Someone Else's Story
At a time when transgender attention in the
mainstream in on the rise, have we as individuals stopped exploring
ourselves and become complacent with a good story?
While we should go forward as a group in a
unified manner, we should also each continue exploration of our
individuality and personal journey’s. Certainly, almost all of us share the
same evolution from closet dressing as a child, to denial, to the first time
out to some type of acceptance and balance in their lives. But is that
balance, or acceptance grounded in reality?
Transgender seems to be the hot buzz-word
these days, which encompasses trans variant people of many different
interests and behaviors - all grouped together in one pot. A few years ago I
asked the question “who are we?” My friends had many different answers, and
today the question seems just as relevant as it did then. But “who are we”
refers to us individually as much as it does “us” as a group. I hear the
same personal identity being repeated over and over, and it makes me wonder
– is that yours, or someone else’s story? Does categorization really matter?
I think it does, because on a personal level everyone needs to discover who
they are, and what may work for one person may not ring true for the next.
I have heard many different descriptions of
what the various categories mean, and to the best of my ability it breaks
down as follows:
The community at large is called
Transgender, which represents the larger circle. Within that larger circle
are several smaller circles, they are:
1) Drag Queen – Usually a gay
man, or performer who emulates the glitz and glamour of a woman, usually in
an over-the-top caricature of a woman - but does not want to be a woman,
2) Cross Dresser – a person who
enjoys wearing the clothes of the opposite gender,
3) Transvestite – according to
the dictionary they are defined as gay men who dress as woman, though the
term has been phased out of late
4) Transgender girl or T-girl – a
person who has some, or most of the emotional and spiritual elements of the
gender opposite their birth gender (I guess this could be explained as
somewhere between a cross dresser and a transsexual)
5) Transsexual – a person who
feels that they were born in the body of the gender opposite their birth
gender, and in most cases pursues all available means to live as the gender
they feel inside
6) She-Male – a birth male who
presents and portrays everything female, except the male genitals – they are
the 3rd sex.
Whether the classifications and descriptions
above are accurate or not doesn’t really change the question. What I hear
from people can range from sexual justification, such as, “I am straight,
because I am only with men when I am a girl”, to more internal clarification
such as, “I was born in a man’s body, but I am female inside” (which the
last time I checked would be the statement of a transsexual). Is it possible
that the transgender revolution has spawned better justifications of one’s
actions, and at the same time caused complacency regarding their continued
personal insight?
Food For Thought,
Until next time, Be safe, be happy and Think
Pretty J
Brianna Austin
