Friday, 6th October, 2006

Divergence/ Convergence

WARNING: This might trail off into a general "hmm, maybe" kind of thought process.

I've been making a big thing recently of a little term that plopped into my head one night: "Tranny 2.0", and I know that it's an undefinable thing, but one of the key things that I think is involved (and emerging) is the intent on integrating one's transgender side of things with the rest of one's life.

Lemme try and explain through Flickr

When I first started shoving photos on Flickr — as prompted by the lovely Ian — it was little snapshot moments from the world around me. I didn't start off thinking "Aha! A place to put all my tranny-photos!" — it was more of an experiment to see if I could use some of Flickr's features to make writing this weblog more 'automatic'.

But after a while, the lure of a pre-made audience took control, and I started chucking all my previously-segregated photography on there too.

The really interesting thing — for me — that developed, was that I started to build up a massive audience, based pretty-much solely on the basis of certain shots that I chucked into certain groups. But each of these TF-magnets brought with it a certain 'sloppy seconds' traffic to the rest of my photos.

The other photos — the day-to-day mundanety of life with a few pieces of work thrown in — were acting like the plot-bits of a porn film — bits to fast-forward, but bits also to once in a while stop and look at.

THe thing is though, while all that was happening, I was doing other stuff with those non-tranny photos. I was plopping them in groups and striking up conversations — all the time very-much-aware that whomever I was engaging with would, at some point, take a quick gander at my photostream and realise they were talking to a trannie.

What I've wanted (and this goes right back to very early conversations) is to be able to engage with the outside world through whichever persona I feel like — without having to worry about the huge 'transvestite baggage' that would perhaps used to have been associated with someone like me.

Actually, this goes back to even earlier conversations, and is pretty much a recurring theme of mine

...

The thing is, you see, I do A Lot Of Stuff™. And one of the most important things for me when doing A Lot Of Stuff™ is for as many people as possible to see it. I'm I've been sick to death of slaving away over a piece of code/a film/an abstract photograph/a technique for building or Photoshopping, only for no-one to see it, and for me to spot someone doing something very similar a few years down the line.

It bugs me that I seem to be working on some 'invisible fringe' of all the interesting things that are going on at the moment — and that day after day I read stuff in mailing lists/other blogs/forums that (a) I'd be really interested in joining in with, or (b) that I've already published stuff about.

...

I'm trailing from the point a little here — lemme try and regain some sense of 'plot'

OK, so there are three specific areas that I'm actively interested/involved with at the moment:

1. The general 'transgender debate'

2. Digital Media — in particular:

   • Abstract photography/film and how it can expand in this medium

   • Weblogs and other social software — from both a conceptual point of view, and a techie one.

3. Second Life

Now, for each of those things, you could argue that I have a perfectly self-contained persona that I could use: (1) Siobhan, (2) Graham, and (3) Kisa. And you could probably equally argue that I have a corresponding 'virtual space' in which to concentrate on each of them too: (1) http://www.tranniefesto.co.uk, (2) http://www.creativepractice.org, and (3) http://secondlife.com

But, dammmit, none of those things are easily extracated from each other — I can't talk about weblogs and social software without at least a passing reference to my own, I can't investigate 'identity in virtual spaces' without considering my own male/female tendancies. Nor can I poke around with my photography without considering how it might transform within a space like Second Life.

Does that make sense?

What I'm saying is that I have to combine all of the things I'm interested into one place — but that that brings a whole series of problems/questions...

The first being "Which space?"

So, as you may well know, I have more than one website. I've this one (natch), but I also have my main domain (that I just redid and totally forgot to annouce BTW). There are a few more domains dotted around (wearetheprettyones.com just expired BTW — I need to move the stuff that was on that), but it's mainly those two.

http://www.eyefood.co.uk is, I guess, and attempt to bring things together — but as much more of a 'portfolio', rather than a conversation. The conversation kinda lives here.

