In a ‘Barbie’ world…

Writing a review of the new Barbie film also gives me an excuse to share some photos from a more recent shoot I did, based on the version of the character from Toy Story 3. The outfit answers the question of whether or not I floss.

I never played with Barbie dolls – my thing was Star Wars figures and Lego sets – but there are certain aspects of playing with doll-like figures which apply no matter if you were a boy or a girl. (For the record I never played with He-Man, Action Man, GI Joe, or any of the others like that.) So there are certainly playtime things which can be mined for comedy as per the Toy Story trilogy or The Lego Movie (that fourth Toy Story film never happened; shut your mouth; just shut your goddamn mouth).

This is pretty much what I was expecting from Barbie: jokes about playing with the dolls and making fun of ‘toy logic’. I figured it’d be an easy-going mood-lifter. Having seen it now: gurl, are you serious?!

A balanced sunrise photo

The film starts off that way, and I wondered how it was going to fill two hours with this. Surely the joke would be beaten to death within 90 minutes? Barbie-land is amazingly realised with vibrant sets and costumes and the logic of playtime and the Mattel-friendly corporate messaging of using dolls representing empowered career women to inspire girls (and there’s a Barbie played by a trans actress too!). And sometimes, when the dolls are played with a little too much, they go a bit weird (cue Kate McKinnon’s Barbie with scribbles on her face and unable to undo the splits). Joining the various Barbies are the dolls that should never have left Mattel’s drawing boards (the pregnant doll, or the one with inflating boobs), and various iterations of Ken, who in all cases is just an accessory and exists on the periphery of Barbie’s existence.

Ryan Gosling’s Ken has no particular qualifications or reasons to exist – and his love for Margot Robbie’s [stereotypical] Barbie goes unrequited. While this presumably reflects the girlhood experience of playing with the dolls, the script goes further and makes Barbie-land into a supposed inversion of our world: one sex does all the jobs and has all the agency, while the other is supposed to just sit about looking pretty and doting on the do-ers. Maybe this was truer in the time Barbie dolls were invented, but I don’t think it’s quite so clear-cut today. The film sometimes has to put in a major effort to stick to this conceit and the message it projects.

You could fairly say to me, “Twist, shut up and watch the damn film, it’s just a bit of fluff and not that deep!” but I would have to turn back and say “Oh, just you wait…”

Not the leg-over I had in mind.

Things go awry for Barbie when she starts having morbid thoughts and her magical toy experience goes wrong (her feet no longer fit into heels amongst other things) – it’s like she’s having a midlife crisis. The only way to figure out what’s happening is by going into the real world, and finding out what happened to the girl who plays with her. And Ken tags along for the ride.

In the real world, simple, vacuous Ken is immediately taken with all the representations of The Patriarchy: men driving oversized wankpanzers, going to the gym, doing all the manly things like construction and fighting fires, overanalysing superhero movies, belittling women in the office, and being in a boardroom full of middle-aged white men (led by Will Ferrell who was presumably the first and last choice for the role after Anchorman and The Lego Movie). Ken wants to bring some of this back to Barbie-land. (At the same time, he also encounters a woman doctor who tells him he can’t perform surgery ‘just because he’s a man’ – but this real-world character is quickly glossed over; hmmmm.)

Barbie finds that her colourful fashion sense is out of place, and girls only see her as representative of a feminine ideal they can never live up to; a figurehead of a corporation telling girls what they should be like and making money off them at the same time. Being denounced as a fascist by Sasha, a Californian middle-schooler, brings her to tears. It turns out the middle-schooler’s mother Gloria is the woman having the mid-life crisis that’s been afflicting Barbie back in her world.

Cheeky beach pose

By now, the film has Ken wanting to bring toxic masculinity to Barbie-land, the leaders of Mattel wanting to hide the fact that Barbie’s crossed over into the real world, and Barbie wanting to bring Sasha and Gloria to Barbie-land to inspire them.

Along the way (and via maybe one too many musical numbers), we are presented with Gloria’s midlife crisis and soapbox speech about 21st-century womanhood, Ken’s existential crisis (what is his purpose in Barbie-land? – which some middle-aged, male commenters, especially those who overanalyse superhero movies on Youtube, have taken to be a reflection of the film’s attitude towards men), and we’re also given Barbie’s existential crisis (what is she for, if she no longer inspires girls but is instead seen as an unattainable goal?).

