Bill O'Reilly on gender rights

Gwendolyn Ann Smith: Interviews


The MAD magazine deconstruction spoof of The O'Reilly factor is pure gold. I haven't watched "the factor" much but the way Gwen Smith is treated here is outrageous. Why provide a counterpoint panelist if you are not going to listen to anything sie says?

"You win this time, Wee Bull!"

I'm going to sleep. I need to work tomorrow and, anyway, nothing panned out for the night. Boredom won. Bye.

Frustration

My god, Friday night and I'm again itching to go to a dance club or wherever. But I have not one friend here in Atlanta, so I'm condemned to stay home. Going on my own? I'm tired of that. I want to be able to relax with a friend, talk nonsense, whatever...

TG Moments, Kusanagi

Something stirred violently inside me when I watched the credits and intro for 'Ghost in the Shell'. In it we are shown the creation of the protagonist, Major Motoko Kusanagi as she goes through a machine which turns her from a robot into a woman, becoming truly beautiful at the end. Add the mesmerizing music and my barriers were melted. It was my own deep buried monolith responding to calls from outer space. I so wished to BE her! She didn't have to care about what others said, she could be a woman and be what she wanted. My kid brother was amused at my obsession with finding pictures of her.
In restrospective, I think it must have been kind of obvious for a watchful eye that everything was not ok with me growing up. I haven't told my kid brother about my transition yet, but I remember him being puzzled as to why I always (always) chose and identified with female characters in games, anime and elsewhere.
My explanation? In games it was that females were generally more versatile and dextrous than males, in anime I didn't give much explanation but I hinted that they were cute and nicer to look at. He was entranced with Pokemon for some time (he stil likes it at 18) and we would watch it together. Brock, Ash, James had no appeal to me, but my heart moved unknown when Misty, the Nurses or especially Jessie would come onscreen. I loved Jessie, she was super cute in that lipstick, skirt and boots, a beauty I thought I could never possess in my life. Shortchanged at birth. Bad luck. Better luck next time. And she was OUT, she was a silly villain, but she was her own self (which I loved).

Wonderful Electric

Ok, I'm listening to Goldfrapp's 'Strict Machine' so you'll have to bear the related title.
Emotions! I love them! It looks so dumb on a page, but it's so beautiful to be able to feel again! Experiencing things or just thinking of certain situations gives me now an emotional thrill. I'm reconnecting with my writing, and a big part of it comes from being able to feel.
I used to think that the whole "Commander Data gets emotions" line in Star Trek TNG was a dumb thing at the time and a sign of the show's decline, but I can really understand now what sie* was going through. Call it a late-realization TG moment. He looked positively womanish and silly when he had his emotional flashes and I remember resenting him for that. Before I realized my true nature I thought that well, I had nothing to do with being a man, being a woman was not an option (I didn't know you could) and I had a deep seated phobia implanted, so I'll be a nothing. No emotions, no nothing. Emotions=harm, emotions=being made fun of, emotions=feelings of not belonging, emotions=desiring to be a woman. Die emotions. Enter the void of stone and hatred of everything. Meeting my love brought incredible light to my soul and for a time I could continue and not abhor my life. But then that same light showed me things that had been hidden for a very long time, dark things. I chipped the dam a bit to see what was behind and there was no end to the flow.
As a child I positively wanted to be a girl. One of my favorite bedtime fantasies was being kidnapped and subjected to a strange procedure which magically turned me into a woman. How I resented life when I lost my child features and started getting rough and man-like in adolescence. I hated my face, always, but then I got used to it. I still hated it by default but I tried to put my mind elsewhere. I'd look at the mirror, have a brief sting of hatred, and then proceed lightly disheartened to brush my teeth. The human heart is very, very adaptable, and after repeated times of encountering a supposedly unsolvable situation where there is harm involved you just bury that part and keep going. I thought about suicide many times, but something kept me going that there would be a day when everything would be all right and I would see the cure for my internal bleeding.







