Black Velvet if you please

I was shopping at the dollar store the other day, and came across a bottle of nail polish in the colour "Black Velvet". I started thinking a bit.

Being in my position in regards to my gender - stuck somewhere that is neither male nor female - I have this tendency to completely deny the feminine and cling to the masculine. I have such dislike for my femaleness that I'll do everything I can to mask, disguise or otherwise ignore the fact that I have tits and a vagina. I'll never be completely genderless. It's just not a possibility. The best I can do is pick and choose which parts of each gender presentation best suits whatever "me" is facing the world at the time and go from there.

I've come to the realization that I'm polarizing myself. I'm falling into the same binary trap that everyone else does. I'm not a man, but I'm trying to be everything non-woman. It's an upstream swim from pink to blue. I'm buying into the binary bullshit by denying myself the full spectrum of gender expression. Androgyny is full androgyny from start to finish. There are no limits to who I am.

So back to the dollar store and the bottle of Black Velvet.

After a few moments of consideration, I dropped the dollar on the little black bottle and took it home with me. While curled up on my couch watching NCIS, I painted my toes with it. It looks cute and kinda girly, but even on me "girly" isn't terribly girly.

Next step: Sandals so I can show them off!

Just a little off the top, please...

This will probably be just a short post.

I recently went to get a haircut. Baron (my partner) decided to surprise me with one, since I'd been complaining about looking a bit shaggy.

The lady cutting my hair was older, and I tend to worry about older stylists, because they tend to be pretty rigid when it comes to how they cut hair. I told her I didn't want a girl's haircut, I wanted a men's haircut, or a boys haircut. She didn't quite follow what i was saying, so she brought over a style book for me to look at. She flipped through "Short Hair" pictures for women, and pointed out some things she liked. I took the book from her, flipped to the back under "Men's Hair", and picked out this really cute bushy kind of trendy haircut. She kept saying "Are you sure?" and was very wary of doing what I asked her to do. In the end, I still think she played the conservative, and left the hair too long for my comfort.

I've found, as time goes on, stylists tend to be too afraid to give me, the customer, what I ask for. They don't want to cut my hair boyish, they're afraid of cutting it too short - even though I tell them that I used to shave my head, and that there's no such thing as "too short". They're afraid of jeopardizing their tip by doing something "wrong", even when that wrong is exactly what I'm asking for. Frustration abounds.

I've had it suggested to me that I go to a barber, but I've noticed that most barbers only know how to cut two styles, and I have no interest in getting a buzzcut. I don't feel the need to look like a butch lesbian marine.

Is there really something wrong with wanting a cute, trendy haircut that just happens to be in the "male" section of the style book? Seriously?

I am not my surgery!

This is a story about terminology.

Transsexual, transgender, transgenderist, crossdresser... Sometimes I think we do such a great job of dividing us into successively smaller and smaller boxes. The only thing we're succeeding at by putting people in little boxes is building walls between us all.

Why do we need these walls? Why do we feel this perpetual need to label ourselves into nonexistance? This box is "right" and that box is "wrong". Any box that isn't my box is automatically invalid. From inside my closet, your closet doesn't exist.

Does anyone other than me see the total futility in this kind of mentality?

My gender identity doesn't match my biological gender. My gender presentation doesn't match my biological gender. Does this make me less transgender than, say, the FtM with topsurgery who ops out of full SRS because the results are sub-par? Does this make me less transgender than the fully post-op MtF, complete with facial femininzation and breast augmentation?

I think not.

I refuse to let society dictate which box I place my check mark in. I'm certainly not going to allow the trans or LGB communities dictate that for me too. I am not my surgery, and my surgery (or lack thereof) is not what makes me the person I am. My genitals do not make or break my identity.

If you don't want me to judge you based on what's taking up space in your Levi's, don't judge me based on what is or isn't in mine. Society says my birth certificate, my drivers license, my legal documents must be checked M or F. What kind of people would we be if we followed the will of the government like lemmings?

