Transwomen vs. Transwomen

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I don't know where to begin. There is too many things to address on this subject. Everyday transwomen face an abundance of opposition from different multiple groups. Some of these groups target transwomen in a whole, but a lot of the time it seems to me that they attack individuals who identify as transwomen because it is easier to demolish one person than a whole group. This is the saddest part of society that we have to deal with. From going out in the streets, to our families or even having an online presence. All of these are avenues of attack that many anti-trans people verbally, emotionally and physically assualt trans individuals.

With as many places that there are for transwomen to be attacked, why is that transowmen attack each other on almost a daily basis?

I see it a lot across the internet and I have viewed it in personally in society. I see transwomen calling out people for not being femminine enough, not wanting to go through SRS/GRS, or doing things that are considered too manly for a woman to do. I am not pointing fingers to any exact individual, but they know who they are.

I find a prime example that happened in a meeting that Vivian Taylor had in this article: http://t.co/T5IlsNGdMk.
Quick summary if you don't want to read on the meeting: She is set up to meet with an older transwoman for tips and then is attacked by the transwoman for not being feminine enough and not trying to blend in so that she is not called out by society.

The major problem that I see with that is that what makes a woman a woman? What is that defining statement that makes it so? Can anyone really point it out?

As our society matures more and more women are finding that they can enter into anything that a man can. On a lot of new levels they are accepted as equals. In others, they are still fighting for the equal rights. Not one woman is exactly like another. There is not one woman that is a Stepford Wife. They all have different dreams and aspirations. They all are unique and able to do anything that they want to put their minds to. If they want to fall outside of gender norms and identify with masculine paraphernalia they are totally entitled to.

The same thing goes for transwoman. Nothing says that we can't continue to identify with masculine things if we want to transition to becoming female. It is not like we just wake up one day and say, "Hey, you know what? I think I am going to transition to becoming female just so I can make my life harder than it already is and add tons of oppression to it because it is something I feel like doing." No. We transition because we are already born women and want to be able to convert our bodies to look the way we perceive that they should look in our minds. This does not mean that we should just go and drop all of things that we have learned to like or just end up liking because they don't fall in line with gender normalities. We are allowed to like anything that we want and identify any way want because it is a basic freedom that is given to us.

Some people will go their whole life not being able to accept trans people and that is perfectly okay. It is their lost. Though what is not okay is for trans people not to accept others that might be in the same situations as them, but don't fully view the same views as them. We need to stick together to accomplish getting our basic rights and freedoms to be treated the same as cis people are. Even if you are trans and don't want to make yourself publicly known as an advocate, you can still help by giving encouragement to those who cross paths with you that you know who are trans. Don't ever discourage a transwoman because we all know how hard it is to be a transgender individual in the society that we live in. We all need support even if we fully able to be stealth and never have to deal with a trans issue again because there will always be a part of us that we won't fully accept.

Transwomen really need to unite on all fronts and learn to be able to accept all the differences there are under the trans umbrella. We need to realize that not everyone will conform to one side or another for gender normality. We need to try to accept everyone with their different levels because we never know when they might need our support the most. Even though some might not like to think so, we are all connected to each other in our fight for acceptance and even when that fight is over we will be united under sisterhood. Lastly we need to unite for our future generations, for the girls and boys that we used to be: confused, misguided and scared. We need to unite to show them that it is safe and that in this world they can come to terms with themselves while being able to express who they are no matter what it is.

Through The Mirror

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Everyday I wake up, get out of bed and perform my same morning rituals to get ready for work. Everyday they are pretty much the same thing: Wash my face, shave my face, and finally brush my teeth. It sounds simple enough. Doesn't sound like it is the hardest routine in the world. Right?

Wrong! It is the hardest part of my day, everyday. I know that I should be thankful that I have the ability to complete these simple tasks and I am able to even get out of bed at all, but the issue I have is looking myself in the mirror and having to see the reflection that I have staring back at me.

It is not that I am grossly disfigured, nor do I consider myself ugly. The reason I have a hard time looking into the mirror is because I don't see the reflection of the person that I am supposed to be. I look into the mirror and see someone foreign, that something is wrong and wishing there was something I could do to instantly fix it. In that moment I have to realize that the face I see is my own and there is nothing else to do, but suck it up.

Growing up as a child, not knowing what my situation was, I would dream there were magic machines and magic pills that could instantly transform me into a girl or that I could instantly switch with another girl in one of my classes just like in Freaky Friday. All of the day dreaming would get me by during the days, but at night it would hit me that my life was not headed in the direction that I wanted it to go.

