Tuesday, 27th September, 2005

An Interview

Introduction

Miss K (whose latest photoset is one of the greatest trannie-achievements I've seen in a long time) rather wonderfully describes herself as a transgendered z-list celebrity. I on the other hand, am so much further down the scale, that I'm either into the Cyrillic Alphabet, or I'm one of those obscure Unicode characters like an inverted question mark or something.

Yep, that's it, I'm a ¿-list trannie celebrity

As a result, it occurred to me a short while ago that no-one is ever going to interview me for a magazine or a website or anything. Which made me feel a little hollow and empty inside. To compensate for that then, I thought "Aha, I'll interview myself!", partly in response to a part of the comment Kris left two days ago...

You don't have to write for the new people all the time, you don't have to re-introduce all the themes and characters every episode, but you do have to add in one piece each time that could pick a new person up.

...partly, because of an email I got earlier from a guy wanting me to "tell me about yourself", partly as some kind of response to the comments in reply to those questions I asked the other day...

...and partly because I am a self-centred vain little cow, who loves the sound of her own voice, and likes to inflate her ego by pretending to be all big and famous

So, and rather than just me interviewing me, I thought I'd take advantage of my trannnieness and have boy-me interview girl-me

I might do it the other way around some time.

When Graham Met Siobhan

G: Hi Siobhan

S: Hi Graham

G: So let's start with an obvious one — why did you start blogging in the first place?

S: Well, actually, it kinda happened by accident. Back in February 2002, I set myself up a little website. I'm not really sure why, but I think there was an element of peer-pressure involved. Not peer-pressure from the outside, but a kind of "Hey, everyone else has a website — I should have one too" thing. Initially I had it hosted on some space I bought from the people I get my domain names from.

It wasn't a particularly great trannie website — just a few badly composed pictures, a little dress-up game (which I've since lost), and a bit of a biog. The usual crap really.

But I wanted to keep track (I can't remember why ) of all the trannie experiences that I had. At the time, it was — I guess — the start of my whole little Crossdressing Adventure™. After years and years of being a slightly closeted, not-going-out trannie, I'd flung myself in at the deep end and took my first steps outside in New York.

I wanted to keep track of these things, so I started a diary.

G: So that's when you started your blog?

S: No, at least you couldn't really call it a blog then. It was just a series of static HTML pages — one for each day — that was actually a real faff to put together. Each time I wrote something new, I had to go and change all the links on all the pages. It was a pain in the arse, and the reason why there's pretty much fuck-all from February 2002 until October 2002.

G: And what happened that October then?

S: Well, I got myself Broadband And suddenly I had a Mac connected all the time to the internet. And reading through a book that touched ever-so-slightly on web servers and stuff, I thought I'd give it a go.

Initially, I was using it to host (I'm rather embarrassed to say) a bit of a kinky site — a site devoted to a large collection of images that I had. Just to share them with like-minded fools I guess. But I started playing around with what my new server could do, and that involved playing with databases.

The thought that struck me, was that I could store each "day" in a database, and then all the links would sort themselves out with a little bit of scripting.

This is why, from the 13th of October, 2002, I suddenly start writing a lot. Basically, what I'd done without really realising it, was to write a bit of blogging software. Although at the time, I didn't even know what the word "blog" meant. Come to think of it, I'd never actually heard the word until people started referring to what I was doing as "blogging".

Initially, I emphatically denied that it was a blog. I used to insist that it was a diary. I can't remember exactly when it was though, that I had to admit that, yep, I was writing a weblog.

G: So why, to throw another of your questions back at you, do you keep doing it?

S: Because I can't stop? Because if I do stop I start getting phonecalls checking up on if I'm OK?

Seriously though, I love it. That's why I do it. It's not that I think I've got some great agenda or anything — I'm certainly not under any misconceptions that by doing this I can change the world. To me, this is a conversation. It's just me talking. I have an analogy that I keep returning to, every once in a while, that to me, the Internet is like a great big pub. And blogging, to me, is like sitting at a big table in that pub, talking (rather loudly) about this and that to the people sat at the table.

The thing is though, and I know I mentioned it the other day, but I'd like to repeat myself...

G: That makes a change...

S: *pfft*

G: Sorry

S: As I was saying, the thing is that I spend a large amount of my time either talking to myself, talking to other people, or thinking to myself. It's like my mind doesn't have an Off Switch. Whenever I'm out walking, driving, or sitting on a train, I'm either talking to myself about things, or thinking about things — if there's other people around.

