Monday 22 February 2010

FTM UK - Tranny Chasers

I haven't really had any progress worth mentioning on the transition front, so I'll push on with the FTM UK topics to keep this blog ticking over. Week 7 was 'Tranny Chasers', this term seemed to confuse the guys on the channel strangely enough. Anyway, here we go...

To me, the term 'tranny chaser' counjours up images of a dirty old man in adult book shop. It's not a nice term, it's not a nice thing. My understanding of the term is that it someone who has a sexual fetish for transsexual people, I.E. they fetishise the transsexual aspects of those people. To me a tranny chaser isn't someone who has an attraction to the person, just the physical charactaristics that usually define transsexualism.

I know the term can be banded about far too easily and people in the trans community can be quick to label someone a tranny chaser when it's not the case at all. A friend brought up a genuine point, she was branded a tranny chaser by a group of transpeople because she expressed an attraction to transmen and women. She made the point, by their logic, if a transperson is attracted to another transperson, does that not then make them a tranny chaser? I know myself as a transman who has been attracted to other transpeople, that I'm not a tranny chaser, there's no fetish involved for me and the same is true for my friend.

So what does it make me? Well not a tranny chaser for one. When defining my sexuality, I tend to use the terms queer or pansexual. My primary attraction is to cisgendered females, but I'm not going to rule anything out, so I don't define it too specifically. There is a clear difference between someone who has a genuine attraction to a person who is a transsexual and someone who has a fetish for the transsexual aspects of a person's body.

What my greater concern is, why are we so quick to brand someone a tranny chaser? Why are we so quick to push these people away from our community? To slap this quite frankly derogatory term on them and react so violently towards them? I see the trans community talk about feeling excluded from the 'LGBTQPI' community as a whole, yet when someone from another letter in the acronym shows an interest, we reject it.

I used to see something similar when I was still identifying as a lesbian (a good many years ago!), in pubs and clubs on 'the scene' in Glasgow, the girls I was with branding others as "hettys" and being so disdainful and hateful towards them. I think they felt that it was an attack on their space, there are so many 'straight' clubs in Glasgow yet at that time there was maybe 3 or 4 gay pubs and basically 1 club. Is it the same mentality that is prevailing? A feeling of "us and them"?

Something I'm finding as the trans community comes into it's own, is that with the spectrum of gender identities out there, there's alot of 'gender fucking' going on. The porn that the queer community is producing reflects this, different body types, different genders getting it on and getting off. Where's the harm in that?

Personally, I don't want to be fetishised for those parts of my body. To me, they are abhorrant, and for someone's primary interest in me to be just those parts, it would be an insult to me. On the other hand, if someone was attracted to me for who I was, and who I am because I am trans, well that's just fine by me.

Monday 15 February 2010

FTM UK - Role Models

I expected a bit more results with this topic, I thought we would all have role models growing up, people we idolised and wanted to be like, maybe it's just me? I'm a big movie fan, I always have been, and I think I've learned a lot from films. Watching how the male characters acted, especially in old films, we watched alot of old films as kids. I think seeing those strong, alpha male, gentlemen characters had a profound influence on me. That's what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I was always a big child, now I don't mean fat, but tall and well built and strong, it's traits that run in my family. But I also tended to identify with male characters who also had these characteristics. The same applied to computer games, with this outlet, I could go some way to express myself. One childhood favourite was Streets of Rage 2. I always went the big wrestler guy, Max.



And as games become more sophisticated and you could customise your characters, I would always go for the big guy. Tall, strong, muscular, everything I wanted to be. But it wasn't just films and games that I had these role models, there was TV too. One program that really sticks in my mind was a TV adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, with Ron Pearlman and Linda Hamilton (some of the older readers should remember!).



I guess this kinda appealed to me as I never really felt 'right', there was something different about me too. Another favourite as a child was a kids' program called 'Round the Bend', I absolutely loved this program, and the main character, Doc Croc, I thought he was brilliant. I think my sarcastic sense of humor was shaped from an early age by the Spitting Image guys.



I don't think I could really say that I had a real life role model that I looked up to. I wouldn't call my dad a role model, we don't really have anything in common to allow us to have a proper close relationship and he's not really one for passing on the things he knows. Pretty much whatever I've learned has been my own doing.

Lacking a proper male role model, I've had to kinda figure a lot of things out myself that normally your father or grandfather would have passed on to male children, fortunately a friend of mine pointed me in the direction of The Art of Manliness, which I've found to be very interesting and quite inspiring. I've still got alot of reading to do on the site, but I think it's going to be quite the influence on me.

The channel's videos -

Monday 8 February 2010

FTM UK - Public Bathrooms

This was the topic for week 5 on the channel, to talk about our experiences and advice. For the post part, I haven't really used men's toilets alot. It's only really been within the last 6 months or so that I've really settled on the issue of transitioning. I was always on the fence before, and therefore I wasn't really making an effort to pass, including using guys' toilets. The last few months though, have afforded me little opportunity to use mens' toilets. But on the few occasions I have, I've not had any bother. I've actually had more bother using ladies' toilets. Women will stop and stare at you, ask each other if that was a guy, question you directly, it's ridiculous really, at times I have had to argue with women that I'm not in the wrong toilet.

One thing I've found with guys' toilets though is that they're generally pretty unpleasent. If it's a big establishment, like an office building or a hospital, it's not so bad. But a pub or club, they're usually pretty nasty. But then, guy's don't usually need to sit down... you get my drift.

Living at home (thanks recession!) makes it even more difficult to do things to help me pass. I don't know how I would explain to my mother about an STP which she would no doubt stumble upon at some point (my privacy is not top priority in this household).

My advice would be the same as everyone else's really. The men's room is not the place for eye contact or small talk, there's a particular etiquette. There's lots online about this, this is a fun little game you can try to test out your knowledge!

Videos for week 5 -

Sunday 7 February 2010

FTM UK - Emotions & Moods

As some of you may know, I keep a collab channel running on youtube, it's the FTM UK collab channel. I don't make videos myself as 1. I feel like a complete tard talking to myself on camera, and 2. I don't have a proper camera. So, I was thinking, there's all these topics that the guys are making videos on, and it's things that I myself have an opinion on. So instead of voicing my opinions in a video, I'll do it here. Weeks 1 to 3 were introductions (which I've already done), coming out stories (that I've already covered) and how do you ID? So I'm gonna jump ahead to week 4, emotions & moods.

This was kinda posed to the guys as have you noticed any differences since starting T. Well, as I've not yet started, I'm just gonna talk about my emotions and moods in general. For the most part, I'm fairly laid back, I don't anger easily, I'm even headed in a crisis, I'm not overly emotional in general. I seem to have the basic 3 or 4 emotions, happy, sad, angry, whatever... I'm not the the type to cry at movies or weddings, I guess I don't feel that much. Maybe it's a defence mechanism? I don't know. My mood's usually fairly even too, I don't seem to have much in my life right now that really gets me excited.

Is this a typically male thing? I don't know, my dad's kinda the same and I take after him in many aspects but I think with him it's more stoicism than mellowness.

So that's it for emotions lol, not much to write about! I've got a couple more weeks to catch up on, so I'll do that another night.

The week's videos are below.