Tag: Transgender

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Trans Ambition

charles-james-gowns-by-cecil-beaton-vogue-june-1948

In the jail I was enveloped by the trans community.  They showed me the way.  Black trans women.  They were not entitled white girls, passing themselves off on the street like women born women. They were black trans women subject to everything a black women suffers (and more) on the streets of racist USA.  These women are considered worthless, trash, undignified.  I related to these people.  They taught me more than I had learned for decades.

This winter I will be wearing couture suits.  A jacket and skirt. Based on a Charles James classic.  I found a brilliant couturier to make them, one in dark green tweed and another in aubergine silk velvet.  They are interchangeable.  Deliberately,  I get four outfits for the cost of two.  A lady has to look after her pennies.

My hope?  To look like a lesbian geography teacher from an exclusive private girls school. I rather think I’m going to look like the chef from Two Fat Ladies, Clarissa Dickson-Wright.  I have no desire to look feminine.  Butch lesbians are far more attractive to me than pretty girls.  If I ever had a sex change I am sure to be a lesbian.

Without the power of the penis I am a free man.

I have, these past couple of years since I left the jail, submerged myself in trans culture.  My silly film about Jake became an audacious film about a trans woman and the men who chase her.  My desire to reprimand my ex became a beautiful treatise on my own trans curiosity.  One thing is certain.  If I am true to this path I will never leave the big city.  I will never live in Whitstable.

There is something about rotting pears on the pavement, wasps feeding on the smashed fruit that transports me to my hometown of Whitstable.  There is something about the occasional warm day in October when I hanker for my home.

Last week I had a serious meeting about a play.  I have not written a play or thought about the theatre for years.  This is an exciting  possibility once again.  I have no desire to direct.  NONE.  Write… yes.  Direct… no.

I met a young trans person yesterday.

There is a chasm between gay men and trans people.  My friend Our Lady J disputes this but my other less glamorous, non performing blue-collar trans buddies tell horrible stories of gay people and their rudeness and transphobia.  Bluntly, why should a gay man be interested in a trans woman?  Gay men sleep with men… not women.  However, out of their trans costumes some young working class non theatrical trans m to f are berated and insulted when they tell gay men what they are into.

If you are a young trans person where do you go to meet empathetic straight men?  Many young, transitioning straight men misguidedly think they can meet men through gay dating apps like Grindr.  They make their trans position clear.

He said, “I tell them I want to dress as a woman when I meet them, that it’s only going to work if I am dressed as a girl.  They tell me it’s not ok.  They let me wear panties but won’t tolerate anything else.”

I am taking him on a date this week.  He’s excited to wear a dress and paint his nails.  He says, “There are two of me, straight me wants to meet trans me and fall in love.”  That was very beautiful.

I met another white gay man in NYC, an undergrad at NYU, who condescendingly lectured me about trans culture.  He vehemently posited that any man who wears a skirt is transgender, that make up on a man is transgender, that drag is indisputably transgender.  That the word transvestite was like saying nigger or faggot.   He told me he wants to help his trans brothers and sisters at his university.  What help will he be?   I couldn’t be bothered to fight.  We had sex and I threw him out of my room.

Since I embraced this new path I have come to love my body.  No longer interested in what metropolitan gay men think I should look like to enjoy a full life.   I have been watching endless documentaries.   Paris is Burning versus Candy Darling.  The concerns of the former oblivious to the latter.

I am looking forward to wearing my new suit in the big city.  I’m excited.

Today transvestite (self described) artist, honored by Queen Elizabeth and the British Government, Grayson Perry writes brilliantly in the New Statesman about default man.  Read it here.

Categories
Queer

Thrupple

Fire Island Pines

1.

The thrupple, along with the cult of Daddy, was a recurring theme throughout the summer.  Three men glued into a happy relationship, usually two older and a younger man working out the sort of relationship most people (straight and gay) may find not only convenient but very rewarding.

My friend W met and fell for a couple he met on Fire Island.  They have since become a thrupple.   I like the word… don’t you?  It’s easy on the lips… like wimple, one of my favorite words.   Robert arrived from London with his two boyfriends.  My friend Fernando lives with two men in one large bed in LA.  This, of course, is not new.  Derek Jarman introduced me to three beautiful boys who lived on Shaftesbury Avenue in the early 80’s.   I was entranced.

