This week is Yom Kippur, so I am scheduling this to go out in advance. Less stuff this week. I was simply less online. As usual, I am not just sharing things I read but also the things they made me reflect upon.
Free Rothko h/t Only Know Nothing
This is lovely. I adore this. Only Know Nothing is an excellent curator of found art and is currently uploading a backlog from his Cohost account. I recommend checking out his blog!
Star Trek Writers Guides – Cliff Pervocracy
The document gives exact numbers on warp factors (they increase geometrically, not linearly), but then tells writers that a “Stardate” is whatever XXXX.X number they feel like using. Also, the Enterprise is not allowed to land on a planet, leave the galaxy, or explain exactly what sensors it has or how they work. Spacewalks are only allowed under exceptional circumstances because, the document explains, the production does not own any spacesuit costumes.
Cliff's "PDF Hobby" is always a fascinating delight. I love getting this peek behind the curtain. Good find, Cliff. Even the utopian future of Star Trek is subtly limited by resource deficiency in the real world. We do not produce the utopia from the utopia, so we must use the limited assets we have to fabricate an illusion of utopia.
Polemic in Favor of a Transsexual Gothic — NumberOneBug
This reflection piece on the pre-transition self and pre-transition life really touched me. It makes me want to hunt down contact information for my old college friends and reach out to catch up. It's easier to reinvent yourself as a better person when nobody remembers you at your most immature and messy, but you also lose connections that were once important. I am very proud of the person I have become and the life that I have built—I wonder what cool things they have all gone on to do? The winnowing of old relationships always leaves behind a crystalized memory of people who once meant a lot to you, but who will never change. I have changed substantially, so what about the rest of them? I want to know who they have become. They have not all transitioned genders—surely—but they too must have become someone new.
The People Have Been Removed from the Picture (h/t Misty)
A juxtaposition of a found image with art that together really spoke to me. By removing everything, it becomes perfect. Without people, who are innately flawed, the mirror is perfect, yet in its perfection, we cannot see anything reflected in the mirror; thus defeating its purpose. In Sarte's No Exit, the main characters become mirrors for each other. We are ourselves mirrors. If we make ourselves perfect, then we become meaningless. We only meaningfully exist as people when we reflect the imperfect world around us and the imperfect people within; which means being imperfect ourselves.
Why Coming Out Still Matters — Rebecca Davis
I feel like I am stretching the definition of "community roundup" sometimes with these. Is a published author and acclaimed scholar of LGBT history really a part of the community of independent bloggers who I am trying to create visibility for? Or is the roundup for our community, to share things I think you might enjoy?
I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Davis recently through work, and her talk on the history of sexuality was fascinating. I subscribed to her substack and this was a meaningful piece to me. Our generation takes for granted the idea that if you are LGBTQAI2P-etc. then other people should know, and it is only natural that others would know. We see being closeted as an active hiding of your true self; rather than being out as an exceptional openness about things that were once considered taboo and none of anybody else's business. We do not realize that Barbara Gittings appearing on television and saying "I am a lesbian" was actually a huge deal at the time. A part of early LGBT activism was focused simply on convincing other LGBT people to be visible and show the world that we are human beings. Kay Lahusen convinced the Ladder to start featuring photographs of real lesbians on the cover of their periodicals, and that was very controversial at the time. Life was easier as a quiet closeted homosexual, why would you want your face plastered next to your vice?
When I first began my transition, I straddled the gay male and trans worlds. I was a gay man in some times and places, and a transfeminine non-binary woman something something in other times and places. When I finally committed to living life as a woman (until I changed my mind, and then recommitted again later) I left behind living as a "gay male" but I was not ready to identify as straight. I had spent six years adamantly identifying as gay to Catholic relatives insisting I should take the "easy path" of being straight. (The Jewish side of the family was fully accepting). Not to mention that among the young hip liberal arts trans crowd, being a straight trans person who assimilates into heterosexual culture was considered a form of treason. I have written plenty about how this drove me to do some dumb things and break some hearts.
Now that I have finally accepted being straight, I am presented with that conundrum which draws scorn from other trans people. If I'm straight, why do I spend all my time hanging out with gays and lesbians? Dating apps suck, so obviously I should make a point of spending time in mixed company with straight people. Being an out-and-proud trans woman is not as attractive to straight people as being a demure quietly transsexual straight woman.
Maddie Wu recently wrote about a conversation with a straight trans woman friend where the straight trans woman presented her with all sorts of advice on how to be appealing to men—despite Maddie herself being a lesbian. The advice reflects much of the advice that cisgender straight women share with each other. To be appealing to straight men requires a level of closetedness and quiet deception, even for cisgender heterosexual women. It is human nature to desire love and companionship—even aromantic asexual people form their own types of close intimate bonds with others. But do we really need to "be green tea" to obtain that love? Never too sweet, bitter, or strong? Is that love, or is it the idea of being loved while your true self remains obscured?
