Post by Ayla on Mar 16, 2016 12:35:28 GMT 8
transgender.wiki/i-no-longer-fear-the-t-word/
I’ve evolved.
It was two-years-ago yesterday, that I sent an email to Zinnia Jones, thanking her for standing up for me as a transgender woman, because she was taking a stand against the use of the word “tranny.” At the time, even though I had officially “transitioned,” I was still too scared of the world publicly knowing that I had. And because of that fear, I was letting Zinnia speak for me. I was also letting her think for me. That period of my womanhood should best be described as part of my transgender puberty, because not only was my body changing, my beliefs and values about what it means to be transgender were also still forming. And they were far from being concrete or fully-formed enough to support me on their own.
As the “I am Cait” reality machine reignites the great tranny debate and community civil war for ratings, and of course profit, I realize just how far I’ve developed since that time. I’ve proclaimed to the whole nation in America’s virtual newspaper of record that I’m a transgender woman. And I now no longer thank people privately in emails for speaking or thinking for me. I’ve developed and toughened up enough to publicly do it for myself.
I’ve done a couple of over things also: I’ve cut my Mother out of my life and stopped clinging to hope that she will recognize me as a female before she dies, and I’ve taken Ronald Reagan’s advice to vote with my feet, and moved to Portland, Oregon, so that I can have legal protections and a safe place to live as a transgender woman.
Pondering the changes in my behavior since first transitioning, I now realize that two-years ago when RuPaul lit up social media and created that huge divide in the transgender community, that I was actually just scared of the word “tranny.” Back then it was a perceived threat to my womanhood. Tranny meant I was a sex worker. Tranny was what was on the cover of boxes in the porn stores. Tranny was what lonely transgender people labeled themselves as when they advertised for sex on Craigslist. Tranny was the slur that men shouted when they beat transgender women to death when they discovered that they have a penis. I wasn’t a “tranny” and I surely wanted to be in the group that was waging war against my womanhood and causing me to be labeled as that word that I perceived as having awful connotations. Looking back, the truth is I was just insecure in my identity as a female. I was allowing that single word to be able to tear down the defenses surrounding my womanhood. It didn’t, and it can’t. And I no longer have that fear. I’ve also laid down my sword and walked away from the fight to ban it.
So what’s changed in me? What’s transpired to give me a voice of my own? Where did I find or grow my courage? What’s happened to allow me to think for myself? A number of things, but the best answer is I’ve had some serious TET (transgender-exposure-therapy).
Since that great war that divided our community and pitted sisters against each other, I’ve immersed myself in trans culture and met all sorts of people under the rainbow that have been grouped together under our vast transgender umbrella, the very umbrella that some of you despise. I’ve went to dinner with girls that are crossdressers that won a famous discrimination lawsuit. Although, I live as a woman full-time, I share their same need of having a safe place to pee. I’ve been to support groups with transsexuals that don’t think I’m a woman because I refuse to have genital surgery. I’ve been to bingo with the drag queens that raise money for the community centers that hold the support group meetings, give free AIDS testing, and shelter our homeless youth. And most of all, thanks to getting dressed-down by some folks much smarter than I previously was, I’ve learned to check my privilege at the door and think of myself as everyone’s equal in this community. Which is all I really am, an equal. If you strip away my military retirement income that protects me from being just another unemployed and homeless transgender woman, or take away the free government healthcare that provides my hormones and protection against AIDS, I’m reduced to being the same lowest form of life in America as the rest of the community is in the eyes of many Americans. Despite Caitlyn Jenner having millions of dollars, it does do nothing more than make her a princess that’s locked in a castle, high up on the hill. There’s still plenty of places left in this nation that neither I nor Jenner can walk at night as trans women. And that’s because even the white color of our skin won’t protect us when someone declares that we are trannies and that we deserve to be beaten as such. Put Caitlyn Jenner on a corner at 2 a.m. in a mini skirt and she’ll eventually die the same death that KC Haggard did.
