I guess it is no surprise, being immersed in a heterosexist culture like we are, that lots of people think that genital configuration is the key to everything, even people who should know better.
For “Women Born Transsexual” and their ilk, they just read this a bit different than most heterosexists; they believe that it’s current genital configuration that counts, not birth configuration, at least for those who have the health & cash to get genital reconstruction.
SSS members, including The Prince, often have a different view, once penised always penised in their eyes, and saving the penis is a high calling.
This debate is often one of the most venomous in trans circles, with transsexuals calling those who haven’t had surgery “not real” and transvestites & drags calling those who have “deluded and phony.”
Me, well, I’m what I call “transnatural.” No physical intervention, electrolysis, hormones, even silicone forms.
It’s not that I have ever been against body changes. I think it’s great when people create their expression, including their bodies, to match who they know themselves to be, when they co-create with God to make art.
I’m not so thrilled about people who think changing their body will change everything, that somehow, it’s all about the genitals. Too many transsexuals think that womanhood should come free with surgery, and it doesn’t. Owning your womanhood in this world is a hard fight that might be assisted by physical intervention, but doesn’t come instantly with it.
Let me tell you what I have learned from being transnatural. The changes in view, attitude, desire, choices and more can come without hormones or surgery. I know, because they have come for me. People can see you as a woman without femaling your body, and femaling your body is no guarantee that you will be seen as a woman.
This, to me, and I think to a wider audience, is a vital and important lesson. How did transpeople live in the days up until this century when castration was the only possible change that could be made? How did they claim their own gender role in the tribe, the village, the community? They did it by claiming their own truth. Transvestism is about changing your clothes, transsexualism is about changing your body, and transgender is about changing your mind, as I said a decade ago.
It’s an important and valuable lesson, and I am very glad I own it.
But that said, let me say something else: If altering your body, femaling or maleing it makes you more comfortable in getting naked with another person, in opening up and creating intimacy, well, I think you should do it.
If the transsexual path helps you feel confident and empowered to pull the stick out of your own butt and dance, well, then go for it.
I am who I am and where I am. I know that. But I also know that I don’t feel safe flirting or getting naked with others, and I miss that. I watch Candis Cayne on “Dirty Sexy Money,” and wish I could get that naked while being that pretty.
Now, I also you don’t have to get all changed to get intimate. LolaCola has been with her lesbian partner for many years, and whatever is or was between her legs doesn’t count. Lots of us find connection without surgery, but maybe with other changes — hormones, electrolysis, whatever.
I do believe that the big change is between your ears, the role you create for yourself. I do believe that the voodoo of placing the power on medical intervention, hormones & surgery, is a big problem, creating too big expectations for the externalized changes. I’d like to see genital reconstruction have less emphasis by having fewer expectations placed on it by the Benjamin standards.
But I also believe that changing your body is your choice, your power, your pride. And if you want to mold that expression in a way that allows more intimacy & exposure, well, more power to you.
Transnatural was a great proof, and valuable for me to do. But my message to you is that you should learn the lessons it offers, lessons about claiming, and then move on to also claim your own crafted expression.
No use being a damn fool stick in the mud about it, in other words.
Callan 