Gender Identities

There are so many terms used by people who don’t fit the behavioural expectations of their ‘assigned birth sex’. I’m not sure if there is any other way of saying that without offending or excluding someone among the women born men, people with birth defects, people with trans history, Harry Benjamin syndrome, gender identity disorder, androgyne, genderfuck, gender queer, trans, trans-women, trans-men transsexual, cross-dressers, transvestites, drag queens, drag queens, transgendered…. almost every term is contentious in who and what it describes.

In my own writing I often use the term trans and transgendered to encompass anyone who does not fit the behavioural expectations of their assigned birth sex. I don’t expect people to accept this as a personal identity label, but I find it a useful catchall term. I do tend to slant this towards people that have or had some kind of gender dysphoria and generally exclude sexuality from this mix.  I include those who identify as having a trans history but are now for all intents and purposes cisgendered on account of their trans histories.

I personally love the word transsexual. It is a relatively new term for how I describe myself. It feels like a word of power and has a hefty weight of history and social expectation behind it. I think many people find it a little scary. I like the reaction I get. It is almost always favourable. There is the initial brain stutter, the eyes dilate a little and then comes the ‘wow!!!’.  It is like I have won a prize. It gives me instant street cred.

Relating to myself it means a person who was born one sex, but desired the body and genetalia of another and has transitioned in some way. Other people use it in other ways e.g.a person who has had genital reassignment surgery, a person who identifies as a gender on the other side of the binary from their birth sex regardless of whether they have transitioned or  a person that has been formally diagnosed as having Gender Identity Disorder or Gender Dysphoria.

I tend to keep my actual gender identity separated out of this as I don’t always identity as a woman. I'm not sure why that is. I’m the woman that’s not. It is a little bit of a minor conundrum. I wish there was recognition of people being non-binary gendered. 

What I want is to be able to say that "I'm a person with a female type body and female genitalia, who dresses and is called female pronouns. While lean towards a female gender identity I am not entirely comfortable being considered entirely female identified and feel that I am a step to the side of that". You could say I am gender queer. 

I wish there was a way for me to dress that would identify me as 'not quite woman'. Maybe I would be more comfortable as an alien, had pointy ears and fangs, or living in a foreign country. 

This conundrum does not cause me any particular distress...pointy ears sounds rather brilliant though! (note to self, don't think of this when manic...)

Sexism in Science Fiction and Fantasy

I love Science fiction and fantasy. It has always been an escape for me. Now that I have become much more aware of inequality and sexism, compared to say when I was a boy in my teens, I am noticing more and more that fantasy and sci-fi novels seem to swing from incredibly sexist to more ideal worlds where there is no sexism.

Often in older sci-fi and fantasy the sexism is there because it reflects the society of the writer at the time of writing. I try to be tolerant of that. But even so I am finding sexism in fiction a total turn-off for what would otherwise be incredibly enjoyable reads.

I just read one of Alan Dean fosters Flinx novels, The Tar-Aiym Krang. It is funny the Commonwealth government featured in the book is described as a progressive, well-intentioned liberal democracy when the level of sexism is rather appalling. Admittedly it was published in the early 70’s and I guess I can forgive it for that reason. It still makes for awkward reading. There are five ‘key’ female characters in the book (next to several male characters who are all equally heroic) – One is a concubine from a race of women who essentially are gold digging prostitutes. She throws tantrums and gets her shapely behind spanked. One is ‘affectionately’ called Mother Mastiff and she is called that despite understandably not liking being called a dog. There is an evil merchant with too much plastic surgery (ewwwww evil!!!) and her inept niece who has a bit part. Admittedly the merchant has a muscle bound male sex slave of small brain but their relationship is described as rather more unflattering than the guy and his concubine. The last is a pilot. The pilots only defining feature is that she is in love with the guy who has the concubine. The piolet and the concubine therefore share a strong cat like enmity of each other. They end up having a fight involving a lot of scratching and hair pulling and they manage to almost completely rip each other’s clothing off!! Phoar!