If you’re going through your own midlife crisis this is some heavy shit to contend with. This isn’t family-friendly fare like Toy Story – in the UK it has a 12A rating and I suspect it’s not just because of the jokes about Barbie and Ken’s inability to have sex. The target audience appears to be jaded Millennial women (I was one of only two guys in my sold-out screening).

I don’t want to be fit, I just want to be slim. And body-shaping underwear will only go so far.

The film mashes up the toy-logic-meets-real-world comedy of Toy Story and The Lego Movie, with a script from any feminist blog (sometimes with sparkling wit, sometimes less so, and sometimes with soapbox speeches that could only come from an affluent Californian who works in Hollywood), and adds in a haunting existential crisis that mirrors the modern movie affliction of turning fun things into over-serious downers in an attempt to give them ‘meaning’. It feels like there’s about three or four competing films fighting for attention.

At my screening, when Ken sings about his crisis, Gloria does her speech, and Barbie ponders on the futility of it all, the audience fell utterly silent and the mood never recovered until the final punchline before the end credits. (That could just be an Edinburgh thing though – in Scotland we’re not really given over to whooping and hollering and clapping at the cinema…)

The knowing sense of humour and in-jokes do a lot of heavy lifting.

I could do this all day. But I didn’t; I really didn’t.

I saw the film’s Barbie-land as representative of girls’ experiences playing with the dolls rather than an inversion of ‘our world’ (or at least the US part of it) – using it as a metaphor can only go so far before it breaks down. I think the script took it right to the edge of what you could do with it (tonally, too). Barbie‘s purpose and targets are muddled and scattershot.

For me, the film was at its best in Barbie-land, where it managed to capture in live action the sort of charm found with Barbie and Ken in Toy Story 3.

Yes, I know I’m not doing this exercise properly!

Barbie is the best new film I’ve seen this year so far (but that’s not saying much), and certainly the most entertaining thing Ryan Gosling’s ever been in – but I wonder if it was trying to achieve too much in its two-hour run time?

The jokes are funny, but if you’re caught in the wrong mood you’ll spend the rest of the evening drinking red wine alone in a darkened room wondering if you’ve ever really known who the fuck you are.

(You can ignore the angry, male, right-wing, conservative reviews of this film, by the way. Which is true for any film. As long as they have Tom Cruise to look at they’ll be fine.)

The film’s making a ton of money, which suggests that original, stand-alone stories, and films aimed at female audiences are the way to go. Instead, it would appear the lesson Mattel’s taken is to try to turn all of their toys into separate film franchises. This is why modern film studios can’t have nice things.

The morning receptionists were probably glad I didn’t come in…

Enough about Barbie’s existential mid-life crisis! Let me tell you about mine instead! (Just kidding. That would take too long.)

The photos I’ve chucked in with this review were taken at Portobello Beach next to Edinburgh, and were a chance to test out some slightly-too-small, Barbie-inspired, shiny Lycra, and some definitely-too-small, body-shaping underwear. I’m in my mid-40s and starting to feel like I’m getting old for this shit. On the up-side, I lost any sense of public embarrassment years ago.

I confused the hell out of so many dog walkers on this beach.

I’ve got a few more girly road trips left in me, but I’m running out of new costume ideas and photoshoots to try out. I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve pretty much achieved all the things I’d hoped to try out wayyy back when I started – hell, I’ve done more than I ever hoped I would!

Unlike Barbie, I don’t think I need to resolve my midlife crisis by becoming “a real woman”; like Ken, being Twist from time to time is “Kenough” for me…

I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world…

Recognising who they are

“The stronger person is not the one making the most noise but the one who can quietly direct the conversation toward defining and solving problems.”

(~ Aaron T Beck)

In my early teens I used to read spin-off comics based on the Aliens films. The idea was that astronaut Ellen Ripley had to protect her friends and loved ones from screaming monsters whose sole obsession is the ability to procreate for their egg-laying queen. One particular book was titled The Female War, a title which immediately bubbled back to mind when I was mentally pre-writing this post.

This week the Scottish Parliament voted 86-39 to make it easier for trans folk to legally change their gender. People in Scotland have been able to do this since 2005, but the process is cumbersome and stressful and puts people off applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate. The simplified process – “Self-ID” – can be found around the world in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Switzerland and Uruguay.