*Neutral pronoun. Data was a male though, even had sex with Tasha Yar, and that was stupid. Why didn't they make him an androgyne or sexless? I can imagine Dr. Noonian Soong working on data's penis, yeah right.

TG Webcomic Review: Triquetra Cats by JessicaRaven Silverstone

Read Triquetra Cats here


Imagine this: You're a 14 year old boy who's wanted to be a girl all your life; you are ostracized by your schoolmates because of this and, by the way, your last name is Jorgensen (Christine, anyone?). Pretty suggestive huh? And if it so happens that you were actually born a girl and were transmogrified in a pod to look like a boy? Whoa! And what if you could not only regain your "real girl" status via the same machine, but were also enlisted in fighting some evil group in a tight fitting suit complete with ears and a tail? Sign me up! Add to that a cool sentai sounding name and you're all set!
Unfortunately, for all its premise, Triquetra Cats never lifts above regular anime fare and its conventions. There's a group of heroes where everyone has their place (the intelligent one, the strong one, etc), they are all asociated to a certain element and most of its main characters are of high school age. There's also plenty (plenty) of fighting with moves like "Fetish Kick" and "Hentai Fist" (no kidding) and the comic relies too much on it to move forward, which makes for whole sequences where the central happening is a fight, and we get two-paneled page after two-paneled page of minute fight developments.
I don't judge a comic's look by its author's drawing proficiency for I believe in style and effect and not merely academia, but the whole first part looks like it needs a lot more work. Take a look at the Period 1 cover where a smiling Michael poses with the comic's emblem behind. The drawing doesn't look like it's been cleaned enough (check out the erased lines over the shoes) and the blue in Michael's school uniform spills outside the lines. Sometimes the comics even look like sketched cutouts glued over various cgi backgrounds. Instead of looking stylish, it looks cheap. And blurring... cgi blurring everywhere. Some of those panels gave me a headache.
It does improve though, and JessicaRaven's style consolidates some more in later stages to something I could actually like. There is a page (arguably the best yet) where a character's last transmission detailing the enemy's plans has a gritty scratched look which delivers more atmosphere than the comic in its entirety.
There's more panel control and experimentation in perspective, much cleaner lines and obvious improvement in Photoshop use. Also, the girls look more like girls instead of muscular crossdressers (which helps, since all the transgender stuff is dropped after the origins for chao-style cuties a tad too big being girly).
Story-wise, there are very few highlights. The plot moves predictably along and this is the place where the comic needs the most work; everything smells stale and the "been there-seen that" feeling is something you can never shake off. It starts on a techno based environment with speeders and futuristic suspended highways and powerful guns and the spirit could be Otomo's 'Akira', but later the anime rules start kicking in and a magic users story is introduced in a Final Fantasy-ish way. And yes, you guessed it, there's a conflux of evil raising an army for the utter destruction of mankind.
Things start to look better after the third "origins" story, but marginally so. JessicaRaven seems eager to leave the first part and move on to the cool catsuit wearing and as such the three origins stories look very similar, boring and stuffed with fighting.
The tone is also way too serious for such little actual content. She should either inject more humor and have a lighter side resembling, say, the Totally Cool Spies or continue to be dead-serious but with a real story adding some ingredient of a Miller 'Batman' or said 'Akira'.
As for the transgender ingredient, it's mostly there in name only (being more like 'masked biological sex' than transgender). There is no treatment of issues but the facing of school bullies (which is not TG exclusive). We see a lot of the Triquetra gals after transformation being as girlish as they possibly could be (somehow they've forgotten their past, it seems) and enjoying themselves as they discover their place in the world. Transgenders are also cast as special magic people. All this is very nice and though seen it could stand on its own (think Escaflowne, stuff mostly seen but so excellently done it breaks new ground), alas it is so bluntly delivered in a matter-of-fact way the magic is all but lost.



Aside: Apparently from 2643 on they diagnose GID (Gender Identity Disorder) as an inherited trait. Next time I see my parents (not), I'll know which questions to ask ;)

Webcomic reviews

If you were one of the few, the proud, who actually read the now deleted post announcing the "Vivian Reads" blog, disregard it. Webcomic reviews and everything will still be posted here.