A relationship with one person I find nearly impossible.  The idea of loving two men… well, that’s just greedy isn’t it?  The cult of Daddy suits me just fine.  The older man mentoring and investing in a younger man seems to have a superb historical provenance.

“He’s a semi gay, he needs my help to open a gym on Long Island.  He’s very happy to see me and spend time with his girlfriend.”

The big winners in this recent gay perestroika have been bisexual and more sexually fluid folk.  Curiosities become realities.  The beginning of a seismic social shift across the west.  A shift the ‘other side’ is desperate to quash.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

This sexual revolution, because that’s what it truly is, is not allied to any left-wing or socialist principle like it is in Europe.  American male entitlement and arrogance is built into the process.  ‘I can have what I want when I want it.  If they are getting something good… I want it too.’  The gay white male lifestyle with its glamour, easy money, few rules of conduct, lax morality, social mobility etc. is very alluring to many young heterosexual men.  Especially the poor, the disenfranchised and the beautiful.

Gay men have learned to communicate with them, welcoming straight men into our lives without shame or fear of violence.  They come to us for advice and succour.  We appreciate the time they spend in the gym, the product they buy for their hair.  They luxuriate in the attention, yet baffled by compliments.

Straight women rarely compliment men.  They never tell them how good-looking they are nor praise what they are wearing.  Straight women seldom acknowledge the effort straight men have made… instead, expecting men to praise and compliment them.  A stray compliment from a bold gay man is so unexpected straight men blush like girls.  Only a moment, we hope, before a blush melts into something hot and heavy.  If only for a moment.

2.

The political conversation has shifted for thinking gays in the USA.  Conservative organizations like the HRC lead by the lamentable Chad Griffin are forced to become more radical.  They achieved their wish for some partial, piecemeal marriage equality, although the legislation is hardly a road map to equality for all Americans.  Women and black people are still undervalued and vilified second class citizens in the USA.

At dinner last night, three gay men and three lesbians.  Between us we could not identify one female leader of industry.  We could not identify one black leader of industry.  The CEO of Yahoo was the closest we got but we didn’t know her name.  The other woman mentioned was Martha Stuart but her name unleashed a torrent of misogynistic invective from an older gay man.

I got to thinking about the Third Reich.  We were discussing Yom Kippur, we were discussing the Germans.  We were discussing the gays in the concentration camps and it suddenly dawned on me.  The answer to a question that had bugged me for decades… how were there so many gay men in the SS yet the camps were full of gays and lesbians?  Of course, we are seeing the same thing now.  An elite corp of rich, white gay men with profoundly right-wing values who would gladly imprison people like me with radical, left-wing ideas.  The concentration camps were full of undesirable gays.  The trannies, the butch dykes, the trouble makers who didn’t see things Hitler’s way.

No wonder the trans community are fighting particularly hard to be recognized, respected and their freedom to be acknowledged.  Yet, unsurprisingly there is a push back from elite white gay men… as if the trans are spoiling the party.

Remember as you celebrate your so-called equality… it is still possible to be fired from your job  for being a gay or lesbian if you live in one of 35 states.  In 45 states you can be fired for being a transsexual or by redefining your gender or simply wearing clothes that are generally supposed to be worn by the opposite sex.

The elite white gays are not interested in trans people, black people (unless objectified and used as living sex toys), women, poor people or inclusively.  The moment they achieved some sort of parity they turned their backs on the coalition of outsiders who helped them achieve their equality aims.

My idea of hell:  A White Gay President.

Last night we cooked dinner, we ate pork.  We walked to the tea dance.   Later, I looked on-line to see what was going on.  As I lay in bed I wondered how long it would take for the right-wing gay elite to look upon left-wing noisy gays… the anti-establishment truth tellers as undesirables and start freezing them out.  Throwing them into jail, silencing them?   Like they did to Peter Tatchell in the UK.

My guess is, this is already happening… my guess is… this is happening to me.