Growing up I would force myself to do the most macho things I could find, such as sports, dating and getting into fights. I would rely on my lack of self esteem to propel me into fighting harder to pretend I was one of the guys and everyday I would find myself losing myself just a little bit more.

When I finally figured out there was something I could do to fix the situation that I was in, I was happy and scared at the same time. I dreamt of all the possibilities I could do with my life, but I was also resistant to the choice because of how transwomen are treated in the world. I knew in my own household that that choice of lifestyle would be highly frowned upon and that I would receive highly negative repercussions. I found out first hand when I experimented with gaining my own articles of clothing and other items that were discovered by my parents that lead to a very heated discussion which didn't end well in my favor.

Today I still see the same treatment to us. I see people haven't changed much in the last nine years. Society still treats us just as bad. There are more support groups and more people fighting for trans rights. There are more role models and more laws to protect us. There has been a lot of change, but still a lot of misinformation is passed around that hurts us.

We are attacked on a daily basis, on simple things that people everyday take for granted like being able to use a bathroom, or going out for a date around the city. These things seem pretty simple to do, but not for a transwoman. In Arizona you will get arrested for using a bathroom that you coincide with, but not your ID. While in New York transwomen have been stopped and searched insuring that they weren't sex workers, but if they happened to have a condom on them, they were arrested for prostitution. Normal women just trying to live their lives.

It seems to me that people are misguided on who transwomen are and the fail to realize that they are human beings too. A lot of it is had to be with how media portrays the female trans community. We are usually the butt end of a joke or we are casted into a negative light. Many find the jokes hilarious and some are done in good taste, but what these writers and producers fail to realize is that these jokes have major repercussions for us.

Take this simple joke that I heard:
Group at a bar
Guy1- You could have any girl in here. Well, except for that one. That's a dude.
Guy2- Seriously?!
Guy1- Trust me I know.

In this instance it seems that the joke is simple: that there is a woman at the bar that was born a male. If you take the words as they came and don't over emphasize there isn't much harm done. Some women I pointed this out to seemed to agree that it was a quick jab and that if the guy wanted to choose the woman beyond the fact that he would choose her because it was his choice. Though that is not all that I see that is wrong with this simple joke. What I see is what the words could lead to for people that don't have to deal with any transgender person on daily basis. It sparks the idea in me that the characters think that there is something wrong with the woman and that she doesn't get a valid chance to be chosen. It also flashes that what if some people take from this joke that transwomen are tricksters trying to lure men into being with them or even worse sexual predators that are lying and conniving to get into a man's pants?

I might be reading too far into this and making something out of nothing, but people tend to have like ideas, so maybe I am not the only one that thought this way. Maybe someone else thought this way and it is a reason that they have fear or hate for transwoman because this is the sole information that they have to base their whole understanding of what a transwoman is.

Then take tv talk shows such as Jerry Springer and The Maury Show. Both of these shows show transwomen in a horrible light. They always seem to make the transwoman as being the wrong person or a trickster. Especially on the Maury Show. One of it's popular segments is Can You Guess If she is a Man or a Woman. Seriously?! These women subject themselves to portraying themselves as tricksters to the whole audience so that they could make some measly money. They are women not men. They don't know how much damage they are causing by going around showcasing themselves as anything other than what they want to be perceived as. Don't even get me started with Jerry Springer. This show is just garbage and makes transwomen always look like they are sexual predators who trick their boyfriends into being with them by not disclosing what they were born. Yes that might be wrong, but it isn't how every relationship that starts out with a transwoman is. Though that is not how all people see it after watching these shows. They base what they see on television with truth and adjust the way they see the world because of it. These shows help them base what they think of transwomen.

Another negative portrayal of transwomen that disgusts me is how shows that have serious situations and are supposed to be lifelike use men to play transwomen. Not only do they do a horrible job at casting the role, it seems that they get actors who are far too masculine looking to play the part and that the part they always seem to play is that of a sex worker. More negative misguided information. If you you are going to include a trans character on your show get a trans person to play the part. Don't half ass it and shine negative lights on us. Even though there have been shows that have tried to portray the life of a transwoman such as Ugly Betty and Dirty Sexy Money, the writers seem to not have the full understanding of our lives which leads to the characters short comings.

What the general consensus needs to learn is that we come in many shape and sizes. Some of us can go through our lives and never be called out, while others of us have to deal with the hard fact of transitioning in society's eye. Our road is long and far from easy. There are many obstacles in our path that we have to overcome even before we can start our transition. We are human and we have feelings. We feel, hurt, laugh, cry and rejoice the same way that everyone else does, so we deserve to be treated the same.