In the 2016 Scottish general election, the SNP, Greens, and Labour all had gender recognition reform in their manifestos; the Conservatives didn’t put it in their 2015 UK election manifesto, but the idea was uncontroversial enough for even Theresa May to support it. Naturally, by 2022 this obscure administrative procedure affecting a tiny minority of the population drew little media attention and was passed quietly.

Oh, who am I fucking kidding?

It took six years, but was still described in the press as “controversial”, “rushed” or “forced through”. When the vote passed, a screaming TERF stood up to flash her home-made merkin to everyone in the Scottish Parliament chamber; men, women and children. Yes, it’s a weird as it sounds. And “Screaming Terf Merkin” is going to be the name of my death metal band.

Now, as a crossdresser, this doesn’t affect me much. When it comes to the ‘trans debate‘, I have no dogs in this fight. I am merely a bystander, hoping it can help my trans friends, and glad in a general sense that my country is looking out for minority groups and making their lives even just a little bit easier. I’ve written in support of trans issues in the past, and I think it’s one of those things you have to reaffirm.

The one small way it does affect me is that crossdressers are dragged into the arguments by TERFs – essentially, saying that trans women are nothing more than a cosmetic expression (and ‘not really women’), and therefore no different to crossdressers; but worse – they crossdress for the express purpose of invading women’s spaces (toilets, changing rooms, sports events, refuges, prisons).

The argument goes along the lines that predatory men – sex pests and rapists – would be able to use Gender Recognition Certificates like Willy Wonka’s golden tickets and storm these places unopposed. As a consequence of this, women’s spaces have to be rigorously policed, lest a man dressed as a woman slip inside: woman and girls must be protected. If you disagree you want to “destroy women’s rights.”

On one side, women like Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, or other politicians like SNP MP Mhairi Black arguing in favour of the changes, pointing out that it’s predatory men, not trans women who are the threat; on the other side are the likes of JK Rowling, or Joanna Cherry QC (also a SNP MP). This is an argument over women, for women, by women.

Hence my opening reference to The Female War.

The obsession with reproduction shows itself in the TERFs’ supposed ‘gotcha!’ question of how one defines a woman (along the lines of the Polish enyclopaedia definition of a horse). Usually it comes down to genitals and babymaking (as long as you’re not referring to women who’ve had hysterectomies, or who are otherwise unable to conceive because that would make the definition argument a bit complicated). Another formulation goes along the lines of “can a woman have a penis?” (My answer: it depends on the woman.)

Anyone who’s subjected themselves to the sight of Sean Connery in a red nappy with a ponytail, pornstache and thigh-high fuck-me boots might remember the line from Zardoz: “THE PENIS IS EVIL!!!”

I have a lot of sympathy with that kind of instinctive revulsion. I went to a boys-only school, memories of which revolve around the years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. I was surrounded by dicks in both literal and metaphorical senses. I fucking loathe the thought of communal, public nudity. The idea of being surrounded by naked cocks feels threatening and makes my skin crawl, and I’ve got one of the damn things. (NB: the shower area at Iceland’s Blue Lagoon resort was a bit of a trial; and I was 37 when I went there.)

But the argument about the potential horror of women or girls seeing a penis in the changing rooms is an argument against open-plan changing rooms, not trans women. (My preferred swimming pool is the Royal Commonwealth Pool in Edinburgh: private cubicles.)

As for toilets, I don’t know of anyone who goes marching or dashing into public toilets with everything hanging out on display (except, maybe, good ol’ Screamin’ Terf Merkin?). And if a predatory man wanted to burst into the ladies’ toilets for a wank, he wouldn’t need a Gender Recognition Certificate or even to crossdress – this guy didn’t, and this guy didn’t have anything at all.

In sports, any law or test created for gender, cisgender people will fail as well. Hormones? Some cis women have ‘male’ levels. Chromosomes? In the 1996 Olympics ten cis women had XY chromosomes with intersex conditions and were caught out. Genitals? Ambiguity does exist. The fear is that trans women will have some sort of innate advantage over other women and take all the medals. This hasn’t happened, and the very few who have won any medals have made the news precisely because they are so rare (and precisely because they can be used as examples for TERFs to claim their fears are valid).

Other concerns are already addressed within the legislation: more time for younger trans folk to think about it, cooling-off periods, the option to change back, and making it illegal to falsely claim a certificate. Regarding prisons, if a cis man falsely applied for a GRC he would end up with a conviction for fraudulent self-ID; the Scottish Prison Service would decide which prison he’d go to and his terms of imprisonment, based on their assessment of risk to this person and risk to other prisoners – having an amended birth certificate does nothing one way or another to help or hinder a sexual predator.

