Thursday, 1st December, 2005

Taking Shape

photo

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

Gradually the new equipment for my little Mac Suite is arriving. I can't tell you just how excited I am about this

Legitimacy

I'd like, if I may, to talk just a little about things from my perspective of Tuesday night. This is not — I hasten to point out — one of my usual ramblings about "coming out" or the pros and cons of being a transvestite, just a bit of personal reflection about personal agendas.

I have, to be honest, always had a little agenda at the back of my head when I do this — or at least, in the past year or so. There has always been a slight frustration that I spend an inordinate amount of time and effort doing/writing this weblog — time that because of the inherent nature of the underlying theme of the blog, is completely wasted in comparison to the rest of my (professional) life.

For whatever reason — whether it's because of a personal desire to 'mask' my identity, because this is my identity and the logical outcome when I try to express myself in this space, or a complete accident — an outcome established over the course of time rather than an identified intent — I engage with the Internet as a girl. Or at least, a bloke in a dress.

And because of that, any attempt to try and explain to others what I do online, or offer the opportunity to explore interesting ways of working online, has to be in a very vague sense. I can't ever reveal the full extent of what I do — becuase by doing so, I effectively come out to them.

But of course, my job is to talk to people about the Internet — and explain these new and exciting things that are happening on it.

So you can, perhaps, see my dilemma.

I've toyed with this conundrum before, naturally. I think the first day I ever actually used a title on a page was a day that the whole question of "Do I do this as part of my research?" was heavily on my mind.

And up 'till now, I've shied away from expanding on the full extent of my online activities within a work context. But, I guess, a few things have shunted me towards being more open about it.

Firstly, obviously, is the fact that I work within a creative environment — an environment where if I was totally vanilla, I probably wouldn't have a job. There's almost an expectation that there's something not quite normal about me, considering I work in art.

Secondly, there's the increasing knowledge of Siobhan within my department — including the Head of School practically announcing it to the entire admin office the other week.

Thirdly, there's my little discovery that some people already know about this, because of a bit of sloppy self-preservation-linkage on my part.

And fourthly, well, I guess it's partly the fear that all the things that I do are being gradually explored by other people, and the fact that I run the risk of being left on the sidelines simply because I didn't have the guts to say "I've been doing this for ages".

So, on Tuesday morning, I was inwawrdly debating whether or not to show this weblog as part of my lecture/talk. I had a back-up plan, naturally. If I felt like chickening out, I'd just concentrate on my Second Life activities — there's a well-established gender-play within online gaming, and I could probably get away with talking about Kisa for two hours without having to even mention Siobhan.

But I figured, "no — there's so much more I need to bring up. I need to talk about weblogs and the effects that they can have. I need to talk about Flickr, not just in a demonstrative way, but showing some of the things you can do with it."

"I need to talk about Siobhan".

So I did.

I started off by talking a little bit about the early days of the web — the days in which we all had home-pages, and sat watching hit-counters. I showed them some of my earliest websites (sites that bizarrely, still exist), and followed them up with showing my boy-site today.

But then I drifted off, and talked a little bit ablout weblogs, explaining how the ability to post things online easily, without faff and complication, has resulted in an explosion of Stuff™ online.

And I figured that the best example I could use for this, was my own archives.

So, having described myself as someone who "plays with identity and gender online", I pulled up this site, and dived into the page with the calendars on it.

I mean, I shuld have known it would be OK. After all, here was a bunch of mature, postgraduate art students. If you can't come out to a group like that then who can you come out to? But, it wasn't really about the coming out for me.

It was the sense of relief at being able to talk about this, in a serious, respected way, without the usual baggage that gets ladled on you the minute you open your mouth and say the words "transvestite website".

...

For some reason (which I might have a stab at explaining in a minute), there are a lot of transvestite websites on the web. It's a medium that suits us greatly — we can edit ourselves in such a way to overcome the usual awkwardness of our real-life existence. We can crop our photographs, and choose only our best, to present ourselves as being as much (visually) like a woman as possible.

