Enough already

Update.-- I'll forgive the new MTV show "Transform Me", or at least from the first episode. I watched it later (rerun) and thought it wasn't all that bad. Some younger transwomen, as some older ones have, want to just be like other women and it's fair for them to try and improve their looks, makeup and wardrobe. I still think it's kinda' hype, but I guess ok hype. I just wish there was a way to lose the trans label for post-transistion women, it's unnecessary and unfair.

Ok, this is rant about several things, which means you can really ignore the rest if you're not into reading my personal rants or vents at the world around, about, with transgender people and the transgender community. It's really boring, except of course as an exercise for me to yell from my corner of the world standing on my soapbox. Ok, enough explanation. Onward.

First, enough of the documentaries about people's transistions. I won't argue the recent film, "Prodigol Son", is excellent and worth seeing once. This is about the TV documentaries of individuals from childhood to post-transistion, such as the recent one by Steven/Susan Stanton. She wasn't liked by the transcommunity when she transistioned and no one wants her see or hear her again.

One reason people do this, invite the cameras into the life like that, is simple. It's to pay for the sex reassignment surgery, in part of more often entirely, as with Susan Stanton. Selling yourself to get the surgery doesn't do justice to the many who need it more and can't get insurnance which covers it (rare anyway) or pay for it out of pocket, or at least not without going in debt for $15-20K.

The other reason is the life stories doesn't change. There's too many common threads running through the life of those who transistion. There's already a wealth of books and documentaries of self-destructive people who finally got through their transistion with some sense of being. It's the sad reality of the discrimination, but also for the bad decisions by the individuals.

And lastly, with this one, Susan Stanton not just criticized the transcommunity and other transwomen, she distanced herself from it by calling herself "a woman" as opposed to "those" transwomen. In short she pissed everyone in the community off enough no one had any sympathy for her when she found herself of need of it, especially from the very community she villified.

What we need of stories of successful post-transistion women, and there are far more of them and their stories. That's what's needed, not another see where I've been through story.

Second, Logo TV channel. Enough RuPaul and his dumbass drag show. And I'll add the new "Transform Me" show looking for transwomen to become beautiful women. What happened to just being ordinary and human? Why do we have to expect transwomen be stereotypical women who only want to look pretty?

It's stupid. It's ok to look good, and some of these shows are ok to see people transformed, but it's not the norm of women. Just sit at a local mall and watch women. How many dress up with clothes and makeup in public? Let's get real. Some shows do and are real about their transformation, but most push wanting to look beautiful.

Third, stop the confusing ideas of what's transgender and who's transgender. It's not right or fair to the many post-transistion and the many in transistion to be thought in the same way as drag queens, cross-dressers and other pseudo-transgender (neither of these are in the truest sense of the DSM) people.

There are significant and clear differences between those transistioning and especially those who have transistioned. They don't need or deserve the label the pseudo-transpeople claim as transgender and forget to distinguish. There is a clear and obvious difference and distinction between those being and living as women and those pretending to be women.

Clothes don't make you a woman, being does. Pretending and playing dressup doesn't make you a woman, living as one does. Dressup is fine when it's for the occasion as women do, but not when men want to wear the clothes for fun. The former take the clothes off and they're still women, the latter resume their life as men. Big difference.

It's the very reason the vast majority of post-transistion women walk away from the transcommunity and forget their past. It's not them and not what they want to go back to. And it's not what we need to see, especially in the life documentaries and in the shows. It's about being real and human versus pretending. Don't confuse the latter with the former.

Ok, I feel better.