Just before you ask – no, this is not goodbye! Okay, I admit, I dind’t pay a lot of attention to you lately – this seems to be the only downside of falling in love and being the only employee of a start-up company plus being active in several LGBT communities.

Fine, I haven’t been to jail (yet). I’m just rethinking the concept of this blog a bit and will adjust several things to spice it a bit up. Don’t worry, you’re not gonna lose little badass Liz, my attitude or anything else that you’re used to. Just excuse me for my ongoing inactivity and trust me – it’s not over yet.

Thank you for haning in there…

Liz

Let’s just stay with that matrix metaphor for a little longer. Every phenomenon we encounter can be mathematically described – well, at least it could if we were smart enough to do so. But what about gender?
Well, here we face trouble pretty soon. First of all this not all too big word has according to some dictionary not one single or exact definition. Many people – including me sometimes – use the wide term “gender” to refer to “gender identity” which would be as what or who we identify. On the other hand many (or even more?) use gender as the word that says as how others see you. And we’re back with the usual me-and-them thingy. We’ll get back to it later here and in another post because for the first time being the following thoughts can be applied to both views.
Right, first there was math. When we understand gender as including male and female entities we should ask ourselves what exactly these entities are, where they intersect and how much they do so. Remember, we’re still two-dimensional so far. I hope you remember statistics and set theory from your math classes, because we are going to use this now a bit – gee, I hate math!

Because simple math doesn’t always really work with everyday facts we need some assumptions to build on (we could also use more complex math here but that would be a bit off limits for the author).
First, we assume that there is a way to measure gender attributes of a certain behavior on some scale, giving either masculine or feminine points (to simplify you can compare this concept to a BEM Sex Role Inventory test[1]) and that the measures are given.
Second, we assume that we are somehow able to sum all existing attributes of a person up to an average.
Third, we assume that we are able to do this for all people in the world (or at least the Eurocentric part of it, ’cause most of us know the western society best).
And fourth, we assume that gender is static so we can have some data which is still valid after we collected it.

Now we have the ability to draw nice little diagrams to show how male and female we really are – may it be how we feel or how people perceive us. Well, there’s one flaw. Neither of the four assumptions above is really possible so it won’t work anyway. However, if we assume for a second they were it would be really interesting how the diagram would look like. A large pool around male and female and few in the middle? Or rather an ellipse with most in the middle and least in the outer region? Fine, we don’t know for sure – all we can do is watch or ask randomly people and take notes. However, I think we just proved that gender is too complex for math so far.

Fine, you may think now, why did she do such a bunch of talking when she just ends up with a simple one-sentence conclusion? We simply need a logic evidence to prove that something doesn’t work and that’s what I did now. Taking a gender role test doesn’t tell you as much as you might think.

During the work on this article, I took the BEM test for the third time in my life. The first one was about the time I came out – I was labeled clearly feminine with a really high ranking. The next time was after I started on hormones. I still was considered feminine, but pretty close now to nearly feminine. Now I did it today and I was only four points towards the feminine in the androgynous scale. Hell yeah, I hit zero!

What do we learn from this? Well sure, these tests also assign male or female attributes to things I wouldn’t consider male or female except when we speak of stereotypes. And I wouldn’t really say that for a pragmatic person a stereotype is something worth to accomplish. So when you happen to be in your current life situation more of a stereotype than usual, you just get coincidentally more feminine or masculine.
But there it comes, the really thrilling question – is there a Zero Point? Is there some place where you either have no gender at all or equal amounts of both (if there only were two). And is there something similar with sex?

If there were something like a Zero Point of sex in the way it’s perceived by others, I probably would have crossed it during the last few years. But if there would be a Zero Point of gender I played quite some time with it without ever really hitting it.