And if I'm out with friends, it's rare that you'll be able to get me to shut up.

This blogging malarky, is just the same, but I have a keyboard in front of me. For quite a while now, I've been able to type at roughly the same speed as what I talk. So it's almost as if this is actually me talking when I'm doing this.

G: That brings me onto the next question you asked — "how do you blog?"

S: Ah. Like I said, I really just sit down and splurge at the keyboard. I don't usually have a plan — I just throw myself into it and see what comes out. Sometimes I'll have something very specific in mind — a point to make if you like — and it bugs me that I'm not more methodical about my approach to this.

Nine times out of ten I end up either contradicting myself, or managing to make the complete opposite point to what I had when I started writing.

G: Do you always do it like that?

S: Well, no, I guess not. Sometimes (actually, just the once I think) I make notes before I write. Yep, thinking about it, it was just the once. It was that thing I wrote about the Grayson Perry documentary.

G: The one the Guardian featured?

S: Yep, that's the one. I'd pre-warned the Guardian that I was going to write it, because they'd been talking to me about linking to me. At the time, they said they were just waiting for the right moment, so I suggested that me writing about Grayson would be a pretty apt time.

The thing was, it was quite a weird experience, if I'm honest. I sat down in front of the TV (ha ha )...

G: Very funny

S: Thank you

I sat down in front of the TV, and wrote down my reactions to certain bits. And then I frantically spun them out into a sort-of review of the documentary. I remember though, feeling a little bit het-up about the whole thing. It felt like I was blogging to order, and I'm not sure if I liked that.

The drive home from Leeds that night, to make sure I got back in time, was rather hairy.

G: So apart from the question of how you go about blogging mentally, how do you do it physically?

S: You mean like what do I wear and stuff? That's what most people seem to want to know

I have two blog-writing modes. Laptop and Desktop. Right now, for example, I'm laptop-blogging. I'm actually sat on my bed in a pair of stockings and a little black shirt, with my laptop on my, um, lap, typing away.

At other times, I'm sat at the G5 with it's proper keyboard. In trousers, usually.

I wonder sometimes, if you can spot the difference between these two ways of writing. The Train Chronicles™, for example, are all obviously laptop blogging. I think they're slightly more rambling than the Desktop blogs. When I'm at my Desktop, I'm much more able to pull in other bits of information — links and stuff like quotes from other people — without it disrupting the flow of what I'm writing about. Because doing that sort of thing on the laptop means navigating round hundreds of windows in a tiny screen (it's a 12"), I'm less likely to do that.

So the laptop-blog days are perhaps slightly more introspective.

I do think, as well, that what I'm wearing at the time has a big impact on the way that I write. Because (as I've mentioned in the past) there is a huge sexual aspect to my crossdressing, there is perhaps a tendency for me to be a little bit more flirty and rude when I write stuff dressed.

I guess I can connect to the character a bit better if I look like her.

G: You mean, of course, if I can look like her?

S: Crap — that's a whole world of Freudian weirdness we really don't wanna go into do we?

G: Nope. So tell me about your audience then. Who do you perceive them to be?

S: It's an interesting one that. I've kinda asserted recently that I think the audience is as much a part of this weblog as I am. I know Tom Coates mentioned briefly the other day that he doesn't "really agree with the idea of a weblog having an audience", but I think I'd have to disagree with him there. At least in respect to what I write here.

I think you can see a huge change in my writing the minute I wrote the comment script. I know this'll come across as a little vain, but I think that the way I handle the whole comments thing is possibly unique in the Blogosphere. I realise a lot of people display comments "inline" — and some even make their own comments differentiate stylistically from those of their readers, but I haven't yet come across another blog that integrates the comments directly into the posts.

YMMV, but for me, it works perfectly. It continues the whole 'conversational' style of what this weblog is for me, and I'm rather chuffed with it

But going back to the change in the way I was writing, it was a revelation to me that people were actually reading this shit. And the minute I realised that, I started writing with an audience in mind.

And to me, that audience is a wide and varied thing, and I'd like to return to my pub analogy (yet again) if I may.

G: Please do

S: Ta If you imagine that we're in a pub, and I'm sat at a table with a few close friends around, well, they're like the people who comment regularly, and the people who have their own blogs who I end up in conversation with.