We can also hide ourselves behind a certain anonymity — an assumed anonymity, naturally, but one that's just enough to encourage us out of our shells.

And, we can use it as a medium to discover that we aren't the only trannie in the village. It wasn't. as an example, until I put myself online and started to explore the murky world of trannie websites that I started to meet others.

The web is great for us — and if someone told me Tim Berners Lee liked to wear frocks, then I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised.

But, as in real life, there inevitably emerges a sense of the seedy ("CD" — geddit? Oh, never mind). For whatever reason, an element of pornography tends to develop, along with an air of tastelessness.

Now don't get me wrong here, I have nothing at all against trannie-porn, and I'm always one of the first to argue that there is a sexual element to what we do that shouldn't be swept under the carpet. But for some reason, that sexualness seems to pervade anything we try and do online.

Perhaps this is totally in my head and made up. Perhaps I'm being utterly paranoid and unsubstantiated. But I've always fretted in the past just what goes through the mind of someone that hovers their mouse over my link on a comment in someone else's weblog, and sees the word "trannie" in their status bar.

I've fretted for years about what they might think they're about to let themselves in for. Is it going to be some godawful garish site with pictures of a man with panties barely containing his knob? Is it going to be some hideous monstrosity of pink and animated gifs?

But what galls me most, is the idea that someone who follows something I've said, immediately doesn't take me seriously.

Back in January, I forked this weblog off from my original site (which is now gone, sorry) for a very specific reason. It's the same reason that was running through the book I started writing about two years ago — the one I'm never going to finish, the one called "Tranniefesto: A crossdressing agenda. The agenda was a very simple one really. I wanted not to be taken as a joke all the time. I wanted to be taken seriously.

It's not that I want people to ignore that I'm a transvestite. I've come to the conclusion that it's an important enough aspect of my life so that if you don't know it about me, then you don't really know me. I just wanted it to be the case that people didn't automatically switch off the minute they knew I liked to wear women's clothing.

...

And you know what? I think I've achieved that to a certain extent.

All I wanted to be able to do was to join in with discussions, arguments, debates and general chit-chat, outside of my normal peer group, without the worry that someone was going to turn round, point their finger, and say "Yeah, well you're a tranny. You don't count".

All I wanted to be able to do was talk to a group of people about the things that excite me in regards to the way the web is moving. To explain what I do all day, to explain why I read things like Plastic Bag and Jon Hick's Journal. To show some of the things I've developed and how they let me interact with a world much larger than anything I could ever achieve with conventional forms of communication.

And that's why, while driving back to my colleague's house on Tuesday night, I was on cloud nine. It wasn't because I'd come out to yet more people, it was because finally, I'd been able to talk about the things I do as work, rather than a tainted fetish.

...

My colleague, incidently, asked me how it went.

"I showed them Siobhan", I said to her.

"Good!" she said.

And I have to agree with her. It is, I feel, about bloody time.

I'm not sure about the idea that to know us, you also have to know we're trannies

I know, this is a personal thing — and it depends on how much that self-definition of "trannie/tranny" is to you. But for me, it's one of the big ones. If you don't get me as a trannie, you don't get me.

hazardous navigation

And animated GIFs!. WHat is it with those things?

And superfluous Javascript too...

if you were a TV programme, you wouldnt be the six o'clock news

No, I agree

Actually, I had a thought for something a while back — likening all the weblogs I read to television channels/programmes:

Tom Coates is, arguably, BBC 1. Miss K is BBC 4. Becky is BBC 3. Joanna is Men and Motors. Or Bravo.

I, on the other hand, am probably E4 during Big Brother. Or ITV2 when they're showing back-to-back Corrie. Or Reality TV. Or something, anything, which is unscripted.

Basically, I am a Soap Opera, not From Our Own Correspondent. If I was a TV programme, I'd probably have Oliver Reed singing Wild Thing, just before a commercial break.

Did I ever mention I was asked to do all the graphics for BBC 3? True story. Ask Kim

How do you feel about OS X?

I've heard it's rather good, although I'm led to believe that you can't run Windows on it