We can’t measure such a thing. And we often tend to forget that something as complex and often rethought and hard-fought as gender cannot possibly have two dimensions. There are way too many personal elements that intersect in too many places to avoid ending up in a multidimensional construct which we can’t just fill in bottles and sell on the black market. Male and female isn’t even nearly enough to be the only parts of gender.
But once again back to our famous number zero. How such something that complex which we cannot measure actually have a Zero Point? But I can promise you one thing – if there actually were a Zero Point, I’ll find it someday – but I’d rather say that we all have one point in this matrix – and we call that point ourselves.

[1]: To take the test, you can download it here.

Yes, the determination of gender is complicated. However, we are used to a binary gender system, which already starts when (and sometimes even before) we’re born. We take the newborn and look down to see what it is – a boy or a girl. When it has a penis it’s a boy, otherwise it’s a girl. The first keyword is ‘otherwise’; it’s rarely replaced with ‘has a vagina’ – why look for something that looks less obvious? Sure, a baby can also have both, but hey, we got good surgeons to make one of the two genitals disappear – who would like to have a child that doesn’t fit in a binary? No we can tick the M or F on the release form and the sex is clear; and with that also the gender.

Now comes the long time of growing up and learning to eat, to speak and to be a proper boy or girl. Nowadays it might be that we are allowed to play with cars and puppets but still – we learn the code of the assigned gender role. Our anatomy is made our destiny, by the help of well-meaning parents teachers and even other kids; they want that we fit in so we can get along well in this cruel world out there. This might sound cynic and it is; sometimes the best intentions lead to not-so-good results. We’re told often some things like ‘you’re a boy, so behave like one’ but rarely ‘you are you, you’re a person’.

Sure, the presence of two sexes makes sense for reproduction so evolution wasn’t all too stupid. But when even the sexes aren’t always as clear as we think (There are people with XXY, XY-women and a lot more) we can say that evolution – or if you’re religious God – doesn’t just work with black-and-whites. Now we put gender in the mixer and turn it on; but for some reason it won’t mix! In our Eurocentric culture, gender role is way more binary than even sex although gender actually blurs more than sex ever could. We assign a M or a F and then it’s done – this is what you are supposed to be for the rest of your life – and even if it’s listed under ‘sex’, gender comes along quite quickly.
When I was a little kid, my mother was often told ‘you have a cute girl’ and she replied ‘no, it’s a boy!’ – even long before my official ‘transition’ I asked her why she insisted so much in me being a boy and she said: ‘because I thought it’s important that people know what you are’. She said this more out of instinct and couldn’t give me a rational reason for it.

But that is the key question – why is it so important what you are? Well, one thing is easy and obvious: we need to know whether to say ‘he’ or ‘she’. But why is this so important? We only know two options, boy or girl. We don’t even have a vocabulary for anything else except the word ‘it’, which is often used in a quite pejorative way. It; the hermaphrodite; the tranny; that thing. We look at a person and ask ourselves as one of the first things whether it’s a man or a woman – this makes some sense when we are looking for a partner because sexual preferences do exist (yes, really). But we also do it when we’re in a relationship or when we don’t find someone attractive. We want to know what someone is, we feel safe when we can assign someone to a group: Worker or banker, strong or weak, thin or fat, men or women. But what happens when we can’t?

As a out transsexual woman who doesn’t pass always I’m quite used to being stared at. There’s a basic set of reactions people have although they don’t intend to show them to me. One is joy: ‘Hey cool, they don’t just exist in telly but also in the real world – she’s gotta have guts’. Another one is confusion: ‘What is this, a man or a woman?’ Some of these people never come up with a result and forget about it pretty soon. And the third one is disgust – yeah, no kidding! But the fewest of them would actually attack me or call me a lower being – most of them are after a few seconds quite ashamed of their reaction.