Someone will say something, then others will either chime in with a quip or an observation, or perhaps go off on one themselves, and talk about it in great detail.

Other people might be just passing through, and pop over to make a point, or a joke or something. And other people might be complete regulars, who sit at the bar or at a table and hardly ever say anything. But they listen to everything that's being said.

That, to me, is what my weblog is all about. Of course it helps that I'm usually drunk when I'm writing it.

G: Speaking of drink, does anyone ever tell you that you drink too much?

S: Regularly. And more so now actually. I think there's a fair few people who worry about the amount of the stuff that I get through. Not, obviously, as many people as those who worry about what I'm doing to my lungs, but we'll ignore that for a second shall we?

I do, it has to be said, drink a fair bit. It's usually a bottle of wine a night, although I might top that up occasionally with the odd whiskey or second bottle of wine.

G: Why?

S: Because of what I was saying earlier about my mind not having an off switch. Without some kind of stimulant (which is so the wrong word — "depressant" is more apt potentially), it keeps going right through the night. And if I don't drink, I don't sleep.

I know there are probably better ways to deal with that, but it's a way that I like. So nya

Plus, drinking a lot means I end up with Exciting Stories™ to write about

I think though, that I might just mention that a few people have expressed concerns recently, about me drinking in light of what recently happened. The thing is, some people are fairly concerned that I'm dealing with things by hitting the bottle. But, if the truth be told, I'm not drinking any more each day than I did before.

And let's face it. Wine is nice

G: So explain something to me a second, while I change the subject. You made a comment on Miss K's weblog along the lines of "This is why I'm a transvestite". What were you getting at?

S: Ah. Well, you see, that photoshoot she did of herself, wearing a shirt and tie? I have a Great Big Theory™ of why I ended up being a trannie — or at least, of why I discovered that I was a trannie.

Basically, I have a bit of a kink. I like girls dressed as boys as much as I like boys dressed as girls. This liking boys-dressed-as-girls thing, incidentally, is something I've only just recently realised about myself, but the girls-dressed-as-boys I've had a thing about since I was very young.

The thing is though, that I always had this thought at the back of my head, which ran along the lines of "I wish I was a girl. If I was a girl I'd wear suits and ties all the time". And part of the driving force behind me wanting to look as much like a girl as I possibly can is based in that.

I've mentioned this before, but I'm still trying to take a picture of me dressed-as-a-girl-dressed-as-a-boy. In a bizarre way, and one that you could probably write a thesis on, I want to be my own porn.

If that makes any sense?

G: Can't help you there — I'm as biased as you are.

S:

G: So what happens next Siobhan? What do you think will happen to this weblog in the future?

S: I'm not really sure to be honest. I think there's possibly a temptation to think that weblogs are the be-all-and-end-all of personal publishing online. But I think they're really just the begining. Part of me feels that some of them will gradually die away, as authors lose interest, or redefine the ways they want to communicate in this space. Part of me feels that they might evolve into something else — more responsive, immediate, and accurate reflections of conversations between disparate people.

Personally, I think I'll just keep doing this I find it fits into the way my head works. I have other little excursions into other parts of the web sometimes, and I don't always feel comfortable in them.

This is like my home.

But also, personally, I kinda feel that I need more integration in my life. I kinda feel that the things that I do — online or offline, as me or as you — they all need to be brought together somehow. I feel that all this stuff is just as valid and interesting (from an academic perspective) as the photographs and stuff I do as you. And I'd love to be able to be open about it.

G: You mean come out? Publicly?

S: Yeah, well, we both know why I can't do that don't we?

G: Parents?

S: Yep — can you imagine what they'd make of this? I wouldn't feel remotely comfortable with either of them knowing about my online life — let alone feel happy with them knowing I was a transvestite.

G: It's a tricky one isn't it? You want to be able to be open and honest about the things that you're involved in, and be able to talk about them in academic circles. But those are the very same circles that Dad is involved in. And you can't do it without him finding out.

S: Precisely. The minute I try and formulate some kind of serious academic discussion about the re-presentation of self in an online space, the minute I have to come out.

It's a fucking dilemma

G: Anyway Siobhan, nice talking to you again. We haven't done this for ages. We should do it more.

S: Aye, that we should.

G: And it's nice to talk to you, for once, without you accusing me of killing Cabbage.

S: You know I was talking about the 'audience' before?

G: Yep.

S: None of them are going to get that reference.

G: