If I had a nickel for every time I’ve read or heard that when a CD/TG goes through a “slutty phase” it’s because they’re just going through their female adolescence, like all girls go through – experimenting with styles, wearing too much makeup, etc., I’d be rich woman.
While it may be true that teenaged girls experiement with makeup and clothes, it also occurred to me that I had never gone through a “slutty” phase. So I started asking other women – partners, friends, sisters – and amazingly enough, none of them had.
One woman (a trans-partner as well) pointed out that the “slutty” girls in high school – the ones everyone knew would have sex with nearly anyone – were the only ones who dressed that way. (She also pointed out that in retrospect, those girls were most likely subjected to sexual abuse or violence as children or young adults, which I think is entirely accurate).
Most of us were busy covering up our newly-exploding bodies, dealing with what it felt like to have curves, to be looked at sexually. It wasn’t easy. But the last thing we were doing was dressing like sluts – believe me, it comes as quite a shock to have thighs, get your period, grow breasts – and suddenly find that your male friends look at you differently. A lot of women I know just covered up – in whatever ways possible – until they’d made peace with their new bodies. And for a lot of us, that didn’t happen until college, if then.
So what are trannies really doing when they dress slutty? It’s my feeling that what they’re doing is indulging in a “look” that they – socialized as men – think is powerful. It’s part of the mythology that women are in control, that we use men to suit out purposes – you know, the “cold hearted bitch” myth that even Robin Givens is debunking on Oprah this week.
And that’s not so much what bothers me. What bothers me is how quickly we as partners are to accept this “received wisdom.” This crap wasn’t explained this way by a partner – I’m pretty sure of it. Because it does not compute. Any woman who has been raised as and lived as a woman knows it doesn’t compute, but we tell each other things like this to feel better about the way our partners are objectifying women in their choice of clothes. We fail to inform our partners, too.
The most beautiful women I know are not masters of their realm. They are usually more insecure than other women who don’t play the beauty game, actually. I was friends with a woman who was beautiful who would always make sure people had noticed her when she walked into a room; it helped boost her confidence, because otherwise she felt she had nothing to give. She waited by the phone like every other girl, wondering if he was going to call like he said he would.
So please – let’s drop this little bromide. Every time a partner tells you her partner is going through the “slutty” phase, just ask her: did you have one? My money is on the fact that she didn’t go through a “slutty” phase, and neither did any other woman she knows.
The Sanctity of Marriage
Does it strike anyone else as insane that the “marriage is sacred” crew are the same people who have decided that Terri Schiavo’s husband can’t make the decision about what she would have wanted? I mean, isn’t that what marriage is all about? Isn’t being able to make this kind of decision what they’re trying to keep gays and lesbians from?
Do they even know what they’re talking about, or look in the mirror ever? I don’t think so. Neither does Dahlia Lithwick of Slate.
Another article, focusing on the privacy of decisions like this, and why our seniors have come out most strongly against this kind of governmental intervention.
And another, focusing on the political grandstanding, which mentions the fact that although the Catholic Bishops have recently started a new campaign against the death penalty, Bush and DeLay and their boys aren’t interested in it. “Culture of Life,” indeed.
Are You a Yale Alum?
As many of you know, I took a panel of crossdressers to this year’s “Trans Issues Week at Yale” in order to elucidate the issues het crossdressers face. Other events later in the week focused on female masculinity and trans youth issues. The only problem is – the funding that financed the first two “Trans Weeks at Yale” has ended. In order to have a 3rd, and 4th, and 5th, funding is needed.
As a result, I’m looking for Yale alum who identify as trans, or who are interested in helping promote trans awareness at Yale. Yale is the college for “future policy makers of America” and as such, is a great place to be having these conferences.
Please contact me at helenboyd(at)myhusbandbetty.com if you are interested in helping get involved in this event – either by donating directly or by helping fundraise for it.
Thank you,
Helen Boyd
Our Boy Overseas
I got an email the other day from a 19-year-old crossdresser who was reading my book.
He mentioned how lucky he felt to be dealing with this stuff at 19, before making any permanent commitments in his life.
And then he mentioned that he’s an Army truck driver in Iraq, who parents made him join because it would do him “a world of good.”
He doesn’t get a lot of mail, or packages, and as we all know, our Army guys are taking the hardest hit in Iraq. As a result, I thought it might be cool for a bunch of us to send him mail, email, and even care packages.