This isn’t to say that all the fears or criticisms are unreasonable; I think certain group counselling sessions should be carefully chosen – I can see how it would be inappropriate for a trans woman who still expresses herself in a ‘masculine’ way (for example, at the start of her transition) to attend a woman’s group with sensitive subject matter, such as survivors of trauma or abuse – counselling in these cases would have to be accommodated, and it’s surely not beyond the wit of organisers to figure out options. I think it’s worth asking waxing salons if they do penises and scrotums instead of simply expecting it. And that’s before getting into the minefield of dating and sex – one can never assume one’s genitals will be welcome and you can’t force people to look at them, let alone like them. Please take note, Screamin’ Terf Merkin.

*

The one group that loses out from the policing of women’s and girls’ spaces is… women and girls. If a girl is deemed too successful at sports, parents can accuse her of being trans. Most supporters of these draconian laws never think it’ll happen to them or their daughters – “I never thought leopards would eat MY face, sobs woman who voted for Leopards-Eating-People’s-Faces Party”.

JK Rowling claims she only wants to look out for the rights of women and girls. Her latest venture was to set up a trans-exclusionary service who provide “support and advocacy” for sexual assault victims. Board members include Rhona Hotchkiss, a prison governor whose prison was condemned by inspectors for the frequent abuse of women prisoners by her staff.

Not a great start, and there’s a whiff of authoritarianism there. Some mistake surely? But then there’s this:

“Nobody but the very naive can fail to be aware that predatory men are capable of going to great lengths to gain easy access to victims, and have often sought out professions or special status that offer camouflage for their activities. Sex offenders have historically been found among social workers, teachers, priests, doctors, babysitters, school caretakers, celebrities and charity fundraisers, yet no matter how often the scandals break, the lesson appears never to be learned: it is dangerous to assert that any category of people deserves a blanket presumption of innocence.

“… This shouldn’t need saying, but in the current climate, it does: literally no feminist I’ve ever met claims all trans women are predators, any more than we believe that all men are predators.”

~ JK Rowling, The Times, 16 October 2022

Oh.

So JKR isn’t into that whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing? And the backtracking at the end gives the quote the same energy as Donald Trump when he said of Mexicans, “They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

But just because the children’s author (who wrote of a super-wealthy boy wizard at an exclusive private school with happy slaves and antisemitic stereotypes looking after his money) can be compared with far-right extremists doesn’t mean that all anti-trans people are like that, surely? I mean, yes, yes, the actual Nazis destroyed a centre dedicated to LGBT research, but what about the 21st century?

Eh, well… anti-trans group LGB Alliance shares its address (55 Tufton Street, London) with right-wing think tanks and pressure groups (like the one that persuaded Britain’s worst prime minister and chancellor to blow £30billion in seven weeks).

Jane Carnall summarises the development like this (essentially, the roots can be found in the USA exporting its social and cultural neuroses):

“Strictly in a local phenomenon, there have always been a subgroup of radical feminists – by no means all radical feminists – who believe very strongly that women are oppressed because of our biology, and men have male privilege because of *their* biology, and therefore trans women have male privilege and can’t experience oppression as women. These TERFs – Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists – have never been a large or a very influential group. They would doubtless have protested the Gender Recognition Reform legislation, but it’s hard to see how far they could have got if they were just the likes of Julie Bindel, who also protested largely against civil partnership (and then registered a civil partnership herself, because, she said insouciently, her girlfriend wanted it).

“What happened in October 2017 was a summit meeting of the Christian Right in the US after they had just lost the marriage-equality decision at the Supreme Court. They mooted the idea that they could “separate the T from LGB” – and attack trans rights by affecting to pretend they cared about the rights of women. Does anyone believe the Christian Right/the Republican Party care about women’s rights? It is to laugh.

“But in the UK, it happened that this Christian Right funded campaign met and melded with a handful of women already inclined to oppose GRR. Magically, when these women published articles claiming GRR was dangerous, they found armies of twitterbots RTing their articles: if they decided to set up an organisation and crowdfund, they found money pouring in to their online fundraising accounts. Lots of money.

