A Dahl’s House

The nice folks over a Bilerico were kind enough to publish this today:

Dear Christian,

I hope you’re enjoying your new-found, and well-earned celebrity. It was refreshing to see a “Project Runway” contestant who’s actually as talented as they thought themselves to be. And if you’re brash… well, that’s part of being 21-years-old.

I saw that you recently retired “fierce,” and—as someone who’s trans (I’m a crossdresser who also performs as a drag queen)—I’d like to ask you to retire your other catch phrase: “hot tranny mess.”

I realize you probably started saying it to be hip and edgy. Maybe you even meant it affectionately in a snarky sort of way—although you clearly intend it to refer to something tacky and ugly. But think about it. If straight folks started using “hot faggot mess” as a put-down, I suspect you’d be a bit peeved. (BTW, did I mention how adorable you look when you’re miffed…?). And yes, it is a put-down, just in the same way that “that’s so gay” is an offhand put-down straight kids use to describe something lame. As if being gay or being trans is sucky and something one ought to be ashamed of.

Or to put it another way- somehow I doubt you’d even think about using “hot n-word mess,” yes?

I also just wanted to let you know that your use of the word “tranny” is treading on insensitive ground. Yes, some of us trans people do use the word “tranny.” But there’s a difference when a term that’s often been an epithet gets reclaimed by members of the stigmatized group as a way of saying “yeah I am a [insert derogatory term here], wanna make something of it”—and quite another when someone outside that group decides to fling it around carelessly.

I realize you probably don’t mean it as a slur—which is why I haven’t given you my “hot tranniest look” (yet…). But the thing is, usually when most of us trans people hear the term “tranny” it’s said by someone taunting us, threatening to beat us up, or even kill us. (So far in the first three months of this year, three other gender variant or trans people besides Lawrence King have been killed in apparent hate crimes. But you rarely hear about them, ‘cause after all, we’re just “trannies”—nobody worth giving a damn about.)

Since you weren’t exactly the most straight-acting kid in the class, I’m willing to bet you had people call you “faggot” in similar circumstances, so you understand how hearing an epithet can hurt, even if the speaker didn’t mean anything by it.

As a celebrity—like it or not—what you do and say does influence people. And from what I’m seeing, “hot tranny mess” is becoming the latest “ain’t it cool” thing to say in certain circles. I’m sure you’d much rather be remembered for your stunning designs than for creating a catch phrase that thoughtlessly hurts others.

You helped start and it. You can help stop it. The next time you do a talk show, let people know that you’re retiring “hot tranny mess,” and why. If Leno can do that, so can you.

But if you really want to keep using the word “tranny,” why not use it describe something worth admiring—I’ve even got a new catch-phrase for you: “hot tranny fabuliciousness.”

Yours in fabuliciousness,
Lena Dahlstrom aka Joie de Vivre

Says the Feminist Majority Foundation in a newly released video. (And yes, some feminists look like men—that’s because they are men.)

Very, very groovoi.

A recent article about the Thai army’s decision to stop branding transsexual conscripts as mentally disturbed, reminded me that Thailand’s national draft lottery is one of the more interesting measures about the prevalence of trans-ness. It’s pretty close to a random sample of the country’s entire population of 20-year-old males. In the latest article, an Army spokesman said transsexuals make up less than 1 percent of conscript, although a different spokesman in a 2006 article said that 1% to 2% of those who show up for the draft lottery are either transvestites or transsexuals.

(Guess Eddie Izzard will be getting his 1st Battalion, Transvestite Brigade, Airborne Wing…)

It’s interesting that that 1-2% figure roughly tracks with the 2.8% of men and 0.4% of women, ages 18 to 60, who reported at least one episode of transvestic fetishism in a Swedish study that’s the only one I know of that posed the question to a random sample of the general population. (The question was actually part of a larger survey on a variety of health issues, which is why the Swedes surveyed the entire country.)

It’s seems reasonable to assume the Thai statistics represent a minimum estimate because despite Thailand’s reputation for trans tolerance, being dismissed from the Army for being trans has serious life-long consequences. (Because men are required to prove if they have completed their national service when they apply for jobs or bank loans ,and those with a “mental disorder” discharge are automatically disqualified from many jobs and mortgages.) So it’s reasonable to assume that only the most gender variant trans people are being spotted by the Army and that those who can closet themselves do so.

I’d treat the Swedish study as a rough estimate, since on the one hand, even though the survey promised anonymity, it’s not unreasonable to suspect some people probably didn’t admit to trans behavior. Especially since (according to those who’ve seen the full study—I’ve only seen the abstract myself) the question posed was “Have you ever dressed in clothes pertaining to the opposite sex and become sexually aroused by this?”. So besides people who weren’t willing to admit to this, there were probably trans people who answered “no” because they didn’t see their crossdressing as sexual motivated. On the other hand, since reportedly anyone who did so at least once was counted, it’s likely they may have counted some people who crossdressed as an experiment, but who probably wouldn’t be considered—nor see themselves—as trans.