I mean, I could have set up three blogs — one for each aspect — but I just can't segregate myself like that. I bleed over the boundaries of the different parts of me. So all the code, the digital media, the academic stuff, the Second Life stuff — it all ends up here mixed in with the tranny stuff.

And there are two very specific reason for this:

1. Traffic

In exactly the same way that my Flickr views are bolstered by the ranks of grey-faced anonymous pantie-shufflers, this blog gets a pretty massive chunk of its readership from Google searches for "crossdressing" — and various variants on that. Mostly it's (I presume) guys looking for "hot tranny-on-tranny action", or "cute crossdresser in school uniform" (both of which I have, incidentally, if you look hard enough ), but occasionally it's people looking for advice — or just someone else like themselves.

What I can't ignore then (and excuse me while my head swells a little bit) is that I have somewhat of a 'reputation' (so to speak), based on four and a half years of rambling. The amount of time and effort I've put into boosting my own traffic over those years is something I don't want to have to do again from scratch — and so (and perhaps you could accuse me of taking the easy road here) I'm reluctant to start a new (or two new) blog(s) when I've got a perfectly good and well-established one already.

2. Melting Pot

The other thing — which I suppose was more of a 'happy accident' rather than a specific intent — is how mixing all this together rubs off on the way that my transvestism is seen by the outside world. Essentially, someone coming here from Beyond The TrannieSphere©™ — for whatever reason — is pretty soon immersed in a world they might not have known anything about.

And I like that I like how it (or at least how I imagine it) comes across as "Hmm, this is interesting — and wait he'a a tranny! Perhaps trannies aren't as weird as I thought".

Or something

But also, it works the other way — so you get other trannies coming here and thinking "Hmm, so I can talk about other stuff. It doesn't always have to be about shoes and make-up".

...

The thing is though, to quote Kath :

I have always been afraid that if I do things one way, then I'll alienate or confuse this group of contacts, and if I do things another way, I might freak out my more "conservative" contacts.

And even though I bang on so much about how it's important to integrate all aspects of our lives — and not to closet them off in some archaic and redundant closet, I do still get all worried (a) that I bore the pants off people when I write about Second Life, or Photoshop, or code, and (b) that my efforts to pull people in from other aspects of my life are always met with sniggering because I've got the word "trannie" in my domain name.

...

You know, very recently I toyed with the idea of ditching "tranniefesto" I didn't (natch) partly because I was persuaded that it was inherently "me", but also because the guy who owns the domain I wanted — "siobhan.org" — wouldn't sell it to me

...

So yeah Like I said, "a general 'hmm, maybe' kind of thought process"

I'm not really sure if I've got any real point — apart from just a reassertion of the idea that there's a general growing movement of transvestites and transgender people that are ditching the idea that we have to inhabit dark corners of the web, and meet in secret. And that this is a Very Cool Thing Indeed™.

And also, despite the protestations from certain factions, I'm not going to stop writing (a) about Second Life, (b) code and photography, and (c) the insides of Italian car engines

Repetition

As I was flitting through my archives trying to find the relevant links for some of the text above, I came across two old entries that proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I do, in fact, repeat myself over and over again

Well, I know that Stephanie has written about similar things, and I got an email off Tidy the other day along the same lines — so I know it's not just you and me

Giant Teddy Bear

^_^ — (via Eyebeam reblog)

Boolean Expressions In Mail.app

Awk! I think I've just grepped my panties — (via Daring Fireball )

Also, can we have a preview buttan plz...? Here's hoping it shows up well.

Gah — sorry Zadia, my little excursions into other web areas kinda interrupted the flow

I'm guessing "/afraid/" was supposed to be in italics?

if I were to be open about my crossdressing to my potential colleagues or employeers, I would get only offers from "tolerating people"

Maybe. Its kinda how I always found things in general worked out — like I managed to end up with people who are Cool And Groovy™ about the way I live my life, but that's mainly due to me ignoring people who aren't.

Perhaps

I think though, that the point I'm trying to get across is that this is predominatly a web thing — in that my engagement with The World At Large™ is mainly through this'ere medium.