“We’ve seen this happen before. Abortion rights activists know that quite small and apparently quite ineffective “prolife” groups can nonetheless raise tons of money to pay for billboards, placards, posters, t-shirts – can provide resources for people to go talk to politicians: can fund the costs for “prolife” interns to work for a MP or MSP for free. Where does this money come from? Well, we see it flowing out from US far-right organisations, and we see money flowing into UK organisations that support those US far-right goals, and – it’s surprisingly hard to definitely prove there’s a direct link. All we have is a lot of smoking guns.

“And it’s exactly the same with the anti-trans movement. They claim to be “grassroots funded”, and there may well be some of the money going in that’s genuinely local: but much of it almost certainly isn’t.

“What we’ve seen in the UK since 2018 has been a dangerous rise of a loud far right campaign, targeting trans people, claiming their justification is “sex-based women’s rights”. This as a legal concept of including cis women & trans men, and excluding cis men and trans women, doesn’t exist in the UK. Cis and trans women have been protected against discrimination *as women* since the 1990s by the Sex Discrimination Act which was rolled into the 2010 Equality Act: trans people, women and men, are protected against transphobic discrimination by the 2010 Equality Act – as are lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people protected against homophobic discrimination, whether we are cis or trans.

“Trans rights and women’s rights are no more in conflict than women’s rights and lesbian rights, and for the same reason. Christians have argued that *their* religious rights need to be protected against LGBT rights, but by that in general they mean that they want a secular right to discriminate against LGBT people respected in law, not that they cannot worship God in their own way unless they are allowed to promote hate against LGBT people as part of that worship.”

Jane Carnall, Facebook post, 22 December

*

Just because a fascist fuckwit makes a particular point, I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand straight away – is there any nugget of wisdom or an improvement or safeguard that can be gleaned? (For another nerd reference, I’m thinking of a line in a relevant episode of The Orville where Captain Mercer talks about policing himself.) As I said earlier, I’m pretty much a bystander in this. I can afford to take these little intellectual double-takes without feeling like I’m attacking the core of my being. The closest I got, as I wrote above, was a vague sympathy for the emotional disgust of penises. But when I considered the cases, I found there were alternate solutions, either accounted for already, or which could potentially be brought in if required.

It’s vitally important for trans folk to be recognised and accepted for who they are, legally and by society. I would not want it any other way. Ideally, society should be managed in a way that a minority group won’t have to be treated like they were a minority group. Sadly, we are far from living in that ideal society.

I think it’s also important to recognise their opponents for who they are too.

And when your opponents’ poster girl is Screamin’ Terf Merkin, you know you’re doing something right.

When I met The Ladyboys Of Bangkok…

The Ladyboys’ show has been visiting the Edinburgh Festival Fringe since the 90s, and it’s only recently I went along to see them. It put me in a thoughtful mood… (this had been in my drafts folder for far too long!)

First of all, it’s impossible not to be aware of sensitivities regarding words and names, and that ‘ladyboy’, however it might have been regarded in the past, is now considered offensive (‘kathoey’ is the correct term in Thailand). Personally, I specifically use the term to describe the show or the performers (like it or not, that’s the brand name they perform under; and changing the name would likely confuse the fans and harm the business). Whether you take offence at the name or not, it was clear to me that many in the audience for the Ladyboys were devoted fans who loved the show.

When they first came to people’s attention in the UK in 90s, they were treated as something of a punchline. I spent my student summers working in a Fringe venue box office, and was involved with a show each night so I never really had the chance to go along and watch. To be honest, I wasn’t all that interested. The only time I saw them was when they were caught out in a rainstorm walking through one of the city parks – they stood out because compared with the locals and fellow Fringe-goers they were all outstandingly pretty (even off-duty), and they were wearing the most gloriously impractical clothing for a Scottish summer (and platform heels on cobbled streets is a brave decision!).

It was a long, long time later before a friend suggested we go along and check out the show, and I figured what the hell – clearly they were doing something right to have lasted this long, so why not see what the fuss was about? All I really knew was that they pitched their tent where they could, and the music was loud. Otherwise, they just felt like part of Edinburgh’s artsy background noise.

The show is an energetic song & dance cabaret mixing solo and ensemble performances (and a ton of costume changes), with lots of lipsynching to well-known songs and parodies (like the adult version of She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain When She Comes, with lyrics like “I was very nearly coming when you came…”). In between are smaller sketches and audience interactions. Some of the Ladyboys’ troupe were boys; one was relatively senior in years, and swapped between male and female presentation throughout the show; one was more diminutive and what they lacked in height they made up for with a powerful pair of lungs to belt out songs; and one was a slightly plumper jester/’madame’ who would harrass the men in the audience.