So why do some, who wouldn’t necessarily be intolerant in their principles, react like this? Disgust, even in its lightest forms, is quite a strong reaction to someone who does actually take showers. One part is probably about sex. We are used to the model of two sexes and we’re used to shame as much as sexualisation. So when we see someone transgendered and don’t know much about the subject we put her/him in context with sex, both the sex and often even the thought of having sex. And then one feels disgust because it goes further than the usual set of knowledge reaches. The other reason is even easier. We are used to binaries in gender, sex and role. A person who doesn’t fully fit into one or the other box is a threat to the system and makes one feel uneasy. When we cling to that system too much a threat turns the reaction from fear to disgust. As I mentioned in my example, most people who react that way feel ashamed pretty soon for their reaction and ask themselves why they just reacted like this. They are not intolerant per se and we could only blame them for living in a small world and not questioning its borders. The dangerous ones are those who aren’t ashamed of that reaction and actually might attack you for being what you are. The other ones aren’t dangerous in everyday life, although they make you feel uneasy and might vote against a better transgender law, so their danger is rather a political one than a physical threat.

The real problem here is our binary gender system. We can determine the physical aspects of sex quite easily, like genitals, chromosomes and so on. That’s fine. The problem isn’t the assignment of a sex at birth, because that can still change (although it should be easier to change sex legally and there should be at least three categories). The problem is the equation that our society still seems to see as carved in stone:

sex = gender

Gender is even way more floating than sex and there are no clear borders here, except the fictional ones that many take for granted. Sure, with feminism some of them blurred a bit, but the actual system remains the same. We don’t even have enough words for the things that are someplace ‘in between’. Sure, as a transsexual you can use the ‘born in the wrong body’-metaphor and it works quite well to explain to cissexual people what we are. But it’s still their terminology, not ours. It’s doesn’t include small parts, the fabric of our personal gender. Some even use the ‘I was a man and now I am a woman’-metaphor, but that only describes genitals or society’s view of our role. There’s no full metaphor for being transsexual and there’s even less for the transgendered. Kate Bornstein already described this more then fifteen years ago:

[…]As a people, we’re short on metaphors, any metaphors, and when we find one that people understand, we stop looking. It’s time for transgendered people to look for new metaphors – new ways of communicating our lives to people who are traditionally gendered. [2]

We could rather see gender as a Rubik’s Cube, a lot of colors and many, many ways to arrange them. Some just happen to come along when we play with the cube and some are brought into position with intention. Sometimes one might despair because one’s unable to solve it properly and sometimes we’re faster with that than others can follow. And when someone hands you such a cube, you’re not obliged to put it on a shelf and let it catch dust – you can think about it, look at it and play with it – change it to what you like most. And there’s no rule saying that it looks best when all color is on one side!

So what does that make me? Pink or blue? Woman or man? Smartass or freak? Actually none because there’s no such thing! It’s just words to describe something that we need a word for; and words are identity. All I know is that I’m definitely not a man and never was one. But I am a woman and on the other hand I’m not. Some who might read this might feel as if I’d slap in their face right now, so please wait and let me explain. First of all we need some words to describe a gendered and sexual identity, like: transsexual woman, lesbian, queer, some subtle aspects of genderqueer and so on… When I say that in some ways I’m not a woman this doesn’t mean that I am none; it means that I’m a transsexual with the background of a transsexual and don’t need to play or be a cissexual; the only reason why I like and want to pass is because it makes life easier, to get less insulted and properly addressed. So yes, I am a woman, but I’m not a cissexual woman. With my attitude I’m probably not exactly what most people mean when they say ‘woman’. But still; I am a woman, just not only that. I already was seen by transsexuals as some kind of poster-girl because I have a lot of feminine attitudes and (honestly) never really had something like the famous ‘male privilege’. Maybe that’s why I can afford such a wide definition of gender pretty easily although there are very few people that would actually have thought that my view of my gender is that fuzzy. Before you misunderstand me now, in my view I am a woman, it’s only that my definition of woman is more inclusive than those of many. I can also still say that I’m a lesbian when I’m attracted to someone not so clearly gendered female or transgendered. Many others would say that from then on, I’m not. Stretching the meaning of words and labels taken for strict is quite unusual in our society but here’s the key: What and who you are is not how others define you, but how you define yourself. And with a good reason for being what and who you are there’s hardly a way to take it from you.

