They definitely don’t pay you enough for this!

Hi folks – I seem to be quite in a hurry lately and don’t have a lot of time for you poor fellows. And yes, I know that you emotionally depend on me and will not let you down completely. In case you feel highly neglected, find me a sugar mommy and I’ll have more time to take care of your entertainment (not that anyone would read nowadays anyway).

However, sooner or later we’ll have to continue with the topic – today I mess a little with local politics. I live in Switzerland, a small country with some rich and some broke banks and a surprisingly high rating of quality of life. Now, we transsexuals are partly lucky here. Okay, a lot of people especially on the country are not what one calls open-minded but at least health insurance covers the bigger part of sex reassignment. And yes, we have very outdated standards of treatment but when we comply (means: are stoical enough) we get HRT and SRS including breast enlargement payed, when we’re lucky we even get laser hair removal and voice training. Yes, you might say it’s not worth the price to wait way more than one year for hormones and get them paid then – except you’re just as broke as I was. However, some conservative party which also is known as polemic force against immigration and social security came up with the idea to remove transgender treatment from the list of treatments covered by health insurance. Well, they simply want to keep health care costs from exploding even more.

To be fair, we really need to see their point: “Why the hell should we pay for something we don’t understand?” Honestly, they shouldn’t, so it’s fair to throw transgender care out. But then, they have to throw out health care for car crash victims (hey, the jackass could look where he drives!) and especially skiing accidents – they even try to kill themselves with something “healthy” called sport. Yon know how much money we waste on idiots who do such things? Way more than on some TS, you betcha!
And the upside of us as opposed to skiing or surfing guys is that we don’t multiply randomly just by trend. Come on, could you picture that some guys just says: “When someone else pays it I want to be a girl for a while”. No, we’re a surprisingly limited number and therefore have a very small lobby – the perfect target for a populist party then.

But now let’s see on the other side: “Why the hell should we pay for some tranny to hack up genitals?” Yeah, big deal: What would she or he cost when one would refuse treatment? It already costs too much because too much time in therapy is considered necessary before treatment – and, quelle surprise, the therapy can even cost a lot more than hormone replacement therapy. Fine, there are cases where one needs to work longer towards it but in most cases it’s clear after some months. And how many depressions, breakdowns and DSH (deliberate self-harm) would follow when a TS would get all treatment refused because she or he is broke? Sure, we would cost a lot more then – although no one could prove that it would be connected to transsexualism. By killing one enemy the conservative would get a lot more – exactly what they need for their next campaign. Now we know that the math doesn’t work – and yes, the executive said of course no to this suggestion because it would be against a European Court of Human Rights descicion as well…

And besides, one alcoholic costs about as much to health care or social security as over 40 strong smokers. Can someone explain me why I can get drunk for two bucks and pay about seven for one packet of cigarettes?

You Liz, with an official affirmation for SRS by health insurance

Transsexual Feminism

I did already talk here about feminism and femininity and transgenderism. But antoher really interesting aspect is transsexualism and feminism. First of all we have to ask ourselves why a transsexual woman would be a feminist. Many people still think that a transsexual actually does adopt every aspect of a stereotype old-fashioned female role model – that would include being suppressed by a man. But just as not all lesbians look like men and not all men suppress women anyway, why should all transsexuals want that kind of a stereotyped self-affirmation?

Well, first of all there are also lesbians among us and they don’t happen to be into men anyway. Then there are a lot of self-conscious straight women too, why should they want to be oppressed? Well, one might argue now that a transsexual is predestined to hate men – some people still believe that we are doing things like HRT and SRS because we hate men and therefore ourselves. However, when halfway reasonable and intelligent, we’d say that we rather dislike our bodies or gender role, not the men in general. So a transsexual isn’t a feminist just because she hates men – at least I don’t.

So we come to the last problem – a lot of the radical feminists actually hate transsexuals because when gender is nothing but a social construction – as they argue – why would someone change sex then? To them we simply have to be men because every other answer would make them question their viewpoint.
But there’s more to feminism than just outdated radical views. Some time ago being radical was completely necessary to achieve some goals, but nowadays it’s not something that rather screws up things than make them grow. We simply cannot afford to blame men for everything bad that happens to women – not that men weren’t responsible for some of it (and for even more in the history) but still, it’s not like some women wouldn’t make things more difficult for themselves too. Let me make an example about that: At grammar school I heard a lot of the gals say “I’ll study this or that subject” and when I asked, on what job they want to work on they said surprisingly often – “Actually I want to get married afterwards and then found a family.” Why study then at an expensive university, maybe even with a limited number of students, when you don’t use it during the next twenty years? Not that I blame housewives that also want to have some degree to work later on, but when they say from the first place that they just go to a university just to find a man it’s rather a waste of resources others could need.

Now, what exactly would a transsexual woman do here? All right, there are also many transsexual housewives, but less than one would guess. We simply had to work on our way before so many of us simply learned to survive on their own. This doesn’t exclude things like love and partnership but often excludes complete dependency. Now of course many transsexuals stay away from feminism because of the old-fashioned radicals that still spook around here and there and are still listened to surprisingly often.
However, others still are feminists in some way – let’s say in many different ways. What is really interesting is that we have quite another approach to some things like being a woman or femininity in general. Although some time ago a woman nearly had to give um being feminine to achieve something this is nowadays not necessarily the case in western society – she can normally be the way she is and whether this is tomboyish or feminine doesn’t really matter. And when a “normal” feminist had to fight for not being discriminated just for being a woman, a transsexual started off with the same fight, just from another perspective. We also get discriminated for being women, only that we rather get discriminated because of the y-chromosome or the outing than for just being a woman – that second part follows at a time when we are already used to make our way in this world so we can handle in quite easily in most cases. This and the fact that we spent at least some time in another role that appeared inappropriate to us gives it quite another background – we first fought for rights most women take for granted. It doesn’t mean that we are the ones that always had the harder life and should be pitied for that, but it also gives another approach to feminism altogether. This includes also gender studies, which can be partly rethought trough that.

I’d never say that we are feminism, but we still are a surprisingly important part of it – last but not least because we might have some things to say that very few people already heard.

Your feminist Liz

Absent Without Leave

Hi folks

This isn’t a real post with an interesting subject and there’s no punchline at all. I just wanted you to know that I am still alive and didn’t quit blogging here at all. I was just extremely busy with moving to a nicer city and into a smaller apartment and starting a new term at university. Now I am basically covered with bruises and have the probably worst muscle ache I (and everyone else) ever had plus some other damages because I am too much of a proper tranny-girl to carry furniture and boxes.
However, I will be back with you very soon and keep on annoying you. No one can get rid of little Liz that easy! So I hope that you are patient enough not to forget me altogether and will come over again soon…
See you soon, beofre next full moon.

Your battered Liz

Understanding is a Hard Job

Hi there. I didn’t write for quite a while but one needs priorities – food and sleep come always first! But now I have some time for you (that I actually should spend working).

Pretty often we hear some really hard or sad stories about transgendered people coming out to their families or friends and losing them. However, we also hear a lot stories of success there, like rediscovering people you know or things remaining the same, except a new name and a new pronoun. Sure, most of you will ask why I dig up such an old subject, but it has some interesting aspects we all know but I didn’t hear often in discussions.
There are of course several ways that someone might react to you coming out. I try here to divide it into three groups, but there are also all the things in between or changes from one to another later on.

The first one is what I’d call accepting – the social group. Although this is also damn hard to us too, the people involved (friends, family, employers… just referred to as “they”) can rationally accept it from one moment to another – but mostly (and emotionally) accepting is a long process. This does not mean that some of them wouldn’t accept us from the first place, the process is rather the getting-used-to. Sure, a wrong pronoun or name is not what we enjoy to hear, and it can even hurt – even more in a time when one is under such social pressure like when coming out to half the world. On the other hand many of them don’t mean it in a bad way, it’s just old habits they have. To them it’s not easy too to call a person a new name after a long time they got used to something else. But it won’t happen all too often – and hopefully disappear anyway with time – when they really want to accept you.  These people may – and probably even will – make accidents, but they don’t mean it in a bad way; they are trying to behave in the right way. And of course the rest of us TG’s will probably make way less or none such glitches because we are already used to such situations.

