Friday, 25th March, 2005

Filling the Void

Sometimes, honestly, I wonder whether anyone takes a blind bit of notice of anything I say.

...

<rant>

Transvestism has a bit of a problem at the moment. I don't know if anyone's noticed or anything, but there's a bit of a change in the air. I've spotted more and more trannies feeling disatisfied with the current state of things — but no-one seems to know what to do about it.

This might be hard for me to explain, which actually is the whole cause of it, so bear with me.

Traditionally, transvestites are predisposed to spend their lives apologising for themselves. We've all seen them — the solitary tranny tentatively making her way down a street petrified that anyone will spot that she's not what she's pretending to be.

I've watched in horror as fellow trannys try and justify their existence to onlookers, desperately trying to give some answer to make ourselves accepted by the rest of the world.

Stop it. Fucking stop it

We don't have to justify our dressing to anyone — just the same as they don't have to justify their not dressing to us.

...

Ack, I'm not explaining this at all — and probably just pissing everyone off.

Try again:

It would be easier for me, at this moment in time, to try and define how I feel in terms of what I am not.

I am not trying to make people think I'm a woman. I am not ashamed for being a transvestite. I am not obsessed by a 1950's attitude of what being a woman is all about, nor do I define women by the clothes that they wear (or, for that matter, their lack of penises) I am not about to walk down a street with my shoulders slumped and head bowed through utter fear that someone is going to spot that I'm a bloke. I am not fussed about whether I look passable — what concerns me is that I look good.

Let me expand on that last one a little...

About 6 years ago or so, before I'd found a space in my head that Siobhan could live quite happily, I used to be obsessed with trying to look as much like a woman as possible. The whole point of putting on make-up was to hide the fact that I was a guy.

Of course, it didn't work at all — all the pictures I've seen of myself at the time were hideous. And I remember looking at them sith a sense of utter shame and embarassment that I could look that bad.

I don't know what it is about things these days, but I no longer get that. It's stopped being about looking girlie — it's about being able to feel good about myself.

...

Ack, I'm sorry — it's just not coming out right today.

This is really bugging me at the moment — I'm convinced that there's something wrong with transvestism as it currently stands, but I just can't quite put my finger on what should be done. I can tell you all the things that I'm not — but I can't for a second tell you what I am.

Is it just me? Does anyone else feel this way?

I can't help but feel that there's a bit of an Avant Guarde going on at the moment — a new wave of thinking in terms of transvestism. But no-one knows quite just how to explain it. It's like there's a bit of a void — a vacuum of thought — and for as long as that vacuum exists, the Old Guard will continue to fill it.

Until someone comes up with a way of expressing just what's going on, the dinosaurs are going to hog the megaphones and continue to present us as some kind of 'worthy' cause.

</rant>

Sorry — at least sorry for being a jumble of thoughts without any direction today. I suppose you could throw all this back in my face and say "Just who the hell do you think you are Siobhan?", and you'd probably be right.

It's just I'm feeling thoroughly frustrated at the moment. Frustrated and powerless to do anything about it. I'm convinced that half of the reason why the world sees us as a joke is because we take ourselves too seriously — practically bringing ridicule on ourselves.

Someone help me out here — have I crawled so far up my own arse that I've completely stopped making sense? Or is there something tangible in all that? And if not, why?

PPS Gawd, you know how to set a 'girl' off you do Siobhan!

I am nothing if not a millitant little shit-stirrer at times Rachel

...

There's a real air of sadness to trannying sometimes, I think. Sadness as in melancholy. And to an extent, that's partly because of the well-meaning attempts to get the outside world to take us seriously

Exactly my point. Part of the problem, as far as I can see, is that our attempts to be worthy are exactly what's causing the ridicule in the first place. We can theorise to our heart's content as to why we do what we do, and we can try and get people to take us seriously — but it'll never work.

Justification is never going to happen — at least not by trying to convince the world that we're a worthy bunch of individuals ... mainly because we're not. For all the "we're a bunch of sane, rational human beings that just happen to dress as women" conversations that go on, there's hundreds more examples of trannys being numpties out there to completely negate any argument.

For every Eddie Izzard there's fifty Emily Howards.

And what bothers me is the pub-philosophy that goes on — the pseudo-psychological babble that tries to justify ourselves. I think we need to move on from that — I think we need to put all that bullshit behind us and just accept that we are what we are.

But we also need to accept that there's a possibility that what we are has an impact on the world around us. It's no use sitting there in a strop feeling sorry for ourselves that the world doesn't take ourselves seriously, without considering the possibility for a moment that we might have a detrimental effect. (something to come back to one day...)

Cathii, the "I am, why do you ask????" phase is exactly where I want to be — or perhaps, more significantly, the "I am, why are you not?" phase. I think there's a sense that things are moving in that direction — but we're constantly being held back by the Old Guard, who seem to think that we have to present a logical argument.

It occured to me the other day, that transvestism is entering a postmodern phase, and that's kind of what I was meaning by the idea that I can define myself in terms of what I'm not.

There should be more irony involved in crossdressing. I'm starting to see more of a sense of self-awareness, self-knowing, self-parodying taking place within some areas of the transcommunity — but nowhere near enough.

I do think we need to stop taking ourselves so bloody seriously and start relaxing.

Rachel, I know exactly what you mean by "the idea of having to be outrageous or flambouyant". It's a bit like that's the role that's developing — the out-and-about trannie, in your face, unapologetic, fun, happy, dancing ... and I know that's not for everyone. This comes, I think, from the danger of interpreting the idea of the "non-shy trannie" as therefore being overtly extravagant and outrageously extraverted — which I think is a mistake.

One of the things I would hope for is that the idea of a stereotypical trannie could be stopped — there's no point in just replacing one stereotype for another.