Looking back, my first thought is that I had surrounded myself exclusively with transgender women that were just like me. But the truth is, I had surrounded myself with transgender women who had their own thoughts about what transgender is, and about what being a woman is, and I was merely adopting their thinking, because I was doing zero on my own. And my new identity as a transgender woman was so fragile that I dared not think for myself, because I didn’t know how to. I thought these women knew what was right for me, and that I should blindly follow them. That’s right, I was a follower. I was part of “the mob.”
That same “mob” has different characters on each occasion that it rears it’s ugly head in the transgender community, depending on the subject matter at hand, but I’m no longer a part of the tranny mob. Nor am I a part of the “I Aint Cait” mob. I’m also no longer a follower, for anything on any subject. And while I don’t consider myself a leader either, I no longer allow others to think or speak for me. I don’t fear anyone taking away my trans card. There isn’t one for you to take away.
Is anyone else brave enough to admit that the same “mob” mentality is what’s attacking Caitlyn Jenner each and every day? Let’s just call it what it is: blind followers that are merely just piling on, because they can’t think for themselves, or they lack her privilege. It’s the “let’s all kill anything that’s successful in any form and all be miserable” movement. It’s all or none when it comes to transgender misery.
Yesterday was a prime example of “the mob” in action. As Rebecca Juro was entertaining Advocate readers about her past as a drug addict and drug dealer and using it as an analogy about addiction to attack Olympic hero Caitlyn Jenner , Alabama dot com was reminding the readers in their state and the rest of the nation that Jenner spoke out about Mercedes Williamson during the ESPY awards. In case you don’t know, Williamson is the transgender girl that was beaten to death with a hammer last year in Mississippi. The psycho with an antisocial personality disorder that killed her now thinks he should get reduced bail so he can work and spend time with his family before being imprisoned. His message: our lives matter less than cisgender lives, she was only a transgender girl, let me out of jail at a cheaper rate.
Juro is too dumb to realize that despite Jenner’s real or perceived faults, she has good intentions overall. And as I’m now tough enough to not allow the “tranny” word to threaten my existence, I can truthfully say that I learned long ago to be tough enough and smart enough to not allow someone being Republican to signify the end of my existence either.
In my early military days, I was a follower too. I was a follower because I didn’t know how to be a soldier, and I was a follower two-years ago because I didn’t know how to be trans. Because I was taught that Republicans meant big money being spent on me as a soldier in the military, I voted for them. When I realized I had a gender problem and that the military would discriminate against me for it, I realized that Democrats had their merits also. I then became one, and I’ve voted for them ever since.
In the YouTube video Rebecca Juro says she needs a job. Caitlyn Jenner says she wants to help get her one. Who am I to question Jenner? Her bus is bigger than my apartment. I defer to her superior knowledge about money, how to make it, or how to create jobs for transgender people.
The biggest thing that changed me regarding the tranny word debate was getting exposure to the real transgender community. That’s right, the real life one. The transgender community that exists on a round Earth outside of computer screens and Twitter wars. When Zinnia Jones was gathering signatures for the Battle of RuPaul, I hadn’t had any exposure to the real transgender community. I hadn’t been to a drag show. Why would I go? Don’t they just pretend to be women? And because they do so, aren’t they a threat to my actual womanhood by pretending to be females? Can’t the mere existence of a drag queen destroy my existence and identity as woman? It can’t and they can’t. And I’ve realized that only I can do so in my head, if I let it. I’ve become more hardened. Not hardened enough not to cry at each suicide, but hardened enough for someone to say “tranny.” Even worse, gasp, I’ve met queer people. They’ve become my heroes in the trans community.
I’ve come to realize that the great tranny debate has other parallels in my life also, because when I was a small child I saw something during my childhood that should only take place in a Hollywood movie.
To this day, I can still remember the dark night my parents had me, my siblings, and my grandmother all piled into a big, old Dodge van. We were headed to the funeral of one of those old relatives that I had never met or visited. Of course my father didn’t know how to get there, so he stopped at a gas station to ask directions. And as the curious kid that wanted to follow Dad everywhere back then, I too hopped out of the van for a needed breath of fresh air and followed him inside of the filling station. But no sooner than we had stepped into the doorway and he began to ask for directions, a pickup truck screeched to a halt outside, and a man covered in blood ran inside, collapsing on the floor.
