Trans Stories Needed!
Alright, so as this blog has developed it’s mostly become me, Alex, reviewing stuff that has queer folks in it. That’s all good and well, except that I have a bit of a bias towards ladies-who-dig-other-ladies stories and that’s starting to show a bit too much for my taste. I’ve been neglecting all the other wonderful parts of the spectrum! But I’ve especially been missing out on reviewing and talking about Stuff related to transgender people. (I’m using transgender in the umbrella sense here, thus I’m talking about all people who are queer in one way or another in regards to gender.)
This must be fixed! Unfortunately though, I’m having trouble finding trans-related Stuff that isn’t about coming out of the closet or having sex. (Which, as you may recall, are the two big Types of Things that QPDS Doesn’t Talk About.) Does anyone know any good (or bad) books, comics, movies, puppet shows, or whatever that prominently feature trans characters having lives that don’t just revolve around being trans?
Batwoman Continued
So, at long last the new Batwoman comic is finally out! I have to admit, I’m all aflutter about it too. I just bought my copy yesterday.
I’ve been excited about Batwoman ever since I started reading 52 back in high school. 52 was where the current version of Batwoman first appeared and there was a lot of fanfare made about the fact that she was a lesbian. Some people accused DC of just trying to be politically correct, but I really hoped that she would be a good, developed character.
To be honest, she wasn’t particularly interesting in 52. Her character obviously wasn’t very developed yet and even her look kept changing. In one issue she was another drop-dead gorgeous, slim Gotham socialite and in another she was as beefy as an aspiring She-Hulk.
However, after Batman died in Detective Comics a few years ago (he’s back now, don’t ask) Batwoman got to take center stage and become a fully developed character with a backstory and everything. I’ve been thrilled ever since.
The thing is though, I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with superhero comics. I love heroes. I love the stories people tell with them and I love comics as a medium. At the same time though, comics have a strong history of being outrageously sexist, particularly with all the gratuitous T and A that the female heroes and villains are constantly forced to display. Often I just can’t take otherwise good comics seriously because of all the boobs being shoved in my face. And I love boobs! Why are you making me dislike boobs, comics?
Anyway, basically I’m scared that Batwoman, one of the few non-bimboifed heroines out there could wind up joining the cleavage crowd at any moment. With this new issue I can still say so far so good. There’s a suspicious amount of “Let’s talk while we change our clothes!” pages in this issue, but she’s still more of a person than a sex object.
The story is also very interesting. Right now Batwoman is dealing with some issues with her father, fighting some child-stealing ghost-woman, training a possible side-kick, and braving the waters of starting a new relationship. Yay, well-rounded characters! Also, the art continues to be gorgeous. If you’re into heroes, this is definitely a title worth getting.
Queer Stuff in the World: Teenagers
I’d like to take a moment to talk about queer-oriented books, specifically queer-oriented books for teens. Honestly, there aren’t very many and that was something that always got me down in high school. I was a very quiet girl then and I was very much into reading. So, when I started to realize that I wasn’t straight, it made sense for me to try and find books about queer people. I wanted to have something to relate to.
There were three main books that I remember reading at that time, of somewhat varying quality: Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters, Geography Club by Brent Hartinger, and Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden.
All of these stories are aimed at teens and I enjoyed them all (though Annie on my Mind was definitely the best), but not one of those would qualify for this blog. All three of these books are coming out stories.
Keeping You a Secret is about a young girl in high school who has a boyfriend but suddenly feels irresistibly drawn to the new lesbian in school. The whole book is about this girl falling in love, realizing that she’s gay, and then dealing with some very dramatic homophobia from pretty much everyone she knows. In the end she’s been kicked out of her house and is struggling to support herself, but she feels hopeful about being able to make it in life with her new girlfriend.
Geography Club is about a boy who realizes that he’s gay and makes some other queer friends who are all too scared to come out of the closet. They decide to form a ‘geography club’ as their secret LGBT club. There the boy falls in love and gets a secret boyfriend, but later decides that he doesn’t want to keep lying. He comes out to his school and family and loses his boyfriend, who joins the rest of the school in acting homophobic. The story ends with the main character being sad that the guy he loves won’t come out, but still proud for being true to himself.
Annie on my Mind tells the story of a high school girl who befriends another girl named Annie. The book is about how they transition from being friends to falling in love and realizing that they are both gay. However, Main Character Girl goes to a very conservative school, where she is pressured by her peers and the school’s staff to break off her relationship, even putting her in danger of being expelled. Eventually the situation is just too much for MCG and she breaks up with Annie. The book ends a year later, when MCG is in college and reflecting on her time with Annie. She calls her and they declare that they are still in love and would like to meet again.
Now, all of these books tell very similar stories. There’s the love, the coming out, and the harassment as of the coming out. I have no doubt that the world needs books like these, after all coming out can be a big deal and many people do wind up dealing with harassment once they’re out. But coming out isn’t always a big deal. And it isn’t the crux of every queer teen’s life.