What you are assigned is not necessarily what you are. What you change in the assignment is not necessarily seen the way you see it. What you are isn’t always the same as who you are. And even more important:

Anatomy is not Destiny [3].

Gee, that was a rather long one. But I don’t have more time for you now because there are more things in my life than gender. Vacuum cleaners are way more hated but they still are somehw significant…

List of References:
[1]: Quite common joke, original source unknown.
[2]: Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, Vintage Books, 1994
[3]: Quote taken from: Lisa Lees, Fragments of Gender, Lulu, 2005

Sure, these definitions are rather brief and explained more closely in the linked articles but let’s work with these quotes now. Again – what is gender for us? There are definitions like the ones we just read and they aren’t all too bad. But can we draw such clear and strict borders when talking about a rather fluent phenomenon? Drawers don’t work because we rather speak about tendencies. Gender isn’t just the “s” before the “he” or the x or y. So let’s picture gender as an open box. So we rather could ask what – and how much of it – is in the box.
So, what kind of things are in this box? Let’s start with the sex; sure, you might guess that a transsexual writer would say that our genetic or biological sex has no influence on who we are – but it does. Even if a lot of the influence is only what we see when we look at our body (primary and secondary sexual characteristics) and how people perceive us, it is definitely relevant. Let’s add how we see ourselves not in the mirror but when we think about us or in our thoughts and feelings. But does gender really end with that? Many people would say that things like whether the kid plays with cars or puppets could be added to gender – I’d say it’s not that easy. But couldn’t we add things that aren’t all too obvious? When we say gender is a substantial part of who and what we are, couldn’t there be more to it than many guess – things about us that are not socially gendered can be just as well part of our gender.

With these things in mind we can leave the not all too short prelude and get to the topic. What is gender expression? In the context we look at it we don’t speak about biology. What I mean with this term is what we do – may it be consciously or unconsciously – to express or show our gender. There is a large risk of misinterpretation here: one can project something into someone that he or she isn’t. One can misread something as gendered which isn’t or the other way round; and last but not least we can misread something completely. And yes, before we continue with another basic thing (most of you will be annoyed because you know that) – when I speak of gender as a whole as well as parts of that gender I don’t perceive them necessarily as binary entities.
But how do we express gender? It’s how we dress and style, how we act, small gestures and body language, how we speak, what we say… you name it. Even something apparently simple as how we dress is way more complex than we may think – it’s way more than just skirts versus pants. We can find here already quite transgressing tendencies and one doesn’t have to be transgendered to transgress gender. Even definitions like tomboyish woman or effeminate man won’t do the job completely. And the often as neutral considered jeans-and-T-shirt look isn’t as neutral as it seems for we still read some gender when we see someone dressed like that. Still, there are strict borders here: When we see someone we read as male in a cheerleader dress or someone we read female in Charlie Chaplin style we get confused. Interesting here is that women tend to have more choices than men – or do you see often men wearing skirts or dresses? On the other hand we are used to women wearing suits. But also here a women’s suit is designed quite differently from a mans suit. So far I didn’t tell you anything you couldn’t see by yourself. But when you buy clothes you nearly always buy them gendered. Sure, there are also ways to break with such binaries pretty much – you could combine a skirt with high heels and a very masculine jeans jacket. Maybe you just try something like that and maybe it’s just your gender – or a gender of your own. The only thing you should keep in mind while reading this is that masculine and feminine can be far from male or female – although both is gendered.