Happily I will buck conformity and express Gender Anarchy. Burn down the closets, break the walls, and leave the boxes to U-Haul, because the isolation you are putting yourselves in is self-imposed. Break the shackles of gender conformity and just be you for a change, regardless of people's opinions, looks and gestures. Toss them a few colourful gestures of your own.

Keepin' it real

Ok, this might get a bit ranty, so I apologize in advance.

As of late, I've noticed a tendency for the trans community to divide itself under the notion that you are either a "real" transgender person, or you're not. By this definition, if I am not:

- Taking hormones
- Working towards surgical transition (top surgery, SRS, etc.)
- Identifying as a Transsexual
- Able to cleanly fit into the boxes of A-Male and B-Female, regardless of my present biological gender or surgical status

...then I am not a "real" transperson.

By this definition, if you identify as genderqueer, third gender, gender ambiguous, androgyne, or anywhere on the gender spectrum outside of the two poles of Male and Female, then you my friend are not a transperson.

You are:
- a drag queen/king
- a crossdresser
- a crossplayer
- confused
- doing it to get attention
- a tomboy/sissygirl
- faking it/pretending

Ok, now here's where the ranty part comes in.

I would like to know what gives someone the right, the sheer audacity, to think that they know who I am better than I do? My gender identity is no more or less valid than any other transsexual. How can you expect me to respect "the person you are inside", when you can't show me the same courtesy?

Much of the transsexual community is so caught up in the cisgender propaganda that you MUST conform to TAB A or SLOT B, with no variables in between. While they may be born in the wrong gendered body, they still confine themselves to their own true identity. That identity just happens to fit into those nice little boxes the cisgender community has designed. Like the cisgendered community, some transsexuals refuse to believe that there are gender identities that defy the polar definitions of male and female. You MUST force your peg into the square or round holes, or risk being ostracized from both the cis and trans communities.

My friends, I call bullshit.

I don't fit your clearly defined gender roles. I'm too physically masculine to be seen as fully female. I've got large breasts and a vagina, so I can't be viewed as fully male. I don't feel any connection to the identities of male or female. I am the third gender, physically, mentally, socially, in every way. Nothing you say or do will invalidate that, and if you are a transperson who attempts to take away who I am, then you are hypocrite in the truest sense of the term.

When I work towards rights and education in regards to trans issues, I'm doing so for the sake of ALL transpeople. I'm not saying "I'm only working for the HBS people" or "I'm only working for the gender fluid people". Absolutely not. Whether people like to admit it or not, we are all in this together. Setting up walls and isolating each other is simply breaking apart what strength we have in unity. This is how society will keep us down and continue to view us as some kind of freakshow.

I am as real as my cisgendered partner and my FtM friend. My thoughts, feelings and identity are just as valid as yours, regardless of my surgical or transitional status. As much as I would like to be able to fit into a neat little box, I don't, I never have and never could. Forcing me into those narrow definitions is just as confining as forcing a FtM to live their life as a woman. I would be living a lie.

If you want to be accepted as your true self, you must be equally willing to accept others who live by the same paradigm. Alternatives in gender expression does not make anyone less "real" than the pre and post op crowd. Don't assume I have any more choice in who I am than you do, simply because I don't conform to your idea of what gender identity should be.

I will not lie to myself and those I love to gain your acceptance. End of story.

"You throw like a girl!"

When I was around 12 or 13, I tried out for Little League. Everyone told me to try out for softball, and one of my friend's parents ran the softball league, but I hate softball. My hands are too small for the ball. But I digress...

I didn't make the Little League team - thinking back, I'm not sure if any 'girls' did - and was placed on the farm team instead. As the only female bodied person on the team, because of my age, I was a little taller than the rest of the team. I would keep my shoulder length hair tucked under my hat to avoid standing out.

One day during practice, we were throwing the ball back and forth. The father of the boy I was partnered with was in the stands "encouraging" him. I'm sure that's what he thought he was doing. I remember some of the things he said to my partner, "What was that?", "Who taught you how to throw??"