It was quite clear that he’d been cut up by a knife, and he was letting the “N” word fly while screaming that a group of black men were responsible. And sure enough, as I peered out the door and looked across the street, there was in fact a group of black males standing outside of a stopped car. And they were looking in our direction and laughing as they talked. As a little white kid that had until that point in life grown up in an almost completely white middle class suburb, that was my first introduction to adult black men.
I never realized how that incident had impacted me until I went into the military and got my first haircut during basic training from a black man that was working as the barber. And I can still remember to this day how traumatized I was when opened up a big, straight razor and began to shave the hair on the back of my neck after cutting my hair. The gas station memory, the black man, and the razor were an unsettling combination.
But as the military trained me, issued me a new set of values, and integrated me with service members of color, that fear of black men faded immediately. I learned first and foremost that despite any differences any of us had, up to and including skin color, that our very lives depended upon not only sticking together, but working together at all times.
It was a simple life with simple principles: the rules were you checked all that baggage that you brought with you from civilian life into the military at the door, and operated under their rules, which said discrimination will neither exist or be tolerated. And if you didn’t do that, then you were subject to losing your job and becoming a civilian again. While that of course applied to race issues, I came to learn that that it most certainly didn’t apply to sexual orientation or gender-identity. Which is of course why I’m such an ardent supporter of open transgender military service. Because once transgender people gain that same level of protection in the military that skin color did, we will be significantly advancing transgender civil rights and creating economic opportunity, albeit opportunity that comes with risk to life and limb.
Despite learning in the military not to be a follower, I allowed that lesson to be undone and became one again when I joined the transgender community. I’ve since learned enough and become strong enough to no longer be a follower as a transgender woman. And when it comes to the word “tranny,” I’ve learned not to fear that either. Tranny isn’t the label or definition that I choose for myself, but the queer community has taught me about the word and their right to use it. They pose no threat to my womanhood or status as a female, only my ignorance does.
I’ve learned.
I’ve evolved.
It was two-years-ago yesterday, that I sent an email to Zinnia Jones, thanking her for standing up for me as a transgender woman, because she was taking a stand against the use of the word “tranny.” At the time, even though I had officially “transitioned,” I was still too scared of the world publicly knowing that I had. And because of that fear, I was letting Zinnia speak for me. I was also letting her think for me. That period of my womanhood should best be described as part of my transgender puberty, because not only was my body changing, my beliefs and values about what it means to be transgender were also still forming. And they were far from being concrete or fully-formed enough to support me on their own.
As the “I am Cait” reality machine reignites the great tranny debate and community civil war for ratings, and of course profit, I realize just how far I’ve developed since that time. I’ve proclaimed to the whole nation in America’s virtual newspaper of record that I’m a transgender woman. And I now no longer thank people privately in emails for speaking or thinking for me. I’ve developed and toughened up enough to publicly do it for myself.
I’ve done a couple of over things also: I’ve cut my Mother out of my life and stopped clinging to hope that she will recognize me as a female before she dies, and I’ve taken Ronald Reagan’s advice to vote with my feet, and moved to Portland, Oregon, so that I can have legal protections and a safe place to live as a transgender woman.
Pondering the changes in my behavior since first transitioning, I now realize that two-years ago when RuPaul lit up social media and created that huge divide in the transgender community, that I was actually just scared of the word “tranny.” Back then it was a perceived threat to my womanhood. Tranny meant I was a sex worker. Tranny was what was on the cover of boxes in the porn stores. Tranny was what lonely transgender people labeled themselves as when they advertised for sex on Craigslist. Tranny was the slur that men shouted when they beat transgender women to death when they discovered that they have a penis. I wasn’t a “tranny” and I surely wanted to be in the group that was waging war against my womanhood and causing me to be labeled as that word that I perceived as having awful connotations. Looking back, the truth is I was just insecure in my identity as a female. I was allowing that single word to be able to tear down the defenses surrounding my womanhood. It didn’t, and it can’t. And I no longer have that fear. I’ve also laid down my sword and walked away from the fight to ban it.