Now remember, he wants to fit in with the rest of the guys, so no boxes full of panties (though he is looking for a copy or two of Girl Talk, if anyone’s got a copy they can spare.)
Send letters, cards, gifts, etc to my PO Box, and I’ll ship them to him (though mark them “for our boy overseas” so I know who they’re for). Likewise, send me emails at helenboyd(at)myhusbandbetty.com, and I’ll forward them to him.
Website Re-Design
In about a week, Betty and I will unveil the new website design for www.myhusbandbetty.com, including the new name for my blog.
A lot of the same information will remain (or simply be updated) but there will be a couple of new features as well that I think folks will like. It will of course look entirely different as well.
If I seem a bit absent from the message boards, or don’t post new blog entries here, that may be the reason.
A Happy Holy Week to all who celebrate Easter.
Couples' Night
Since around November, a group of couples has been getting together on Friday or Saturday nights for dinner. We’ve been very lucky in that the restaurant East of Eighth has provided a good spot – it’s big, they don’t mind if we’re there for a while, and we can hear each other speak.
We’ll be going out together tonight again.
If anyone is interested in joining us for an upcoming gathering, please check the TG Events Listings part of the MHB Boards.
My Best Audience
Helen, reading the pitch for the next book to a fascinated Aeneas, who has gender issues of his own.
When we first got the boys, we were told they were a brother and a sister. I never bothered to check. As good cat parents, we took them to the vet for their shots, where I asked about when we should have them neutered. “I don’t want any kittens on my hands.”
The vet looked at me as if she didn’t know quite what to think.
“They can’t have kittens,” she said.
“No? I thought them being siblings wouldn’t prevent that,” I added.
Finally it dawned on her: “They’re both boys – I guess that explains why this one’s named Aenea.”
Not only did it turn out Aenea was in fact Aeneas, but he was the more sexually mature of them, and could have started spraying at any moment. In a few short days, he went from female to male to eunuch (but he’ll always be a princess to me).
The founder of Rome never had such problems, I’m sure of it, though Dido sure came close to castrating him.
Helen & Betty on Canadian Bravo
Hey Canadians! Our “lust lit” episode of Richler Ink is going to be on Bravo in Canada on March 17th, at 10pm:
For the actual listing, check out Helen & Betty on Richler Ink
Obvious
This may seem obvious to the rest of you, but I’ve had a major revelation tonight.
I’ve been reading Judith Halberstam’s Female Masculinity – just started it, in fact – and I’ve been looking forward to reading it since I was given it – so much so I hurried through the end of another book (yes, about gender too) I’d been reading.
And then I came to this, on page 28:
Because female masculinity seems to be at its most threatening when coupled with lesbian desire, in this book I concentrate on queer female masculinity almost to the exclusion of heterosexual female masculinity.
My enthusiasm dropped like a lead balloon, then, but I read on:
I have no doubt that heterosexual female masculinity menaces gender conformity in its own way, but all too often it represents an acceptable degree of female masculinity as compared to the excessive masculinity of the dyke.
And there you go: not only is she not talking about masculinity in heterosexual women, but she managed to get a dig in about how “acceptable” my masculinity is. (Tell that to all the boys who wouldn’t date me, and all the kids who called me dyke over the years, Prof. Halberstam!) So not only did I not find validation, but found its opposite.
I’m sure for a lot of you, finding stuff about drag queens (or even crossdresser erotica that ends with the CD being sexual with a man, or the stories about how most MTF transsexuals end up dating/marrying men, etc) had the same effect, the same kind of let-down, the hope of finally reading something about yourself only to find, in fact, the author is precisely not talking about you.
What I realized is that in some ways, this is my connection to crossdressers: of being gender variant in a heterosexual context. In fact, one young TG just came on our boards trying to figure out where to meet girls who might like his gender mix; I spent most of my teens and early 20s trying to find a guy who liked women who weren’t models of prototypical femininity, and let’s just say: I found a lot of friends, and not a lot of dates. (I did get asked out by women an awful lot, though.)
Although I probably knew this at some level before now, the actual experience of opening this book with expectation – that I might learn something about who I am and how I fit in – came to an abrupt and unsatisfying halt: oh cool this is about – well maybe it is – no she doesn’t seem to be – oh, it’s not about me at all… like the judges on The Muppet Show.