The second group is the radical one: If you are transgendered, you are out of their lives. Unfortunately this does even happen within families. Mostly they are either pretty religious or extremely conservative. When they put their religious or social beliefs over their family or their friends, it’s their business. They are definitely not worth to stop you from who you are, they probably already managed to steal you enough time of your life because of that attitude. If they have these priorities, they can also cope with the loss of someone with less priority. Here it’s just important that you can cope with the loss; because it wouldn’t be worth it if you’d spend your time agonising when there is nothing about them you could do without hurting yourself even more. Just try to forget them.

The third group is what I call the cowards. There are not all too many of them but they do exist. They may have something against transgenderism or not – that does not really matter with them. They just find ways to make themselves believe that you aren’t one of these weird trannies because they definitely know you better than you and something that strange will never happen in their environment. They use you as a screen for their mental projection of their expectations. Many of the accepting ones start off like this – because it was the last thing they expected and ignoring it is the easiest thing to do. However, they manage to get over it by trying not to rely on the rather narrow view one single person has on a huge world but also questioning it. There are also some of them which realise with time that you actually are transgendered and their wishful thinking or prayers didn’t turn real and end up as members of the second group. But again, this is the process; there are also people who remain on this group for their whole life. The problem in dealing with those is that they don’t offend you directly – they just deny the existence of a central aspect of your personality. How should one deal with such a thing when it’s about a person close to you? The ones that hate or banish you at least make a clear statement – they don’t use a passive-aggressive way to try making you what they want you to be like the long-time-members of this group do. With them you need to make your own decision, either hoping it might turn better or giving it up at all.

Now you might argue that I proclaim a really stereotyped view of the reactions your cissexual environment might have to your outing – but remember that I’m only trying to show a pattern, not to write a manual or a full overview. Sure you can’t put everyone so clearly into one of these groups, people might be someplace in between, change their attitude or even be someplace completely else. However, most reactions I saw, heard of or read of could be categorized withing these groups or in between them. It is sometimes really interesting how few different basic reactions people do have to one single thing. And someone once tried to put transsexuals into two basic groups but made the mistake to divide people instead of their behaviour…

Your watching and assessing Liz

Four-Letter Words

We all use some four-letter words like USAF, HDTV, Help, Home or Girl. Now, why should these words be as bad as the F-word and the S-word? Well, basically US Air Force already fought a lot of wars to kill people and stop overpopulation. HDTV makes you buy new devices and therefore saves economy. Help really is something bad – wasting time for someone else who doesn’t even manage something like surviving. Home is good – it’s the only quiet place you have except you are married. And girl, well – I don’t have to say much about that when you know a girl like me.
Of course I tampered a little with the term four-letter word right now but from time to time I also need to have some fun. But now let’s get to the serious stuff, the four-letter words which rarely have four letters and refer to us.

Let’s start with something that many of you might not consider a cursing word at all: queer. However, originally this was a highly disrespectful term to describe everyone not fitting social norms, especially applied to LGBT people when used with a negative meaning. Long before that (and still!) it has another meaning: odd, strange and unusual. But how could a cursing word turn into a common term? Well, words can get neutralized. Before the ones used to war movies think of assassination, let me tell you that you’re partly right. Although you don’t wipe out the word, you do remove its negative association. This is not a fast process because it will take years, however it does work. Mostly it works when a word is used by the people that are being called it but without the negative meaning. Then it spreads wider and wider until it’s a common term. Even “gay” was associated negative not all too long ago.
Considering the fact that I’m not from an English speaking country it’s difficult for me to say whether queer is still used as a cursing word when talking about someone – but I’d say that such occasions are really rare.

Another of these words is tranny. Before we start with us let me say that it has some other meanings too. It is also slang for some cars, transistor radios, transformers and some other things. So first you be sure that one means transgender when saying “tranny” because you don’t want to be mistaken for a car. But let’s assume that we talk about the probably most common use of the word and it’s applied to you. The first question would be: Do you feel offended? Some would say yes, others would say that it’s about an average word describing anyone transgendered. Take for instance this blog – I use this word to describe myself and others but not in a disrespectful meaning. It’s just shorter than “transgendered” and therefore easier to write. Maybe it even sounds modern and dynamic. But when you walk on the street and some (probably adolescent) guy shouts “f*** tranny” past you, it’s used in another way. However, also this word is in the process of being neutralized and will probably lose the disrespectful meaning with time as long as we use it too.

Honestly, I don’t mean to offend anyone by using this word but I guess that a few people might feel offended. However, we rarely interpret it as an offense when said by another transgendered person – but often we do listen up when we hear it from a cisgendered person we don’t know well.
This seems to be a general curse of minorities. It’s not really dangerous as long as we still take the time to ask ourselves how the other person meant it. But when one made a lot of bad experiences with something one gets hypersensitive. This is a natural way of self-defense and not in any case bad – but one needs to keep enough self-control not to freak out on people who don’t mean to offend us. And the others aren’t worth freaking out anyway.

The last word I briefly deal with is faggot. This hasn’t been neutralized so far and we don’t really know whether it will. It is mainly – nearly exclusively – used as a cursing word, not only against gay men but also transgendered women. As far as I know, it’s very rarely used against lesbians, but again, I’m not a native English speaker so I just do guesswork built on my background knowledge. However, a word that has already quite a long history as a cursing word – and only as a cursing word – will take a lot more to be neutralized. But here we could also ask ourselves the question whether we really want to do it.
Do we have to disarm every negative word someone else invented to offend us? When we do we prove that we’re stronger than someone needing a disrespectful term to feel superior to someone he doesn’t understand. On the other hand we use like this words that were not invented by us, that maybe don’t describe what we want to describe and that maybe don’t satisfy our needs. However, even here we have the possibility to bend the meaning of a word just as well as we bend the word. So at least it’s worth a try to make a four-letter word to a some-letter word.

Your cursing Liz

To see or not to see

We all have these days when we ask ourselves how we look or what we look like. What would people looking at us think about us? Maybe something like “what a freak” or rather “she’s ugly” – maybe they also think about getting us laid but the problem is that we don’t really know. So most of us (excluding telepaths of course) would like to be able to take a gaze at other peoples’ minds to know how they judge us.
However, we do have the possibility to watch others’ reactions. But there remains the problem which also exists in science: by studying a phenomenon we often interfere with it and can therefore not be sure whether it actually still is the same way as if we wouldn’t watch it. If you look at someone this person might notice and look at you differently than otherwise – reflections in windows are there of a great use. This leads to the conclusion that we simply don’t know for sure how other people judge us as long as they don’t tell us – and even if they do it might be the case that they are liars.

Now you may ask what this has to do with us transgender people. We already know that we’re prettier that others because there are more fellows turning around to look past us when we walk a crowded street. Of course you might argue that this is rather negative because it means you don’t pass. Pass as a woman or pass as a man? Well, many of us – especially transsexuals – try to pass all the time as how we perceive ourselves and therefore as who we are.
Well, there has to be a reason for this. Many might say that they want to look like a real woman (I speak of women here because I heard from them way more passing stories that from men and know the situation from myself). Well, but what would be a real woman then? One with two X chromosomes or one that looks boring or average? Really, I am a real woman, transsexual or not, post-op or not! So I’d say this is a stupid argument. It is about looking like what society expects a woman to look like. Hey, we live in an individualist age, so why try to fit a norm? Basically it’s not about self-affirmation for most of us but about safety. When you look like a member of a certain minority you’re automatically more of a target; so it makes sense not to look all too much like it. Let’s compare it to mimicry that some animals need to survive. It’s what we often try to do although we call it “passing”. I – for myself – never did mind to look like a transsexual. As I said, we’re prettier anyway. However, out on the streets you probably feel a lot safer when you don’t look like a tranny at all. The more you blend in, the less you’re a target. And in addition, when you look like a tranny, people may not just offend you but also address you wrong and I’m not really looking forward to someone calling me “he”, “he-she” or even “it”.