So what’s changed in me? What’s transpired to give me a voice of my own? Where did I find or grow my courage? What’s happened to allow me to think for myself? A number of things, but the best answer is I’ve had some serious TET (transgender-exposure-therapy).
Since that great war that divided our community and pitted sisters against each other, I’ve immersed myself in trans culture and met all sorts of people under the rainbow that have been grouped together under our vast transgender umbrella, the very umbrella that some of you despise. I’ve went to dinner with girls that are crossdressers that won a famous discrimination lawsuit. Although, I live as a woman full-time, I share their same need of having a safe place to pee. I’ve been to support groups with transsexuals that don’t think I’m a woman because I refuse to have genital surgery. I’ve been to bingo with the drag queens that raise money for the community centers that hold the support group meetings, give free AIDS testing, and shelter our homeless youth. And most of all, thanks to getting dressed-down by some folks much smarter than I previously was, I’ve learned to check my privilege at the door and think of myself as everyone’s equal in this community. Which is all I really am, an equal. If you strip away my military retirement income that protects me from being just another unemployed and homeless transgender woman, or take away the free government healthcare that provides my hormones and protection against AIDS, I’m reduced to being the same lowest form of life in America as the rest of the community is in the eyes of many Americans. Despite Caitlyn Jenner having millions of dollars, it does do nothing more than make her a princess that’s locked in a castle, high up on the hill. There’s still plenty of places left in this nation that neither I nor Jenner can walk at night as trans women. And that’s because even the white color of our skin won’t protect us when someone declares that we are trannies and that we deserve to be beaten as such. Put Caitlyn Jenner on a corner at 2 a.m. in a mini skirt and she’ll eventually die the same death that KC Haggard did.
Looking back, my first thought is that I had surrounded myself exclusively with transgender women that were just like me. But the truth is, I had surrounded myself with transgender women who had their own thoughts about what transgender is, and about what being a woman is, and I was merely adopting their thinking, because I was doing zero on my own. And my new identity as a transgender woman was so fragile that I dared not think for myself, because I didn’t know how to. I thought these women knew what was right for me, and that I should blindly follow them. That’s right, I was a follower. I was part of “the mob.”
That same “mob” has different characters on each occasion that it rears it’s ugly head in the transgender community, depending on the subject matter at hand, but I’m no longer a part of the tranny mob. Nor am I a part of the “I Aint Cait” mob. I’m also no longer a follower, for anything on any subject. And while I don’t consider myself a leader either, I no longer allow others to think or speak for me. I don’t fear anyone taking away my trans card. There isn’t one for you to take away.
Is anyone else brave enough to admit that the same “mob” mentality is what’s attacking Caitlyn Jenner each and every day? Let’s just call it what it is: blind followers that are merely just piling on, because they can’t think for themselves, or they lack her privilege. It’s the “let’s all kill anything that’s successful in any form and all be miserable” movement. It’s all or none when it comes to transgender misery.
Yesterday was a prime example of “the mob” in action. As Rebecca Juro was entertaining Advocate readers about her past as a drug addict and drug dealer and using it as an analogy about addiction to attack Olympic hero Caitlyn Jenner , Alabama dot com was reminding the readers in their state and the rest of the nation that Jenner spoke out about Mercedes Williamson during the ESPY awards. In case you don’t know, Williamson is the transgender girl that was beaten to death with a hammer last year in Mississippi. The psycho with an antisocial personality disorder that killed her now thinks he should get reduced bail so he can work and spend time with his family before being imprisoned. His message: our lives matter less than cisgender lives, she was only a transgender girl, let me out of jail at a cheaper rate.
Juro is too dumb to realize that despite Jenner’s real or perceived faults, she has good intentions overall. And as I’m now tough enough to not allow the “tranny” word to threaten my existence, I can truthfully say that I learned long ago to be tough enough and smart enough to not allow someone being Republican to signify the end of my existence either.