And this is where we get to the lovely picture that started this post: the most recent queer-oriented teen novel I’ve read. M or F is about a gay boy named Marcus and a straight girl named Frannie who are best friends. Frannie falls for a boy named Jeffery, but she’s too nervous to flirt with him herself so Marcus does it for her through instant messenger. Soon Marcus starts to fall for Jeffery though and shenanigans ensue. This story has some decent plot twists in it so I’ll refrain from spoiling the ending, but it’s suitably happy for everyone involved (just in case you prefer to avoid tragic endings).
This isn’t a particularly deep story. In fact, in many ways it’s a typical teen romantic comedy, but I love it in that coming out isn’t the focus of the story. Whenever Marcus needs to out himself to someone in the story the whole situation is over and done with in less than a page. He doesn’t deal with harassment and his only gay-related angst is that it’s kind of hard for him to find a boyfriend.
Perhaps the existance of this book is a sign of our changing times, but I think it’s beautifully refreshing to have a story about a gay teen who is already out to his family, who just leads a normal life, and doesn’t risk losing everything he loves just for being true to himself.
Marcus is free to just do Stuff, and we could use a heck of a lot more characters like him.
Did you know that queers can even have little siblings? Ones they’re allowed to mentor and stuff? Wowzers!
On Being Bisexual
When I started this blog, I hadn’t really wanted to turn it into the sort of blog where I just talk about whatever’s going on in my life. But recently things in my life have sort of become more blog-relevant.
Crazy things have been happening in my family lately and as a result I’ve been going to therapy. In the midst of my last session it came up that I’m bisexual, just something I mentioned in passing, and that I have a boyfriend that hope to be with in the long term. I’ve been out for years and the Boy has been in my life for quite a while. These are both solid non-issues for me right now, but my therapist seemed to think otherwise. When she heard about my boyfriend she asked if I was really “settled” in terms of my sexual orientation. I asked what she meant and she said “Well, with a bisexual person in a married relationship…many couples would consider it, well, having an affair.”
I was surprised. Honestly I’m always surprised when I encounter ignorance about bisexuality. I won’t call it biphobia because what I’ve encountered has never been hateful, just grossly misinformed. Clearly my therapist was assuming that as a bi person I couldn’t or was unwilling to commit to a monogamous relationship. I corrected her and pointed out that I have been so commit for nearly three years now.
A Queer Fairy Tale: Part Two
A Queer Fairy Tale: Part One
Here’s my submission for the Queer Stories for Kids bonanza we have going on now. (Or hopefully will soon. Come on, folks! I know you’ve got in in you!) I hope you all enjoy it and its twists and turns. And if you like it and know some kids who enjoy a good fairy tale, please by all means read it to them! Anyway, I’ve decided to break this into two post so that it’s not too intimidating. Part two will be up soon. Here is a little tale that I call:
On the Origin of Glitter Glue
Queer Stuff in the World: Boys Don’t Cry: Brandon Teena (and Hilary Swank)
This post also comes from my friend Dusty, whom I should really badger into making his own Tumblr account. Also, just to clarify, Brandon Teena was a real person. Boys Don’t Cry, tragically is based on true events.
How Hilary Swank pulled it off, I will never figure out. Maybe she’s just amazing like that. Either way, she did it, and she did it without making it seem like an insult.
In Boys Don’t Cry, Swank plays Brandon Teena, a transgender young man from Lincoln, Nebraska, in the early 1990s. Being transgender is not easy, and I can only imagine just how much bravery she had to use to get into that role and play it like she did. Before filming started, she took a month and lived as a boy. I can only imagine the crap she had to go through doing that. It seriously shocks me. But she did it, and clearly it did what she needed it to do – she was brilliant. She plays a transgender guy, but she understands that Brandon isn’t just transgender. He’s a human being. He’s a boy.
Brandon wasn’t a perfect kid, and the movie does not portray him as one. It shows what happened (to the best ability that a movie can do) in the months before his murder. When he moves to Falls City, he meets some people, becomes friends with them, dates one of them, and the entire time he was a guy. When his new friends found out that he wasn’t biologically male, they did a couple of bad things to him, namely exposing him, raping him, and, after he reported the rape, murdering him.
The movie shows damn near everything. For this alone, it stands out. There is no sugar coating, no hiding. The cast and crew went balls out telling Brandon’s story, refusing to let people not see. The story is vicious and unrelenting, and I have several friends who, after seeing it once, just can’t watch it again. Some can’t even watch the whole way through once. It shows people committing the worst crimes possible against a guy just because of his identity. People completely disregard that Brandon has been their friend. This guy never did anything wrong to them, but they killed him anyways.
Personally, I recommend this movie to anybody and everybody. It is a beautifully told story.
A Day in the Life of a Transman
This is copied, permission from the facebook of my friend Dusty, who was recently inspired to write about his experiences as a transgender person and just a person in general.
To me, being trans isn’t something I like to think about. I know plenty of people who are perfectly content to sit about for hours on end thinking about it, and how they should handle each aspect of change and each new conundrum the world cooks up for trans people to deal with on top of the big one. That isn’t to say I don’t think about it, or that I’m not willing to discuss it. But in my own eyes, I’m more male than half the population of guys out there. Yes, yes, I know you can’t be “more male” than anybody, it’s not an open term. The proper wording would be “more masculine,” but you catch my drift.
