Penny's Story
A cute little drummer living her dream.Archive for Rant
Inconsistent Tranny
How the hell am I supposed to insist that people don’t use the word “tranny” when I come to a queer space and they toss it around like drunken sailors?
Could we at least decide whether it’s a horrible word or not, please?
And none of this shit about “well, we can use it but ~cisgender~ people can’t.” That is hypocritical bullshit.
guh
It is interesting how alienated and unwelcome I often feel in queer spaces – I’m really such a normal little straight girl nowadays…
WTF is “read” anyway?
Yesterday I hung out with a friend. We had an interaction with a third person (my interaction with the third person was very limited, while my friend’s interaction with them was direct). After the interaction with the third person, my friend told me that she thought that the third person had “read” me.
I guess I’m struggling with a lot of this.
I don’t know what being “read” means in relation to me anymore. I’m a woman that happens to be tall. Does being “read” mean that someone thinks I look masculine? I sure as hell don’t think I do. Does being “read” mean that someone has divined something about the nature of my genitals at birth? If so, that’s pretty impressive. Does being “read” somehow invalidate my status as a woman? I don’t think so, but who knows what my friend thinks.
Actually, when my friend explained why she thought this third person had “read” me, I thought there were many possible explanations, and that my having been “read” seemed less obvious than other possibilities. I also can’t understand, even if it were true, why this friend would think it made sense to share this with me. To me it’s as if this friend had said: “Hey, they could tell you used to be a guy.” Which is just fucked up on only about a million levels. First, I never “used to be a guy,” I’ve always been a woman (well, girl first) struggling to exist in the world. Also, what about all the women that were born with their vaginas factory-installed yet appear more masculine than me (and there are plenty of them)? Do we get to guess about their legitimacy as woman by trying to “read” them?
Guess what: I’m a woman; telling me that you think someone “read” me is incredibly insulting. Incredibly.
This friend is also trans, though in a different place on her journey, and she’s dealing with her own self-acceptance issues, and I see this pretty clearly as her projecting some of her stuff onto to me, but it makes it very tough to be around her when she bleeds her perceptions onto me. I’m very willing to be supportive and helpful, but not when part of that is her pulling me down, even if she’s doing it unintentionally. I’m done with any sort of thinking that society doesn’t see me as a normal woman, because ~it does~. I understand that this friend still needs time to process the fact that she’s not a freak, but I don’t. We are both normal.
It’s funny how sometimes it seems like cis gender people that “get it” get it better than some trans folk. I totally understand the trans people that get the hell out of the trans ghetto and just exist in the real world (I actually mostly do, but I don’t feel right abandoning people struggling with stuff I once struggled with). In the real world I’m real.
I am a woman.
“God doesn’t make people like you.”
“God doesn’t make people like you.”
Okay, so I don’t know the person that said this, but it was said to a fellow transwoman. And it pissed me off. A lot.
First off, F~U~C~K Y~O~U; how do you know the mind of God? I believe that God created everything; if it’s here, there’s a reason for its existence. I understand that different people have their different faiths and their different ideas of how strongly they get to bully other people to see the same face of God that they see, but come on. If God didn’t make me, who did? And please don’t give me any shit about Satan, or the Devil, because I just don’t buy it. God not only created me this way, but God celebrated my self-acceptance and transition.
I always feel leery trusting people who claim a moral authority. Moral authority is something you aspire to, but you should always feel like you’re falling just short. It’s sort of like I tell my students about perfection: it’s a journey, not a destination. I have done more soul-searching and praying in the last five years than I think most people do in 20; the one thing I am most certain of is God’s love for me just as I am. I have never told someone else that were evil or that God had a problem with them. I have a hard enough time telling people when I think they’re wrong; my approach is usually to ask them questions and make hope they work it out for themselves. Speaking for God just seems beyond the height of human arrogance.
Judgemental people suck.
When my ex-wife moved out, I guess there were some people that tried to vilify me (understandable, considering our marriage’s status as collateral damage in my transition). And the question she would ask these people was: “Who would choose to be transgendered?” Even given all the pain she suffered, she could get it. Transfolk don’t choose this path, why would we? It’s a pretty difficult road. Hell, we have people assuring us that we’re going to hell. 😉
God made me a woman, and for some reason decided that I should be born with a penis and live a life with a transsexual path. I won’t think to question God’s wisdom in that. How dare someone else have the temerity to do that.
