Dyssonance

Odds are that if you’ve come here to read this, you’ve heard about CNN finally airing the documentary on Susan Stanton.

Some of you may even recall that this documentary is often brought up whenever ENDA is in congress and looks good.  I mention this because some of us have been waiting to see this for a long time.

I know I have, for certain. And since I’ve waited so long, I’ve got a lot to say on the subject. (yes, long post ahead.  Get the coffee/soda/tea and get comfy).

It was the time of a Snickers ad featuring two men kissing. The public firing of another trans woman was in the news — fired in Batavia. Cyndi Lauper was doing the True Colors tour.  Julie Nemecek was fighting her being fired.

Like many, I recall the eruption of her as a news figure fairly vividly.  I recall spending hours in February, March, and April of 2007 fighting with people who said things like this on a daily basis:

I guess homophobes are defined as people who actually have compassion for the wife and son and can see the selfishness of this act. Stay in Denmark, you pansy! — Homophobe (yes, that is the screen name they used).

He is an embarassment to them and the citizens and needs to go. He can sue but won’t win. His selfish operation is of his own choice, not a birthright.
I wonder why I see no sympathy for his innocent wife and son. This guy is slime. — Jim

Sad day in America when so many people seem to forget the ‘real’ issue(s) here … and that is perversion! You are what your birth appendages show you to be. With Penis, a man – with Breasts and Vagina, a woman! Wanting to be the opposite of what you were birth’d is simply perverse and only self indulgent! If your body isn’t self producing hormones for you to be the woman (and artifical or self induction of such real hormones is the only way)YOU ARE PERVERTING REALITY and I just don’t get how you can’t equate this to those who prey sexually on minors – Does it not surprise the majority that the praying on minors is so prevalent in todays society because our ‘American’ way of self indulgence says anything goes as long as its feels good and I can ‘do it’ and if I can’t I can simply scream ‘discrimination’ or ‘its my right to do anything I want’! and thus be ‘paid’ well for same! If this ‘man’ can justify his internal turmoil to be not a man, but a woman he never has been … he is as conflicted (inside) as those adults bedding themselves a minor and believing it ‘alright’ right into the courtroom on sentencing day!… it is time that our city ‘governors’ stood up and said ‘on your way man, or ma’am’… we’re a city of moral character and as such, all confidence in you has evaporated; impossible to lead when ‘your ok’ only helps further the child molesters and horse and other animal sex nuts causes too … and that is what can only happen! — Jerry

How can you people change what God has made you. It’s become as casual as changing furniture in your living room. The joke will be on you when you stand before the judgement bar and what you had changed is as it was before. And don’t give me that trapped in the wrong body crap. — Mountainman

If the guy wants to change his sex or whatever, its his business but he needs to be able to accept the consequences of his selfish actions. I think most citizens who pay his salary realize that the ethics of him forsaking his wife and family to realize such a self centered goal are indicative of how loyal he would be to his position.

He has every right to do the change but he needs to accept the social, business and family consequences. — Trent

This person was created…by God or by nature…as a male. It is moronic to think that he can suddenly and conveniently decide that was a “mistake” and surgically change that. If I lived in that city I would demand that my taxes did not go to support this clowns agenda. If I worked for the city I would file a lawsuit against them if they didn’t fire him. This goof is promoting his private fantasy and simply demanding that everybody accept it whether they like it or not. Let him go off in some slimy pit and pretend to be a female if he likes. He has absolutely no right to try to force others to support him and enable him. Keep him and his ilk away from me and my children or I swear I will sue them. I try to keep my kids isolated from perverts and scum until they’re old enough to judge for themselves. And that is exactly what this guy is. A moron. When decent people put their foot down and stop pandering to queers by allowing them to decide if they’re a “him” or a “her” maybe they’ll crawl back under their rock. — Alan

men should be men and women should be women.plan and simple.he is out of there thanks to the people of largo.at least they know whats right and a homo man wanting to be a homo women is not right I don’t care what kind of of freak you are.he’s not a leader it’s proven he’s a follower. yes following femals is not leading so how could he be a leader.thank you largo for standing up and getting “IT”out of office.thank you all. — Kevin R in lake city FL

Doesnt matter if it is a personal choice or not
In his position it becomes a distraction and
the reality of it – very few people will take him
seriously ever again- he scares people — sam i am

I would fire him i mean IT because that sounds like a mental disorder. imo
why would someone want to do sucha thing unless they were born with both…you know..thats the only way i would understand. — Dan in Orlando

Please understand that people like you are a small minority and most of us don’t really want to be around you and we certainly don’t want some bozo who screwed over his wife and kids, in a position of leadership. By the way, SHE is a HE.  I’ll bet his Mother, Father, Wife, Son, and family are really proud of him. What a selfish loser. – Sid

I left out the ones where they called her a faggot, referred to her as a homosexual, and generally made it clear that they think Trans and Gay are the same thing.

Now, to be fair, once you removed the four trans folk and the three cis folk who were speaking on her behalf, the rest of the comments were about 60% against, and 40% in favor. So it wasn’t all terrible.

And I remember the things that she said that were absolutely terrible — truly, they were.  She made some of the same mistakes in the Documentary, but they were, as she noted, things she was learning about, and it really is unfair of me to castigate her fro going through the same stuff I did — even if I went through it in about three weeks and it took her much longer.

This is one of the reasons that I advocate for conversation groups. Not support groups — although I think those need to be there as well, and have a value — but simply conversation groups.  Get togethers, dinner parties, and little excuses just to do something with other people who understand stuff without all the baggage of having to talk about the sort of stuff one does in a support group.

Doing this alone does not need to happen, and is one of the reasons for it leading to things like the “Option C” that she spoke of constantly — even after surgery.

But support groups — as wonderful as they are — are not always the best thing for simply exploring who you are and finding camaraderie.  Support groups tend to focus on, well, support — so there’s a lot of boo hoo and hand wringing and they are generally open.

A conversation group is basically just getting a bunch of friends together to talk about whatever.  And yeah, that means that sometimes it will be about trans stuff, but not always.  I started something called “genderific” here in Phoenix last year that does this.  My goal with it is to have several of them throughout the valley, so that there’s always something to do.  Today (Sunday) as this is read, I will be doing the same thing once more,  There is a second group (better attended than mine, lol) run by a close friend of mine, and his group just features a different movie each week.

My group is a dinner — an excuse for me to cook something. It used to be a little more political than it is now, but I created a separation there.

It can be simple — coffee and water and enough seating.  But by doing it, by providing something to do, it creates a sense of shared commonality and camaraderie that goes beyond merely the support aspect, and helps you to see that there is more to this than things like surgery (or, conversly, if the group is a bunch of folks who feel that way, that there is nothing more important than surgery — I don’t really care as long as its something to say you are not alone).

I don’t make rules about who can and cannot come.  I do may rules about what can and cannot be discussed — I don’t allow religion to be spoken of in terms of absolutes (such as there is only one God), and I don’t get into conspiracy theories like who killed Kennedy or 9/11 or stuff like that.  I find it creates too much tension and is an unsuitable subject for discussion.  Chalk it up to the old sex, religion, and politics rule.

One thing that stood out to me, personally, was the drive to be “normal”.  For once, in the case of this woman, I don’t fault someone for wanting to live a normal life.

I do fault the organizations who seized on her case and her person as an example of the injustice done to people when it comes to working.  Fact is, Susan was fired because she started transition, and fact is she didn’t get work because of her being a transsexual.

And that is wrong.  Period.  And to anyone who thinks that it is ok to fire someone for being a transsexual — or *any other kind of trans person* — well, I have one thing to say to you: die soon, painfully, and in great agony without surcease.

Yes, really. And for those who think it doesn’t happen, well, you are asswipes. And the two groups together are, in my opinion, worse than the jerk offs who want to trade trans folk for votes in getting legislation passed.

I hope that’s fairly clear an expression of my contempt.  If not, please let me know and I will attempt to make it more detailed on an individual basis.

Odds are really good that no one will ever make documentary about me and my transition in a similar vein to the one CNN did. For one, I say things like the above and mean it — that is, I’m outspoken, and I’m not “safe” — I’m not neatly packaged.  I am not someone that can readily be stripped of my own agency. I do not speak party lines, I speak my lines.  And that’s all the kind of thing that makes people uncomfortable int he broader society.

In short, I don’t seek to be “normal”, as Susan did.  And part of the reason I don’t is that that search for normalcy, under that banner, is what causes a great deal of the pain and suffering associated with transition.  Even if you have a large support network of friends, lovers, and family.

Those organizations seized on Susan and, as was noted, made her the poster child.  As with Chaz, as with Alexis, as with Christine, they found themselves in a spotlight, a sharp and unyeilding focus that is damaging early in transition.  And to a great extent, these people are shoved out there (or dragged out there) and they have that urge that anyone newly “out” has to speak to this stuff and to want to teach and educate and they have no expereince or knowledge or basis from which to do that.