Lazyyy

This blog is a mess, but I promise to set everything straight once I come back from vacation. Boy it's hot in Florida! Good thing I brought my skirts! Anyway, faithful audience of this mess (?), I promise a lot of new posts are coming. And reviews, by golly, a bunch of webcomic reviews. I want to be done with my TG webcomic review project and start reviewing others.
Speaking of, my two reviews got published at the Webcomic Forums (www.webcomicforums.com)! So far they're the only ones posted but I'm sure more will come as the site grows.
More good news. A girl from a list I belong to has pointed me to a tg-friendly doctor in Atlanta! I don't need to cringe anymore when I think about that. At least I hope so.

Visit to the doctor

Sorry about the fact that the last post dates from almost a week ago. I've been working on more than one and actually didn't post any. Dumb me. I'll get them out today.
Guess it's all come together: the posts, the fact that I need to pack (I'm going on vacation, yay!) MORE things (I understand now why girls in movies and animation always take a lot of stuff when travelling), my allergies and yes, you guessedit: a small depression.
I went to the doctor today for some digestive problems that I have. Boy, was I nervous. It was my first time in years in a medical office, totally en femme and I hadn't eaten anything for five or six hours. Besides, I didn't want to tell him that I'm driving my own HRT (he'll want me to go to a psychologist, stop HRT or label me as a transsexual in my insurance which gives me the privilege of humongous premiums) so I was pretty nervous. All right, I was almost clawing the walls. And since my progress shows everywhere with my face softened, my breast growth and body shape change, they kept asking me if I was taking any medicines. Oh... I'm very "private" you may say (schizo bitch) and I get terribly nervous about people even when they DON'T ask me if I'm a crossdresser or about my sexual activities (which he did). Lord, if I had been made of stone I would've shaken into destruction! I just want to know what's wrong with my lousy digestive tract! Do I have to disclose every intimate detail of my life?

I'm going on vacation tomorrow which will allow me to purge my emotional system of a lot of ups and downs I've been having lately. I came out completely to my love's sister (I could barely speak) and she was completely supportive. She's even teaching our little niece to call me "aunt"! I'm so excited cause she's such a cutie! :D I never wanted to be a father really, I always saw it as a lump I had to carry because it was expected of me. A mommy I'd have loved to have been (LOVED to), but not a daddy.
Anyway, I've also gone through a series of shook-ups with my sweetie about us and my transition. Staying together

Rain

This is for you transgender guys and girls out there: can you recall some fond "transgender moments"? And what's a "transgender moment"? When before becoming aware of your transgenderism or accepting it you felt a little tug inside seeing something on tv or reading a book.
I have plenty. One o the most heartwarming when I remember: I used to watch the anime "Hello Sandybell!" where this cute little girl with pigtails lived wonderful adventures and basically was awfully nice to everyone she met. My stepfather got real angry that I was watching girls' cartoons I must have been about 9 or 10 years old.
But more recent than that was the first time I saw Madonna's video for "Rain" (Erotica, 1992). I was about 14 and already struggling through adolescence. "You're a big boy now", I just couldn't get away without performing my male role more actively now. Slowly but surely my world was beginning to crack all around me and the future begun to narrow. The beginning of my Dark Ages, for sure.
Then I saw "Rain" at a friend's house and I was transfixed. I couldn't help bringing it up all the time that afternoon. Even today when I watch it I get the same feeling of wonder. There was Madonna, blue eyed, short haired and looking gorgeous.
She was what I wanted to grow up to be. That almost extraterrestrial lolicon goddess inhabiting a world of blue hues and a video shoot that went on forever.