One could say that we have to fit in society because society is too slow to fit us yet. And again we can compare this to biology with the principle survival of the fittest, where fitness is not necessarily connected to sports but rather to a more complete package of survival abilities. We also learn them. As I said, why would someone gay want to pass for someone straight? Well, if he is not a hairdresser or she is not a truck driver it might be a good idea to blend in a little, especially in more conservative countries. Now the transgender movement is even less far so we have more need to blend in. Of course there are also some of us that stick out, either because they want to or because of bad luck and it’s also them bringing the movement further in broader society (including mass media of course). So in one way our mimicry is a need to survive and in another way we get stuck with it – running and hiding. Let’s take for example me: I am an out transsexual and nearly everyone in my environment does know about it. However, even I worry sometimes how many people notice I’m trans when I’m in a crowded place or walk past some drunk guys which don’t look all to friendly. But we still have the option to buy a gun and feel just as safe then – if we were able to handle it after all.

Your good-looking Liz

Losing My Religion?

Some years ago, when the war in Iraq just started and the president of the US was some ugly guy, the pope said for some reason that this war was evil (as opposed to the inquisition, I guess). However, the catholic church of the town I used to live in wanted to hang a peace flag on its tower. Somehow they turned it upside down and with the writing on its back and it took them several weeks to realise that they had a gay pride flag on their tower…

Yes, even the church does sometimes live with a certain self-irony. It’s not really just about Christians, but I take them here as example for it’s the religion I know best. But we shouldn’t underestimate the more radicals among the religious people. Where should be the difference between Al-Qaeda trying to eradicate everyone not being muslim and some radical christian trying to eradicate all that might be LGBT? In the end, every group which is mentally not all too gifted does need some sort of official enemies. If one defines so explicitly what is right and what is wrong from a moral viewpoint everything that one considers wrong needs to be exterminated. On the other hand there would be the problem that without enemies, radicals won’t function. I know that I’m about to piss off some of the radical religious groups now, but let’s be honest, their main subject is not religion. In their world a counterpoise is needed to justify the existence of the righteous ones. There can be no God without Satan, there can be no heterosexuality without homosexuality. I know, this idea may sound weird to you, but who would care whether being straight is normal or not if it’s the only thing we’ve got? I never heard anyone say that having one single sun in our solar system is normal. As long as there are no statistical dispersions, there is no need to define what is normal. So, when a reasonable Christian does believe in God, he’d never say that the Lord is just on the good side because there is a devil. A radical wouldn’t say it either, but nonetheless this is how his world works. Radicals never take the good side like love thy neighbour but rather rely on an eye for an eye. In the end we get some double moral out of it with the meaning of if your neighbour fits your expectations, you love him and if he doesn’t, you kill him.

Now, why should being gay, bi or trans be a sin or a moral crime? Yes, it may be written in the bible but let’s be honest – first of all we need to be Christian to believe this book contains the words of God. Now let’s assume we do so: It was translated and rewritten hundreds of times because back then they did not have any printing machines (yes, really). It’s very likely and often mentioned that many monks used the occasion to decorate the parables and statement a little more. Now who’s going to tell me that they didn’t add values and views that were specific for their certain time and society? So far, we can only say that we don’t have any exclusive proof whether God is against homosexuals and transgendered people or not. However, this is what most of these guys claim – also neglecting that there are some passages in the bible which show quite another view.
Remember that I am not a Christian an therefore don’t consider myself an expert on the subject. In this article I only try to deal with exclusive radicals. But who wants to read on transsexualism and theology can find some interesting things on this page and search for some others.

Now we come to a sad chapter about this phenomenon in its most ugly way – hate crimes. A very extreme case was the murder on the transsexual woman Gisberta in Poland 2005. She was killed by a group of adolescents/kids which were students at a catholic institution. I don’t want to go deeper on this really cruel case, you can find a short summary as PDF on the European TransGender Network Page. Torturing someone to death is of course one of the cruelest way of committing a hate crime, but striking enough to show what happens when people are taught hate instead of an open mind. Especially striking here is the age of the killers – connected with the fact where they were educated one could make the guess that they were taught a moral which puts some people way below some others and if interpreted in its extreme doesn’t make it a moral crime to kill them. Giving different values to people because of their gender, race or views isn’t something new – and to use it as a justification for crimes is neither. It’s like when a kid grows up in a criminal district he or she will learn that under certain circumstances a human life may not count much – only that in our case it’s connected to a moral view. Not that this knowledge would be of any help to the victims as long as a wider part of our world’s society doesn’t apply it – here all that is left to say is: In Memento Mori.

For now, let me come to an end with this subject. I may pick it up some other day for a more expanded view, but I guess for now it’s enough that was said. Just to remind you once more: it’s not a bad thing to believe in something and in some way we all do, even an agnostic or atheist like me does. The problem is that many people don’t respect the borders between their believes and the right of others to have their own beliefs. And when we’re already with it: How would you know whether your ideas of good and bad match those of others? And why should they?

Your highly moral Liz

Watch and Learn

As you may know – also because I discussed here several subjects concerning this – there are lots of transgendered people in audiovisual media – before you ask, that’s what people call film or telly. When you search IMDB you find a lot of transgender movies from different categories. Although I still wonder why Shrek 2 was listed there are many other films that make more sense in this context. You may all know titles such as Breakfast on Pluto, Transamerica or Boys Don’t Cry. However, often you also find a lot of films you may never have heard about or that are from different countries than the usual ones. There’s a lot of documentaries too dealing with the subject from different viewpoints and approaches. These are the Pictures that actually deal with transgenderism from a closer viewpoint – although their views may vary.

On the other hand there are often transgender topics in well-known TV shows – mostly transsexuals or transvestites. You can find them at nearly every crime show or medical show, from CSI - Crime Scene Investigaton up to House M. D. Also here the actual subjects wary a lot. From victim to criminal, from patient to a topic to talk about in the break and from hate crime to SRS. There are of course pretty accurate, realist and respectful depictions although some are also highly stereotyped, overdrawn or simplified or negative. What I really would like to see is what would happen when Monk would encounter a transsexual. Would he get confused that someone does not match a strictly ordered system? Or would he admire her because she’s putting things in the right way for her and even ordering her life? These are the really interesting questions of transgender film science.
A really extremely emotional scene is when in an episode of Crossig Jordan where a pre-op transsexual woman is dieing and asks the pathologist to do a post mortal SRS so she can be buried under a female name. There are a lot more stories like this and also other where there are not so positive depictions of us but I have to stop here for I’m not getting paid to write television bulletins.

Now you may ask what my point may be after so much talking and barely saying nothing at all. So far we can think of films containing transgender topics in three major groups: films on the subject, documentations and films where the topic occurs once among others (here mostly shows). Now we of course have to ask what the main audience for the different productions is. With the films dealing with transgederism as a main topic, the audience consists of trannies, people who are interested in it and some film fans. With the documentaries it’s probably a larger audience for most documentaries are TV productions, so you can add the people who regularly watch documentaries and subtract some of the film fans. But you reach most people – you betcha! – with the TV shows.
Now you might ask why this is of any importance. But as with other things, the media that reach the masses are shaped to be of interest to them – but they also are going to build a social image of something. So, what do we have for instance on transsexuals? They are bad-ass criminals, victims of hate crimes, patients of plastic surgery, exotic dancers, a thrilling topic to discuss in a break, sexually deceiving men who want to get someone laid, beautiful women or just people who want to be themselves like everyone else. There are of course more such images but I guess I collected here the bigger deal of them. You might say, hey, this is a pretty wide spectrum and not even always negative and you’re right. But sometimes it’s just not as easy as it seems.