In the fight for our rights we still have a long journey ahead of us to gain the ground that we need to be accepted as we are. There will always be hate in the world and groups that are different will always be attacked. What we need to learn is that instead of calling people out for being transphobic and shouting hate from the top of our lungs is that we need to learn to preach and coach them to help them understand the situations that we go through. We need to teach the world that we aren't to be feared or hated because we just want to survive the chaos of the world the same way that they want to survive it.

I hope that one day I will be able to look in the mirror and be happy with the reflection that is looking back at me. I hope that when that time comes that society will also be ready to accept it too. 

Defining Yourself As Trans

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Recently I got caught up in the hate of someone either really confused on trans issues or someone pretending to be a trans activist and creating chaos around the community. The reason I had to tried talk to this individual was that I felt what she was doing was wrong.

To read more what was said in the conversation click here.

I took a highly defensive stance once this individual claimed the above statement. Janet Mock has done much for the community and has devoted much of her life towards getting more rights for the trans community. She is a leader and fighter. Not only was this person trying to cause a rift, but also going against every trans individual that looked up to her. 

In the next tweets she tried to change her stance and attack individuals that didn't or couldn't afford to go through SRS. She claimed that all the trans women who did not receive surgery weren't fully committed to becoming women and were not truly women, just fetish seekers.

I took much offense to this and decided to go on a rant that was taken out of context and used by a fellow trans women to personally attack me for having a view on how I define a transgender individual. Here is the tweets that had caused her to get all riled up:

In this set of tweets I did agree that there were confused individuals amongst our ranks as trans women as there are amongst any group that has a following. I have had personal experience with supposed girls that were pretending to be trans so that they could be sexual predators and try to scam other trans women into exchanging pictures or personal information that was then used to target them. I messed up agreeing that they are confused gay men, but when you have only a 140 character limit, you try to make use of the space that you have. I tried to explain myself to her, but she wouldn't listen to anything I had to say. She would rather prefer to use derogatory language and hate instead of trying to help correct me or show me how to voice my ideas in a better light.

Then she decided to attack me for this point of view. I shouldn't have blanketed all trans women under this term, but I did. This is my view and even though people won't always agree with it, it is how I see the world.

To clear up what I meant in calling us a third gender, in my personal view I don't see us falling in a category that is male or female. We can align ourselves to meet what society views as a gender norm, but scientifically we are related to the sex we are born with. Trans women are born male, with a chromosome build of XY. They have organs and anatomy that aligns with their XY chromosomes. To me this does not make you a man, You get to choose if you are a man or not, but if you end up having issues with your born anatomy, you would have to take them on medically as what you were born with: ie - if you get prostate cancer you don't want doctors who operate on female anatomy.

I see myself as a woman. You might see yourself as a man. Someone might see themselves as in between. These are all personal views. How do I cover all of them in one term? Third gender. I now know that all trans women don't agree with me and one clearly made light of that, but it is my own personal belief as I believe there is a God.

I am not taking away anything from the trans community by classifying myself as third gender. I am not telling anyone that they aren't a woman or a man. You can be whatever it is that you want to be in life and the world will just have to accept it. I wish for trans rights and I will fight as hard as I could with the small voice that I have. There will be more people out there to trip people up and ruin what we have created for ourselves. In our ranks we need to teach and nurture the girls who are ill informed so that they can see a clearer picture. We need not to attack those who are different because we each are different in every aspect of life.

Finally I leave off with: If you have an issue with someone tell them why you have the issue instead of assaulting them with vulgar words of hate. They may have not realize what they did wrong or how they offended you. You never know, it just might be their tipping point too. We are all sisters in this fight and we still have a tough road in front of us.

Running

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There are many sides to a story. There is no one way that an event happens in one's life and it affects more than that person who feels that they are at the center of that event. Looking back on my life and the choices that I have made, I forget to realize how many of those choices that I made affected the people around me. They affected my family, my loved ones and people that I have never met. Nothing in life is one sided and many events are experienced by more people than you realize. 

Today I thought about running away from it all. Just taking off and never looking back. Saying goodbye to the world I knew and embracing the sudden openness of the world. On paper it seemed perfect: Escaping from all of my problems, responsibilities and fears. I could go anywhere that I wanted and do anything that I wanted. There would be no boundaries and nothing seemed impossible in my little fantasy. Life would be perfect.

Then I applied my dream to reality. What would I tell my family? What would I tell my friends? What would tell the people that I worked with? What kind of real plan did I have? What would be my financial status? Where would I find income? What could I really do just running? 