But there’s more to life than nice clothes. Accessories work more or less the same way so we don’t look closer at them. Still, there are many other ways of doing gender and we use most of them every day. There’s the voice. Did you ever notice that women tend to raise their voice towards the end of a sentence? Maybe one could compare the sound of it with asking a question, something like “Hi, I’m Liz?” – but of course (and fortunately) it’s not that extreme. There are of course way more subtleties to language but this example shows quite well what I mean. And also here we can make a gender of our own. There are many expressions that would be read as binaries like a male or female sound of a voice; but I take every bet that you did (and also do) encounter many situations where you couldn’t assign certain attributes to the person by using binaries – a woman can have a low voice and a man can raise his voice towards the end of a sentence.
Now, there are also gestures that we assign a gender. How do you gesticulate? How do you open a door or hold a cigarette? Just to make it clear, not everything is necessarily gendered but also here we read a lot in the context of a person’s gender. We don’t do this consciously except when we question a person’s gender. As a transsexual you hear a lot like “this looks really feminine” or “I wouldn’t do this, it’s too masculine”. On the other hand, when we take someones sex for granted we rarely question such things, except we have another reason to assign a gesture to someones gender, like: “She’s a lesbian so it makes sense when she acts masculine”. But when everything seems to match the classic gender binary we get confused when something small doesn’t add up but we rarely realise what it is. It’s basically the same thing about how we walk and how our facial expressions work.

This was merely a brief introduction to a complex topic – I hope I gave also those who never dealt with it some thought-provoking impulse. But I have good reasons to guess that many of you already thought about most of this – so keep on thinking.

Your thoughtful Liz

As a reader of a blog which also deals with transgender subjects you might like to hear something about my life, at least when it’s connected to the topic. And for I know that you stalk me anyway it doesn’t really matter to write something personal for once.
About two weeks ago I had my SRS and I’m still alive and kicking.  They gave me a lot of nice painkillers as drugs, so I just missed the rock’n'roll, but with my mp3-player I could also try to make up for this. Now I’m already back home because everything went better than usual (except the pain, but “no pain, no gain” is still one of the real truths in life). Sure, it’s boring and one can’t do all too many things, so I had to recruit my friends for shopping, entertaining me and carrying me around. But it seems to me that I spent more time in the hospital with visitors around me than alone, so entertainment did actually work.
As it looks I’ll have time to write something useful here soon again and keep on entertaining you.

Behave and be brave
Liz

First of all we notice that many of the female supporting characters which are or were put in a lesbian context are bisexual. Not that I would have something against bisexuals but still one notices this surprising amount pretty soon. I could end up with some attempts to explain. Some characters were originally designed as straight or the writers didn’t actually think about whether they might be lesbian or bi – so when they introduce a lesbian couple she just can be bisexual by logic. Number two is that they were on intention designed bisexual because so they could be of interest to a larger public. Number three is even simpler: they were just designed bisexual without any tactics in mind and this whole discussion would have been obsolete – but this would be a rare case with nowadays mass media.

For the simplification I talk in the rest of this post of lesbians, even when a lot of the characters are bisexual. It is interesting that lesbians are quite often in supporting roles lately, some years after the gays were. On the other hand lesbians went in public in a large scale after the gays already were. Whether this has an influence on this phenomenon is something I can’t say for sure.
But it’s sure that basically all of these lesbian characters have supporting roles – in the large scale shows there’s close to never a lesbian (or gay) leading role when it’s not the topic of the show. So don’t screenwriters dare to put us that high up because we might bite? Not really, most of us are being fed well. So there remain only two reasons I could think of. First, we live in a heterocentric society. Although we might guess that when we stick to statistics “only” 90% of all leading characters should be straight, this isn’t really the truth. We do have other minorities (for instance race) in many important roles; but still filmmakers tend to the male, white and straight hero – although nowadays one can sometimes also see a woman. But honestly, they’d fear that only a minority could identify with a lesbian in a leading role so they just leave it. When we follow this thoughts we end up with the second reason – there’s a lot of people that can’t identify but in addition also would be pissed off if suddenly in television everyone would be equal – they are called the Religious Right. We could add all the fans of Al Quaida to that corner and some other suspicious individuals to complete the scheme. I’d wonder how the TV shows would look like when the larger part of them would be produced in Western Europe.