For the following discussion I take the show CSI as example. I can recall three and a half cases (or episodes) that more or less directly include trangender topics. For I am sort of an expert concerning this show it’s unlikely that I missed something up to season 9.
In episode 13 of season 2 a serial killer is caught and turns out to be a transsexual man. He always killed people on the day his father was murdered (who was also the only person accepting and supporting him for being a boy). However, here transsexualism is probably not added as a main subject but rather to make it more difficult to find the killer with DNA. In that case it’s really hard to say what to think about the transgender topic because he’s neither shown as the “poor victim” nor as the “bad transsexual killer” – although he is a killer he isn’t so because he’s a transsexual. So I leave this open and don’t make a clear statement on it because opinions can diverge a lot on this one.
In episode 2 of season 3 a famous actor kills two women he wanted to sleep with because he found out that one of them was transgendered. In the end he gets convicted and justice wins. Here, we have a very typical hate crime a lot transgendered people have to fear – on the other hand I could guess that some guys still identify with the killer in this case as the man who was “deceived by a tranny”, even although he appears like an arrogant bastard and commits a double homicide to keep up his male ego.
In episode 8 of season 5 a transsexual woman gets murdered and it looks first like a hate crime. But because I really recommend you to watch this episode I won’t spoil it and tell the rest. It is really the one and only real transsexual episode from CSI and compared to other crime shows they did a lot of research on the situation and treatment of transsexuals in the USA and Vegas.
Finally, in episode 4 of season 8 a boy with breasts gets found hung on a tree. Although he is first thought of as a transsexual woman it turns out that the cause was a high estrogen concentration in the water of the lake and the assumed hate crime was actually suicide. Now you may also understand why I was talking of 3 and a half stories with transgender subjects.

To make it short, this should just give you a brief overview on how transgenderism is presented in mass media. Sometimes in a way where it’s really dealing with it and sometimes rather as a add-on to put some extra spice to the plot. However, there are so many shows that some episodes of CSI can hardly be representative for the whole television. So try to watch closely and think about how other people might think of us after seeing what you were watching – you can learn a lot from that…

Your investigating Liz

Name Things, Feel The Power

Human beings tend to name things; monkeys probably don’t. It seems to be special for our species that we use language on a highly sophisticated level. We use an abstract pool of signs to describe things we might encounter, talk about or even think of – it’s what we call nouns. But to communicate more detailed we need a lot of other words (words are clusters of those random signs we put together) like verbs, adjectives and pronouns. The really shocking thing about language is, that you understand this text although the words don’t have any natural meaning – it’s just a society-wide agreement on what they are supposed to mean, just varying from language to language.

Well, I didn’t say anything new so far; same old story, same old song, although you maybe never looked at it from this point of view. But to name things also gives us power over them – it’s not a direct form of power, rather an intellectual one. Although we probably were lucky enough to have never seen an atomic bomb everyone does associate this word to an object and its consequences. And this is not a word that was invented when the basic of language was finished. There are even newer words like laptop or ATM – who would have thought that some guy one day describes a computer as a gadget to make your lap look better? But still we use the word and never rip it down to its linguistic basis. An atomic bomb could also be a very tiny tool chemists use to destroy single atoms – the word would make sense in this context too.

But of course we don’t care about the end of the world; we’re just normal trannies that care about ourselves. And of course, we care a lot about language and shortcuts.
Transgendered people have a sort of shortcut language that only a few other people understand. We speak of TS, IS, TV, CD, TG, SRS, HRT, LGBT (okay, common word) and a lot more that even may vary from language to language. I’m pretty sure that if you would put for instance two transsexuals with a good passing on a crowded train and let them discuss about transgender issues by using shortcuts only few people would understand what they are talking about. The rest would probably think that they are technicians discussing new inventions. Sure, most people knowing some of our species start to understand the shortcuts by time and even use them. On the other hand transsexuals can get pretty paranoid when seeing trucks written “Transex” on them because they might be used to secretly smuggle more transsexuals in the country.

But we also can find answers to other interesting questions. For instance, why the hell is the term “transsexual” socially pretty often associated to sex in the meaning of sexuality and not biological sex? Well, there is first a pretty obvious answer to that – what are the words that sound similar? We might think of homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual. Now, these words are of course connected to a lot more of just having sex with someone but still they do describe sexual orientation. On the other hand words like transsexual, intersexual and cissexual do describe gender identity from a physical viewpoint. But because they are constructed similarly to the more common ones describing sexual preferences they just get associated with sex nonetheless. This turns even more extreme in languages like German, where the word “sex” does not mean the biological gender but is only used in the context with sexuality – and nonetheless one says “transsexual”. People not aware of the English origin of the term will definitely connect us to sex then.

There’s also a third group of words describing gender – let’s take for example transgender, genderqueer and intergender. Here we have a clearly gendered label although many people will only know the first word. But now we can even start playing with words – when we use transgender as umbrella term then a transsexual is a transgender. “Trans” does mean “on the other side” as you might remember from your chemistry class or tranny knowledge education. But now, are we on the other side of our sex or our gender? You see, it starts to get pretty messy. But there’s no need to fall into a deep identity crisis for that – the beautiful thing about language is its redundancy. We can sometimes use different words to say what we want to say and although the meaning might slightly change or adjust we still say the same thing, only in our way.
Let me explain this with a pretty interesting example. In the time when my mother learned the words “gay” and “homosexual” the first was a cursing word (like most people use “faggot” nowadays) and the second one politically correct. And although nowadays nearly all homosexual men (and some of the women) also call themselves “gay”, it’s still a negative word to many people from that generation who do not know a lot of homosexuals (or TV documentations) and they wouldn’t dare using it. Also the word “tranny” started to get rid of a negative association and to enter common language as a simplification for “transgender”. Although many people still use it in the negative way, many simply use it to describe themselves or someone else without negative feelings.

Language does change and it even does so because society – meaning us – makes it change by time. So we still have the possibility to understand what we want to understand when we hear something. Maybe one day a guy shouting “tranny” past you will do this for saying “Hey, cute one”. It’s a fact that we’re way cuter and fascinating than cissexuals, no one can deny that! We don’t know what the future brings, so let’s wait and see…

Your linguistic Liz

Fame is a Bitch

Once or twice a year I watch the weekly best-of review from all talk shows broadcast in the German television – here the best-of is actually the most-stupid-of. I mostly do it to remind me how horrible such an adorable medium can be when one uses it for stupid things – and yes, also to laugh about people. But what I notice every time I watch it is, that the tranny-quota is highly disproportional to the one in the outside world. Raised by a factor of at least ten, I’d say.

Now we have of course to ask the question why this might be. For I don’t have a huge science budget I couldn’t get a lot of these trannies and talk-masters to my lab and will use my smartness instead of the good old empiricism. Because most of the people clinging to Jerry Springer are rather weird and the bigger deal of them not all too smart one could argue that many trannies are not all too smart too. And yes, it’s true – we’re just as stupid as the cissexuals – at least in most concerns. So, what is the real reason for this overpopulation? You might already guess it if you belong to the smart ones – it’s probably the marketing effect. When they pick people that appear in a talk show they choose those who will be more interesting, more exotic or more confusing to the audience than Mr. & Mrs. Smith. And if they don’t find trannies, they take people with very extraordinary problems like a boyfriend cheating on them. Considering the fact that unfaithful boyfriends are boring people we stay with the trannies.

You hear stories like a wife dragging her husband to a talk show to out herself as a transsexual. Let’s be honest – why would you do this in front of half the world? And just by the way, why would you do this after getting married? Okay, the second question is quite easy to answer. Considering the fact how many guys got violent when they figured out that their girlfriend was born with a y-chromosome I can understand their fear – but what I don’t get is this: Why the hell would you marry a guy when you don’t know whether he freaks out when he knows you’re trans? Normally I’m a cynic, but here I’m probably an idealist – I’d never marry someone I couldn’t even trust that much. Which takes us to the first question: When you’re afraid of him it wouldn’t be a bad idea to tell it in front of some people – but in television, where everyone watches it? Not even Hollywood stars try to get voluntarily that much publicity about their private life.