Running away and continued running seems so perfect to me because it is how I have come to my life at this point. I have finally decided to take control of my gender dysphoria and face the reality that I want to become a woman. I have managed to avoid the issue with everyone around me because I constantly kept running from the truth. If it wasn't events in my life that tried to prove my masculinity, it was with bad addictions, girls and video games.

Video games are the perfect way to avoid life. Getting lost in a world that doesn't exist, where you can be a character that has his or priority straight, or in a game where you get to choose what you want your character to be and then modeling them into the ideal you. You don't have to pretend in a video game that you have to pretend to fit in. You just do as you are that character and are able to feel as if you are in a safe environment. Bonding with the character wishing that you could be as cool as them and when you get spend your countless hours in the game you just lose yourself with all of your problems. Video games are the prefect form of running away. 

Drugs and alcohol make you feel numb. They distort your thinking and provide you a minimal window where you don't have to deal with your full self. They are great for the limited amount of time that you are on them, but after the high disappears you need more and more to try to stay at the same place that you just were at. Not only is it a bad habit, but it is a way to surely kill yourself on the inside as well on the outside. Your problems don't just magically disappear, but come back stronger when you realize that you have a new bigger problem thrown on top of all your other ones.

Death. What to say about death? it is the ultimate ending to any living thing on this planet. There are many different beliefs held around the world as what happens when you die with your body and the spiritual realms, but facing the truth one of two things are going to happen: You are going to get put into the earth where you are going to become food for mother nature or you are going to get burned into a pile of ash that is going to sit in some urn somewhere. What I am trying to say is that your existence in this world will be over. There will be no way of coming back from it unless you are Jesus or told to rise from the dead by him. (If the ladder happens then you'll be a damn Zombie and that is just freaky.) Taking your life could be simple and would release you from everything that holds you down in this world.

All of these are ways that I have used to run away from my problems. They are things that I am not proud of. I gave a majority of my life to them and my problems still are present in my face until this day. (I obviously was not successful with the death part as I am still here and able to write this article.)

Todays thought was another new way of running. The way a fugitive runs from the law. I thought that my life would somehow be better if I could just keep moving as if I was on the lamb. Never being tied down to any one place, person or thing. Just moving from area to area, experiencing the world and getting myself lost in it, while forgetting pretty much everything else that I had ever had to deal with.

That is when the questions came in. I had to ask myself: Could I really do this? Could I really force myself to live harshly for the time that I want continue running or should I just man up and actually face the problems that are before me? Even as I write this I do not know the answers to my questions. The idea seems so perfect and easy, it is hard to just not wonder. Yet I know that running only delays the issues never solves them.

Just remember when you make a rash decision that it is going to affect everyone around you, not just yourself. Cutting yourself from the world destroys lives, even of people that you never knew or seen could get impacted greatly. There are many different support groups out there and people willing to talk to you about your problems. Just make sure to seek help before you make a drastic choice that will be permanent. 

Stepping Up

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A lot of people don't know me and I am ok with that. I am ok with passing through life as another just another being that you might come across. You do not know my thoughts and I do not know yours. I don't pretend that I have walked a mile in your shoes as you should not pretend to have walked a mile in mine. So when you blatantly pretend that you know anything about me or people in my situation, please take a step back and realize the ignorance in your statements and the hate that you are spewing from your mouth. Take a second to learn something about us and formulate an opinion on knowledge and not blind anger or hate. You just might realize we aren't the abominations that hateful people perceive us to be.

There have been many issues popping up in the current media about transgender issues and the people attacking individuals that don't fit to their supposed society norm that just saddens and sickens me. Even after these individuals cried for help and/or ended it all, the media still pushed and attacked. What makes it OK to hate? What? What makes it OK to attack individuals that already have it hard going through situations that others can't even fathom? What makes it OK for other people to let it slide by unnoticed and unhitched about it?

I am transgender, but that doesn't make me less than a person. I hurt, bleed, and breath just like any other person on this planet. Words hurt just as much as fist and sometimes more. The sad thing is most people don't realize how hurtful they actually are. They don't realize how much pain and suffering that they could cause with a simple set of words that really takes no effort at all stringing together.

This article isn't only fashioned to protecting the transgender community from bullying, but created for everyone. No one is perfect and all of us have weaknesses. We all can't be the perfect weight, have the perfect bone structures, the perfect body type, the perfect brain and for some of us the perfect gender. What we do have is humanity and love. Care for your brothers and sisters as you would like them to care for you. Humanity is great when we come together. We need to stop letting our biased opinions and hateful views slip through the cracks. We need to stop allowing for bullying to exist in our homes, in our schools and our workplaces. It only takes one person to make a difference in the world. The only question is: Is that person going to be you?