Saturday, 9th December, 2006

Super Happy Cryptic Search Fun Game

You will need:

1. A blogging friend who you know checks their in-bound search queries often.

2. A couple of glasses of wine.

Step one

Incessantly 'ping' your friend by searching for random things, with their name attached.

So, for example, if you wanted to play this with me, you might Google for "pisshead tranny siobhan curran", or "all the characters in torchwood are transvestites siobhan curran"¹, or "I once had that siobhan curran in the back of my taxi" then fish out the link to my blog and click on it.

Thus ensuring there's a strange weirdo-entry in my stats.

Step Two

Drink wine

Step Three

Wait for the weird-ass search terms to accumulate, then give yourself twenty points when they post a "Hey, look at the strange Google searches"-type post

¹ Oooh. K comes up first for that one. Followed by Becky . Hmmmmm

Elsewhere

For the past wee while, I've been in a pig of a mood. I anticipate being in exactly the same mood for at least the next week — if not more. There will come a point — over the next fortnight or so — where my pig of a mood will cease, and mental balance will be restored.

In the meantime though, I just wish I could channel this pigness into some truly virulent (and, more importantly, carefree) bile, so I could launch myself into a full-scale rant.

I used to be able to rant. I don't know why I stopped...

Rant

Actually, I know full well why I stopped ranting.

A while ago, I posted something along the lines of "I'm not angry anymore" as a feeble excuse as to why I dont write much in the way of transvestic rants these days.

And while the sentiment was true — in that I felt I'd expunged pretty much all of my spleen in regards to one or two topics that used to rear their ugly heads every time two or more trannies gathered together online — the fact was a bit of a fib.

And fair dues — I got a stupidly large amount of email after that post, pointing out to me that there were a bazillion reasons to be angry about the state of play of twenty-first century transvestism.

So, I feel it only right that I come clean, and confess that the reason I rant very little these days — especially when it comes to thoughts and arguments relating to my clothing fetish¹, is because I'm a weak, yellow-bellied coward, more concerned with keeping everyone happy and full of *la la la*s, than I am about making a point.

...

See, a few years ago, this wasn't quite so much of a stage. Sure, I had a handful of regulars that used to stop by and read shit that I wrote, but they were measurable in tens, rather than thousands.

I think a lot of the time, a lot of people start up blogs thinking that they'll reach the whole planet — not realising that you have to do a lot of work to keep your voice 'relevant' and heard.

But the flip-side to that, is that the more people read you, the more chance you have of offending someone.

And if you're someone like me — someone who hates the idea of 'rocking the boat' — then that inflated audience is a frigging nightmare.

...

Gah.

This isnt going where I want it to. And that's another reason why I've stopped ranting as much.

I suppose it's something to do with that notion of 'extended audience' — in that the more people that read you, the more people are likely to pick you up on something, and question you.

And I think that the nature of blogging — in some way — instills in you a sense of this being your 'soapbox'. It's your space to get up and shout about the things that you care about — and God is it fucking annoying when, in the middle of a good rant, someone casually points out that you're way off the mark.

Which happens a lot, to me

So a lot of the time, I'll get all worked up by something — and half-compose a post. But I realise, mid-rant, that it's very likely that someone — probably someone I know — will jump in a say "Um, Siobhan, you're talking bollocks"

So I don't post them.

...

Which is shit really, because it stiffles debate.

I mean, I bet there are some fantastic discussions to be had at the moment. There are loads of them that tickle the back of my brain's 'rough-draft' folder...

...things like...

1. Is it just me, or can you count the interesting tranny-blogs on one hand? Despite a flurry of initial bandwagoning (not helped by that article I wrote, to be honest) about a year or so ago, most of them have receeded into pits of either (1) militant bullshit, or (2) tedious drivel.

2. Have you ever noticed that people that spend the most amount of energy insisting that everyone should 'follow their example' in life, are the ones who are the most insecure about themselves, and naive about the various possibilities in life?

3. No, I haven't got heartburn, because I don't eat like a glutton. And James Lastesque-renditions of 'popular music from films' will not make me want to buy your double-action remedies.

4. The world is full of lazy people, and not — as I had imagined — full of excited innovators intent on exploring the new possibilities that present themselves each and every day.

5. I will never give up smoking because someone told me to. If I do ever give up, it will be because I decide to by myself. No amount of reasoning, bribes, or disapproving nagging will make me contemplate giving up — in fact, quite the opposite. The smugger you are about not smoking, the more you want to make me blow the stuff in your face. And it's not a question of anyone 'knowing what's best' for anyone else. It's just a question of it being a fucking addiction that I quite happen to like, frankly

6. (I will regret this) But have you ever noticed that in any TV vs TS argument — purile and devisive as they are — it's always the TSes that come across the most sneery?²

7. Why can I not get a litre bottle of wine in the shops? 75cl is not enough.

8. I was in Sainsburys earlier on, and it dawned on me just how much I hated the simpering fucktards that were running around each aisle, lapping up the overly marketed shite, in the blind ignorant belief that they were somehow exerting "choice".

9. Also on a Sainsburys angle, I came out with a great one the other day ... I was sat watching some adverts with M, and The Fat Tounged Mockney Twat Jamie Oliver asked "You know what would make Christmas even more special?.