There are other typical scenarios, like a gay guy trying to get his boyfriend back as boy although she transitions and lives as a girl – or she trying to keep him nonetheless. But there are of course also scenarios that are more common to such shows, like the typical relationship problems: wanting more or less sex, cheating on someone, having fights and the whole shebang that comes with this. Also here there are a lot of transsexuals to watch. And trust me, it’s very unlikely that we have so much more trouble in leading a relationship (unless I am involved but I am the exception that proves the rule). Here it’s the same trick as with the rest – they just prefer to have a tranny so when you apply there and mention that you’re trans, you have high chances of being picked.

Well, it makes sense to call the TV network when you’re in financial trouble and they have a free counsellor when you agree to have it broadcast. At least it could help you somehow if you listen to the guy, even when all people think: How the hell could she waste that much money? But in a talk show you just get hacked up. There are also some blind dates in these shows, but I never saw one with a tranny, so I just leave them out. Now, the point about the whole thing is the keyword negative publicity. Because we transgendered people are as horrible as everyone else we also appear as stupid as everyone else in these shows. But when the audience sees how many trans-people appear there then especially those who don’t know a lot of trannies and don’t analyse the principles of entertainment publicity will just think: Trannies are weird people with huge problems in everyday life. They overact and behave stupid in every possible situation. And when they are in the Springer show, the trans-women beat each other up like real guys! Seriously, I don’t really care about such talk shows and who wants to make oneself look stupid should get that chance – same rights for all! And yes, if you want that fifteen minutes of fame (that are probably just five because you don’t have anything smart to say) then do it – just keep in mind that you make us trans-folks look as ridiculous as you are – because one cannot expect from all people to think free of gender stereotypes if even we don’t manage this all the time. Okay, a few of us even live for those stereotypes and have their fun with it – but they at last say that it’s fun and don’t sob for the cameras as if they would play in a cheap drama.

So we come to the moral of our fairytale. If you are smart enough to understand what I just said you better got to TV with something interesting, maybe in a political talk show or a book review – and when we all do this, people will think that transsexuals have the secret control over our countries and will fear us forever!

Just by the way – I was in television too. But I just had to say what I thought about the last Star Wars movie. I love advance showings to a discount price – and no, I won’t tell you how I got in!

Your telegenic Liz

Something Special

We all want to be special in one or another way. Every time we watch the advertisements on TV – still one of the best ways to reflect society in general – we get dozens of promises to waste our money on very special products.

But there are only two kinds of people in the world: Those who are considered special and want to be normal and those considered normal who want to be special. Okay, there’s everything in between as well, but they don’t really count in a bipolar world. Although we are an individualist society, fewest people try the approach to being special by considering what makes them special as individuals. They rather tend to consider what the bigger deal of people might think of as normal or not so normal.
In that way, a soldier shooting an enemy is normal and a soldier running away from the battle isn’t. A guy working on his eight-to-five-job is normal and a freelancer working at home on his computer isn’t.

Only by defining a norm we can define the abbreviation of the norm – what we may call special. And because I’m a transsexual writer we end up with the subject we’re already used to. A cissexual is probably normal, everything else isn’t. But sometimes it’s not easy to equal majority with normality. It did work very well when one had to discriminate the black or the gay. But although there are more women than men it took feminism to free the majority –to be male, straight and white was what was considered the normal consumer for most products. Fascinating, isn’t it?
But when you take one of those free newspapers that were designed to cover up the free seats in jammed commuter-trains and read the sex ads, you get maybe out of ten offers one for a studio with “transsexuals” (nowadays they even write “TS” and horny guys understand it – wow). Although I don’t know a lot of sex business because I never was provider nor customer I would guess that the majority of the offered transsexuals are probably she-males. However, we don’t care about labels here because the guys want to have sex with a stereotype tranny and not with a tranny with female genitals – not that I would make a difference at all in everyday life because I don’t really care about peoples’ genitals anyway.

The point is that these ads seem to offer something very rare, exotic and special – maybe even forbidden or connected to inappropriate behavior. Now everyone thinks that any transgendered person with sexual need has to be special. Even more interesting is the fact that physical attraction is actually just that and works with everyone basically the same way when one looks at the biological background. So it’s got to be the body that makes “us” special then. Hum… there’s flesh, bones, organs but nothing really special from a biological viewpoint. If you sum up the prevalence of all inter-gender conditions not even the other “abbreviations” are really special at all. So it’s just the society’s image of us because we don’t fit in a bipolar norm. So we are to be considered as freaks but secret fetishes as well.

Fine – when we judge the big badass society of being cruel and discriminating (and yes, it is!) we still should keep in mind that we are part of just that society. And maybe, we are secretly discriminating some other minority because it’s more comfortable than asking questions. We’re all cruel and we’re all equal, but some are more equal than others. We can’t always avoid any mistake because it’s too much of a job, but we can begin with asking ourselves questions about the results of our actions. Just because you’re an “outsider” you’re not outside the causal chain of the big picture.
And just because you’re special doesn’t mean that others are more or less special – they just may think so by forgetting that such things depend on the viewpoint. So, my dear fellows; just remain as special as you happen to be and where you happen to be – it’s less stress and more special experiences in life…

Besides: Thinking about special things is my speciality!
Your very, very special Liz

Transsexualism and Pop Culture

Every generation seems to have some different things that are “in” or “cool”. Because these things seems to apply – at least partly – to the whole society most people argue that it is part of our pop culture – if not the pop culture at all.

When I went to high school (or rather the western European equivalent of it) it was in with the not-yet-intellectual girls to have at least one gay man as a good friend. Maybe because a straight girl can talk about the boys with a gay guy. Maybe just to play the minority card and then pick the gay because they at least have style. Sure, it’s just guesswork, but it could be some clues about the motivation. However, you need to have him and show off with him.
Now, for I came out as a transsexual during my time at this school it is quite interesting to see the results of this compared to the rest of the “queer-is-cool” trend. First of all I have to say that at such a school no one would dare to directly offend a transsexual on the school although there was a lot (at least partly) negative gossip behind my back – I happen to have my ears everywhere and wiretap everything. Well, most of the guys just avoided me, because it seems to overthrow a man’s world image as (post-)teen when another ‘man’ just turns into a woman. On the other hand some of the women did the same although many tried the same showing-off game as with gay guys. So a transsexual is not as cool as a gay but at least a useful replacement on a school where there are not that many out gays. At least you can say “I know a tranny”, although the tranny may not know you at all…

Sure, it would be mean to say everyone does things just for the “oh-so-liberal” image but it’s a factor that can’t be neglected. However, there are other signs that transsexualism seems to enter pop culture in some way. The reports in the media don’t really loose their sensation-seeking touch but there are so many that one can actually get bored. It’s about time that it turns into something more boring and average than one could guess. And in some way – mostly by media – people seem to know more about the subject. Although here are already the first cissexuals playing “smart-ass” on the subject they don’t really know; but everything has its downsides.

The last thing that seems to make transsexualism enter pop culture is the fact, how many transsexuals mess around in the entertainment industry. You can listen to pop music made by transsexuals, you see them in movies and that maybe without even knowing for every revolution uses subversion. And so most people already heard of it, talked about it or at least pretended to do so. And yes, everyone who wants to appear smart, open-minded and tolerant needs to know a transsexual and talk about her to get a better ranking in the mentioned disciplines. Somewhat creepy, considering that there are still weird radicals on the other side that have a lack of self-control and apropropriate behaviour.

So fellows, don’t try to show off with me too much because I hope you’re smarter than that.
Your extraordinary Liz

Identity Crisis

I already talked once about tests some time ago. You know that you can open your browser, type a nice URL and then you get to one of these personality test that you can fill out. Sometimes I like doing them because it’s a lot of fun to see what comes out. But don’t worry, I won’t repeat much of what I already said except that one shouldn’t take the results all too serious.

