Sunday, 31st July, 2005

The Meme That Dares Not Speak Its Name

Typical isn't it? I go away for four days, and all hell breaks loose.

As many of you will know, it never fails to bug me when people start debates about reasons for transvestism. In most part, this is because people tend to make severely flawed logical assumptions along the lines of "this is how I feel ... all of the people I know feel the same ... therefore all people must feel like this".

The most frequent occurrence of this fallacy, tends to be the "All transvestites work in IT" malarky: it starts off in an internet forum, where someone will quite innocently mention that they work in IT. Soon enough, at least two other people will note that they too work in IT, and within a few postings, suddenly everyone is saying that they work in IT, and that there must therefore be some connection between the two.

What this totally misses is that the only significance of the "working in IT" commonality, is that's why they're all online

As an analogy, imagine this (fictitious) conversation between me and Selina...

<me> Hi Selina, I live in the North West
<selina> Really?! I live there too!
<me> Wow! There must be something about living in the North West that makes people transvestites!

See?

...but that's not what this little rant is about. Oh no. This little rant, is part inspired by Becky's Meme Theory, and the flurry of emails in the UK Angels Mailing List all saying things like:

I [...] get no sexual thrill from dressing.

following an email that contained this:

It seems to me that most TV/TGs seem to either want to transition or dress for some kind of sexual kick but for me its neither.

Not wanting to dive into The Hot-tub Of Controversy™ stirred up by a certain person, and not wanting to resurrect a thread that seems to have died all by itself, I just wanted to make a little observation...

Everyone is always so quick to emphatically deny that they get any sexual "kick" out of crossdressing — so quick in fact that it occurs to me that there's a perception within the community that getting turned on by crossdressing is wrong...

...and that annoys me. Partly because I think that it must inspire feelings of guilt and self-loathing in a lot of trannies who read this stuff and apply it to their own experiences, but mostly because, well, if you'd permit me to stick my head over the parapet for a second, I get turned on by crossdressing.

I've mentioned this before — even set out the details of how I think I discovered transvestism (or rather, how it discovered me) — and d'ya know what? It's something that's bothered me for years.

I mean, I can understand a little why there's always this desire to distance ourselves from any sexual origins — I know it doesn't particularly help dispel myths and stereotypes of us all being furtive pantie-rustlers. But I do think we're quite over-zealous in our denials sometimes.

The reason I've struggled with getting aroused by women's clothing, is because it worries me that there's some deep misogyny going on in my psyche somewhere. It bothers me that connecting ideas like "frilliness" with ideas like "submissiveness" hints that despite my pro-feminist stance on a lot of things, I inadvertently make some kind of connection between femininity and weak.

(This may not be making sense BTW )

Basically, I worry that Fantasy Siobhan In Petticoat World With Pigtails And Everything™ marks me out as being sexist.

...

But what I've been thinking recently, is that that's OK. Fantasy World is just that: a fantasy. Most of what makes up our sexual-selves has very little to do with our true feelings about things. In fact, it's probably the case that our fantasies are the direct opposite of what we think of as "good" and "right" — it's the naughty things which turn us on, isn't it?

If you've ever read My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday, I hope you'll get what I'm trying to say here. The fantasies that she explores through interviews with women are sometimes completely outside the realms of 'normal' behaviour.

...

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say here, is that it's OK to be turned on by crossdressing. In fact, I think it's a lot less sexist and a lot less to be ashamed about than all of the "I like to be girly" emails that float around the Tranniesphere.

I think that as a group of people, we're very good at inventing hierarchies within ourselves (TV vs TS anyone? ) and that inadvertently, we sometimes give the impression that those of us who indulge in a quick shuffle whilst dressed are somehow Bad And Wrong™. Somehow less worthy.

And I just wanted to say, that I'm proud of who I am. I'm proud of being a pervert.

...

