Trans Men Together

I am not just Trans.

I am my parent’s son. I am a writer. I am a friend. I am a brother, a cousin and a nephew. I am queer. I am a loyal, kind and amazing friend. I love taekwondo. I love reading. I love writing. I love nature and I am spiritual.
I am more than this label. I am not this label. I am my own person who is doing what he can with a bad situation from birth. I am becoming my own man when society tried to make me a woman.
I am not a stereotype and I am not some experiment. I am a human being with real emotions and I cry real tears. I have every reason to love life and every reason to keep fighting for what I need and what I want.
Don’t put the Trans community in a box, see past the gender and see past the transition. See the people and how they live their lives. See the quirks, the humour and the things they love.
Your task, find a Trans person on YouTube, anybody. Write them a message asking more about them as a person. Ask about a favourite memory or a favourite hobby. See past their Trans identity and see the larger identity which makes them who they are. We are all unique and all have our quirks. Stop noticing the differences and start seeing the similarities.

A guest post by Karl Walker

Today is Spirit Day. People all around the world, gay and straight, (myself included) will be wearing purple to remember six young gay men who took their own lives. This is horrific. It’s sad. It’s bloody dreadful, don’t get me wrong. But they had a choice. Some of these people were being bullied, yes, and suicide is never an easy choice, but I’ve been there, and it is, in the end, you that kills yourself.

Murder is not a choice. You do not go out and say “My life is shit, I want to die, I’ll get murdered”. For these gay men, they still had the… choice, to kill themselves. It might, and probably did, seem like there was no other choice, but since people are regularly “saved” from suicide, and some go on to live productive lives, clearly there is another path, even if in the depths of despair it isn’t seen. These murdered trans women didn’t have a choice. What murdered trans women?

Well, Victoria Carmen White, for a start. She lived within, I believe, 30 miles of Tyler Clementi, and was murdered three weeks before he killed himself. Oh. How sad. She was a trans woman of colour. Tyler was a young white cissexual man. I wonder why the only news coverage of her death was in her local paper, I really do. Or actually, sadly, I don’t, because I know all too well that society values the suicides of young gay men over the murder of black trans women. Every time.

We’re wearing purple to remember 6 specific cis gay male suicides. Anyone have any guesses as to how many trans women have been murdered this year? I don’t know for the whole year, however, 93 trans women were murdered in the first half of 2010. That’s 93 murders in 181 days. Where’s the outcry for these women that didn’t have a choice, that didn’t get to write a note, that didn’t get to say goodbye, that had their right to a decision forcibly taken away from them?

Where’s the campaign to remember them? Where are all the facebook pages? Where are the memorial days?

Just as those are only the reported suicides, these are only the reported murders.

I’m not against remembering people who killed themselves as a result of bullying. Of course not. But where’s the remembrance for these people who had no choice?

As I write this, 17,204 people have committed to wear purple, on facebook, to remember these 6 gay suicides. Meanwhile, the biggest page on facebook (that I can find) for transgender day of remembrance, has at the time of writing, 2,149 people who “like” it.
Googling “Spirit day gay suicides” comes up with 2,080,000 results. Googling “transgender day of remembrance” comes up with 42,800 results, and has been running since 1998. Spirit day was set up this year.

I’m not writing this to dishonour the memory of people who killed themselves in part due to their sexuality, but I’m writing it because they had a choice, and the 93 certain trans murders so far this year, didn’t. If we assume the trend of one trans murder every other day continued beyond June, that’s about another 55 trans murders being forgotten, whilst we remember 6 gay suicides.

My name is James, though I tend to go by Jamie, and I have male privilege. I don’t have all the trappings of it, there are the times I don’t pass, the times I didn’t try, and the times I don’t want to, but I’m going to start with having it, and how that affects my life.