Lately I found such a test on a lesbian page – it should evaluate whether you are a lesbian and what type of person you are. Okay, it wasn’t all too bad because it figured out that I actually am a lesbian. But the rest was quite funny. It just quote the most important results here.
To other women I seem to appear quite masculine according to my character (hey, I’m a transsexual, it’s rather the outer appearance…). However, I’m a big seducer and sexually rather dominant – wow, that’s a really new one. I don’t like straight women because I don’t get why they are attracted to men – don’t know why I have so many straight friends then. I tend to think in black and white – now that’s really mean! However, I seem to have a rather tender and sensitive character in love – finally something that I agree with.
I think that mostly people who know me will be quite shocked by some of these statements and if they would believe more in the test than in their eyes they would really rethink their view of me. But because I actually prefer people that use their own brain (in case they have one) they rather will find this funny.

But actually I’m not here to write about lesbian identity tests but rather about the categorisation in our world that such test are built on. Well, of course it starts with obvious things like what job one does. We think differently when we hear the guy next door is a broker and not working on construction. We have an image for everything – not surprising in a world ruled by images. But as a queer I don’t do that much thinking about brokers and construction workers but rather about other queers. So I’m also thinking in categories then – shame on me. Now, as a trans-woman I also need to put myself into some category on the MtF spectrum. We have here transsexuals, transvestites, crossdressers, drag-queens and everything in between. If we widen the horizon we could add intersexual and transgendered. Okay, so I am a transsexual, transgender and according to some rather new theories claiming that transsexualism is an intersex condition, I’m also intersexual.
Here the mess starts. Some of the radical transsexuals would already freak out when they hear the term transgender because they think that it’s a term to descrbe everyone who isn’t a real transsexual. However, it actually is an umbrella term for every trans-condition including transsexuals and, if we widen the horizon we could even include tomboyish women and effeminate men. Transgressing gender doesn’t necessarily mean to be “in between” but it can also mean to “cross over” of some sort. I know that many don’t like to hear this but as sorry as I am, language is pretty well defined and we should try to stick to it in some way. Now that I seem to have pissed of all the radicals we can go on.

Within this transgender category-cloud there are a lot of people that are trying to make a pecking order. We could describe it like this:

• Intersexuals are better than transsexuals because with them it’s a visible physical condition that doesn’t need some genetic proof of being relevant.
• Transsexuals are more serious than all other transgender people because they take the pain of crossing over and want to gain a proper social role.
• Bigender/genderqueers are better than transvestites because they don’t just crossdress to make a gender statement but actually dare to be real “anarchists”. Interesting here is that some also blame the transsexuals to try to fit in a certain role and therefore to be too conservative.
• Transvestites don’t have many groups left to call them less serious, so they maybe blame drag-queens.

Seriously folks – do you really think that some scheme like that does pay off? Don’t we have already enough religious fundamentalists, radical conservatives and others to blame? It’s really counterproductive to mess with the ones that could support our own interests. And there are already a lot of weird fights between some gay and lesbian groups and transgender groups I don’t really see the reason for. Maybe we should rather make a class distinction within the whole LGBT community that we can also apply to the straight and cissexual people. The group of radical conservative dorks and the group of the rest – the people that also can accept what they don’t understand. We grant the last group all social privileges and give the other group a country where they get enough space and ammo to kill each other – I guess that the world would become quite a peaceful place pretty soon…

Your meanie Liz

Ovarian Envy

Well, it seems to be time for Freudian psychoanalysts to rethink their lives. By the way, did you ever notice that the word “anal” is in the term “psychoanalist”? Don’t worry, fellow psychiatrists, I don’t mean that all you say is just s***. But some things are really worthy to be doubted. However, there were some things that psychoanalysis seems to be scared of.

Some time ago a famous psychoanalyst stated that women are fundamentally bisexual. Now, why did he say that about women but not about men? It’s quite simple. At that time, everyone in psychiatry was male. And did he ever consider to admit that – in case his theory would be right – he would be attracted to some men too, maybe even his fellow psychologists? Hell, no! Everyone would curse him as horrible abnormality and think that psychologists make group sex at their meetings. God beware! So it’s just the women that are bisexual because every guy likes to picture lesbian intercourse while analyzing his patients.

But there are even slightly older ideas. Let’s take the good old penis envy. Sure women are jealous of men’s penises because they are what makes men aggressive, dominant and more intelligent so they can rule the world and the women. But it was actually never about men’s sexual organs but rather about misogyny. Why should a woman have been jealous of a man? Rather because of his social possibilities, his freedom and the whole shebang that comes with it. The penis is just the symbol for it which psychoalanystsfound to be appropriate in a sexually suppressed society. And yes, psychoanalysts think of sex all the time so it’s obvious why the picked a penis.
But here comes a huge dilemma. In a – at least theoretically – emancipated society, shouldn’t have men ovarian envy too? Because men are discriminated in one substantial aspect: They can’t give birth to children. Sure, they can go to the army instead and argue whether you are traumatised by a crying baby or exploding grenades doesn’t matter – you can’t sleep well with either. And they are right with the insomnia part – and that’s why I would never go to the army or give birth to a baby! But still, the social meaning of it is totally different. To go to war is to fight for flag and fatherland – but to destroy. To raise a baby is to suffer for future generations and horrible children – but it means to create. So some men might envy that women tend to create while they remain in the social role to destroy.

But now we apply this to the group which is best to reflect society – which are of course we transsexuals. Why is a transsexual man not of any interest to psychoanalysis? Because he is just a woman with a penis envy to them, something obvious and expected. Probably just an all too masculine lesbian with an identity crisis because of her own internal misogyny. Sorry guys, I know you should get more proper attention too but because I’m not a transsexual man it’s not my point of view to write about – I simply lack the experience.
On the other hand, a trans-woman is something absolutely impossible! She shouldn’t exist, because she doesn’t only tamper with the point of view of radical Christians but with all the social expectations that we have. A man with ovarian envy? Please, why? Such weird things don’t exist! Everyone just wants to get the better social role, the one connected with prestige, who would want to be a weak woman then?
We prefer here pretty much to find some way to compensate the existence of something violating against the social order. We can make them ridiculous as some of the intellectually less gifted people with a horrible ego do because they think we question their mere existence.
But the really smart people – the psychologists – found of course another answer for this. Either we’re homosexual or autogynephile – a simple explanation everyone understands. Those who are attracted to men are homosexual men who chose to be women because they don’t want to admit they’re homosexual. And of course because they like wearing satin… On the other hand, how could you blame a trans-woman of being homosexual when she actually is homosexual, meaning, lesbian. Sure, in that case she can’t be homosexual to psychologists, it would just be too easy. She’s autogynephilic, meaning a man sexually attracted to the image of himself as a woman. Yeah, you got it – what label you get depends on sexual orientation – at least the one you would have if you really were the man they think you are.

So we know now that I’m autogynephlie. But well, I wouldn’t say I’m sexually attracted to myself as the woman I am – I just have the self-confidence to know I’m cute (as opposed to many psychologists). I think you already saw that such patterns don’t really work. What homosexual man would undergo SRS just to pass? I mean, being an out homosexual is nowadays more widespread than being an out transsexual so you’re actually less freaky. But this fact seems to be too difficult for many psychologists to get. On the other hand, a lesbian transsexual is male because she is attracted to women like every normal man – doesn’t fully add up too, right? Did you ever ask a lesbian whether she is male? She’d probably kill you when you assume she’s suffering from penis envy. On the other hand I really assume that some of these psychologists must suffer from what I call now ovarian envy because they are jealous of us transsexuals – we manage to mess with their hetero-centric world image. But yeah, there are no known transwomen with ovaries, but as opposed to the psychologists we are talking about, evolution will grant us some when we wait some centuries – not every species is meant to survive and Darwinism works sometimes better than one thinks…

Your psycho-but-logical Liz

The Perfect Dinner

Honey, I know it’s hard to take. Really hard. But yes, queer personality can be compared to a menu at a restaurant with a lot of choices. No, I really know that you will get used to it in time, so stop sobbing before you order dinner!
The best thing in good restaurants are of course the cute waitresses and not the food – but when several people even take me for a waitress in my either-federal-agent-or-hunting-for-girls outfit the waitresses seem to lose quality concerning style. Fine, now that our philosophy of style and food ended, we can start with the meal.