The audience was mostly middle age to elderly women, and quite often little old ladies would jump up and try to dance during the performance – sometimes being steadied by a friend or relative.

A notable scene – played straight – involved the senior Ladyboy slowly changing out of her evening gown into a suit while singing I Did It My Way – singing as a woman until the very end, when she removed her wig and sang as a man for the last refrain. I found it oddly affecting – I’ve long known that I won’t be doing Twist stuff forever, and at some point I’ll take the wig off and never put it back on again. Will I do it singing My Way, or will I simply not realise it’s the last time? That was the sober part of the show – it can’t be comedy and high energy all the time…

The only other bit that gave me pause for thought was the the jester/madame’s humiliation of men in the audience. Every so often she picked a victim, dragged them on stage, and groped them to cheers from the audience. The worst one I reckoned (hoped!) had to be an audience plant (we saw him later leave via the staff exit) – he refused to kiss the jester/madame on stage, so she got him on the floor and dry-humped him. My friend and I understood how this routine started as a way of “power-rebalancing”, by dishing sexual humiliation out to the men, but it felt kind of dated. (That, and I’m not keen on ‘prank’ humour – it’s a bit like comedy wanking in that the only one really having fun is the one doing it, not the one who’s on the receiving end…)

In all other aspects, the show seemed to be really in tune with the times in its message and inclusivity. Everyone was gorgeous, funny, and talented, and I’m amazed at the energy they put into the performances, given they do both lunchtime and evening shows (we went at lunchtime). But if the performers weren’t the Ladyboys, would there be anything special about it?

Afterwards we had a chance to get our photo taken with them. I felt kinda frumpy standing next to them (okay, a lot frumpy) – who wouldn’t want to look as good as they do? – and I got a lovely reaction from them when they heard my voice and figured me out!

Spot the odd one out…

The Kids Are All Right

I reckon the future’s in good hands.

I recently had the chance to help out and speak at a couple of school events dealing with gender issues.

In the first, I only provided links to some recent brain studies and helped prepare a presentation for two teenagers, made in front of about 1500 pupils and teachers. Their talk was powerful, highlighting the death rates among trans people, from suicides and murders, and making the case for (among other things) gender-neutral school uniforms. They did a bloody good job, too – it’s really quite uplifting when things like that happen.

The fact that they got the chance to do this – and the lengthy applause afterwards – made me wonder if we’re reaching some sort of turning point.

In the second, I got to speak to a pupils’ lunchtime group which discusses LGBTI issues, led by a couple of teachers. I won’t repeat what I said, since much of the information has already appeared in this blog (and the rest of it will appear in future posts). My main goals were to inform, reassure, and – when possible – to entertain.

The teachers appreciated the fact that I had citations for everything I said, and the pupils appreciated the fact that I covered a wide range of sex, sexuality, gender, history and culture (kudos from one girl when I included asexuality with the other types).

But if the group response was anything to go by, I think what they’ll *really* take away from it is my impersonation of Australian cuttlefish…

LGBTI kids still face a lot of discrimination, but public awareness is growing. Doubtless, things will improve further as more parents understand what their children (or their children’s friends) are going through and seek support.

In some schools in the UK, more pupils are challenging the rules on uniforms – skirts for girls, trousers for boys – and schools are starting to adapt.

Kids are more aware of these issues, because they are already part of the world they are born into.

Me, as depicted by the 4-year-old daughter of one of my friends…

In my own experience, a couple of my friends have been happy for their kids to see pictures of me, or meet me dressed up.

“[She] saw and liked your new Wild West photos.
She said, “Cool! He must have fun being able to dress in both boys’ and girls’ clothes.”

It probably helps when you can provide a friendly, familiar face (if not a respectable one…) 😉

“…it was interesting to me when she met you in full Twist mode because it challenged her expectations at an age when she was probably quite binary (genderwise)”

Obviously, openness and acceptance aren’t going to happen everywhere, immediately. But they do seem to be spreading and accelerating.

“Twist is the biggest challenge to identity norms I’ve offered my children.”

It’s going to be interesting to see where this all leads. A couple of years ago, I introduced a talk by Nathan Gale, who expressed the hope that trans- and intersex issues would be mainstream within Nathan’s lifetime. Back then I wasn’t so sure, but now… hm!