I’ve heard rumors of a UK study that looked at what percentage of male patients brought to the emergency room were underdressed—i.e. wearing or more article of women’s clothing under their men’s clothing—but so far I’ve not found any evidence that the study exists. Since not all trans people underdress, the statistic (if it exists) would drastically under-report the actual numbers of trans people. But one might be able to combine it with some survey work looking at the prevalance of underdressing. Obviously once again you run into issues of properly sampling a closeted population. So any result number would be an extrapolation of uncertain data based on other uncertain data, and would be at best a rough estimate.

Trying to estimate the size of a closeted population is inherently imprecise. But my take on it is that it’s a bit like on-GPS navigation in sailing, in which compass/celestial sightings are inherently imprecise (due to the motion of the boat and other reasons). Nonetheless you can triangulate among enough of them to calculate your position in a useful way—albeit within what’s referred to as the “area of uncertainty.” So we’ll never have exact numbers, but if different methods end up with results in the same neighborhood, it may be possible to develop some estimates that have a greater reliability than the individual surveys.

Samuel Lamar Moore went on trial Tuesday in Mobile County Circuit Court, charged with murder in the October 2006 shooting death of Marco Little.The body of Little, 31, was found sprawled inside his Kimberlin Drive home near Old Government and Dawes roads, lying in what one police officer described as a “lot of blood.”...A motive for the killing was unclear. In testimony, the victim was described as a man who enjoyed dressing up as a woman and considered himself a transvestite.

And then there’s this joyful tidbit…

Patton, Phillips and Circuit Judge Rick Stout had a difficult time putting together a jury for this case.

Monday’s efforts fell by the wayside because, among other reasons, a significant number of potential jurors informed the court that due to their religious beliefs they might not be able to hear the case without prejudice.

Stout and company succeeded Tuesday in seating a jury that promised to consider the violent shooting death of a person—no matter what his sexual orientation—as unlawful and wrong.

Oy…

At least the judge recognized the possibility that prejudice might taint the jury and appears to be doing something about it. Too bad he had to remind the jury that murdering someone—even if he’s gay and/or a transvestite—might be wrong.

UPDATE: After a one-day trial, the jury took only 75 minutes to convict Moore of murder. BTW, a few more details about the murder: Moore shot “Coco” Little (who the defense called a “known transvestite”) twice in the head and the prosecutor “reminded jurors on Wednesday of how, according to Moore’s friends, the defendant had described Little’s death with contempt and inhumanity.”)

This month’s Out magazine is a special on trans issues. As part of that, they included a rather craptacular list of must-read trans books. I realize Out is a fashion magazine, but jeebus it’s a bizarre list. There’s a few good choices, a few books I’d never heard of that look like they may be interesting but I doubt are essential reading, and a few asinine choices (“Myra Breckinridge”).

As Diana said, yet another clear indicator that the real and perceived ‘’trans’’ communities are light years apart.

Fortunately Helen Boyd has posted her own list of essential trans reading with capsule reviews on her site. Modestly, Helen omits her books—“My Husband Betty” and “She’s Not The Man I Married”—which are definitely on my must-read list. (Sadly, both SNTMIM and Julia Serano’s excellent “Whipping Girl” were both overlooked for this year’s Lambda Literary Foundation’s list of finalists in the transgender category. One wonders whether the Lammies had any trans people on the review committee.)

The lead story on the front page of the today’s Sunday NY Times Arts and Leisure section is an extended extended profile of Izzard, who’s describing himself as an “off-duty transvestite” these days.

He doesn’t always mention being a transvestite in his shows, he said. But he did in the two I saw, and it worked as a disarming strategy: acknowledge it for fans who are wondering what happened, then move on. “I am a transvestite; I’m just off-duty at the moment,” he told the audience, and immediately went on, “I never was a transvestite; it was a tax thing.”

As he explained later: “Some people would heckle me and say ‘Where’s the dress?’ and I’d say ‘Don’t oppress me, you Nazi’ — tends to shut them up. Because I have fought for the right to be able to wear a dress, not that I have to wear a dress. I didn’t jump out of a not-wearing-dress box into a have-to-wear-dress box.”
”
But isn’t he now in a have-to-wear-pants box for career purposes?

“Slightly,” he acknowledged. “Socially, politically, the number of out transvestites in the public eye are few.” And in American-accented voices he imagined one studio executive trying to persuade another to hire him:

“ ‘Yeah, he’s a transvestite — but he hasn’t been wearing a dress for a while.’ ”

“ ‘Yeah, I suppose that’s O.K.’ ”

Being a transvestite is “still not part of the establishment,” he said. “ ‘Twelve transvestite senators turned up today’ — it hasn’t been said yet. You’re always sort of outside the loop.”

When he started performing in England, he wore ordinary men’s clothes but worried that the press would learn of his transvestism and run with the news in a lurid way. He told reporters that he was a transvestite; they thought it was a joke. “So I thought, I’ll wear a dress and wear makeup,” he said, “and they wrote, ‘O.K., he is a transvestite, but he looks a mess.’ ”

“By the time I got to America in ’96, I thought, I’m going to bring it to America so I don’t have to do a two-step here,” he said. Eventually people saw him only as the cross-dressing stand-up, though, so he veered again, and here he is as Doug Rich.

