I am going to be busy the next couple of days with work for the non-profit so I dug through my blog and picked out some posts that are worth bring back...
Do you remember that line from the Wizard of Oz? When Glinda, the Good Witch of the North asked “Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?” Sometimes we are asked "Are we a good trans-person or a bad trans-person?"
There is a post on Facebook from Autrostraddle by Vivian from early last year that asks that question about trans-people, “I’m A Trans Woman And I’m Not Interested In Being One of the ‘Good Ones’” in which she wrote,
A month or two after I started living full time out as woman, one of my friends suggested I talk to an acquaintance of his, an older trans woman who had been out for years.
My friend thought his acquaintance might be able to give me some tips on surviving as a trans woman. I was thrilled. Here, I though, was someone who had the answers. Surely she would be able to point me in the right direction. We had arranged to meet in a coffee shop. In my excitement I arrived an hour early. It was going to be awesome.
What actually happened was that she showed up and asked why I wasn’t dressed like a woman. I was wearing skinny jeans, a studded belt, and an ironic t-shirt. I liked how I looked. I looked, in my opinion, like a queer woman in her mid-twenties on her day off, which, shockingly, I was.
When I was first coming out I dressed in a dress and heels and used makeup but after awhile I realized that it wasn’t me. What was me was jeans, T-shirt and sneakers. I do like getting dressed up for special occasions but it is not something that I want to do full time, for one thing pantyhose sucks and heels are a pain in the back.
The thing is, we all dress different and you dress different for different occasions, you dress different for work than you dress for working out in the yard (except if your job is construction or something similar). We dress different if you are going out to a fast food restaurant or a fancy restaurant.
She goes on to write,
She was neither the first nor the last person to inform me that I’m doing it wrong. There was I woman I met soon after moving back up to Boston in 2011. She had transitioned in her teens and most folks wouldn’t know she was trans unless she wanted to tell them. She had a real heart for women who were just starting transition, but she had expectations for those people. She couldn’t stand ‘bricks.’ She explained that bricks were women who looked “like a man in a dress.” A cinderblock was even worse. A trans guy who was too femme was feathery.
I think many of us have heard other trans-people talk like that; how they believed that if you ccannot blend into society you had no right to go out in public and “give us a bad name.” But the lightning bolt that hits us and make us trans does not distinguish between whether we pass or not. I know trans-people who will always be identified as transgender, but that doesn’t make them any less trans. We cannot judge who is trans and who is not trans by how a person can integrate in to society.
She ends her article by saying,
I don’t care. Sun shines and rain falls on the just and unjust alike. I don’t want to know who the Real Good Ones and the Real Bad Ones are. We’re all people. We all deserve to be treated as valued members of humanity. That’s all.
Are You A Good Witch Or A Bad Witch
Do you remember that line from the Wizard of Oz? When Glinda, the Good Witch of the North asked “Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?” Sometimes we are asked "Are we a good trans-person or a bad trans-person?"
There is a post on Facebook from Autrostraddle by Vivian from early last year that asks that question about trans-people, “I’m A Trans Woman And I’m Not Interested In Being One of the ‘Good Ones’” in which she wrote,
A month or two after I started living full time out as woman, one of my friends suggested I talk to an acquaintance of his, an older trans woman who had been out for years.
My friend thought his acquaintance might be able to give me some tips on surviving as a trans woman. I was thrilled. Here, I though, was someone who had the answers. Surely she would be able to point me in the right direction. We had arranged to meet in a coffee shop. In my excitement I arrived an hour early. It was going to be awesome.
What actually happened was that she showed up and asked why I wasn’t dressed like a woman. I was wearing skinny jeans, a studded belt, and an ironic t-shirt. I liked how I looked. I looked, in my opinion, like a queer woman in her mid-twenties on her day off, which, shockingly, I was.
When I was first coming out I dressed in a dress and heels and used makeup but after awhile I realized that it wasn’t me. What was me was jeans, T-shirt and sneakers. I do like getting dressed up for special occasions but it is not something that I want to do full time, for one thing pantyhose sucks and heels are a pain in the back.
The thing is, we all dress different and you dress different for different occasions, you dress different for work than you dress for working out in the yard (except if your job is construction or something similar). We dress different if you are going out to a fast food restaurant or a fancy restaurant.
She goes on to write,
She was neither the first nor the last person to inform me that I’m doing it wrong. There was I woman I met soon after moving back up to Boston in 2011. She had transitioned in her teens and most folks wouldn’t know she was trans unless she wanted to tell them. She had a real heart for women who were just starting transition, but she had expectations for those people. She couldn’t stand ‘bricks.’ She explained that bricks were women who looked “like a man in a dress.” A cinderblock was even worse. A trans guy who was too femme was feathery.
I think many of us have heard other trans-people talk like that; how they believed that if you ccannot blend into society you had no right to go out in public and “give us a bad name.” But the lightning bolt that hits us and make us trans does not distinguish between whether we pass or not. I know trans-people who will always be identified as transgender, but that doesn’t make them any less trans. We cannot judge who is trans and who is not trans by how a person can integrate in to society.
She ends her article by saying,
I don’t care. Sun shines and rain falls on the just and unjust alike. I don’t want to know who the Real Good Ones and the Real Bad Ones are. We’re all people. We all deserve to be treated as valued members of humanity. That’s all.
No comments:
Post a Comment