   "If you died. You cunt"

10. ...which made me seriously contemplate giving up this whole 'blog' thing. Giving up writing about wearing frocks, writing code, cats, wine, ranting, Second Life, ranting, day-to-day chit-chat — all of it. And instead, just post random adverts with overlaid subtitles.

...you know, stuff like that.

¹ 'cos for me, thats almost all that it is

² Like I said. I'll regret that. But at the same time, it does bug me that in any conversation I've seen that runs along those lines, transvestites are always sent on the defensive — having to excuse our lives as being more that "fetishists" and "hobbyists". Well fuck it — I'm both. And as much as I respect the opinions of some of the more learned and intellectual transexuals that I've come across in my time, I can't help but notice that there are some seriously fucked-up random TS nut jobs out there, who seem to revell in upholstering their egos by turning their noses up at a community that might — God forbid — actually support them.

I'm really sorry that you feel that way

I would suggest that you're misinterpreting the way I feel, which is wholly my fault for being flippant, ambiguous and one-sided, and for keeping schtum on the subject in general for so long.

And are you seriously telling me that that's not a puerile, divisive and sneery comment in itself?

Ah. Oh dear

Yes — or at least, I wouldn't use those words — in as much as it wasn't intended to be. But perhaps I could have put it a lot better — in that it assumes prior knowledge of the arguments I'm referring to, and there is a danger that it's readable as a 'blanket' statement, or something.

I get very frustrated when potentially interesting discussions descend into personal pettiness — when insecurities surface and an initial dialogue that held the promise of discovery becomes nothing more than a protracted excercise in one-up-manship.

And for some reason, the tired TV vs TS thread (that seems to have been running since the dawn of time), always seems to go down that road. You start off with a few interesting people talking about how they feel about things — wide-ranging things, and wide-ranging viewpoints, which is almost inevitable given the breadth of our community — but instead of fascinating outcomes, you almost always get someone chipping in with a "I'm this, therefore I am better than these people".

Which, of course, changes the tone of the debate, and plunges it into the cliché-pit, negating any interesting discussion that came before.

The observation I was making, was that in these situations, certain 'factions' within our communities seem to crawl out of the woodwork and take it upon themselves to 'personalise' the debate — not that one side or another is always to blame.

But you're right to pull me up on that comment. I've been trying for the past few hours to find some way of justifying it — and I can't. It wasn't thought through at all, it was deeply one-sided, and it's very wrong of me to toss an ambiguously interpretable statement into a list of general/frivilous 'irks' of mine without some kind of clarification, and an assumption that people know how I feel about some of the issues surrounding it...

I'm fascinated by the levels of diversity within our community. I'm intrigued by how tiny differences in outlook and perspective between us can give rise to massively different overall outcomes. I love it when two people, who on the surface seem to have so much in common, can turn out to have a wide gulf in between their respective world views — because somewhere within that gulf is a new thought or idea waiting to surface.

So when, for example, you plonk someone like me — someone for whom it seems that the whole raison d'être centres around the actual clothing — into a discussion with someone for whom it centres around gender, I think you have the recipe for an interesting discussion.

But what's not interesting, is when those discussions get derailed because of personal agenda.

...

You know, the more I read back to myself what I wrote last night, the more I realise that, yes, it was quite sneery, and perhaps not a little intentionally provocative — and I'm sorry it came out like that. I'm also sorry if it came out in such a way as to cause offence — especially in light of what I was writing a few paragraphs above it.

But do please read it in the context of a question — one that I (a) put very badly, and (b) don't purport to have the answer to.

I presume — perhaps, to be honest, inadvisably — that the large majority of us are very familiar with that particular thread, and the the minute we see it forming we know to take everything written after a certain point with a very large grain of salt.

Which is fine, within our more traditionally 'closed' environments. When it happens in a private forum, or a private mailing list, the vast majority of us roll our eyes and move on to another subject, leaving those who want a troll-fight to their own devices.

But when it spills out into a more public arena, I think there's a danger that whatever interestingness that has previously developed as a result of the coming together of disparate minds and ideologies, slips into the background because of personal egos and agendas — and the 'audience', who's perhaps not used to the many previous examples that exist in our collective archives, walk away thinking "They're all a bunch of weirdos".

...

But before I dig myself even deeper into a hole here (which is, I feel, exactly what I'm doing at the moment), I have to ask something...

A lot of the time, when I'm reading through discussions online (or listening to them in a pub or something), I find myself cringing inside that someone purporting to 'represent me' comes out with some of the things that they do. I find that a lot of the 'justifications' of transvestism that get spouted are tired clichés ("Women can wear trousers, blah blah blah" etc...), and it bugs me that I don't try to engage with these arguments.

I continually see it as a great personal failing of mine that I haven't got the balls to interject into a debate about something I feel deeply about — and invariably skulk away to whinge about it on the sidelines.

But it's that 'representative' thing that annoys me the most — that someone might think "Hmm. X is a transvestite. X thinks this. Therefore all transvestites think this." That's what gets me the most.

And my question is, is it just me, or do others read through things that claim to speak on their behalf and find themselves shaking their head in disbelief?

as long as people are aware that you're poking a hornets nest just to see if anything interesting emerges, is there any real harm?

Well yeah, I guess. What I worry about sometimes, is whether or not I have the right to poke certain nests.