Sort of. In the poster art for “Stripped” he is wearing an open lacy shirt, suit and jeweled collar pin, an image he described as rock ’n’ roll. He may be wearing a bit of eye makeup — more than most men but less than Keith Richards. It’s a dandyish, Beau Brummel look that hints at the balance he has to find at this stage of his career.

The nice thing is that while Izzard’s crossdressing is obviously a factor in the profile, it’s not the focus. BTW, annoyingly the end of article seems to have been cut from a version that was up earlier—which had a nice closing line about Izzard being a worker ant bent on world domination.

Nice coverage from a trade paper about yachting industry conference, where a well-known figure in the field came out as a trans woman (it’s not clear, but seemingly it was in the context of her being on a panel that was discussing other things).

Even nicer was the supportive nature of the person who introduced her. And nicest of all was that the announcement was buried in the tail end of the story—in other words the reporter thought it was only incidentally interesting.

“As the World Turns” tried to be daring by adding a gay couple, but got cold feet about actually showing them kissed. Which has upset fans.

It all started last Christmas, when Luke and Noah, the young gay couple on “As The World Turns,” were about to kiss. Though fans had seen them kiss before, this time the camera panned up to the mistletoe.

Over the next few months, while heterosexual couples were kissing, Nuke (as fans call the couple) was restricted to holding hands, playing with one another’s neck scarves and sharing meaningful looks.

Ensuing complaints of discrimination to CBS and the show’s producer and sponsor, Procter & Gamble, had no effect. And the last straw apparently arrived on Valentine’s Day, when every other couple but Nuke shared a kiss. They hugged instead.

Online fans began a nationwide media blitz on Feb. 20 to bring attention to the show, which has been twice nominated for an award from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

More in-depth coverage, and even the show’s straight supercouple is calling foul:

Austin Peck (Brad) and Terri Colombino (Katie)—whose steamy, straight sex scenes are by far the most racy on the show—don’t mince words when asked about the Nuke cool-down. “ATWT got scared off because there were two men,” Peck tells Out. Colombino says there’s one simple reason her character’s sex life won’t suffer the same fate: “I have a vagina.”

Happened last month, but folks outside Charleston, SC just found out about it.

“[Adolphus] Simmons, 18, who dressed as a woman and was doing freelance work as a hairstylist, was shot multiple times about 8 p.m. Monday when he took out his trash, witnesses said.” Three teens have been charged. Police have said there is no indication that it was a hate crime—but also have not given any indication of what the motive was.

Profile of the victim. On the positive side, Simmons’ friends and neighbors accepted him (his mother used male pronouns) and “looked past the clothes and hair he wore and saw only a loving human being.”

Between Lawrence King in California and Simmie “Chris/Beyonce” Williams in Florida, Ashley Sweeney in Detroit and Talib “Nesha” Stewart in New York all being killed, and a 10-year-old kid with gender issues committing suicide, it’s been a tough month for trans/gender varient folks.

Too much death, too much death…

At least two of the cases involved hate crimes—both King and Williams faced anti-gay slurs from the alleged killers—and Stewart’s killer invoked the reprehensible “gay panic” defense (echoed by the ever-so-sensitive Daily News’ headline: “Fooled john stabbed Bronx tranny”) but yet the foes of trans-inclusive rights protections within the gay and lesbians communities argue that gender variance has no connection—none, nada, no way—to sexual orientation and therefore can be dropped in order to gain protections for sexual orientation. Funny how those who hate us don’t bother to draw those distinctions. Yes, I’m bitter…

In the discussion over at Bilerico, about what I and others found to be an offensive ad, someone argued that I and others who were upset were vilifying sex workers.

To clarify… I don’t think sex work is something to be ashamed of, nor should be ashamed of trans hookers. (Although I do have problems with people feeling they have to turn to prostitution because they’ve got no alternatives, as well as the human trafficking that’s frequently tied to prostitution.)

But the premise of the joke was that Jen (the mom) was utterly blase about something that we the audience are supposed to find freakish and probably shocking. You could’ve substituted a talking dog and the premise would be the same. Even in my rewriting of the ad (in my prior post), the joke remains premised on Jerry (the lawyer/hooker), being a “freak,” but at least my version tries to show something unexpected about someone who’s perceived that way. Similar to a “Sex in the City” episode I once saw where one of the characters was upset about boisterous trans hookers outside her apartment, but through some plot twist that I don’t remember ends up getting to know and discovers that they’re human too.

Now the objector did raise a fair point, that the ad could be viewed as “hey there’s nothing wrong with being a crossdressing lawyer/hooker.” And if there were a lot of other kinds of portrayals of trans people in the media I might agree with you. Or the scene had been played straight and not for laughs. But let’s be honest, the vast majority of Americans (even New Yorkers) do see prostitution as disreputable, and the ad clearly seems to be making her a hooker for the additional shock value.

But the other part of what makes the ad problematic is that it’s trafficking in stereotypes, i.e. someone’s trans, well obviously they must be a hooker. It’s similar to the historical complaints about blacks and Latino only getting roles that depict them as crack dealers and gang members, gays only getting roles that depict them as stereotypical caricatures, etc.