This is my open response to the entry entitled “I Don’t Care” on the “Enough Non-Sense” blog.
Hmmmm. Well, I’ve got a lot of disagreement with the things you state here, but clearly I’m reading and so are others. This tells me there are many out there who feel as you do. I’d love to respond more personally, but though you seem to do a lot of attacking, you don’t have an “About Me” page. Too bad. I’ve got one here, check it out. I stand behind what I say. Even when I am proven wrong, I find it important to own my words. We appear to disagree, so I’ll have to respond more generally to you and your active readership.
I think all this divisiveness is sad really. As a life-long student of politics, I can tell you it’s the primary tool that those who would oppress us use to keep us under their heel.
Still, anger is just too easy. I could spend all day responding piece by piece to your statements just in this entry alone. But your primary thesis is that you “…Don’t Care.” So detailed refutations would be pointless.
A particular quote that struck me personally however was this one:
“I don’t care…if those who have recently transitioned feel that special legislation will smooth the edges of their life for they don’t realize that any success they may have with it lies in their ability to be perceived as what they think they are; just saying they are doesn’t make them so.”
I recently transitioned myself. Four/five years on HRT and the effects have been dramatic and wonderful. I even “pass” sometimes, though it always catches me off-guard when I do. I try to be the best woman I can be. The woman I am. It’s really not difficult to do, I just let myself be myself.
I also have something like 20 years or so of Improv and Theatre training, so I can convincingly portray the Prime Minister of England if I really wanted to. Just being a socially-acceptable woman is cake. Again, I’m really just being myself and making minute adjustments.
I even won a friggin’ Pageant! I’m the very first Miss Trans New England. Even as an alternative Pageant, it’s pretty much the most mainstream, heteronormative definition of “Beauty” we have in our society. And to be clear, because I mentioned I’m in theatre, I am not and never have been a “drag queen”. I do sketch comedy and improv mainly, but have also done Shakespeare and more serious things. I’m basically a good Yankee New England woman.
But. I’m also 6’4″. If you haven’t got that, it’s exactly the same height as Abe Lincoln. (Who I played in a long running series of shows at Second City LA) The practical upshot of which is that no matter how well I may “pass”, how “good” a woman I may be, my height will always invite close scrutiny, which is the enemy of complete “passability”.
Also, as an actor/writer/artist I’m not in a traditionally lucrative field. Surgeries and such will come as I can afford them. Which very well may be never. I was not prepared to wait for that, so I started as I could and have never for a second regretted the choice.
I will likely always be read as Trans. But I still need to pay the rent and maybe scrape together the lucre it takes to get to my next goals.
That requires employment. Also, protections for basic things such as housing and services would be helpful. I don’t think asking for the same access as anyone else is extravagant.
For these reasons, I fight for legal protections for all trans people. Transsexual and Transgender identified alike.
Yes, we have a lot of differences among us. What large group of people doesn’t? But we have enough in common to stand together.
I wish you would stand with us instead of tearing us down. I wish you would stand with me.
Slainte!
Lorelei Erisis