So, to apply Becky's Meme Theory to my own situation: Crossdressing for me began through an as-then-unrealised exploration of sexual fantasy. But it wasn't until I came into contact with outside influences — finding the word "transvestite" in a dictionary, seeing things like The Two Ronnies running around in dresses on TV in The Worm That Turned (that's about all I could find on it after a pretty feeble bout of Googling ), meeting other transvestites online and then in real life — that I formed an idea in my head of how to express my transvestism.

It seems sometimes, that we stick too rigidly to the meme. We create an idea of The Ideal Transvestite — and I think it would be much better if we concentrated on celebrating our diversity instead. I don't think it's intentional — I just think that sometimes, in our haste to rattle off an email or a blog post or a forum comment, we don't think about the language we use. And that sometimes, that language can upset people.

Things I Hate (A continuing series)

Number 38,251 : Starting a weblog post with a very clear idea in my head about what riles me, but getting to the end and realising that I lost the plot half-way through and instead of a well-planned and thought piece of prose, I've just rambled on and on about pretty much nothing.

*sigh*

(Incidently guys, I noticed everyone trying all sorts of different ways of getting asterisks to appear round a word: "*giggles*". Because I'm using Markdown, you have to escape the asterisks by sticking a \ in front of them — like this: "\*yay\*" )

You probably need some <br>s in there hon

Ack, sorry — single line-breaks don't get honoured. Double line-breaks get converted to new paragraphs. I might rejig that at some point...

Neo-Cons in Tights!

Has anyone else seen this?

I saw it pop up on Loz's blog the other day, and then it wound its way onto Tom Coates's where it sparked a few comments.

My first thoughts when seeing it were "Oh. My. God. That. Is. Unbelievably. Utter. Wrongness." — a dire Neo-Con attempt to hook the "kids" into their lies? And, I'm sorry, but Oliver North as a hero?!

WTF?

I think it's generating a lot of controversy in the States at the moment. Personally, I think it's odious. It's full of shit. It extrapolates all the fear that your average paranoid ignorant Bush-phile has, and builds it into a fantasy — but a fantasy guaranteed to whip up a frenzy of disinformation and paranoia.

However, I couldn't help but shake the feeling that it reminded me of something, and deep from within my (now clouded) memory, I found a vague nugget of information about a series of comic books I'd been exposed to as a kid...

http://www.chick.com/catalog/comiclist.asp

The style is very similar — and the tactics are almost identical: Completely make up a scenario, but draw it in a way that adds validity to the premise, and convince weak-minded readers (of which I was at that age) that what you're saying is absolute truth.

I guess that my point, if I actually have a point, is that things like this never work. Attempts by stiff-collared groups to "identify" with the "kids" by trying to jump into their territory never work. They just become more laughable. The attempts to identify with a particular bandwagon — in this case, a resurgence in comic-book heroes fueled by the current crop of cinema releases — and portray a bunch of (quite frankly) assholes as heroes is, utterly, utterly pathetic.

Those comics though — they had a weird effect on me. I'd like to say that I was affected by them at all — truth is, they actually did me more good than harm.

The sheer ludicrousness (which is a word I just made up, but ispell seems to llike it) of the messages that they contained — the stereotyped, almost racist images of people, stuff like that — made me really question what was going on in them. I'm sure that the intent was to get ideas across to me, but all they did was make me mistrust anything that purported to be from a reliable source.

So thanks Chick Publications — your anti-communist, anti-gay, pro-conservative comics made me the screaming lefty poof that I am today

And perhaps Liberality will have the same effect? Perhaps (and is this too much to hope for?) it's bilious offering of anti-UN, anti-liberal shit will, in fact, turn a whole generation of people — not into world-hating, pro-Bush wankers — but into a rather pleasant group of left-leaning, tolerant, nice people?

(BTW. If the whole thing turns out to be some kind of spoof, then I want to get it on record that I don't think it's a very good spoof. If someone turns round in a few weeks and says "Ha! I had yous all!" then I think we'd all be in our rights to find that person, and hit them with sticks)

Mandy, you can say "fucking" — I won't mind

Those pictures Lana, were of one of Kathie's friends, who coincidently enough, now lives in New Zealand