With that we come to the last thoughts. The fewest of these supporting characters with lesbian background are actually presented as if it would be a simple fact that they were lesbian. Many of the reactions of the other characters or even just the way the story is told imply something like fascination. This goes from “Lesbians must be cool” up to “It’s hot that she’s into girls (obviously from a guys view here)” – but honestly, can you recall a situation where she just has a girlfriend and there’s no special way of presenting it? When I get asked whether I have a boyfriend or not and I reply that I’m a lesbian people very rarely react like this. Either universities are just way ahead of their time or the audience of mass media just wants a bit more drama than in the real life…

But besides minority cards, there is something way more important we shouldn’t forget: Is the person qualified for the job? Well, to stay with our examples, I’d say both of them are overqualified – just look at the last two decades and what kind of presidents and technical consultants the US had in this time. So let’s say (and hope) that they were chosen by ability and not just to fulfill a minority quota.

Now, what can we do with a transsexual in the American government? The religious right – not all to righteous though – already speaks of infiltration by minorities that shouldn’t exist. But hey, they always complain when someone more intelligent than them gets a better job than them an when this person is even not an average boring jackass it gets really ugly. The problem with this is that it stirs up the climate for hate crimes, witch-hunts and the holy inquisition. And of course this is the case because there are more (normally also not all too intelligent) contemporaries that rely on what other people say without questioning it.
On the other hand, for the whole transgender community, this appears to be a victory after what happened to the last trans-woman who was supposed to work for the US government. Diane Schroer had a job offer as analyst in terrorism prevention but never got the job when her employer figured out that she was a transsexual. This was 2004 – and it took some time for the courts to acknowledge that she actually was discriminated based on her gender identity.

Now we have a transsexual consultant in Washington, a former rocket scientist that can be named in the same breath as Lynn Conway. This proves one thing: Yes, we can have success. And also: Yes, we can actually be smart, although many people are scared to death of this fact.
And still we’re stuck with politics; but there are a lot more transgender in politics than one might think – especially in Europe. Italy has a trans-woman in the parliament but she is or was harassed quite often by that annoying right-wing Mussolini-Woman (yes, that Mussolini clan) and even Switzerland nearly got a transsexual in the parliament. Of course she had also to fight for her rights in court and won, but long after the election was over so she couldn’t get a seat anymore. And my city Zurich which also has a lesbian mayor has a trans-man in the parliament. So if we recapitulate and look at it from the world of simple phrases: Yes, we can – and probably we won’t give up until we are normal citizens.

But of course there are two things that remain to be said. First of all, we don’t seem to be normal citizens at all when the average newspapers write of the “First transsexual woman in US government” and when her former name is mentioned more often than her qualification for the job. Seriously we are still at the point where the (boulevard) media finds it very exotic and trilling to talk about a transsexual’s transition rather than about her success.
And the second thing goes to all of us: Keep in mind that there is a difference between a transsexual in politics and transsexual politics. An out transsexual politician already has it hard to do her job and be judged based on what she can instead of what she is. And trust me, this small difference is enormous. But also keep in mind that not every transsexual doing something new or great has to do this as a transsexual activist. I’m the first one to support transgender politics but we can’t expect anyone transgendered in politics to do this just for us; they also might have other goals and priorities in life. The worst thing that can happen is when the expectations from the public are mirrored in the expectations from our community – we should know better than them. First of all, we should judge a transsexual in politics like anyone else – based on what she does. If she does activism, great! And if not, fine – it’s her decision and not ours to make.
Just so you really don’t misunderstand me: A person is a person and someone working for the state is also more than just a transsexual. Let’s just celebrate our moral victory and raise our expectations – but towards the world and not towards the few transsexuals who made it in public as successful persons: They have to do their job, not ours. And I’m sure they’ll do it very well.

Your political Liz

Just to say that – I’m not dead. I was pretty busy lately and didn’t have time for you, which doesn’t mean that I don’t like you – well, at least not all of you. However, it looks like I’ll have time for you and will write here something reasonable pretty soon. Such a lack of time exists when you’re stressed at university and get a larger television to see horrible crimes in a higher quality. However, it’s easier and way more realistic to blame university and the stress I stands for. So please don’t panic, I’ll be back soon in case you didn’t forget me already…

Liz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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