 

 

Ch-ch-changes

The only way you can be who you’re meant to be is by having the freedom to make a lot of mistakes along the way…

I used to be afraid to admit to myself that I wanted to cross-dress. Then it became easy. I think the changes that allowed it to happen were as much psychological as social.

The best thing anyone can do when they’re still young is to leave home; there’s no other way to find out who the hell you are. I’ve written before about my childhood cross-dressing impulses, concluding with my first week at university when I met a girl who encouraged me to go to a Rocky Horror stage show wearing some of her clothes.

It was also at university I had my mind blown by the early internet (a shout-out to all those who remember using Netscape with dial-up modems!) which was young and unregulated (perfect match: so was I!) and introduced me to a whole bunch of cross-dressing and trans issues.

Even so, there was a lot my mind just couldn’t grasp; and what I couldn’t grasp I just dismissed. For example, in a philosophy tutorial group, one of the participants was middle-aged and trans. I never figured out if they were male-to-female or female-to-male. I just thought “Are you a hermaphrodite or something? No idea! Don’t know; don’t care; why won’t you shut up about male/female stuff? Men have balls, women don’t – why are you making a big deal about it?” (I was kind of a dick back then.)

It was the 1990s. As much as trans issues impinged on most people’s minds, they would have involved drag acts, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game, the arrival of The Ladyboys of Bangkok, and a whole bunch of awkward episodes of The Jerry Springer Show in which young trans women decided the best way to come out to their boyfriends was on (inter-)national television (one of the happier outcomes can be seen here). The only female-to-male examples I can think of are Hilary Swank Boys Don’t Cry and the character of Jack in Pitch Black (which actually came out in 2000).

In any case, trans issues were a mostly seen as a punchline. In the midst of all this, comedian Eddie Izzard was a breath of fresh air. He made it clear that cross-dressing wasn’t seedy, or weird, or deviant. It was just about the clothes. For my part, at university I limited my cross-dressing to theatre, and the occasional party: ostensibly, just for fun.

Fast forward about ten years or so, in which there was a long break from cross-dressing after graduation, working abroad, and then trying to re-establish myself in the UK.  Finally, I felt comfortable enough coming out to my girlfriend (written about here) and ‘Twist’ rapidly came about.

What changed?

For one thing, I was older, more broadminded and more knowledgeable; my views of how the world worked had changed considerably since my teenage years (I won’t claim to be wiser, just not such a dick). I had gained self-confidence and the emotional security of a relationship and social group. In short, I gained the ability to not give a shit what other people thought of me. If there’s one thing you need in life, it’s that.

The times seemed about right too. In the past few years, more famous figures have come out as trans: Rocky Horror creator Richard O’Brien (who said he was ‘70% male‘); The Matrix co-creator Lana Wachowksi; the writer Chaz Bono (Sonny and Cher’s son); Lady Gaga’s alter ego Jo Calderone… leading up to Caitlyn Jenner’s appearance on the cover of Vogue magazine in July 2015.  Gender-swapping was given less mocking treatment in comedies like It’s A Boy/Girl Thing (2006), and trans actors are getting prominent roles in BBC TV shows like Boy Meets Girl and Eastenders. Trans issues are generating a lot of media coverage.

Do I wish I could go back in time and come out as a cross-dresser sooner? There are two problems with this line of thinking. For one thing, I’ve changed (so even if circumstances were favourable when I was younger, I’d still lack confidence I have now); for another thing so has culture (so, even if I had the confidence I have now back then, the social circumstances would still be against it)… I think all we can do is make the most of what we’ve got and hope for the best.

*

Postscript:
I was different in the 1990s; I just didn’t get it. But by being presented with things that went against everything I thought about the world, by having to argue my case and lose, I ended up changing my mind about a lot of things. For me, this is one of the important parts of leaving home or going to university. One’s ideas must be tested; one must always know how to argue for what is correct and pick apart what is wrong; one might find nuance and subtlety where least expected.
For this reason, I cannot support the ‘no-platforming’ of people whose ideas are misguided, outmoded, or just plain wrong. Those ideas will not be destroyed by censorship or silence; only confrontation and constant exposure to facts and evidence can see to that. (The thought occurs that if someone’s response to an argument is to try to silence their opponent, then they either don’t have a counter-argument, or they lack the wit to argue.)
For my part, I will provide whatever facts and evidence I can find. I will not silence those I disagree with because I want to allow them the possibility of changing their minds without ill-feeling. In other words, I try not to be a dick about it.