As Dr. Davis Writes:
As I head into National Coming Out Day, I’m recalling not only activists’ battles against antigay hate but the joy of queer identity, from “coming out” balls in the 1930s to the humor of Milk’s slogan, and much else. This annual event marks not only a legacy of fighting against hate but a tradition of seeing LGBTQ identity as a gift, and that is worth celebrating.
National Coming Out Day, this year, coincided with Erev Yom Kippur. It feels fitting. We are to strip ourselves down to our most bare, vulnerable, and honest selves. Yom Kippur is not a day to dress for the sake of attracting men. Yom Kippur is not a day to pretend you are someone else.
I pass for cisgender perhaps 75% of the time. I have very good health insurance through my union, and in the near future I could get facial feminization surgery. I would easily pass and could go stealth and assimilate into heterosexuality. I could be inoffensive and demure, only quietly transsexual when relevant, and distance myself from the trans community that has supported me to where I am in my life today. My unusually high number of gay male friends could be attributed to being a faghag beloved by GBFs like I'm Grace of the eponymous Will & Grace. I could rename my blog to "The Millennial Chofetz Chaim" and edit and delete every post about being trans. I could make myself someone appealing to the lowest common denominator of men.
But is rejection of who I am really the path to happiness? Is the love of a man worth more than the gift I have been given by HaShem of being transsexual? In the words of Julian K. Jarboe:
God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine: so that humanity might share in the act of creation.
Plenty of cisgender heterosexual people participate in the act of creating themselves as a unique person—but many simply live on-rails as the people they have been shaped into by their circumstances. Growth is a process of small changes, but rarely are they prompted to completely create an entirely new person. Transgender people are forced to consider who we would want to be, if we could be anyone. We must design ourselves from scratch: head to name to toe. We do not usually have cisgender mothering that raises us into "proper women." We instead invent new unique ways of being.
The transgender community is full of remarkably creative and talented people. It is vibrant and beautiful. We are already defying the desires of others by transitioning at all, so why conform to new expectations that come along with our new gender?
When I say that trans women are predominantly lesbians, the response I get is sometimes that it only seems that way because the lesbians are open about being trans while the straight majority all go stealth. The trans lesbians live out and proud and dress funky and hang out together, and the despicable straight trans women dress like normies and embody the patriarchy and distance themselves from other trans people. This is false though. The 2015 US transgender survey (h/t Gwen) found that the plurality of trans women identify as lesbians, and straight trans women make up less than one fifth of trans women. The 2022 survey has not yet released their data on sexual orientation, but I suspect we will see a similar trend. It's kind of insane that in decades past, only straight trans women were considered "real trans women" given how small a minority we are in the community today. It could be true that our small fifth tends to go stealth and hide from the community, making us even less visible, but we are still a small minority within the community who receive disproportionate ire from our fellow trans women for no good reason. That ire, I think, further pushes us to consider stealth and distance. Stealth and distance further shrouds our true existence.
A lot of the trans women who disparage straight trans women have never actually met one of us or heard our stories. Many never consider that most of us lived as gay men prior to transition, and how that changes our experience of transition. For most LGBT people, coming out results in being welcomed by a vibrant and joyful community of gay people. When you are already gay and you come out as trans, you instead can end up losing your gay community and entering the straight world, who do not like you because you are trans.
A lot of cisgender people who are transphobic have never actually met any trans people or gotten to know us. We are a specter haunting the country conjured by conservative talk radio and One American News Network. The number one thing that changes someone's mind on trans people is simply getting to know one of us and learning that we are real people. This is exactly why coming out was so important in the 20th century. When straight people learned that they already knew gay people, the issue stopped being abstract and started being about someone who they know.
Being openly straight in the trans world has changed the views of a number of other trans people who I've spoken to. Being openly trans in the straight world does not reward me with a lot of romantic love, but it does change the minds of a lot of straight people. I know a lot of cisgender heterosexual allies through work who not only changed their minds on trans issues by knowing trans colleagues, but who also began to reconsider their own relationship to patriarchal gender norms. If I can be a woman despite everything, she can still be a woman without wearing makeup, or without submitting to men. For many of my patrons, trans people stop being an abstract specter, but instead become the helpful librarian with the pleasant—if unusual-sounding voice.
The urging to come out in the 20th century was not for ourselves. It was for our community. Yes, it's beautiful to live as my authentic self and anyone who loves me should love me for my authentic amazing self blah blah etc. but the better argument that convinces me is that being out and proud about being trans makes the world better for other trans people like me. Visibility might bring us conspiracy theories and phantasms from people who don't know us—but it also opens the door for acceptance and love.