This article has some extracts from an interview with male model Andrej Pejic (the one that FHM charmingly referred to as “that thing”)
Anyway he talks a lot about his gender identity — he seems really comfortable with who he is:
“When I started experimenting, it was to make myself feel happy, to look in the mirror and be satisfied. I never did drag or anything like that. It was always that I wanted to be pretty, to look beautiful, as a girl would want to.”
“It’s not like, ‘Okay, today I want to look like a man, or today I want to look like a woman. I want to look like me. It just so happens that some of the things I like are feminine.”
“I don’t really have that sort of strong gender identity—I identify as what I am. The fact that people are using it for creative or marketing purposes, it’s just kind of like having a skill and using it to earn money.”
It really would be cool to see more attention given to men willing to subvert gender identity like this.
I believe the updated version of the DSM is adding “autoandrophilia” to give trans men that “pervert” angle, too. But I could be totaly off base on that… but then, I heard it from a trans guy who I think would know his stuff on it.
You know how trans men are assumed to have been part of the lesbian community in almost 100% case (at least according to the radfem and the Blanchard hypothesis that most trans women are gynophilic while ALL trans men are gynophilic).
Yet it’s used to pain trans women in a daker, “more perverted” light, than trans men. By psychiatrist men for the record.
“”In the non-LGBT community (I’ve not been IN the community really), it is pejorative, and used to assign weakness or insult someone’s reputation. It is never positive or neutral. And always with a sneer.””
It’s my experience outside the community that *everything* gay is a pejorative. We’re usually a little kinder to ourselves.
and the equivalent trans misogynist radfem trope is that trans women do it to slum, invade and destroy women (which would make any tinfoil-hat-wearing paranoid go WTF about how implausible it is)
Also, I want to mention that this thread has busted out a major radicalfeminist misandristic trope:
Trans men do it for the male privilege and to deal with internalized misogyny.
Btw, besides going to trans pride (not a parade, more of an information thingy) once, I don’t have any contact with the physical LGBT community. At best some of my blogs have contacts with some (but given they’re anglophone, rarely ever in French Canada), but I don’t know anyone.
Sissy has no currency in French (meaning here), and there is no equivalent to that or pansy or fairy or pussy. Really here, someone who is male-assigned or male-appearing and feminine, will get labeled effeminate, or gay as a pejorative (or a multitude of names meaning gay in slang). Stand-up comics go to great lengths to say that saying something “is gay” is not homophobic, it only means that it’s weak, bad, unmanly. In the non-LGBT community (I’ve not been IN the community really), it is pejorative, and used to assign weakness or insult someone’s reputation. It is never positive… Read more »
Re: effeminate, I don’t think it’s necessarily a perjorative… I could see how “flaming” might be, when used in the same context, but in my interaction with my groups of gay friends, it seems to be similar to using the terms “butch” and “femme”. Of course, the vast, vast majority of gay men I know are “straight” gay — neither leaning towards exemplifying masculinity or the limp-wristed, mincing, clothes designing, lisping stereotype. Just, y’know, average. To my ears, effeminate has a much better tone than the word “sissy”, which is usually used as the inverse of “tomboy”. I wish there… Read more »
Schala: “”Any documentary that would focus on the gender identity of the people involved, rather than their expression, would be extremely enlightened in comparison.”” That’s true. But I am not going to say that these people who are being transitioned and de-transitioned by outside forces per a cultural tradition are without a doubt “trans” without some sort of exploration of their _identity_. Without it all we can do is guess. I am not going to guess at the gender identity of Afghani girls raised as boys then transitioned back. And I am certainly not going to guess about what this… Read more »
I doubt they’d sneer as much to the word feminine. Because it has other connotations in their mind, while effeminate is ONLY ever applied negatively. It’s like murderer, never a good thing.
“I know that “sex change” means surgery but I also think that these articles aren’t exploring the gender identities of these people but instead their gender roles and performances in a certain specific cultural context. ”
Virtually all documentaries not done by trans people or particularly enlightened put 99% of the focus on gender roles and gender performance.
It’s no wonder we see trans women putting on lipstick, or wearing heels as the stereotype.
Any documentary that would focus on the gender identity of the people involved, rather than their expression, would be extremely enlightened in comparison.
“”“I generally don’t view it as pejorative, though it mostly refers to gay men, I don’t think any of us have a problem using it to refer to ourselves? Though, maybe it is something that’s been reclaimed or such…” Given it’s used 90% of the time in a sneering tone not shown towards feminine women or feminity in general. I stand my ground on the pejorative bit.”” Yes, but that’s because it’s feminine behaviour in men. We can switch to the word “feminine” but they’ll just be sneering that too, along with the way they sneer “gay” (and “queer” and… Read more »
@OrangeYouGlad
The layman term sex change quite literally is used to mean surgery for tabloids. If trans men don’t get bottom surgery, they’re not counted as men, because “they didn’t get a sex change”, I kid you not.
