Sunday, 5th June, 2005

The Tranniesphere

I've had a thought in the back of my head for the past few days, a thought relating (still) to the loss of my other websites, but a thought about websites in general. Or more specifiaclly, transvestite websites.

Why do we have them?

See, I was thinking the other day that once I'd finished tweaking the arse out of this here weblog, I'd start putting back the pieces of siobhansplace.co.uk...

But why?

I'm trying to remember why I started one in the first place, and I think it's got something to do with an extroverted need to be seen — or perhaps it was to do specifically with wanting to share or record the times I got myself dressed up

What I'm trying to avoid saying here, is that I made one because it seemed to be the thing to do, and everyone else had one.

It all started for me with wanting to show my face in Sarah's Chatroom — I needed somewhere to host pictures at, and I guess it was a logical step to then go on to try and build a structure around those pictures. That's what siobhansplace.co.uk was initially — just a place to dump pictures, and write a little bit of a Diary Of My Experiences As A Trannie™

But what I found, was it was a perfect place to try out new stuff, to play with code and develop little ideas — which I suppose eventually led to this beastie. But now this thing is in place, and I can throw whatever picture I like at Flickr, do I need to resurrect siobhansplace?

I'm rambling slightly away from the point here — what I wanted to concentrate on was this need we seem to have to build ourselves web pages and stick scantily-clad self-portraits all over them.

It seems a peculiar thing to do to me (she said, fully aware of her own participation in such activities ) — for a group of people who are usually petrified of showing themselves out and about in public to post photographs of themselves in what is, perhaps, the most public space in the world.

Ack, but then again, there's two things:

1. The assumed anonymity of the web
2. The slight frisson of danger in the thought that we might get caught through our caches and our histories, or a colleagues innocent Googling

So yeah, I think there's a lot more to why trannies shove themselves online than just a desire to be seen. But again, that's not really what I wanted to talk about.

What I actually wanted to talk about, was the sheer amount of shite trannie websites out there.

I've heard it said a lot in online forums, that there seems to be a large percentage of transvestites who have some kind of IT involvement (which is a self-serving statistic, but let's not go there...) — but if that's the case, then why is it that half the "Saucy, Sexy, TV" websites around look like they've been built by five-year-old who's just discovered the Clip Art button in MS Word?

Permit me to attempt to build some kind of Top Ten Trannie No-nos of Web Design ... (which I reserve the right to alter over time)

1. Animated GIFs

   Somewhere, buried deep in the heart of Utah (perhaps) is a small company whose main role is to produce bandwidth-sucking animations of men morphing into women. They make no profit at all, because their work gets snaffled by every Geocities Newbie, but they keep at it.

   God knows why.

2. Flowery Backgrounds

   The same company, incidently, are also (probably) responsible for the entire world's output of light pink and yellow rose patterns, which are intended (perhaps) to reinforce the facade that this is indeed the website of a woman (because women like flowers and stuff, right?)

3. Shania Twain

   If there's one thing more likely than anything else to send your visitors screaming towards the back button than having background music on a homepage, it's doing just that at the same time as relying on the oldest trannie music-based joke in the world to raise a "chuckle".

   It's the equivalent of, if you like, headbanging in full make-up and a wig to "Dude Looks Like a Lady"

4. Disclaimers

   No, really? This website, the one that I'm looking at, the one called "www.transvestite-fantasy.geocities.com", it deals with "transgendered issues" does it? Well bugger me.

   Ack, I hate disclaimers — they're like an admittance of shame. They're like apologising even before you've said anything. If people don't want to look at TV websites, they won't type "shemale fuck party" into Google, will they?

5. Homepages that start with "Welcome to my space on the World Wide Web"

   This isn't the mid-nineties — we all know what the "www" in the url stands for...

6. Java-based widgets that follow the cursor

   Adding things superfluously does not make up for a lack of content.

7. Flashing text

   Unless your femme-name is B1FF

8. Using words like "Saucy" and "Sexy"

   There's something unsavoury (to my mind) about this. It's not that I'm a prude or anything — and I certainly don't subscribe to the notion that we transvestites have to act all sensibly in order to be "accepted by society" or anything like that. It's just I think using words like that demonstrates a slight sexist attitude to women.

   Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it has connotations to me of exploitation, of laddish FHM-based appreciations of what women are, and what "sexy" is. Pull me up on this if you like — I'm not quite sure what I mean.

9. Websites that have nothing on them

   Remember when the most commonly used words on the web were "Under Construction" (usually accompanied by a little gif of a roadworks sign)? I thought we were past all that...

10. Fifty-year-old-blokes using the language of fourteen-year-old-girls

    As I've said before, it shames me to my core that a lot of the language I used when I first started doing all this was peppered with words like "*giggles*". It's a bit odd isn't it? I kinda liken it to hiding behind a mask — using language to apologise and cover up who we are.

    I think we should be proud of ourselves, not pretending to be something we're not by shrouding our personalities in the culture of people a quarter of our age.

As I said, I reserve to right to prune that list, and edit it considerably in the morning I also realise that I'm not beyond reproach in the slightest.

And as much as I'd like to name names, and, er, url urls, I won't. I'm too much of a nice girl for that *giggle*

an unfortunate coincidence

I disagree. I think is an inevitable consequence of the Trannie-Tick-List — the strange notion that there are certain Things™ that one has to do in order to reach the heights of Girl-About-Town.

A website is just another thing on the list — so many times I've seen comments along the lines of "I've bought my first skirt, now the next step is to make a website to share photos of me in the skirt".

This is kinda what I was alluding to at the start of this page — that idea of "I'm a transvestite, therefore I need a web page".

I think Becky summed up the correct response to this in an email to the UK Angels no so long ago...

What next...? Any suggestions...?

Erm, without wanting to sound negative, do what YOU want to do. There isn't a checklist honey.

Don't get rid of siobhansplace — I get 1000 referrals a month from your links page

Bit too late for that really All gone. *poof*. Cloud of smoke.

I've been working a lot today on my my main site — trying to get it back up and running, and in the meantime make it look a little more sexy (oh, the irony )

In the process though, I found that with a bit of tweaking, I could repurpose a lot of the structure of it and repackage it as a rehash of siobhansplace — so, I imagine that over the coming weeks, I can rebuild the thing.

But I can also take a little moment to reflect on just why I have it there at all. Yes, partly (as so well put) as "a link in the chain", but also as a place for me to play with ideas that might be outside of my professional life.

...

Most of what I wrote last night was just late-night rantiness, so yeah, I'm probably out of order on a couple of things. But I just have to come back to this:

Your Top 10 ranting makes you sound very male.

I know. And that's what makes it OK. If I didn't know, and I was deluding myself, then I'd deserve a slap. But I think this is my most important thought of the moment: that it's only through a self-knowing touch of irony that transvestites can ever hope to pull themselves out of the freak show.

In Other News...

OK, this was weird:

So I was just leaving the house to walk over to Kath's yeah? And I spotted this little fellow sitting on the kerb next to my car. I realise that hedgehogs are not exactly rare in the British Isles, but I've never seen one round here before.

Anyway, I figured he could probably be doing with not being right where he is (my neighbour asked me if I knew how fast hedgehogs could move — I said that considering how many flat ones you see on roads, not fast enough), so we got a shoe box, helped him in, and took him round the back and freed him into a hedge.

The appropriateness of putting him in a hedge was completely lost on me until later BTW

I'm not sure if he was OK though — he didn't curl up into a ball when we prodded him, so we think he might have been injured. I may be a home for feline waifs and strays, but I can't extend that same sentiment to other animals (except for the ones that are inflicted on me at stupid o'clock in the morning by the forementioned kittens)

...

I had a peek in the hedge a few moments ago, and he's not there. So I think he's OK.

"Mr Hedgehog" was the best name I could come up with at the time — after having watched David Dimbleby flouncing round the Lake District wondering at a host of daffodils this evening, I'm trying desperately not to rename him "Mr Tiggy-winkle"

BTW — just a thought — had Wordsworth been writing in Grassmere today, I think his poem would have gone slightly different...

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of fucking tourists;

And just what was wrong with the hedgehog bit?