After writing damn in the margin, I kept reading, and found out that the clitoris was officially discovered in 1559 when two Italian anatomists . . . gave the organ a name and ascribed it a function (p. 60). So far, aside from the academic writing style (which makes me want to take out a red pen) it’s chock full of goodies like that one, despite the fact that I won’t find any answers to my own questions in it.
In solidarity,
Helen
Transvestites and Terminology, Redux
I wanted to reiterate one point: I’m not calling for people to start using the term transvestite if it makes them uncomfortable. I am all for people calling themselves what they themselves choose. In the same light, I’d love to see crossdressers accept the fact that some people will opt for transvestite- whether it’s because they’re from the UK, as a queer strategy, or for any other reason. We don’t have to agree on terminology in order to educate, by any stretch, and angrily arguing with another person with a male body who wears women’s clothes about what he calls himself seems counter-productive; likewise, writing a letter in response to a journalist’s use of the word is also pointless. My over-arching point was that it’s not the terminology that will make or break the chance of crossdressers and transvestites achieving public acceptance, but education as to the broader issues.
But I also think understanding where terms come from is important. Transvestite was coined by a fellow transvestite; I’ve just learned that Magnus Hirschfeld crossdressed (though if anyone can back up that claim, I’d like to see the evidence, as I’ve never run across it before). As much as I can understand a community choosing a new term over a word that had become loaded with negative connotations, I also strongly feel that taking back those words – emptying them of their charge – is equally valid. (I just learned that ‘Suffragette’ was a slur against the women who called themselves Suffragists, in fact, as if to minimalize and ‘make cute’ their issue. The Suffragists were not deterred by the slur and it certainly didn’t stop them in their tracks, since they won the right for women to vote not long after.)
Again, what words we use is not the important issue.
One of my themes recently has been that we need to be more gentle with each other within the trans community. We also need to ‘wait and see’ a bit more. I was accused not too long ago of using the term ‘real woman’ in one of my workshops. I was made aware of this fact by a transwoman who hadn’t read my book and who told me how offended she was, how hateful and hierarchical the term was, about a minute after my workshop ended. I was dumbfounded. As any of you who speak to groups know, you’re not always conscious of every word choice while you’re speaking. Still, I was pretty sure I hadn’t used the term – except perhaps in quotes, to indicate what someone else might have said. (Later, a transwoman and friend of mine, when she heard how upset I was, confessed that she had been the one to use the term in my workshop, and immediately volunteered to explain to the angry transwoman that she had attacked me unnecessarily. At the end of the day, the issue was resolved, but not before I’d felt attacked and shaken for having said something I never said.)
I’ve learned, as a feminist, that pointing out that I’m not a girl but a woman is met often with raised eyebrows. And this, within the trans community, where using the term transvestite instead of crossdresser or ‘real woman’ instead of ‘woman raised female’ can cause flame wars online and arguments in person! It’d be ironic if it were even a little bit funny, but it’s not. The constant use of ‘GG’ offends me regularly, for two reasons: because chromosomes are not necessarily the definitive evidence for one’s gender/sexing at birth, and because I’m over the age of 18 (as I like to remind my dad). But is it a big deal? No, it’s not. I mention it when someone refers to me as a girl, but if another partner or SO uses it for herself, I’m not going to correct her and tell her what she should be offended by.
Righteous anger over how transpeople are misrepresented is often needed, but a lot of the bickering and judgments we make of each other are unnecessary and distracting. I’ve read letters sent to newspaper editors, journalists, and the Lambda Literary Awards people that horrify me. Do we need to be righteously angry and insulting in order to get our point across? I’ve read exchanges on message boards that are more full of hate than I’d expect from my worst enemy. I understand anger, as I’m a punk rocker at heart, but are we really going to gain allies and educate the larger community by telling everyone they’re insensitive idiots? Must we use full-blown, dramatic rhetoric every time someone gets a pronoun wrong, or refers to a transsexual as transgender?
The question is whether or not we want to be heard beyond the trans ghetto, and if we do – what we need to get there. The community needs to be a place of support and power, a place that we go back to, to recharge and energize ourselves for the larger work of educating the general public. Time spent arguing about semantics among ourselves is time not spent coming up with creative ways to represent the trans community to the rest of the world in a positive way. Confronting each other instead of calmly suggesting a mistake makes it harder to collaborate in the future. Our words matter, but our attitudes matter more: the goal is tolerance by larger society, not who wins points on the message boards for telling a fellow transperson what-for.