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.

With All Due Respect

With all due respect, gorgeous gay guys are not transgender. They just like playing dressup for other gay guys. So why does the transgender community hold them in regard let alone respect? If you ask any of them if they would like to be women, the answer is always no way. They love being guys and love being gay.

In addition these gay guys are often the most vocal critics of transwomen for not being feminine let alone women, and often condemn them for wanting to transition, saying they're just gay guys who don't pass as women, so live with being gay. And the trans community celebrates them for being pretty?

So why does the transgender community like them? And those who don't often get criticize for not embracing the diversity in the transgender community. With all due respect, give them, and me, a break. Lose the pretty gay guys. Let them play where they want, with other gay guys.

Why

Why is that the women who bring up or discuss the issue of passing or not passing during and after a transwoman's transition are those who pass from relative easily, meaning a few times being mistaken for a man, to totally invisible as women? Is it because they want to create a divide which distinguishes them, because the pass as women, from those who don't?

Why bring it up at all? I've read or heard many a story or interview with very passable women whom call for tolerance and preferably acceptance of all "transwomen", except they will often then distance themselves from being transgender. In short they're transwomen and I'm not attitude. So why do they start this discussion to create distinctions within the transcommunity for the public at large to see transwomen?

The answer is human nature, wanting to be included in the groups you want to be identified with, such as women for passing transwomen, and excluded from those you don't want, such as transgender women, because of the public perception and label the public of "transgender" women.

But why then make yourself look and act like a "natural" woman while making less passing and especially non-passing transwomen look like it's an act to be women? Every woman identifies yourself as female and a woman differently and covers the range of really butch to completely feminine, and every transwomen fits in that range somewhere, despite their physical appearance as women do too.

So why raise the issue? Yes, it's discussed within the transcommunity and sometimes divides the community, but it's unnecessary in the public discussion. Is it better just to defend the right of all transwomen to be who they are? No one governs the label transgender, so why do passing women think they have the right to try?

Because in the end, even they're still going to be label and called transgender, like all the rest of the transwomen, all the beauty they have aside. It won't matter, they're still one of the many, both women and transwomen. And like it or not, it's not their choice except to themselves. So keep it to yourself.