In my early military days, I was a follower too. I was a follower because I didn’t know how to be a soldier, and I was a follower two-years ago because I didn’t know how to be trans. Because I was taught that Republicans meant big money being spent on me as a soldier in the military, I voted for them. When I realized I had a gender problem and that the military would discriminate against me for it, I realized that Democrats had their merits also. I then became one, and I’ve voted for them ever since.
In the YouTube video Rebecca Juro says she needs a job. Caitlyn Jenner says she wants to help get her one. Who am I to question Jenner? Her bus is bigger than my apartment. I defer to her superior knowledge about money, how to make it, or how to create jobs for transgender people.
The biggest thing that changed me regarding the tranny word debate was getting exposure to the real transgender community. That’s right, the real life one. The transgender community that exists on a round Earth outside of computer screens and Twitter wars. When Zinnia Jones was gathering signatures for the Battle of RuPaul, I hadn’t had any exposure to the real transgender community. I hadn’t been to a drag show. Why would I go? Don’t they just pretend to be women? And because they do so, aren’t they a threat to my actual womanhood by pretending to be females? Can’t the mere existence of a drag queen destroy my existence and identity as woman? It can’t and they can’t. And I’ve realized that only I can do so in my head, if I let it. I’ve become more hardened. Not hardened enough not to cry at each suicide, but hardened enough for someone to say “tranny.” Even worse, gasp, I’ve met queer people. They’ve become my heroes in the trans community.
I’ve come to realize that the great tranny debate has other parallels in my life also, because when I was a small child I saw something during my childhood that should only take place in a Hollywood movie.
To this day, I can still remember the dark night my parents had me, my siblings, and my grandmother all piled into a big, old Dodge van. We were headed to the funeral of one of those old relatives that I had never met or visited. Of course my father didn’t know how to get there, so he stopped at a gas station to ask directions. And as the curious kid that wanted to follow Dad everywhere back then, I too hopped out of the van for a needed breath of fresh air and followed him inside of the filling station. But no sooner than we had stepped into the doorway and he began to ask for directions, a pickup truck screeched to a halt outside, and a man covered in blood ran inside, collapsing on the floor.
It was quite clear that he’d been cut up by a knife, and he was letting the “N” word fly while screaming that a group of black men were responsible. And sure enough, as I peered out the door and looked across the street, there was in fact a group of black males standing outside of a stopped car. And they were looking in our direction and laughing as they talked. As a little white kid that had until that point in life grown up in an almost completely white middle class suburb, that was my first introduction to adult black men.
I never realized how that incident had impacted me until I went into the military and got my first haircut during basic training from a black man that was working as the barber. And I can still remember to this day how traumatized I was when opened up a big, straight razor and began to shave the hair on the back of my neck after cutting my hair. The gas station memory, the black man, and the razor were an unsettling combination.
But as the military trained me, issued me a new set of values, and integrated me with service members of color, that fear of black men faded immediately. I learned first and foremost that despite any differences any of us had, up to and including skin color, that our very lives depended upon not only sticking together, but working together at all times.
It was a simple life with simple principles: the rules were you checked all that baggage that you brought with you from civilian life into the military at the door, and operated under their rules, which said discrimination will neither exist or be tolerated. And if you didn’t do that, then you were subject to losing your job and becoming a civilian again. While that of course applied to race issues, I came to learn that that it most certainly didn’t apply to sexual orientation or gender-identity. Which is of course why I’m such an ardent supporter of open transgender military service. Because once transgender people gain that same level of protection in the military that skin color did, we will be significantly advancing transgender civil rights and creating economic opportunity, albeit opportunity that comes with risk to life and limb.
Despite learning in the military not to be a follower, I allowed that lesson to be undone and became one again when I joined the transgender community. I’ve since learned enough and become strong enough to no longer be a follower as a transgender woman. And when it comes to the word “tranny,” I’ve learned not to fear that either. Tranny isn’t the label or definition that I choose for myself, but the queer community has taught me about the word and their right to use it. They pose no threat to my womanhood or status as a female, only my ignorance does.
I’ve learned.