Isn’t there something in the Bible about being meek, and not judging, and all that?
You are dead wrong; God ~does~ make people like me.
God made me a proud transsexual woman.
Period.
The Never Ending Outing
So, I got outed today, which is a weird thing to be able to say since I’m pretty much as out as I can be. At the same time, it’s not like I make sure everyone that comes into contact with me knows every aspect of my history, including the fact that I’m transsexual. I usually don’t make a point out of telling people anymore, but it comes up sometimes as I get to know people just because it’s an integral part of my history and it has a lot to do with me being me.
So getting outed is weird and sort of pointless. I don’t really want to detail who outed me and to whom, but I’ll just say that the person that outed me doesn’t even know me, and they outed me to someone that I haven’t met yet but am planning on meeting very soon. The bizarre thing being that I felt like this person should be told, and I was planning on being part of telling them as soon as our first meeting (if not sooner). So the “outing” really is just goofy in the grand scheme of things.
And yet, why do people think that they have the right to spread my personal details around? Yes, it’s very true that I live my life as a ~very~ open book, but when someone goes out of their way to tell someone something about me (and it’s always that I’m a transsexual, it’s never that I’m Swedish), it kind of rubs me the wrong way. How about letting me decide who I share my details with? Is it really relevant to anyone but me and my boyfriend what’s in my panties? (which, ironically enough, is now ~A VAGINA~! {yes, fine, I love saying that}) I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business; I share as much as I do because I think it’s important to have as many transsexual “success stories” floating around as possible. I went through my share of hell; I know that being transgendered can feel like an impossible burden to carry; I want people to see that you can turn things around and succeed in the face of it all.
It’s been a very long time since I got outed, which I think makes sense considering how open I am about my life – it’s pretty hard for anyone to find someone that ~doesn’t~ know that I’m a transsexual. And I guess I naively thought that after surgery I was beyond being outed. Nope; apparently as long as I have the history that I do (which obviously will be forever) I have the potential to be outed.
All this does is make me want to scream from the rooftops: “I AM A TRANSSEXUAL, AND I ROCK!”
Even being the ex-wife of a transsexual garners hate sometimes
A while ago, when I got fed-up of guys emailing me after seeing my pics online, only to have the guys disappear and/or say hateful things when I told them that I’m a transsexual, I started posting the email or IM transcripts just to show how much people can suck sometimes. Well, amazingly enough, even my ex-wife gets hate for having been married to a transsexual. What the heck? This little exchange happened between my ex and a wicked winner the other day. I asked her if it was okay if I shared it, because I just couldn’t believe it and I wanted to rant about it. Anyway, here it is (in case it’s not obvious, “J” is my ex):
m: i wanna eat uJ: Bye!!!
m: will u let me
m: y u say bye?
J: Not so interested anymore.
J: Sorry.
m: why arent u
J: I believe strongly in a healthy sexual relationship…but that’s not all there is. You don’t even know me and that’s all you can think about. You show little interest in getting to know me…but TONS of interest in sex.
m: lol
J: What is so funny?
m: you!!
J: And why is that?
J: Enlighten me…
m: maybe u got what u wanted by ur ex
J: Glad that I can finally see the real you. Have a nice life…
m: oh i will darling i will
m: see i see the you in u how u r
m: well i do hope u get a disease and die,,, for marrying a fag
m: why would a man change himeself to be a lady like,,, that tells me ur not worth it
So, wow do I have a lot to say about this. It’s pretty obvious this guy realized that he wasn’t gonna get his willy wet and decided to lash out. I’m surprised by the amount of vitriol that this guy would unleash on someone that he had chatted with several times; I know the internet encourages people to be more rude than they ever would be in person, but still. “I do hope you get a disease and die.” WTF? Also, this kind of reminds me of the reaction that some tranny-chasers have when they get shot down; when a transwoman turns down the advances of a chaser, the chaser will often respond by calling the transwoman a “fag.” Damn, people are messed and conflicted.