Put more easily (and more scarily for some) they haven’t been educated themselves.  And that needs to happen.  In my opinion, of course, they need to hear multiple points of view — the good, the bad, the not so good but not bad, the not so bad but not good, and the something in the middle there.  They need to be exposed to the full range of trans folks — not merely category wise, but culturally as well.  They need to basically learn about what it is that drives all of them, and what they have in common, and what is diffrerent abou tthem, and they need to hear it from the mouths of those who live that.

And they need to be given a chance to learn about themselves, because doing this is not easy in the first place.  That kind of media attention is incredible, and it can burn and scar and, as we have seen, it can kill.

Susan’s option C being the method of killing most commonly used.

And look at these people again — there are not many people of color in that collection of names.  There needs to be more of them — more Miss Majors and more Monica Roberts’ and more people who are *obviously* of color.  I watched this show and I saw Mara and Vanessa and Amanda and a whole host of pale faces. Yeah, there were a few people of color in it, I saw them, I am aware of them, but it wasn’t really enough.

btw, the gal in the beret is totally cool. Even if I do give her crap, lol.

I actually had to analyze myself regarding the reality shows that have come up of late — Boss ladies and the upcoming Transform Me.  And I realized that the reason I am giving them a  chance isn’t simply because they say “trans people”.  It’s because they are “trans people of color”. If it was just another all white party time like this documentary was, I’d probably say “oh fuck that”.

But nicer.  It’s late, I’m tired and I have stuff to do, so I’m kinda edgy right now.

This show was overwhelmingly white.  And while that might not seem like a big deal, it is. It’s a huge deal.

And, for that matter, where the hell are the guy versions of these things?  Holy cow, you’d think there were no multi-ethnic, darker skinned, bisexual trans men in the US from the way they get *totally* ignored by every one.  Including me, to my personal discredit. Will have to work on that.

I do have a confession to make.  I understand why it is that cis folk do things like show the make up and the wigs and the rest. I also know why they show the baby pics and the history and the rest.  Which is another reason I won’t be in one of these, lol — I don’t have most of that stuff. There’s just me.

That said, I liked the way they handled it this time.  There was none of the usual BS you see time after time in such things. I like how they kept the focus on the one full face shot when first dressed up really soft, and then I liked how they showed only *parts* of the images, enough to say “this is how it’s going”.

I didn’t like the whole music thing in the show. And I really didn’ t like the visual equivalent of the “reveal”. There’s enough drama in all of this already, folks — let’s not make it any greater if we can avoid it, please.

I also liked the structure, and the dating of events, and the way the show was set up.  From the early interviews when she was still presenting as a man, through the various changes into the woman she became.

My roomie and I both have a personal issue that’s ongoing, lol.  Both of us are that terrible kind of trans person that gets hung up on the “voice” thing.  I can’t help it — at the end I was looking at a wonderful woman who spoke and made me cringe.  I want to point out that that is a serious flaw on my part that likely isn’t going to change, and I apologize ahead of time for it.

It just really irked me.

I know voice work is hard.  For me, personally, though, it was important enough that I do it, and so I have.  For me. Not for others. So while *I* have problems with that, they are my problems, not anyone else’s.

I also liked the way they structured the narrative. THe narrative itself I’m not going to say much about — because the narrative itself isn’t that important.  I know some people put everything into the surgery impulse and narrative, but I’m not one of them and find that idea to be, well, bunk.

I didn’t cry at all during the show — I watched it twice — the first time to let it come to me, the second time to pay attention to meta stuff.

In comparison to past ones, it was good.  I disliked the dramatic emphasis on the suicide issue (even though I understand *why* they used it).  I found the timing to be particularly strong and well done — with ENDA coming up again, it’s a big deal. Useful.

I liked that it didn’t gloss over her low points as a Poster Girl, and that it kept her relationships and her need to work in play the whole time — there was much there for me, personally, to connect to on an emotional level, but the scars over those places are really strong these days so I was pretty well inured.

All in all, it was a good documentary on how Cis folks see trans lives, and a decent documentary on one person’s transition.  Which are two things that are both it’s greatest value and it’s greatest weakness.

I still want to see one of these news stories take a trans centric view of things.  We’ll get there, and this may help it.

So in between the two showings, I had a little bit of time.

And I sat down and went to the CNN news site.  There they have a “current situation” interview with her.  She talks about several of the things — including her Option C — in the documentary.

One of the things I found most resonant was this:

“Today my focus is being a city manager, not being a transgender advocate,” Stanton says. “I promised people in that community [transgender community] two years ago when I walked off the stage — I was gone.”

I have several people telling me on a nearly daily basis that they “are sick of transgender advocates like” me.  And ya know what?  Tough.  I’ve said since I decided to live out that I was going to be stepping away from this at one point. It’s even pretty much a known “when”.