Civilised people which also have money happen to start with a drink, probably a Martini – shaken not stirred – if they didn’t shoot their toes off first with a Walter PPK. So, you are going to need this drink because once life gets hard everything feels better if you have a drink (at least as long you’re not an alcoholic, I guess). And your coming-out is dead ahead so you desperately need this drink!
But as usual, as we queers know, it is important to come out to someone – in that case the waiter and everyone seeing what we do on he table – only that here, we are not saying something like “Hey, I’m a tranny-dyke” but rather “I prefer salad because the weather is too hot for soup”. You may say that this is not important, but guess what; people will judge you by what you eat.
And yes, if you take the soup and the salad, you’re a transsexual – you start with one thing and end up someplace else. If you take only the salad, you’re cold-blooded and if you only take the soup you’re probably a real hottie. So, until now we know whether you are transsexual or not, and if you’re not we could comfort you with a positive aspect of your personality. The weird part is that not every transsexual is a cold-blooded hottie, but my image seems at least to fit in there and of course I am the benchmark.

Now to the main dish. The start is easy: If you order meat you’re butch, if you order vegetables you’re femme and if you order a cold dish with very few calories you’re extremely femme.
But are you actually gay or not? Well, in case you are a man and you take knife and fork to eat the pizza and cut every single piece you’re probably gay. Otherwise you are either Italian or straight. On the other hand this does not work with girls because there are too many straight ones eating pizza by hand, so we have to take another example here. If you hold the fork with some strength, you are either a lesbian, a feminist or not used to forks. On the other hand, if you hold it rather sloppy, you’re either straight or drunk. But I’m not quite sure yet what a drunk lesbian would do if she wouldn’t stab herself with the fork in the first place like I did.
The problem is only how to know whether you are bisexual. But also here you may find some interesting answer. If you don’t always do it the same way, you’re probably bisexual and in just a few cases not yet decided what way you want to eat or whether you want to quit eating at all.

But no food-fetishist will ever forget the dessert. And here the real revelation comes, because when we assume that you’re on a date with someone you can even find out whether this is going to be a stable long-term queer relationship. Let’s further assume that you are femme, and you figured out by watching her behaviour while eating that she is a butch lesbian (or bisexual) and didn’t mind that she took the soup and is hot, took the salad and is a cold bad-ass and even worse, probably a transsexual too. So, if she takes something witch chocolate she’s a sweet one – but she should prefer dark chocolate and you white one, so there will be enough suspense in your relationship; otherwise it will get boring. If she takes ice cream it doesn’t matter what you take, because she will give you the cold shoulder. But there is still hope because she might just be playing it; remember that kids like that dessert too. If she takes cake, you would only be lucky as a butch – you will get a chatty housewife who can cook! I won’t talk about the meaning of cream for everyone knows what people do with it in the bedroom – a really intense affair then. And if she takes fruits or something light you better don’t rush it because she’s healthier than you (even if she’s a chain smoker) and will win every battle…

I hope I helped you to find out more about yourself and your next date…
Your now officially creepy and extremely hungry Liz

Big Guns for Bad Girls

You go out of the house, take the bus, see a guy who handles the ticket machine as if it was built by aliens, get stared at by a woman who looks as if her last bath would have taken place some months ago and have a fight with a passport picture machine which is only fluent in french. Some guy behind you asks another one: “Was that a tranny?” and some girl says to another one: “She’s cute.” You take the bus back, the driver forgets to stop at some station and in the end you go to the supermarket. Does that sound like a normal day to you too? Yes it is.

But even if most people assume that they just live in one world, I’d rather say that there are some parallel worlds – and luckily I’m not the spiritual type. But some people lead their Second Life, others live in television series and some others computer games. One can get lost in Books, or worse, writing them and yet others just sit there and think about how bad the one life they have is. I’m a little bit of everything, but sometimes the manipulative bitch in me turns into a raging amazon, although I’m mostly doing it in a computer game. Well, multiplayer versions of ego-shooter games where you steal flags and run for your life (no, it’s not patriotism!) are not what one would consider a huge intellectual challenge, but they’re fun. By the way, the first time I went out as a woman was not, like many of my friends think, in London but rather that very game where I started living and killing as a girl quite a while ago.

Fine, in the time where I started playing there were only about two women in that game – at least on the dozen serves I used to play – so we got quite famous among all the guys. Well, lately I had some time and couldn’t think of something smart to write – yes, my readers will start complaining – so I took out my ancient Pentium IV, removed the dust and started playing. Well, when I fight and my ping is so high that everything lags I prefer the big guns where you don’t need to aim that well and kill everyone, including your teammates. And yes, when you stop being assassin for quite a while, your aim suffers like hell.
Anyway, when I kill people and get killed by people I also chat with them. However, some guy said something weird I don’t remember and I told him that he’s sounding like my ex-wife. Not that I would have an ex-wife, but such quotes also work in film, and everything that works in film also works when a film scientist says it. The first thing the guy replied was: “Liz is fake, hes a guy!”
I asked why he thinks so, and he said: “Well, you just said ‘wife’. Either you’re a guy or a dyke.”
Wel, he got me, so I said that I’m a lesbian. It was really fascinating how much just the word “lesbian” lead to a lot of questions and endless discussions among the guys there. The most creative remarks went from “do you wear your hair short?” over “now I know why you are so mean with us poor guys when you play” up to “wouldn’t you like to publish a picture of you kissing the other girl that plays here?”
Well, I’m pretty much used to that so it’s nothing new. But the really most interesting thing was that some guy who knew me a bit better asked why all lesbians he knows are called Sarah. I don’t know but I’d rather say that most transsexuals I know are either called Andrea or Sarah, which is just as creepy. However, when you are a lesbian in a virtual world full of men you don’t need to worry – either they have something to talk about or you have something to shoot at without worrying to kill potential partners…

Well, I’m sometimes in Second Life too but I couldn’t find there enough cute lesbians to dance with. Europride was way easier and even real which basically means that I look worse and get more exhausted but protect my computer’s life…

Your virtual Liz

I’m just not the lipstick type…

Well, as a transsexual you happen to get rated quite differently from a double-x-girl. From the moment you come out of the closet (did you ever sleep in a closet? It’s quite uncomfortable) people look at you in another way. When you do it in the time you start to transition they will watch anxiously what you do and give all the nice tips how to become a better woman. When you tell it to somebody after transitioning you will be examined for anything masculine that remains, like: “Oh, I would never have thought you’re a transsexual, but now I realize your hands are bigger than those of a woman…”

Well, when you get older you get used to it. As soon as you killed all friends which still called you “he” behind your back and can consider yourself one happy transsexual and you also get rid of most of this. But you still hear it sometimes from the ones that figure out you’re trans. It’s like the difference between: “Are you a transsexual?” and “Were you once a guy?”
One of the funniest thing is when the so called experts on transsexualism tell you what to do. Some of these fellows are psychologists, some doctors and some people who think they are experts because they had to comfort more than two stressed transsexuals. The best suggestion someone from these experts once made was: “Don’t you want to use some pinkish lipstick? You would look more like a woman with it.”
Wait… would this really fit my hair colour? Come on, never decorated an apartment? And yes, I’m just not that much the lipstick type…
But honestly, you get a lot more tips. Another is something like: “When you wear a skirt, sit with the legs tight together – you have to be a girl now.” Fine, there I make it myself easy because it’s not really relevant when I wear opaque stockings. And yes, I could even sit there like a guy, because I’m a lesbian. Just don’t try to come me with gender stereotypes, I can fight back with double strength.

