A friend of mine went to a presentation by the fabulous Janet Mock recently, and took this photo.  Part of the presentation talked about how non-trans* people be allies to trans* folks.  She fleshed these points out a lot more at the presentation, but I want to share her list and add my own thoughts as well [my additions are in brackets].  I hope that trans* readers will comment!

My buddy C and I enjoy exchanging stories about the funny, traumatic, or improbable "sir"-ings bestowed on us.  We began talking about manners surrounding the incidents; what do we want people to do after they mistakenly refer to us with male pronouns, then realize their mistake?  Here's our advice:


Things to do after you make a mistake about someone's gender:

1. Just say, "Oops, sorry," and move on like it is no big deal.  Because it really isn’t.  It's happened to us before, and we won't hold a grudge.  Promise.

We'd love to end this post here, but unfortunately, personal experience suggests that a second list is warranted.

Things NOT to do after you make a mistake about someone's gender:

1. Do not blame the other person.  Do not say that our hair or clothes are "confusing" or point out that we are "dressed like a man."  Doing so is embarrassing for you and annoying for us.
2. Do not overapologize (hint: more than two apologies qualifies as "overapologizing").  We realize that our self-presentation is not gender typical, and don't think you're nuts or a jerk for making the mistake.
3. Do not use it as an excuse to tell us how much you support gay rights or trans rights, or about all the friends you have who are trans and/or gay.  This takes a relatively innocuous situation and douses it with awkwardness juice.
4. Do not use it as an excuse to tell us you love our haircut and "wish" you could wear your hair that short (hint: you can!).
5. Do not defend yourself (after following us into the women's restroom and yelling at us accusingly through the closed stall door, "This is the WOMEN'S room!") by saying, "It was an understandable mistake."  We will never understand why someone is SO certain that they know what a "real" woman looks like that they honestly believe that a short man with hips and boobs just walked into a clearly labeled women's restroom, ignored the presence of women and the absence of urinals, and blithely sat down to pee. Isn't it more likely that you just might have a narrow idea of what a woman "looks like?" 
6. Do not switch pronouns, then switch back again.  Being "sir--ma'am--sir'd" is worse than being sir'd.
7. Do not say, "Oh!  Them is little titties!  I thought you was a man."

I just read this article on the Advocate's website about a parent who accepted her transgendered kid early on.  It's heartwarming that the kid wasn't bullied (at least, not yet--fingers crossed for him in middle school).  But what really caught my eye was the sentence, "He transitioned at the age of five."

What?

My first thought was this: no one knows what he or she wants to do or be at five.  Five-year-olds will assert that they are dogs or fire trucks, or that they want to eat only pickles for the rest of their lives.  Sometimes they assert such things with startling persistence.  Are we supposed to take all these things seriously?

At the same time, maybe assertions about sex and gender are more fundamental somehow--more elemental.  Maybe by being perceived and treated like a boy from age five, the kid in the story will avoid nasty bouts with depression and gender dysphoria that would have plagued him if he'd transitioned at 25.  He'll be able to go through puberty as a boy the first time around.  Kids know who they are, this line of thinking goes.  And a really big part of me agrees with this. 

Still, another really big part of me knows that the world is packed with sex divisions and gender norms.  From a very young age, I certainly knew that I wasn't like the other girls.  I always wanted to play with the boys and wear boys' clothing.  When I looked in my parents' closets, it was my father's ties that I coveted (and my mom is by no means a "girly" girl, so it's not like ties were the alternative to dresses and heels).  If the mom in this article had been my mom, I probably would have transitioned.

Instead, my mom would reassure me that not all girls liked to wear dresses or play with dolls.  There were unfortunate restrictions (how I wished I was allowed to shop in the boys' department!), but as best she could, she taught me that there were a lot of different ways to be a girl.  I'm positive that her open-mindedness helped me to become the dapper butch I am today.  For a lot of reasons, the road was not an easy one.  But I am very glad to be a girl; my girl-ness just doesn't look like most other people's.

