Some 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 3^rd 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? 

As always, be happy, be safe, and think pretty.
Brianna Austin

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