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

~ by Liz on July 22, 2009.