I guess what I'm struggling with in reading this article is a fear that gender nonconformity will be taken for early expressions of trans identity.  I think it's super important to accept kids as they are, but how do you do this--and support a kid you think may be trans--while at the same time, leaving wide open the door that your dress-eschewing kid may be a female butch?  I worry that labeling gender-nonconforming kids "trans" is another incarnation of affirming gender norms.

As you can see, I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this.  What do you think, dear readers?  Is five years old too young to transition?

Hi friends!  Sorry for the kinda-long absence.  My ADD-addled brain has been preoccupied with a number of things the past few weeks, including but not limited to:
1. Finishing a profile for one of my jobs;
2. Propagating succulents;
3. Doing a big around-the-house project with my DGF;
4. Taking a bunch of photographs for a website for one of my other jobs;
5. Undergoing massive amounts of career-related identity crisis.

Anyway, I'm back now (yay!  I missed you!) and was wondering what you all thought about the following topic: When, if at all, is separation based on sex ideal/necessary? 

First, a few caveats.  Let's acknowledge that this question is inherently problematic: cissexist, falsely essentialist, and denies the experience of intersex people.  It assumes that sex is a dichotomy, which it is not.  (Also, note that I'm talking about sex, not gender.) 

So, I'm curious: What do you think about separation based on sex in the following scenarios?  And why?

When do you think that sex (or gender) separation is necessary and/or ideal?  Would you be happier in a world with no sex separation? 

A reader wrote to me recently and said she's only attracted to trans men, but not "biological men" (i.e., cis men).  She wanted to know if that was "weird."  Others have written with similar questions.  For example, I've gotten, "I'm a butch attracted to butches; is that weird?" and, "I'm a straight guy attracted to butchy women; is that weird?"

My universal answer is: no.  It is not weird at all.  It may be statistically uncommon, but who cares?  High intelligence and the ability to throw a 95-mile-per-hour fastball are statistically uncommon, too.  There's nothing wrong with this.  If we were all identical, the world would not be nearly so interesting.

Writer Ann Lamott once said, "Nobody knows what you really want except you, and no one will be as sorry as you if you don't get it" (she was quoting from a letter one of her teachers had written to her, and the teacher was quoting Lillian Hellman).  Lamott was talking about writing, but I think the same thing applies to relationships.  No one knows who really makes you happy except you. 

If--for whatever reason--you're only attracted to trans men, but date cis men because you think you "should," I can imagine a number of possible advantages.  It's easier socially (in most places), the dating pool is larger, and you never have to explain the trans thing to your parents.  But are these things worth dating someone who doesn't make your heart quicken? 

When it comes down to it, what really matters in a relationship are the micro-interactions you have with that person: the inside jokes, the intimate moments, the quiet moments, the indefinable something that draws you to that person.  You can't fake it.  And you can't conjure it if it's not really there.

I tried dating femmes for a (short) while, because I thought I "should."  After all, my butch friends all liked femmes, and there didn't seem to be many butch or androgynous women interested in dating other butch or androgynous types.  But dating femmes just wasn't me.  I knew it, but I tried it anyway, and it felt like role-playing.  My heart wasn't in it.  However common the butch-femme dynamic may be, and however wonderful it is for so many couples, it is not the dynamic that feels most natural and fulfilling to me.  Does that make me normatively "weird?"  I don't think so.  Does it make me uncommon?  Maybe.  But again: who cares?

As far as I'm concerned, there is not a lot of value to be gained in worrying that you're a femme attracted to only femmes, or a trans guy only attracted to cis men, or a bi woman attracted to everyone except butches.  Sometimes terms like "tranny chaser" or "butch fag" are used in disparaging ways to talk about people with uncommon romantic preferences.  I think this is because people are threatened by something they can't relate to.  And it's easier to call uncommon things "weird" than to try to wrap your brain around the wild diversity of human relationships.  In fact, it's SO easy and SO common to label and police and stigmatize and categorize that sometimes even if no one imposes judgment on us, we will impose it on ourselves.

I advise you not to do that.  I advise you to pay as much attention as you can to what your gut and heart are saying.  The more carefully you listen, the clearer they'll get.  And I bet you'll never hear them utter the word "weird."