This is kind of what I mean by my frustration at feeling like there's a void at the moment. I think, as I keep on saying over and over again (sorry ), that transvestism is undergoing change — it's being ahem transformed — but no-one is quite sure what into.

Like I said, the closest I can get to a definition, or a word that sums up how I feel about it is postmodern.

there's just that concept flickering in my head of what I am, that I can't find the right words to express, every time it slides off that perfect expression and onto something below which is inexact, insulting and just wrong.

Loz, that's it exactly — it's so frustrating. I've been trying to verbalise what's in my head for so long — but it never quite comes out right.

Maybe if I keep at it, then something will emerge — providing no-one get's thoroughly bored with my first

if you want to change the world that's one thing, if you want to be happy that's another and much more attainable.

But Josephine, changing the world is exactly what I want to do

The thing is, for me anyway, that I know that all that really matters is how I feel about myself inside — but I feel the need to get that idea across to the rest of the world. Because, I think that it's as important to get that message across to other trannies as it is the straight ones. I think there's a danger that the void that's left when you accept that Trannie is a state of mind get's filled by (again) the Old Guard.

I'm not explaining that well ... what I mean is that true, in these individualistic times, all that matters is what goes on in my head. It shouldn't matter what other people think of me. But the problem that I have is that I'm still seeing worthy attempts to justify ourselves in the media, in the real world, and all I can think is "Oi! Stop misrepresenting me!"

I think that there's hundreds of well-adjusted trannies out there — but the danger is that reaching a state of inner-peace about the whole thing means that we're the ones that don't speak out. And we're still seen as a joke.

(dammit, I hate when I can't type what's in my head...)

Lauren, we are perverts. We are bloody weird. And the sooner we face up to that and stop trying to justify ourselves the sooner the Real World will take us a bit more seriously.

What we do is odd, it's unnatural, it's kinky, it's potentially offensive to the group of people we proclaim ourselves to be "worshipping". We can't hide from that. I think you're missing my point — I don't want it to be OK for men to wear frocks, I don't want to justify it. I don't want to be accepted — I want to be celebrated.

There's somethiing in my head that makes me do this — and no amount of theorising is going to explain it to someone who hasn't got it, just as someone who's black can't explain to me what that means.

I think we've got to move on from it — which is why I said recently that I don't care why men wear frocks, I care what happens when men wear frocks.

I'm interested in our subversion, our affect on the gender debate, our ability to question people as to their perceptions of each other. I'm interested in that peculiar confrontation between the T and the straight. I want to know what effect we have on other people, I want to know what gay men and lesbians think of us, and what outcomes can happen when you put us all in a room together.

...

I'm being negative here aren't I? I find it hard to be positive to be honest — I find it hard to put forward a sensible solution to What Should Be Done.

The problem is, I think, that our community is so diverse, so different, so motivated by opposing forces, that any attempt to define what it is to be TV will fail. If I say it's about sex, then half the trannies in the world will throw their arms up in protest. If I say it's not then all the Real World Folk will prove me wrong by citing some example.

I've been trying for ages to distill things down into their core — trying to get to some kind of central issue that we all agree on. And the closest I've got so far is this:

I am not a joke.

I'm not suggesting that transvestism isn't something to take the piss out of — I'm just saying that it shouldn't automatically be funny.

Take the Bounty adverts for a second (since they got brought up) — I find those hilarious. They're not taking the piss out of transvestites — they're actually a very sophisticated humour, that demands us to take ourselves less seriously.

D'ya know what does offend me though? Michael Bloody Winner.

Apart from the fact that the eSure adverts are quite possibly the laziest in the world — relying as the do on a bit of a bizaree, random moment of public adoption of the "Calm down dear" catchphrase, the attempt to garnish a chuckle out of the audience by putting Michael Winner in a dress is fucking pathetic. That's exactly the joke I'm trying to rally against. I don't think we're in a space where we deserve to have the piss taken out of us like that — it's lazy and outdated. But then again, the rest of the ads are, so why should it be any different.

I wonder, sometimes, how the gay community feels about those Muller Lite adverts — with the effeminate air steward. To me, they seem just as lazy — but then again, maybe the gay community is in a different head-space than us.

...

Meh — this always happens when I get a phonecall half-way through a rant. I lose my train of thought (or I calm down a bit )

I will attempt to sum up shall I?

(1) Transvestism is not automatically funny. (2) Trannies need to start asking themselves some very serious questions about themselves, in order for the rest of the world to stop finding us automatically funny. (3) I need to lighten up a bit.

Rachel, nail on the head there honey

But with all this debate I can't help thinking that it's futile (allbeit entertaining) coz shouldn't we just be out there being ourselves.

True. Very true. Very very true indeed. But...

While we're out there being ourselves, moving on, not dwelling on all the usual bullshit, we leave a vacuum — that get's filled by the usual bullshit.

This is my Whole Big Point today — Transvestism has moved on: it's no longer the flowery frocks and the slumped shoulders and the fear of passing. It's a brand new thing that is yet undefined other than its definition as a New Thing. But the void that is left by this lack of definition is being filled with the Old Thing — partly through the lack of media attention to the New Thing, but also because the Old Thing just won't shut up.

ahem Before we all get hung up on lables ...

I want to be able to edit the minds of everyone around me instantly so that they think a specific thing when they think 'tranny'.

Loz, honey — I think we can do just that. It's just going to take a while. And I think it's going to piss off a lot of the Old Guard in the process. But fuck 'em — they've had forever to make a difference, and all they've done is moan

Oh, and Rachel, Kath constantly has her fist in her mouth trying to stem the flow of outbursts sometimes

...

Now, if yous'll excuse me for a while, I think we might be about to witness the Greatest Event In Television History