"You throw like a girl!"

I caught the ball, and stopped. Reaching up I took off my hat, and dropped it on the grass next to me, and resumed practicing.

The guy was quiet the rest of the practice.

--------

At the end of the season, we had a big picnic. We'd topped the farm league that year, so each of us got a trophy. I remember going up to the table, and seeing all the little baseball player trophies lined up in neat little rows. I eagerly searched for my name, and to my horror, I found mine. In the neat little rows of baseball player after baseball player, helmets on and bats poised high and waiting, was a figure about a half inch taller than the others, with a more upright stance and a ponytail.

They had put a softball player on my trophy, because the figure was a girl.

I don't think there were words at the time to describe how angry I was. I'm NOT a softball player! I'm a baseball player! I wanted to be just like everyone else on the team, I didn't want to be singled out or made different. Why couldn't they just let me blend in with the rest of the boys?

I'm sure they thought at the time they were doing the "right thing". As they say, however, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and all they succeeded in doing is reminding me just how different from everyone else I really was. All it lead to was me forcing myself into the role of "GIRL" they had laid before me, forgoing my love of baseball and BMX an squeezing myself into a prison of skirts, sweaters and false enthusiasm: Cheerleading.

Yes, there are pictures.

No, you can't see them.

Flasback! 7th Grade

So I went out to run errands today: picked up an Ebay purchase at the post office, went to CVS to get cold medicine for my sick roommate, and stopped by Arby's to bring home some dinner (forgot how expensive they are!).

As I'm pulling out of Arby's, Home Sweet Home by Motley Crue comes on the radio station. Suddenly it's like I'm transported back to eight grade, and I'm twelve years old again.

I remember a classmate tearing the legs off the Gumby keychain my oldest brother gave me.

I also remember someone handing me back the mix tape I'd made for the class party (I think for the last day of school). This was of course after someone had smashed it.

I recall the school dance, where the only person who would dance with me was the assistant principal.

*sigh* Ah, memories.

Relationships

Relationships are an odd one in my situation.  I'm transgender, identifying as third gender, and a lot of people really don't know what to make of that.  

My last long term partner, a bisexual man, had no problem with any of my gender expression.  Since our breakup over a year ago, in my search for a new partner, I've come across a myriad of responses to my gender identity.

Once, while sitting in a diner with me, my potential partner, a gay man, and a very sexually liberal thinker (straight, but very accepting of everyone in the LGBT community), we got on the discussion of transgender, and I mentioned to them that I am transgender.  My not-partner (who already knew this) said very loudly "No you're not!!", startling the hell out of me and our other two friends.  I think that was when I realized it really wasn't going to work.

Someone else I crushed on once said "I wouldn't care if I found out tomorrow you had a penis, I'd love you just the same."  It was one of the best things anyone had ever said to me.  Then he disappeared, and I haven't seen or heard from him since last July.  So much for that.

Then I met Baron.  Baron is my current partner, and we've been committed to each other for five months.  I came out to him very early on in our friendship, and I think it kind of threw his brain for a loop.  Instead of doing what some people I've met have done (which is run and hide, or never talk to me again) he buckled down, and he researched.  He read, he studied, he met other transgender and transsexual people and talked to them, he did everything he could to understand as best as he can.

We both knew early on he is a strictly heterosexual man, and if I chose any kind of surgical transition, it would mean the end of our relationship.  I understand that.  He's heterosexual - he's not attracted to penis.  As it stands, identifying as third gender, I really have no surgical plans in my future (except maybe a breast reduction, someday).  I like living my life very gender ambiguously.  To me, it's comfortable.  To us, it works.

My partner, despite being heterosexual, is comfortable with me being as out and vocal as I am, and with being beside me in public, when I dress and present as male.  Sure, this might mean we could be mistaken for a gay couple.  Let them.  We are who we are - two people who love each other - no matter how straight or how queer you define it.