I don’t like thinking about being trans because while I do admit that I am, it’s more for society’s sake that I use that word. I am a boy, and that ought to be good enough for anybody.
For the sake of argument and understanding, however, I’ll explain what it feels like to me, because I guess a lot of people wonder {Side note: This is just me, not every trans person out there}.
When I wake up in the morning, all I think about is how badly I wish I could fall back asleep. Usually, I do, for about twenty minutes. I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, grumble about having to put on my Testosterone (it’s in a gel form, so I rub it onto my shoulders and upper arms) because it smells very strongly of rubbing alcohol, and, having just woken up, I can’t really stand it. I go back to my room, I pull on a shirt, pants, socks. The entire time, my thought process is focused on what I have to do that day – go to work, go to class, clean the kitchen, write a paper, the usual – and I don’t think about much else. Maybe when my shirt is off I’ll look at myself in the mirror, stare at the scars from my top surgery for a minute, then wonder how long it’s going to take the exercise I’ve been doing to start kicking in. That’s my morning.
The rest of the day passes in a similar fashion. I do whatever I’ve got to do, when I think to do it, and it’s no big deal. Occasionally when I go shopping I wonder what people think, but having had the top surgery, I assume they just think I’m sixteen.
When I go to the bathroom is the biggest issue for me. I’ve never liked public restrooms, and I will still avoid them at almost any cost. But sometimes, there’s no alternative, and I just really need to go. Now, for anybody who thinks that trans people just go into bathrooms to look at other people’s junk, I assure you, that is the last thing that I want to see. I would rather see somebody puking in a urinal or the sink or something than have to look at somebody’s equipment. I walk in, let my eyes go out of focus so that everything is blurry, stare straight ahead, and walk directly to the stalls. I have never encountered the problem of the stalls in a men’s room all being taken, and should that ever happen, I plan to say “hell no,” and walk out like I just have other things to do. I wash my hands staring straight at my hands (I don’t even look in the mirror), dry them off still staring at them, and walk out. If anybody thinks that’s weird, let them. If I could, I wouldn’t use it.
That’s the worst of it for me, really. I don’t get many people saying mean things to me for being trans, and the one time I did, it was via Facebook message and I unfriended and blocked the person. I deal with the issues that come up as I have to, but for me, being trans is just about the fact that I had to go through a transition period to get to where I am today, and seriously, everybody goes through a transition period to get to be the person that they are. I wouldn’t say that being transgender is the hardest – I especially had a relatively easy transition. There are always hard parts in everybody’s lives. Changing from one gender to another, or becoming more genderfluid as some people do, is just another thing that a person has to do to become who they feel they are. And if they’re wrong, then they need to make that mistake and learn from it (although I can pretty much guarantee you that somebody who is transgender will probably not be making a mistake, and it would be wise to refrain from suggesting it).
Literally speaking, I don’t feel like I’m trans. I feel like I’m a boy; not in the middle, and no longer trapped in a girl’s body (not completely, anyways). There’s more paperwork than I would like, and I have to have some surgery, but overall, it’s not that different. I look a little different than your stereotypical 20 year old guy, but screw stereotypes – they’re fun to laugh at, but not really accurate.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the mentality of being trans, for me, at least, is that it’s something I had to go through to be who I am, but now, because I’ve had surgery especially, I feel like I’m just a normal guy. Not normal in the sense of “I do normal things,” but normal in the sense of, “I am no different from other people, just a little more scarred.” Does that make sense?
I have no shame in who I am. Without everything that’s happened in my life, I wouldn’t be me, and since I like me, I’m proud of myself. I’ve done a lot so that I can be comfortable in my own body, and I don’t plan on letting it go anytime soon.
So that’s what it’s like for me. Not a huge deal, just something that exists.
1. “Ho-hum, let’s see how the blog is doing.”
2. The aftermath of lgbtlaughs linking to us.
3. “AH! WHERE DID ALL THESE PEOPLE COME FROM?!”
4. “Um…hi, new followers. It’s nice to meet you all! “
Thanks for the linking LGBT Laughs!
Comic Geekery: Yes, Ballerino is a Word →
Queer Mob
Alex Townsend
Beads of sweat were starting to form on Wallace’s forehead.
It was ridiculous. Wallace was a man who prided himself on his ability to keep cool. He’d gotten his first job after seeing a man lose both his thumbs in an “accident” with a with a cigar cutter. Wallace…
Reblogged with the author’s permission. Full story through the link.
One day a friend let me borrow his banjo. I don’t actually know how to play, but it’s easy to fake on a banjo. I played random notes for hours. No dates with sexy ladies or dudes resulted, but that’s okay. I had a lot of fun anyway. I mean, how can you not have fun with a banjo and a top hat?
1. German can’t be THAT hard.
2. Whoa, that is a really long word.
3. Gah! Too many articles!
4. ICH VERSTEHE NICHTS!!!
5. ….Maybe I’ll just date a lady instead.
