining little phrases to describe them, stop and think. No, your credibility in the eyes of this "Serious Transsexual" hasn't been destroyed because you advocate fun costumes. It's destroyed because you're biased and prejudiced. I get enough prejudice from my ex-wife, you know, the one on the other side of the courtroom.
Posted by
Faline
10 comments:
Hey Faline, this wasn't aimed at you, it was definitely tongue-in-cheek and it was prompted by the reaction to some pics on a forum that's roughly equally split TV/TS. My apologies if you take it personally.
I appreciate you are having a hard time. Consider for a moment though what your life would be like had you not split up with your wife and instead of transitioning you'd done everything in your power to hang in there as a bloke for the woman you loved. Dealing with it through humour might be one of the few weapons at your disposal.
Yes, humor is a way to deal with things. You must admit, though, that the one post came across a little sardonic? The trans site that I help administer, if I wrote something like that about, say, "Serious Crossdressers," I'd be castigated, and rightfully so. It'd alienate members of the site, whether or not my intention was humor, ya know?
The post featuring your blog did stay up way too short a time, and I need to take my share of the criticism, because when Jenny pointed out the post that Robyn-Jane had written, I should have asked to let my post remain up a couple of days longer, but did not.
The contrast between American and British ideas of what is humorous and appropriate has never been in better relief than here. As a Canadian, it is possible for me to see both sides. You are both approaching it the very best way you can, from those differing points of view, in my opinion. It does hurt me to see either of you being upset.
Fuck yeah, I was serious. No apologies for that. How else would I have got here?
I think the post just highlights the difference between those who change sex and those who cope with not changing sex (or perhaps don't actually need to change sex).
When do women dress in silly outfits? Halloween, maybe. A costume party. Some sci-fi con. Otherwise, I can't imagine wanting to do so. And yet, I'm still a lot of fun. :)
The thing I find Ineresting about Jenny's post is the question she asks:
"So have I just shot myself in the foot, destroyed my credibility to Serious Transsexual eyes as surely as if I had changed my avatar to a picture featuring myself in a rubber French Maid outfit?"
I wonder if a better question would be; did she have any to begin with?
Anyone who is sincere has credibility in my eyes. I see this spat as being another instance of there being two nations divided by a common language, as the bloke with the cigar said. My reading of 'serious' in the OP had more to do with humourlessness than intentness of purpose. And I hope we're not going to play intenter-than-thou....
Abby... I'm not going to take things that far.
Dru... I don't quite agree with your slant on the intent of the OP. To wit:
Every time she posts one of her pictures I hear mutterings of disapproval, as though she's gone too far this time, she's not taking this seriously.
"Serious" there has nothing to do with humor and everything to do with intentness of purpose. I'm not going to play intenter-than-thou, but the intent of her post was clear.
Why so serious?
I mean, costumes are fun. I've always liked a good costume on Halloween or for a play. And I appreciate costume design in films, both men and women. Heck, the TV show Fringe has the best dressed people ever.
But I don't see getting "dolled up" as an outlet for anything. I never have. I tried it once long ago and thought I looked like a horror show and it proved to remind me of what I was not and what I thought I could not be. That's, I guess, why I don't get it. If I were someone who felt that I couldn't transition for whatever reason, getting dressed up in silly costumes would be just about the most painful thing I could think of doing.
Does that make me "Serious"? Ha. I understand the intended humor of Jenny's piece. But it doesn't quite work. And for the record, I will take British humor of American any day of the week. Am I too serious about what I am going through? Yeah, sometimes I am. But I laugh at myself a lot as well. Maybe not on the interwebz, but I value the humor of my day-to-day life a great deal. I'm amused by my world on a regular basis. There is an absurdity to being trans that is hard not to see.
But I guess I'm too serious because I don't play dress up and take funny pictures. Ah well. Sad for me, then.
xoxo
Thinking about it I care not a lot how my credibility is viewed through my writing. I write for myself as a cathartic, and if others choose to follow or unfollow it at will then that is their choice. I would happily use the word 'serious' in front of any group, even - gasp! - the crossdressers! In fact I have several acquaintances who are the epitome of the serious crossdresser and I don't think would be worried in the slightest at being described thus. I am in awe of the dressmaking skills of one in particular, even if I don't share her predilection for bustles.
My apologies again now I've read your post again while not on the run in a works lunchtime. There is no hidden agenda or need for paranoia over the T-Central schedule, nobody involved lets certain featured posts have any amount of time. Robyn-Jane's post just happened to appear and I thought it worthy of featuring. Sometimes not many such posts appear in a week, sometimes two come along at once.
Shame we ain't Evil Geniuses really, I could use a fluffy white cat to make a fuss of.
On another point, I don't moderate my blog's comments unless they're spam. Or maybe if someone stepped outside common decency, but that ain't happened yet. It's turned on for posts over 5 days old to catch spammers, and I enabled it for my last post about the N-word, but that's it. Go on, try posting one, you'll see.
Faline, my heart goes out to you. I know you're going through hell right now. And, all of this just to bring your body and brain into congruency. I've known others who have gone through ugly divorces over the years. In most cases, time heals a lot of the wounds. I hope that to be the case for you and your "ex". More importantly, I hope that all of this does not negatively affect your children's image of their loving parent.
Jenny has that tougue-in-cheek British humor that I just love. I know that she didn't intend her post to point a finger at you. Perhaps, as Halle pointed out, this is just a difference in the cultures of two countries separated by water.
Faline, at T-Central we feature a blog when one of finds one worthy of featuring. There are dry periods when we find little to feature and then there are periods when almost every blog post we read deserves to be featured. We set a policy some time ago to leave a T-Central featured blog up for a minimum of two days. Halle did her post on Sunday. Yesterday, Jenny told us she going to feature Robyn-Jane's post today (Tuesday), allowing for the two-day separation between posts. Unfortunately, the time difference between continents was not considered. I suppose we should modify our policy such that posts stay up for 48 hours. I can assure you that Jenny had no intent to minimize our feature of your excellent post.
Calie xxx
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