“I generally don’t view it as pejorative, though it mostly refers to gay men, I don’t think any of us have a problem using it to refer to ourselves? Though, maybe it is something that’s been reclaimed or such…”
Given it’s used 90% of the time in a sneering tone not shown towards feminine women or feminity in general. I stand my ground on the pejorative bit.
Women are conservative here and have nostalgia about the 50s… not the same degree of opression but I’ve found people with a taste for the past when men were men and women were women are common enough in both sexes. By grandmother still wear a hat to church because “women shouldn’t show their heads in the presence of God” and misses the days when that was so. Passing women in the West would have been subject to the daily male duties of any man as no one would have known their biological sex. Though they would not have been subject… Read more »
OrangeYouGlad: I thought that “sworn” virgin article was interesting precisely because of the missing connection to transsexuality, homosexuality or sex change, but rather about pure performance. And not only to obtain the male priveleges, but also obtaining the male duties. Like ordering your 15 year old nephew to go and shoot your father’s murderer – which led to the 15 year old being killed – even obtaining the prejudices against women : Diana Rakipi, 54, a security guard in the seaside city of Durres, in west Albania, who became a sworn virgin to take care of her nine sisters, said… Read more »
“”Btw, to me effeminate is simply feminine, with a pejorative added on top”” I generally don’t view it as pejorative, though it mostly refers to gay men, I don’t think any of us have a problem using it to refer to ourselves? Though, maybe it is something that’s been reclaimed or such… “And if they are gay and masculine, or feminine and straight, well they think they’re lying or hiding something. People will fit the square peg in the round hole no matter what.”” I’ve seen the “feminine and straight”= “total secret-gay” thing before but the “gay and masculine” usually… Read more »
I can say that as an observer who reports what others say they see, because I don’t see it that way. I find it weird that other people do see it that way, and I can conceive of it having consequences (it had some on me pre-transition), but I still don’t get that it should have any importance. That is, in my aspie thinking, nothing that can be observed makes me gay or not gay and the same goes for others (in my perception). So I can easily reconcile that I love lolita fashion and am a hardcore videogamer who… Read more »
It’s funny how it works, people seem to think any man with feminine mannerism, or a female-coded occupation (stay-at-home, nurse, secretary, hairdresser) is necessarily gay, and that a gay man is necessarily feminine.
And if they are gay and masculine, or feminine and straight, well they think they’re lying or hiding something. People will fit the square peg in the round hole no matter what.
Btw, to me effeminate is simply feminine, with a pejorative added on top. Johnny Weir would be called effeminate. But also any guy who does figure skating, ballet, ballet jazz etc. Regardless of how ‘flaming’ they appear.
The article on sowrn vigins even says that it should not be confused with homosexuality or sex changes:
“”Taking an oath to become a sworn virgin should not, sociologists say, be equated with homosexuality, long taboo in rural Albania. Nor do the women have sex-change operations.””
“”Do bacha posh who after detransitioning desire to be male develop their gender identity from being treated as a boy?”” Do they even have male gender identities? They seem to mostly miss their male privilege making them far more akin to “passing women” in the West than to any trans boy/man. The exception being the girl who transitioned herself, she might actually be trans, but it is up to her to assert that if she has the freedom to (which may be unlikely). All the other women seem to mostly miss their privileges and at least one of the girls,… Read more »
I remember seeing that article in the past, Tamen, and I simply couldn’t remember what culture it was. Nat Geo reports there are only around 100 or so of these sworn virgins in the world — probably a relic of a more modern culture now where it isn’t seen as necessary for the family and it’s honor to have a male head. Apparently the full version of this episode of Taboo covered sworn virgins, but I somehow stumbled upon the clip with the Fa’Afafine mentioned earlier: http://natgeotv.com/hk/taboo/videos/sexual-identity …On the Hong Kong nat geo site. Google, how did you manage that?… Read more »
An interesting dying Albanian tradition where a woman can be sworn to virginity and take on the rights, responsibilities and in some cases even the prejudices of a man: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/world/europe/25virgins.html
If you’d offered that pill to me when I was 19, I’d have taken it.
Today — more than a decade later — I wouldn’t.
However, if you removed just these two words from your description:
…I would get through, like, a tall cocktail-glass full of those little marvels in a month.