Most importantly is the assertion that he makes in his last line. I know that J has worried that she had something to do with me transitioning. But she had nothing to do with me going into the dress-up box in Nursery School and picking out the high heels; she had nothing to do with me stealing my mom’s pantyhose when I was twelve; she had nothing to do with me buying a dress for one of my girlfriends wishing that I could wear it instead of her. J had nothing to do with the fact that I’m transgendered; it started way before her. The reason this pisses me off so much is that J saved me; she encouraged me to join my first support group, start therapy, and accept myself for who I truly am. I can’t believe that someone would give her any shit whatsoever about that. J is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, and it pisses me off when people don’t treat her right. It’s weird how I feel protective of her; I’ve told her that in some ways I feel like her big sister, in some ways I feel like her little sister, I am her ex-husband [there’s a mind-fuck if ever there was one], and we’re best friends. This is just about the strangest (and most lovely) relationship I’ve ever had with anyone.
There was one nice thing about this exchange, I can totally picture J saying, “Enlighten Me.” She has such a “hey, fuck you” tone when she wants to. I only wish this guy could have heard her say it, I’m sure it was cutting as hell.
Living the Deceptive Life
“She deceived him.”
So was the reaction of one of my friends to the story from Fark that I blogged about the other day. And I kind of freaked when she said that. It is very unusual for me to stop a conversation in the middle and say, “We shouldn’t talk about this.” That’s just what I did, though. I could not continue with that line of conversation without becoming completely irrational.
I guess my problem could be as much with the specific word as it is with the concept that this person was trying to communicate; that a tranny that doesn’t identify her genital status verbally before any one gets to see said genitals is not being completely forthcoming.
I worry that it is the prevailing wisdom. Worse, I worry that the reason it is seen as deceptive is because, as much as people “get it,” on some fundamental level there is the sneaking suspicion that I’m just a man that decided to be a woman and no amount of living as a woman, or hormones, or surgery will ever make me anything but a deluded man.
meh
I am becoming the humorless tranny. I get offended and hurt and pissed and wounded and grumpy far too easily. Another friend yesterday asked me if something had offended me in such a way that I inferred that she was suggesting that I become offended with great regularity. I’ve been accused of making people walk on eggshells more than once.
I don’t try to be so high-maintenance, I just get frustarted that so often I feel like I have to defend my identity even to people that I feel should be safer than they turn out to be.
Maybe I am just hyper-sensitive. Maybe everyone does get it. Maybe I should just chill.
But then, right when I’m feeling especially vulnerable, a friend says that the trans woman that got stabbed had deceived her attacker. I guess the word “deceived” really pushes a hot-button for me. It pushes me right back into the dilemma that I love so much: either brand a scarlett T on my forehead or I will be accused of deceiving people. Am I deceiving people when I use the ladies room? Am I deceiving people when they address me with female pronouns? Am I deceiving a suitor that takes me out to dinner? Am I deceiving someone if I make-out with them without disclosing the particulars of my panties? Am I deceiving someone if we engage in heavy-petting without first having a heart-to-heart about what my genitals look like? (and I guess the [to me implied] question: Am I deceiving myself by thinking I’m a woman). [my answer, btw, is an emphatic “no”]
I suppose I can only see the word “deception” being appropriate is if the person in question isn’t really a woman; she’s deceiving someone into thinking she’s a woman, but she isn’t really.
People get involved with other people all the time and don’t disclose important details (marital status; STD status; having kids; what religion they are; medical history; etc…). Those people are rarely stabbed for their lack of disclosure. Being transgendered seems to be a special case. I love being special.
*sigh*
I’m sure the stuff that’s gone down with my ex lately hasn’t helped. Being over my “practice-crush” phase isn’t helping. The article on Fark really didn’t help.
Feeling like I’ll always have to carry a bull-horn announcing the fact that I’m a tranny (even post-surgery) to ward-off claims of “deception” just makes me feel so tired.
Having a discussion with a close male friend who I feel would have had a similar reaction as the stabber in the Fark article (I don’t think he would have stabbed her, but he may have become violent {you know, like a slap or something – no big deal, right?}, and I totally believe would have felt deceived and embarressed) makes me feel hopeless.
Not having had a single date since my ex left makes me feel completely undesirable. And I’m completely undesirable equally with people who know and people who don’t know. I’m equal-opportunity hideous.
It’s funny, because a lot of the time I feel generally “happy,” but I’m also so damn tired and worn-out by life.
I’m just lonely.
Penny's Story 