Yes, I live a pretty queer life, and I'm in a pretty queer relationship.  We defy the idea of a heteronormative couple.  It's like those tshirts: "I'm not straight but my boyfriend is."

Well, it's true:  I'm NOT straight, but my boyfriend is.

Invisibility

First, let me apologize for my lack of updates. Between preparing to move, and a nasty bout of the flu, I haven't been able to update as much as I'd like. I hope to remedy this soon.

Invisibility

I grew up invisible.

Not in the Harry Potter Invisiblity Cloak kind of invisible, more like the "no one really noticed I was there" kind.

I grew up in the shadow of my twin brother, born one minute before me. When we were growing up, my mom (like the mother of all twins it seems) wanted to dress us in matching outfits. Me being a "girl" and my brother being a boy didn't deter her. She simply bought his clothes in blue, and mine in red. So it would seem I was a very very young crossdresser. Keeping my hair short didn't help matters any, people would just mistake me for my brother, or thought she had twin boys.

Growing up, I tried very hard to get my parents to notice I was there. I played sports, I won awards, I was in civic and community service organizations. I earned the right to go to fancy dinners with State Representatives and Mayors. I was the stereotypical "good girl" - I never got in trouble, I didn't break rules, I just wanted someone - anyone - to notice I was there, maybe even like me. I remember a time (my teacher actually took a picture of this, I wish I could find it), around fourth or fifth grade, at recess, watching the kids play kickball, and me sitting on the steps by the doors, alone. I did that a lot.

My brother has always been my opposite. I'm left handed, he's right handed. I'm more extroverted, he was very introverted. My parents - and most everyone who came into contact with him - overcompensated for his lack of involvement. He was given everything he could want, toys, musical instruments, video games, electronics, a tv, even his own room. I had my own room for about a year - age 13-14 - until we moved to a smaller apartment and I had to share with my mom.

It's difficult living in someone's shadow. I had nightmares of being in crowds, screaming my lungs out, and no one hearing me. Finally, at age 16, burnt out from going from school to work to civic groups, frustrated because my mother signed for my brother to get his drivers license (but wouldn't sign for me), suffering for months from an ulcer, dealing with the emotional torture of sexual abuse that started when I was 13, I decided I wanted to die.

Why is it that it took an attempt to end my life for people to notice there was something wrong?

I still bear scars, though few people get to see them. Talk to me long enough and I might let one slip. Four suicide attempts and 19 years later, I still struggle to not be invisible. I no longer live in my brother's shadow, we haven't spoken in six years. The rest of my family still doesn't see me, being the youngest of seven children, none of us have really talked to each other since my parents died.

I'm not entirely sure what the message of this post was, but it's something that's been rolling around in my mind the last few days, and I needed to get it off my chest.

Is Gay the new Black?

But I don't want to be the mommy!

One of my earliest gender alternative moments that I can remember came from kindergarten.

I remember the way our kindergarten room was set up, desks towards the front of the room, the back of the room having a thick carpet to play on, low shelves full of toys, games and blocks, and in the corner, a "house" type setup complete with fully stocked kitchen, table, chairs, high chair with baby, etc.

My favorite toy was the bristle blocks. I could play with those all day, every day, and I tried to. I was always the first to get to them - I bypassed the wooden blocks, legos, games... just so I could build with those blocks. I loved building things. Wooden blocks came in a close second, if the bristle blocks weren't available.

At some point, the teacher decided I shouldn't play with them anymore.

I remember I went to get the box of blocks from the shelf, and she led me away from them, taking me over instead to the kitchen where the other girls were playing. They were cooking, taking care of the baby, having tea at the table, and being.. well.. girly. I think I might've wrinkled my nose.

I didn't want to play house. I didn't want to be the mommy. I wanted to build.

The teacher wouldn't let me go back to the blocks, she insisted I play in the kitchen. The other girls tried to get me involved, I guess, but I wasn't interested.

I finally broke down and told them I'd play, but only if I could be the Daddy.