"This is the voice I want to use", said Vivian to the clerk

My mouse started doing all sorts of funny stuff and a quick check determined it was more the computer connector than the mouse itself. So I needed a USB mouse.
Off goes merry Vivian to the store! After I found one that would suit my needs and my budget (or maybe it's the other way around), I headed to the counter not really looking at anyone around me. The giggles and the whispering have subsided a lot these days, now replaced by palpable doubt; and I found myself thinking about something my sweetheart had told me more than once: that even though I didn't completely pass as female on close inspection, I didn't look like a man at all. That's so neat! I have left maleness enough to not stick out like a sore thumb everywhere I go. I wasn't very much dressed even: jeans, spaghetti tank, sandals, purse, nothing fancy.
Then it came the time to pay and my voice, even though it came out naturally, it was kind of muffled and strained. This gave me the jeebies and I got a little clumsy with the credit card reader. The clerk guy was really nice though, smiling all the time and not making me feel like a clumsy dummy ("You were banished because you were clumsy?"*).
It's something one builds on through time and experience, but sometimes I feel as if I couldn't speak at all. Silly me. Ok, my allergies are working me up too, but I think I need to work more in my fem voice. It's still too atonal and low and not too interesting, really. But it's becoming more and more me, though, more my own female voice and not something stilted and foreign like at first.







*the phantom menace

Blue Tigresses - A few thoughts

I do know I take four a day and that they look pretty puny, but I'm still amazed at their ferocity. Thanks to those innocent round blue pills my whole sense of self has changed in very pleasant ways. Beyond the extensive fat displacement (extensive displacement, not extensive fat >P) and skin and facial feature softening, the sense of femininity which fills my every moment is wonderful. Such a relief from the male burden cannot be described simply, a sense of calm and collection coupled with a lively feminine spark. And it feels better the more I peel the old crusts of old male traits away. I'm not naive enough though to think that it's only the blue pills operating such a change in me. As far as the physical goes, yes, but I think a lot of the added peace that's poured into my soul comes from the fact that I'm not battling myself anymore over being something I am not.
I also feel I'm regaining my emotional breadth of old. When I was a child I used to be very loving and way more sensitive to everything around me. Then adolescence came, deep voice, big lump of muscle and hair in all the wrong places. Welcome to manhood (yuck).
My sensitivities deadened and my emotions became estranged, muffled partners as I tried and tried to conform to something I was not. The "Shut up and be a man" phase, where the only way to conform is to pour lye and salt on your soul, kill everything in sight. A walking stone is better than a walking contradiction, and you'll die anyway, and it'll all be over then, wait for your next incarnation (hopefully as a woman this time).
What a stupid, painful thing to do, yet we slough through it always lacking, never happy. I could never do a good job as a guy anyway, more often than not a gesture or something would give me away and immediately everyone would put me in cold storage. My heart was really not in it.
The sublinguals are mostly gone now, but the blue tigresses are off to do their thing. Coursing the paths of my veins, they turn desert into jungle and savannah as they run into the horizon.





Vignette:
Once or twice when I was 12 or so my stepfather jokingly asked a couple of friends and I if we needed to borrow some chest hair for our open shirts, and while I laughed with everyone, I thought chest hair was gross and not a desirable thing at all. I always wondered why I aversed being a guy so much, now I know ;)

My little project

Wow, if I had a hit counter it'd already have like 4 digits! All zeros. Oh well, I'm pretty new anyway and I haven't really done any url advertising, so it figures.
I'm now in the process of reading and reviewing all transgendered webcomics I can find. I want to review each of them and then move on to regular webcomics.
Right now I have in queue Big Girls Don't Cry (ended), Venus Envy and Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki. I need to read Lean On Me too, but I haven't had the time and since I've already read the ones I've mentioned, I'll do them first :P

Know of a tg webcomic you'd like to see reviewed? Post the address here and have it added to the review queue!