• I find myself being sexist without meaning to – stepping into the road to allow a woman to continue on the pavement, whilst not necessarily doing so for a man, because I don’t want  to be the one that submits to his wishes unless I respect him. I find myself being aware of women around me and how to respect them, holding doors etc, where I wouldn’t necessarily for a man. Some people tend to be unfussed by this, feeling that it’s the respect a man should show to a woman, but I wonder when i started, and intrinsically I feel it’s wrong. I don’t see any reason why I should have the right to treat women differently now, because I identify as male, when I treated them the same as men before, when I lived as female, and I have no idea when I internalised these messages. I know I didn’t used to act like this, so it’s been in the previous… let’s say 2 or 3 years that I’ve picked up these traits. It’s hard to know how to eradicate them. Do I stay on the pavement and one of us step into the road at the last minute? Do I exercise my privilege by forcing the woman to step into the road? With doors it’s easier, I just hold them open for anyone, on buses I go on in order of arrival, unless there’s someone who obviously needs to get on first. I struggle though with whether I’m exercising privilege unduly, or not, and how to act appropriately in different situations.
• I find myself having to be “that man” in social situations with other guys. That man that lectures them on how what they said was anti-feminist or sexist or homophobic even if they didn’t think of it that way. And I don’t resent doing that, I’m glad I can, but at the same time it’s not something I’m used to doing. People just assume I will be sexist and misogynistic up to a point, even (especially) women, and I find it hard to analyse to what extent I am and to what extent this is placed on me through social situations. I don’t want to be that person and to some extent it gives me guilt about having a male identity. I don’t want my existence to cause pain and hurt, or my self to be a party to it. I try and support women in standing up where appropriate but is that right even? It’s hard to know, am I just exercising my privilege again by assuming a woman can’t stand up for herself.
• People make way for me in the street. If I’m in my hoodie and jeans they’ve been known to cross the road to avoid me because as a man in those clothes I seem threatening. Is there any way I can mitigate this, and seem somewhat safer, without changing who I am?
• I’ve internalised a lot of those messages that say that to be a woman I should be tall, and slim, and beautiful, and long haired, and wearing make-up, and submissive, and that men are tall and muscular and fit, and hard, and rugged, and dominant, and yet sometimes soft and romantic. I’m not a woman, but there’s this intense sense of failure that I never met those aims, and I feel hugely guilty when I see a woman like  that and she attracts me. I’m mostly attracted to men, but when, on the rare occasion, that happens, I feel horrible that I’m playing into this abuse of women. I feel like a failure as well for not meeting the standards of men. I’m not fit, I carry a little extra padding, I’m short and emotional and not particularly dominant. I feel like I’ve internalised both sets of messages and try and balance them whilst coming up as a failure to both.
• When I don’t pass I feel intensely visible, moreso than I did when I actively lived as female, I feel like everyone can see me and is judging me on my (masculine) appearance and finding it lacking because I don’t look like their view of what a proper woman should. I don’t know if all women feel this all the time, or if it’s a rare sense, but it’s horribly uncomfortable, and makes me feel like a boyish flat chested twelve year old surrounded by débutantes and beauties.
• There are times when I want to be perceived as performing femininity, as a man. When I put a dress on and  heels and bind and then pad my chest and pack. I want to be seen as a drag queen, and I wonder what that does to how women, cis or trans, are seen and treated if I do a performance of over the top femininity. Is it degrading to women? If so, is it something I should stop doing? And then how should I manage to present femininity when I need to to remain congruent with my gender identity.

I feel like identifying as male has forcibly changed a lot of how I interact with the world and how the world interacts with me, and I’m not sure that that’s a good thing. I feel like being perceived as male is on some level dangerous or damaging for women, and even worse being seen as a man performing femininity. I don’t know how to mitigate the effects of my actions, and if anyone has the time or energy, I’d appreciate some support in how to navigate society being the best “ally” I can to women around me.

I wanted to post a blog to outline the purposes of the blog, the site, and the projects:

• I want to create a space where people challenge their privilege and the effects that they have on the world they move in
• I want to create a space where homophobia, transphobia, racism, classism, ablism, sizeism, sexism etc are unwelcome, and where people feel able to challenge their own conceptions of how they interact with these.
• I want to create a space where people who want to change the world can work together
• I want to create a space where intersectionality of prejudices are discussed
• I want to create a space where I can discuss having a disabled trans identity, and how I move through the world as a disabled man
• I want to create a space where people blog on the issues that are important to them, and feel they’re being heard
• I want to create a space where I can discuss my identity in the context of that of others.