The Importance of Being "Honest"
A piece on translanguage, at Reality's Last Stand
I’ve got a piece up at Reality’s Last Stand about how terms like MtF and FtM allowed some of us to understand and accommodate transsexualism, without forcing us to participate in a delusion. And how the evolution to terms that have no common meaning—gender, anyone?—have destabilized us, leading us to culture war.
When I moved to New York City in 1993, there were categories of people known as FtMs and MtFs. Some MtFs were literally marginalized, prostitutes turning tricks along the outer avenues of Manhattan. Others were entertainers or hostesses at clubs. “Trannies” appeared on a few episodes of Sex in the City, and non-trans people could say that word with affection (or with vitriol, and face some transsexual wrath).
Drag queens were feminine gay men who dressed as elaborate caricatures of women. They could call each other “girl”—we normies could refer to them in the third person as she/her—with no feeling of cognitive dissonance. There was wiggle room in the language. We knew that drag queens were male. We knew that MtFs hadn’t literally changed sex.
It seemed to me the city was a tolerant and accepting place, though perhaps with a caveat that these people relegated themselves away from the mainstream, away from the center, away from the kids. It was a compromise, but a compromise in favor of the majority and a definition of normalcy that perhaps some trans people didn’t want to consent to. I admit that.
I also think that the language was part of that fragile, imperfect peace.
If I know someone is FtM, then I know the sex of the person I’m looking at—which I believe is a fundamental human need: to categorize the person by sex, both to know who is a potential partner and who is a potential danger. It’s the most basic fact of a human being’s profile. There’s an honesty in the categorization, even as it requires a modified suspension of disbelief, the use of some figurative language to help someone else understand. I was born a woman. I changed myself to look like and move through the world as a man.
More at RLS. Thanks for reading!
At exactly the same time, the early 1990s, men like my ex-husband were sneaking out and crossdressing, "exploring a female identity" while spending the family grocery money, abandoning wife and children and enjoying the adoration of their "therapists" who were mostly acting as fashion stylists. For the real deal of what this meant and means to families, tune in to Lime Soda Films YouTube channel on Friday, Aug. 30 at 2pm EST for Vaishnavi Sundar's epic documentary profiling several trans orphans and a couple dozen trans widows. Trailer with Vaishnavi's introduction for the film which took 3 years of interviews, animation for women who feared retribution if they showed their face (I don't, so I appear) and a commissioned score:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpZ0CWWnbR0
I’d really love to read this, Lisa. I’m a paying subscriber here and not there, though. Would it be possible to post the whole thing here but paywall it? I am a paying subscriber primarily because I want to support your work, including your upcoming book, which will be important and (I hope) will arrive at a time when the public has become slightly more receptive. But I really don’t care that much about the weekly roundup on Fridays, as I’ve already gleaned the top-level news from my close Twitter follows. Substantive articles like this one are what sweetens the deal for me.
I deeply value the work Colin does, too, but a late-in-life divorce leaves me financially constrained, and I have to be careful about how many subscriptions I accumulate.