Fine, you sometimes also get some useful tips. On the other hand there’s also a lot of people asking really weird stuff. One of my favourite questions started with: “So if you change your sex, are you into guys or girls afterwards?” – “Afterwards? Uh, the same as now… I’m homosexual” – “So you were gay before and lesbian after?” Yes, that’s why I believe in intelligence…
But there are even more logical people. “If you can change your name after taking all those pills and doing sex-change, to what are you going to set your age?” Uhm, I don’t happen to be able to change my date of birth as you might know if you would use to think…

But the really best one was from my therapist: “Now that you weigh more you appear more like a mother type.” Well, as far as I can see on the street not every mother is fat, and cynics like me as mothers would just ruin the kids more than they already are…

Your Liz with a varying age

Europride Zurich 2009

Lately I was at the Europride parade which took place in Zurich this year – and not just because the new mayor is a lesbian. Yes, I did even dance on a truck with some other cute girls. If you can’t dance you better ruin your reputation among 80.000 people than go to a club – it’s much more fun and documented on several web pages. And when a rather small metropolis like Zurich turns so queer that even the tramways are decorated with rainbow flags (tram and proud?) then it really turns everything upside down for some time. The shopping addicts flee from the parade to the mall and the sensation addicts run from the mall to the parade… The queer are there anyway.

Well, not all of them. When I asked some people I know a little bit over the web, some of them asked me: “Europride, what is this?” Frankly, I was shocked; in a small country like Switzerland there are some lesbians that don’t know when Zurich turns to Europe’s queer capital? Fine, I thought, and replied that it’s something like a European CSD. But – guess what – I was asked: “What is the CSD?”
Okay, I may be sort of a queer poster-child in some way but even I wouldn’t guess that every GLBT person goes to the next CSD. Nevertheless, there are some things about history and current politics they should know… What again does 40 years with pride mean?

But to be honest, I was surprised how few bigger reports there were in media. Sure, something small on page five, but when something of this size takes place in Switzerland it’s all over the media. Maybe there were just too few gay journalists because they had all off for the parade which would make sense. Another interesting thing was to look at the pictures. Sure, more than half of them showed styled people, mostly drag-queens, spider-men/women and the whole shebang. Makes sense for this is the biggest attraction. The rest were pictures of kissing men; makes sense as well. But never even one picture on a site of a Swiss newspaper or TV-station with a boring average lesbian like we were. Thanks to Picasa I at least found some of us – we were there, I even did remember properly then. But it’s really fascinating that newspapers prefer kissing men quite big deal over kissing women when reporting about a pride but it makes sense when we look at society. A gay couple just is more shocking or exotic than a lesbian one – not because there are less gays but because of the male role in this society. Not that I would mind, but it seems like being gay has way more a forbidden, or if you want to say so, a queer touch than being lesbian. We’re just girls that are assumed to be masculine and seem to be more sensational to society when it comes to porn movies that straight men watch. Really, it’s an interesting phenomenon.

Near the end of the parade the police had to beat up some Nazis in a side alley. But honestly, did forty skinheads think they had a chance against some ten thousand queers? They probably never pissed off a butch dyke before…
And yeah, the horrible religious fundamentalist party did annoy us even months before the pride – but as some people then stated the party still has the chance to be healed…
As a friend told me there were also some not all too intelligent machos in the city on the city festival, asking some guys: “Man, you really gay?” Quite funny when the real men get lost among gays – seriously, if I would ask every girl whether she is straight, society would fall apart in no time! On the other hand when I say that I’m a lesbian some people still say: “Wow, you don’t look like one”. But hello, at one point (when you get dressed for the day) you need to decide whether to look like a tranny or like a dyke – even when you manage multitasking pretty well…

So much for not dirty but wet (from rain) dancing…
Your Liz

PS: Some pictures can be found here, there will be some free chocolate for everyone who manages to spot me on two of them.

A Queer Cookbook

In a world where individualism does count and you can do and be a lot – even a freak like me – you also need to know who and what you are. But how do we puzzle something like this together? Well, we can take the things and make something nice or horrible out of them, it’s as easy as Tetris.

Let’s take me as an example. I seem to be a really complicated person to a lot of people. I’m a transsexual – most don’t get all about it but they live with it, mess with me or don’t cross my way so it’s quite a fair deal. But then I’m a lesbian too – here it’s the same with others but it gets slightly more complicated. I was already asked several times: “What do you get out of a sex-change when you won’t have sex with guys afterwards anyway?” Hum – I wouldn’t really say gender identity is just about having sex. Sexual orientation on the other hand is not necessarily about a preset gender identity. But when we take the classical stereotypes of transsexuals as hyper-feminine men that want to be women and therefore get laid by every guy and lesbians as hyper-masculine women beating up every guy and hitting on every girl we get a slight conflict. How could a transsexual now be a lesbian? Sure, stereotypes don’t work that easy in reality but when we look at them we can get the bigger deal about strange questions that an average transsexual lesbian like me wouldn’t understand otherwise.

Now I also happen to find some trans-girls cute. Wouldn’t that make me rather bisexual? Not every transgender is necessarily also a full blown transsexual you might end up with someone who doesn’t fit in a bipolar gender drawer. Well, again, there are not always appropriate drawers for everything so we just make our own which would probably make me trans-lesbian, meaning a lesbian not excluding transgender from her preferences. Don’t despair; we can keep on making this endlessly more difficult.

But when we take GLBT and update it to modern standards with GLBTIQ and then need to pick what we are I would be with L and T so far. Now we have I and Q as well. With time more and more scientists came (and probably will come) to the conclusion that transsexualism can be considered as some sort of intersex condition I’d be I too. And Q; well, I’m not creating mean technical toys for James Bond but when I already got three letters I pretty definitely have to be queer – right? When we add my queer attitudes we end up with four letters out of six which is quite a mind job for many people to take. Fine, multitasking is not something everyone is capable of but there turns out to be another dilemma for me. What if I had to choose whether to go to a lesbian or a tranny party? Yes, you get it – I’d ask around until someone invites me to one of the two events so I’d pick the one which is free. Every problem one might have can be solved like this. But if you really end up in a fight because some lesbians don’t like trannies and some trannies don’t like lesbians (huh, I thought we should hold together to fight radical religious groups?) you even got it easier: both radicals would hate you anyway so you wouldn’t have to pick a side at all! And besides, no one can hate little Liz – she’s just too confusing so you spend so much time thinking that you never get the time for fighting…

Your Liz the Strange

Serial World

Lately when I made my way to university two women walked past me. For I wasn’t really awake (commuting kills one) I was mostly looking on the floor. The first woman was wearing the same shoes as I do – of course in smaller size. The next one was wearing the shoes I bought last week. When you visit someone you can nearly bet 10:1 that this person owns IKEA furniture and you will probably recognize some piece because it’s in your apartment as well. Think of clothes – I’ll bet you once saw someone wearing the same thing as you on the street. And when you lived once in a place where two neighbours owned exactly similar cars you are already traumatised anyway because the guys always had to use their keys or license plates to find out which car was theirs.

We live in a world where serial patterns repeat everywhere. Normally we don’t really notice it because we have an individual attitude towards it. We are rather surprised when the train we enter looks different one day but not when it looks the same like every day. We only realise such things when we stumble upon but not when they are as expected. So projected individualism is not about a piece you wear – someone else wears it too – but rather about the whole composition of things. Of course it is not a new attitude to create serial patterns around us – think of those who did some sort of “early psychology”. Like nowadays psychologists they tried to create types of personalities, from aggressive to melancholic. Nowadays it’s for instance Jungian archetypes that we have as a replacement but it’s still a serial pattern. So we don’t just try to get some sort of serial logic with things – where it’s easier and cheaper to do so – but also with people. The extreme version of this would be “Brave New World”, but there the old-fashioned guy was quite a weirdo too, so no really interesting options for someone smart like me.

But it gets better when we see that even contemporary art has the attitude to depict serial patterns. We could say this started with Andy Warhol – at least everyone knows the invasion of soup cans. Yes, we live in a serial world – connected and already quite often reflected. Another interesting clue is that TV serials and continued movies gained success compared to classical movies. Serial forms of every kind seem to boom – sometimes because they are just pragmatic and sometimes because we simply like to have something we recognise wherever we are. The Ford in the USA reminds the European of being home…

So, don’t photocopy your personality and cross-reference your clothes!
Your serial produced Liz