Dec
22
This is one of my favorite ways of getting in on all the fun that goes on this time of year – dressing up and taking pictures. (Come to think of it, I enjoy being in front of or behind the lens all year long.) Well, maybe it’s the shopping then. 😛
Anyway, I hope you like them. 🙂
To all my readers, have a safe holiday season/Merry Christmas!
xo
Janie
Dec
19
Selfish f&%king people!
I may be a bit late to this story (as it was dated November 3) but that’s the only way I know how to react to an ABC News report about Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington, allowing a 46-year old pre- or non-op MTF transgender student to use the women’s locker room that is shared with Capital High School Swim Club and a children’s swim academy.
I am steaming!!
The Incident
“‘[A mother] reported her daughter was upset because she observed a person at the women’s locker room naked and displaying male genitalia,’ said a police report filed in September by a mother on behalf of her 17-year-old daughter… According to parents… the student has exposed her male genitalia, in one instance in the sauna…”
The school says it is following the law regarding non-discrimination based on gender-identity, which requires them to accommodate this student.
My problem is with the student. WTF MTF?! What is the matter with you?
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Dec
17
Aside from the practical and emotional and time-management problems (which I alluded to last time) of leading this double life, of two separate lives under one brain and body, there are self-image issues.
Talking to Myself
I’d look at myself in the mirror and worry that maybe I wasn’t feminine enough – inside and out – to consider myself a woman. This is not simply an appearance thing – or even mannerism thing. Often, looking at my reflection morphed into a conversation with myself, a reflection of a deeper sort.
Sometimes, I asked myself if maybe I was fooling myself; maybe I was faking it. Was I pretending to be female, or was I really partly female? I consoled myself with the notion that awkwardness was to be expected in behaving in a way that was unlike the way I had been used to for decades.
But, the question never completely went away, even as things became more natural for me. One of the main reasons I allowed that doubt to gnaw away at me was that I don’t think I ever really accepted what I had appropriated – that I could be two separate people.
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Dec
15
In the course of contemplating – ad infinitum, I might add – the authenticity of my femininity and my life as Janie, it finally occurred to me that I am actually quite unsettled by the idea of being two people – of leading a double life.
Personal reflection is a strange process by which you think about the same things over and over, until you think that maybe all that thought is just procrastinating away the actual real life you are supposed to be leading. But then, you consider something with ever-so-slightly different words, and suddenly, a door opens.
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Dec
12
A number of years ago, I wrote about Nicole, a friend of mine who gave up crossdressing/transitioning despite being the prettiest and most feminine t-girl I had ever met. This person decided that it was all a fraud, and he could satisfy all his needs as a beautifully feminine gay man – almost a yaoi character, if you will. (See my post Yowza Yaoi! for my take on this term, and Wikipedia for a more scholarly description.)
The reasons for his decision that the whole transgender experience for him was not authentic had to do with the way his treatment changed from one moment to the next at the hands of the same people, based solely on his gender presentation. (A wig coming off would be a relationship-changing moment, for example.) It seems their like or dislike, attraction or revulsion for him was based not on his genuine soul and personality but on the way he dressed and groomed himself and the efforts he made to transform his gender or not.
I am sure his own self-perception was similarly affected – and I say this out of personal experience.
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Dec
03
Today, I bring you a brand new photo, fresh off the presses. (Or is that, “Hot off the griddle?” … Would you believe, “Right out of the darkroom?”)
Perhaps I shouldn’t comment on my own work, but if I didn’t say stuff, you wouldn’t have a reason to visit, right? So, what the heck…
I really like this shot because it seems there is more to it than simply, “Look at the pretty girl.”
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Dec
01
The other day, I saw a crime show on television called “Perception.” The basic premise of the particular episode in question involved a doctor who was “curing” men of their gay-ness by giving them a pleasure-inducing drug and having them have sex with women while feeling that pleasure. The idea was to create a permanent association between hetero sex and pleasure.
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Nov
20
Gender is the simplest thing in the world – until you (or others in your life) start questioning it. Then, there is no end of questioning, no end of wondering, of guilt, of fear, of discrimination.
Sometimes, we make the simple complicated. And sometimes, someone can find the words to cut through all the garbage and make what seems so very complicated quite simple. It all looks effortless, but we know better 😉
I commend you to this video. Watch it and share it. Simple wisdom is such a rare thing.
Nov
17
The grass may seem always to be greener on the other side, but take it from someone who’s walked a mile on both sides, it isn’t worth the gender envy.
Gender Envy by Men
Guys may think that women have it all.
After all, men are beguiled by women’s charms and desirability. And, men are driven to desire sex, while women seem to be able to have as much as they please and yet often decline to partake.
On the dating scene, men must put their egos on the line in pursuit of women, making the first move, risking rejection – and it may often seem that women have no shortage of options at their feet.
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Nov
14
Comments on my recent post about dealing with the temptation to get my ears pierced ran inevitably toward the idea that one should do what makes one happy, especially when it comes to one’s body.
I replied there and repeat here, that we live among people, and the quality of our lives depends to a great extent on the relationships we create.
To be able to put at risk relationships that have endured decades on the hope that others of comparable richness will rise to take their place is an act of courage, no doubt.
I understand that a person has to be true to herself. But, in many issues – and perhaps in most of the issues of complex soul-searching – the truth is not so clear, at least to me.
Others seem to see my true nature so much more clearly than I can, and I have to ask myself whether I am being dense or they are jumping to unwarranted conclusions.
I know that a big part of my hesitation is that I am at a stage where moving forward is a big step – perhaps not so much externally as conceptually. Not moving forward is also a big decision, but not deciding is less so.
It would be nice to just allow myself to float the way my emotions lead.
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