And it struck me as strange, earlier, when thinking about it, that I'm still loathe to give this address out to people — depite four and a half years of banging on about the very same subject.

...

But the main focus of this, is what happens When Worlds Collide™?

I mean, on the one hand, I think (excuse my ego for a second) that I'm a pretty well-established trannie-blogger¹. And I can quite happily write about stuff relating to that side of my life knowing full well that a fair few people will read it.

But I've been wanting to push this address in other spaces recently. Granted, I've embraced Flickr as a form of self-expression, and I'm at the point where I can wade into a discussion or debate in any number of non-tranny discussions without feeling in the slightest bit ashamed of what I am².

But — for example — someone recently on the SLED mailing list (it's an SL Education thing) asked if anyone had a blog. And I haven't said that I have³.

Let me run that by you again: I, Siobhan Curran, Reigning Blog Princess™ (), haven't taken an opportunity to whore my URL in front of a group of people.

And it's because of that crossover within these pages and entries between my 'serious' life and my 'running around in stockings' life.

...

In my ideal world, I could just chuck out a URL to whoever I meet — safe in the knowledge that whatever I do is going to be taken on face value, without the baggage that has traditionally come with the word "transvestite".

But what I'm finding — ironically — is that even though my fears are directed towards those outside of the TrannieSphere©™. the actual reality of The People That Grumble When Siobhan Writes About Things That Are Not Of Interest To Them™, is that — actually — the most vocal ones are the trannies.

My illustrious (if somewhat busy and beseiged by spambots) colleague, Miss K sent me an email a few weeks ago:

I love how you write a post abut spaghetti and suddenly it's comment city after a couple of dry SL days!

I guess maybe I've been feeling a little guilty of late — guilty that a lot of the time I just post random 'mid-build' pictures of shadows and shit like that. Guilty maybe that some really great conversations about the ins and outs of transgenderism have been lost in a great sea of random archives.

Guilty that I'm not Keeping Everyone Happy™, and that in the process of trying to extend myself into more and more spaces — for whatever altruistic intentions — I'm alienating a group of people.

...

Ack, I dunno

Sorry Erin is going so slow at the moment BTW — I'm uploading the entire 30 minutes of film that was my MA submission to my external server. It's not actually that Erin is going slow — it's that CuChulainn is hogging the bandwidth.

¹ Some (ie. me), would say "the Original Trannie-Blogger". It's not traffic — it's longevity...

² Well, maybe a little bit still.

³ I forget what this footnote was going to be. Sorry. I'm a bit drunk.

Time to leave things there and head to bed.

No dammit. I'm going to pick

We don't merge work, rest and play into one single entity [...] so why should we feel obliged to do so with crossdressing?

Well, I'd argue that we do. All of us — to some degree or another — are a product of all of those things: our working lives, our resting lives and our playing lives.

But that's not important. What is important is that the general face of transvestism in the World Today™ is still (Hollyoaks aside) one of shame, ridicule, and general uncomfortableness.

Call me an old-fashioned Modernist if you like (most do), but I still like the idea of a manefesto. And my manifesto is to converge everything together so that all of the parts of my life come into contact with all of the others.

So you can't just say "Oh, Graham's good at coding¹" without coming into contact with the things I've coded for this. And you can't just say "Hey Siobhan, ur hawt" without coming into contact with some of the more 'academic' or 'intellectual' pages that exist here.

And you can't say "Hey Kisa, I love your textures" without at some point accepting that it's basically a man in a dress that did that.

"Convergence" to me, is saying that these three things that I am — these three things that I do — all of them are valid. And if it challenges some people's perceptions along the way, then all well and good.

The problem that I have is living up to that.

That's my point. I think

It's a bit like sharing your favourite sexual position with your parents.

Oooh. That's a much better metaphor tha my "Kylie at the bus stop" one²

you really need to work out a way to continue the conversation over from one day to the next

I know Just as an example, you just know I'm going to want to talk about this tomorrow instead...

¹ Just don't, OK? I know I'm not...

² About half-way down the page...