TG Webcomic Review: From Then On Forth by Elizabeth Troub

From Then On Forth


Mass e-mailing your friends and relatives a missive stating you're a transsexual doesn't seem like the safest way to get the best of them. More like a shot to the head than slicing your veins, (if you'll excuse the morbid comparison) it certainly is the quickest most effective way to get it out and its real value lies in forcing oneself to face the music and work from there. This is the way Seth/Rachel from "From Then on Forth" chooses to come out, and I understand the whole comic is more of a slight reworking of the life experiences of its author than a work of complete fiction. And while all TG comics have some measure of that, Elizabeth even relates some of the panels to actual things in her life in her forum. Whoa Liz, what guts, what craziness! That's not just coming out, that's shooting yourself through the door!
The most interesting issue raised by this comic and which makes it special among TG comics is that there is an interesting Seth/Rachel conflict. Unlike other TG comics where years of education and conditioning by society seem to have had no effect and the character is simply in the wrong place, Rachel/Seth is clearly lost in genderland with a single guiding star (the desire to become her own self) and a great big dark around. And it's not that Rachel wants to remain Seth or that cares much about being a boy, but education and the way one is brought up if you've placed trust in others to tell you what to do are hard to overcome. The "he" inside still fights and will not be put down easily while the "she" is still weak and is very much afraid. Throughout the comic this conflict will play out and Rachel will become more and more herself with the Seth self-doubt embodied by a haunting black figure in her dreams ("Shadoe", kind of a not too inspired name really).
Artistically, the comic has gone from its austere first panels to much more detailed hair, clothes, shadows and backgrounds. One can tell she's been practicing. Seth now even sports a noticeable Adam's apple which is a clever addition since it's a common appearance problem faced by Male to Female transsexuals. We also get every once in a while colored panels which look fine and have improved lots too. Much as I did find the encounter and swordfight with Shadoe sequence a little wordy and drawn, I liked the neon coloring and soft blending. I also got the feeling that if the sun came up over that land, it would resemble the endless empty wastes of DragonBall Z encounters. Buu!
Alas, I have a couple of gripes with "From Then On Forth". Some concepts need reworking, the crafting of new symbols; take for example the black shadow man that haunts Rachel's dreams: it's actually not the same Venom-like being that we saw in Venus Envy: Shadows of Juliet and earlier, but it's too close for comfort and serves the same purpose. Also, It'd help to see some fleshing out of Rachel's feelings, and for things to be presented in more symbolic terms and not only just plainly said: of course we know Shadoe embodies Elizabeth's fears, we don't need to be told that. The comic needs to become more "inspired" by Elizabeth's issues in life than a simple retelling, that will certainly give it the wings it needs to take off on its own.
Lately the comic has been down due to the author's computer going dead. Too bad. It'd be a pity if she dropped it now that she seems to have found a stronger narrative voice and a better grip on panel mechanics. A good example is the whole email aftermath sequence which is the most focused in the comic and includes the "face your parents" part (mom and dad don't live together for a change) which is well scripted if a little plain in its retelling of the well known transgender story.
On a final note, the title is very apt and sounds good. The sonic balance being almost perfect, "fr-mn-fr" with a "th" thrown in to let off the steam. The implied meaning applies well to transgender issues too. As a transgendered person, you begin to live your life for real the moment you make the decision to go forward with being yourself, and though it'll be hard, and your past will always hang around and make faces a couple of times a week, the best portion of life is still ahead. From then on forth, you who were dead shall live.

TG Webcomics you must read: Second Stage by Shawna Strobel

Second Stage - Friday, June 4, 2004

First of all, congratulations on your graduation, Shawna! You show 'em girl!

