What is She Thinking

I read the articles about Isis modeling American apparel T-shirts to support gay rights (not lesbian rights?) and the contradiction she makes with the work. She's a post-transtion (trans if you want to add the prefix) woman who had most and especially the surgery for her transition paid by Oprah.

She says she's a heterosexual woman simply promoting gay rights and her situation doesn't matter, except it does as she and others tout her as a model for transwomen working in the modeling industry, so her identity is important for herself and her career, and she does speak for transwomen. But she doesn't promote transgender t-shirts.

And that's the contradiction. Yes, models are paid to model without regard for the clothes or the company, but some models do pay attention to who they model for and Isis is one of them as she recognizes herself as a role model for transwomen. Like all transwomen are so lucky to be easily passable and have their transition costs paid by a celebrity.

Sorry Isis, I agree with the criticism. You're model doing a job, but you're also promoting your views as a model and what you model, and just focusing on gay issues and rights doesn't represent transpeople or send the best messages to the public for more or better understanding of transpeople.

You're not their role model unless they say so, not because you want or say so. And lose the t-shirts until they're and you're inclusive of transpeople.

A Hypothetical Question

What if you reached a point in life that being born male (being a boy or later a man is gender, birth is sex) you know you should have been born female and been a girl and later a woman, and when you've reached the point you decide you're free to transition, you discover you can't? What would you do?

When I mean can't, it's not that you can't transition, but that your transition wouldn't be what you wanted, wouldn't be all that successful at making you adequately passable to be relatively stealth (invisible to others as just another woman), and would bankrupt you financially.

When I mean can't, it's because the Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) you take prescribed in the Standards of Care (SOC) required by the medical proceedures to qualify for sex affirmation surgery (formerly sex reassignment surgery) and become fully (birth certificate) legally female would destroy your mind and body in the process.

When I mean can't, you discover you're one of the few people who can't tolerate HRT and any amount over a very low dosage will crash your body and drive you into deeper depression about yourself and your life. And add you won't be passable without extensive and expensive surgeries, a transition would drive you deep in debt.

What would you do with your life?

It's not always

For some transwomen, it's not about the social presentation, meaning the clothes, the social friendships, or anything else. It's just about the body. For some transwomen, it's their body that defines them, all the rest is extra and their choice of who to be and how to live.

It's why we can't define all transwomen by how they look. They could just be as happy because they have the right body after their transition and they have their feeling of being a woman with a vagina. It's why to them it's never about the public presentation or perception, it's all about the surgery.

For them, happiness is all about the body, nothing more and nothing else. Wholeness is their sense of themselves when they're naked, not when they're dressed. It separates them from the rest of the transwomen, and just makes them women defined by their body.