In the interim, though, I will get in people’s faces, I will make myself heard if I have to shout, and I will fight and agitate in whatever ways and means I am able for the equality and equity of trans folk in the US.

And as for *why* I will keep getting in people’s faces — be they trans, or cis, straight or gay or lesbian or bisexual, no matter what their race or ethnicity — the reasons are right there in the comments to the CNN article.

A few examples:

At the end of the day SHE is still a HE. No matter how much hormones, drugs, counseling or self-delusion is used. — birbseed

What this man has done to his wife and even more so to his child is deplorable. He seems to be simply getting off on the attention and for CNN to give him the spotlight is upsetting to me. I am open minded and have always lived my life in the ‘you do your thing and I’ll do mine’ mindset, but keep it to yourself. Don’t rub it in my face. I’m not interested. If he wanted to live a woman’s life he should have quietly resigned his position and gone on with his life outside of the spotlight. Does he really believe that Sarasota didn’t hire him because of the media? Come on — judulo, possibly quoting some trans people I’ve encountered online

To all of you congratulating Steven on his courage, did any of you listen to the audio link on this page of his ex-wife’s reflections on how miserable he made her during their marriage? Do any of you have any sympathy at all for her many years of torturous suffering caused by this man? It seems that the vast majority of you can’t or won’t look at this side of the story because it doesn’t fit your own personal agendas of promoting gay/lesbian/transgender rights at all costs — edrury101

I have sympathy for all the many years of torturous suffering caused by society forcing homosexuals to marry into straight relationships. — disgirl

We’re mired in a very demanding war and we’re focusing our attention on some perv who abdicated his manhood to be something he really is not. I feel sorry for his family. — ockamzrazor

CNN, like every news organization, missed the issue and continues to propagate the notion that people can be one gender trapped in the body of the other gender. An entire industry within the medical profession supports this erroneous notion. Unfortunately most people with this problem never deal with the issue that, at some point during their formative years, a part of their psyche imprinted on a gender other than their own. People like Steven need help identifying why they feel trapped in the wrong body. Once the issue has been identified, they can begin to deal with it without mutilating their body and destroying their lives, as well as the lives of others.

This is, for the lack of a better term, a sad disease. The medical community is ill equipped to help people pull back the layers of the problem so they can clearly identify the reasons why they feel as they do. The wrong solution is to change gender. Deal with the issue. Deal with the issue. Deal with the issue. Don’t destroy your life on the false assumption you can change gender to solve the problem. The issue will remain unresolved. — Guest, using the same argument used in the 1970′s by Paul McHugh

We are witnessing the end of rationale, logic, and common sense – the death of society. Now we are being coerced to accept the abnormal, promote the perverse, and toss-out truth. This cannot end well. — BakoJeff

This is pure madness! We’re talking about a mad man and mad science here! I can’t believe CNN is shining the spotlight on such twisted and sick story. This individual was created to be a man. He was given the body of a man, the voice of a man, and all the characteristics of a man, including the natural ability to make a woman pregnant and produced a son. This man and others like him have no respect for God — 4evertTuth

This is a very interesting article. An important subject, too. Alas, I was unable to read it completely — had to go puke. — ObamaTheOne

So if I thought I was two people (duel personalities), I would be treated for a mental illness. Why isn’t someone who is physically one gender but thinks he/she is the other not treated for a mental disorder? They claim they have the wrong body for their brain; the simplest answer is their body is fine, they just have a defective brain. — Mike500

Whatever he/she/it is…I believe God is crying! –uscgvet

So, …the story goes……Susan got another job – with lower wages because she is now a female worthy of lower wages, and Gadamn, she has more expensive issues, like what she said in the earlier video- nails, a real pain on a daily basis, make-up, a real pain on a daily basis and- not very cheap, -hair a real pain on a daily basis- yes, we all have to worry about how our hair looks when we walk out the door- oh poor you Susan, you are probably spending more to keep up than you are making at so much fun being a ‘real woman’. wow. You are a pathetic human. Read Gore Vidal Myra/Myron- nothing new in the USA………. — dmdrew, with a reference that goes back to the 1960′s

What nonsense….this is mental illness and nothing more; to attempt to legitamize this with medical dianosis beyond mentsl ilness is an outrage. He is a man; he will always be a man, you CANNOT excise your Y chromosome — gottagit

It’s been 3 years.

Some things haven’t changed all that much.

And until those comments are one in a hundred or I’ve hit my endpoint, I’ll keep going.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Unique visitors to post: 3