Second Stage is a very sweet and at the same time powerful comic of what are presumably Shawna Strobel's own experiences as a transgendered girl in college. Indeed, her Keenspace bio says simply "read the comic". She is the main character and around whom the rest of the strip's world revolves. It is a vague, hazy world too, drawn in isolated pencil strokes which wander around the unforgiving white of the page.
This minimalist, black and white, doodle-like anime style adds more than it subtracts in its effective portrayal of loneliness and separation. Shawna is rarely ever actually happy and one of the things you notice from the first strips are her sad, droopy eyebrows which tell you everything you need to know about her past life and the world she lives in. This is one of her most prominent features and she manages to convey great emotion in the way the eyes are drawn.
One of the things that make this comic very different from other TG comics (maybe excepting Matt Nishii's Transe-Generation) and what appealed to me especially is the fact that Shawna has to contend with people who knew her as Shawn and with those that fall on her mercilessly when she doesn't pass (meaning she is seen as a guy in girls' clothes and not as the woman she feels she is, ye unwashed), which is most of the time. In strips such as Venus Envy, the pope of transgendered online comics, all TG characters pass flawlessly and their only concern regarding the matter is keeping their discordant body parts well hidden. "Second Stage" manages to keep it real (passing is an important issue for all of us TSs, whether we place any value on it or not, and something we all have to face) and still infuse itself with the magic and endless possibilities of a fictional world. Shawna oozes cuteness and friendliness, what makes it harder to understand why others are so mean to her and will not see her for what she is.
It's a strange feeling you get when a line like "I fear... I fear I will find no one to love" is presented in such a way as to make it credible and corn-free but Shawna manages it. It's like we're reading words off her diary and we can see the tear stains on the page at the same time that character Shawna touches us with tender expression. A very nice harmony of feeling between the "real" Shawna and "character" Shawna which the comic always manages very well. Or her treatment of the classic "face your parents" sequence where a painful vignette reinforces the feeling of basic transgender loneliness and is completed with a wonderful two page working of U2's "One".
It is not easy being who we really are if we don't happen to like the options we're given and every transgender knows this at heart. It's not just coincidence that the community sports a lot of high-iq or otherwise insightful people: questioning the received shape of the world sets gears in motion which most people never exercise, and that shows.
All in all, a beautiful webcomic which should it continue it will change a lot in the future I'm sure as Shawna's style evolves, but won't lose its sweet heart. Keep it up, girl.


PS: If only now she would add some email address for comments or a guestbook, that would make it even better!

Podium

Hello everyone (o hypothetical ones!) and welcome to my stage. My name is Vivian and I am a transgendered MtF woman. I live around the the city of Atlanta, Georgia (that's in the USA, mind you) and have been here for around three years.
I have been "coming out" to myself and others about my TGness for two of those years now and I feel like I should be getting used to be treated as The Utmost Freaker and Object of Sheer Disgust by people around me, but I haven't. Recently I just had to quit a martial arts class I had been taking for a while because of it. Some people just can't hold their arsenic, right? No, they have to shoot you with their looks and burn you with their gestures. And you can just feel them basking in their light of societal acceptance, as if you're not only wrong but stupid for ditching macho ways for your own.
Anyway, welcome to my blog. It won't be always like this (I think). Or maybe yes. The whole purpose of this is to share what I think and feel with whoever wants to listen, and find others like me in the process.
Like I was saying, I've been coming out for a couple of years now. You must be wondering what all this "coming out to myself" talk means; because, come on, don't you just "come out" to others? Whether you're a Queer Language major or have barely brushed with the world of alternate gender expression/sexuality you know what "coming out" means. But it is mostly an internal process. We don't come out for others, we do it for ourselves, to set in motion the gears of the real us. To find our face among the bushes. Myself, I've been coming out slowly but surely in these two years, accepting and understanding what I am and where I'm headed.
The first thing that set me in motion was finding out that there were crossdressers and guys who felt like girls (or simply more feminine) in the world. You see, I come from a very repressed childhood and terrible adolescence and had always felt like I was caged in a place from where I could never move, a being of ether forced into bruteness and mud. It took that single piece of knowledge for my feelings to breach the wall, and then all hell broke loose in my life... literally. I left the place where I'd been born and raised, I left the people from whom I'd been born and who'd raised me, and cast my eyes towards the wide horizon. It's funny, actually, but what cast me away from house and lord was not my TGness, but all the thoughts its awareness raised.
It all came into perspective for the first time in my life, a puzzle that suddenly pieces itself together, a large canvas which I am still discovering and which doesn't cease to amaze me. It was sad too of course, very, very sad, but I'm encouraged now to live the real me for the rest of my life. I'm 25, so that should be a long time!
Welcome, then, to my blog again. That's thrice I've welcomed you, for three is not only the most magic of numbers, but also my birthday! If you will, go explore the rest of the world now, but stay tuned for the next post... :D