I think historical sexism in sci-fi and fantasy has created a lot of baggage for geek culture today. Sexism is still alive and kicking despite the fact that sci-fi and fantasy has often been used to push the boundaries of sexual and racial inequality e.g. Star Trek. Perhaps most blatant is the immerse worlds of computer gaming, particularly social gaming. 

The anonymity of the internet creates a forum for sexism to flourish with no consequence. Girl gamers get harassed in many different ways and games are often designed with male dominated worlds and women with overly sexualised bodies (the same goes for comics). In many games you still can only play them as a male character. It is easy to see how young men who spend a lot of time gaming on-line, who have comparatively little ‘real life social contact’, who are being fed a diet of women as objects for male gratification and women as not having the same power as men, are getting the wrong idea. As a result there is an on-line gamer communities which are actively hostile towards women. 

I think there is still a place for sexism in science fiction and fantasy, particularly if it is used as social commentary. Sexism is about power imbalance. My question now is can you have gender roles without power imbalance? Would gender roles exist if there was no power imbalance? I’m not sure they would. 

One example which might fit the bill is Game of Thrones where the women and men have rather strong gender roles. While the males tend to inherit overt power it is the women who seem to be the movers and shakers behind the scenes. Many of the characters transgress their roles. We have a mix of strong warrior women like Briana and soft pretty men like Little finger. But even so the gender roles in the books are based on the premise that women are there to make babies while the men hold all the power. This is one of those medieval fantasy tropes.

Trans-lies

I like challenging some of the memes of the trans world. As a group we carry a lot of baggage to do with identification, the way we name ourselves, stuff inherited from past types of diagnosis and the historical gates we had the get through to receive treatment, societal expectations around perversion, sexuality and religion…

What I really want to do in this blog is show that there are other paths outside of the norm, that there are other equally as valid ways of carrying out your journey. I’ve been thinking about what the ‘idealised’ transsexual woman might look like in western white society using all the standard memes and tropes out there (caveat: based on my experience of white western culture). I started making it but I realised it was pretty offensive. It was offensive in that actually some of us might look exactly like it and that is perfectly ok. I think there is an element of arrogance on my part as if to say that I know better. All I really have is my own experiences and my interactions (and altercations) with other trans type people. 

So instead I thought I would make myself a little vulnerable and talk about some of the things I said before and during my transition. These are things I said because they were the party line of my community, because I wanted to protect myself because I was afraid that I was not trans enough or that I would lose people I love. I’m feel very embarrassed and sad and guilty about some of these things, but here goes:

I never get aroused by dressing as a woman.

There is this massive fear among many trans people of all stripes that they will be labelled as autogynophilic (translating to something like getting turned on by seeing yourself as a woman). There is a huge stigma attached to this. I think in the past you were not considered a ‘true’ transsexual, and therefore not receive treatment, if you were autogynophilic. We are understandably afraid of being labelled as 'simply' having a sexual perversion, so divorcing ourselves from sex is in many ways good PR. It is not generally considered a valid reason for transition.

I used to say on no uncertain terms that I did not have autogynophilia, but this is a lie. Helen Boyd in her book “My husband Betty” spoke very frankly about autogynophilia among trans people. I think it was that book that made me realise, or at least admit to myself, that I do get turned on by seeing myself as a woman.

While the thrill has diminished with time from those first teenaged forays, I still love myself. I love looking at my body. I love feeling the curves. I love that I feel ‘right’. It turns me on.  It is a kind of narcissism and if I was somehow cloned I would so do me. 

There is no denying that I suffered from gender dysphoria. There is also no doubt that my body now matches my internal sense of self. But I am still turned on by seeing myself with a female body. Perhaps this is just one expression of gender euphoria, the, in my case, lusty busty sister of gender dysphoria. Not all of us feel this, but I think more of us do than we like to admit.

I will still be the same person inside

I think this is the biggest lie we tell ourselves, that somehow we will remain unchanged within all our physical change. Usually this is something we say to partners, to try and reassure them that the person they love is still there. 

Unfortunately what we don't or choose not to consider is that transitioning is not just a physical change. It can be a total emergence of a very inexperienced young self who has a huge amount of growth to do in order to find their place in the world. We change. We change in ways we don’t even realise ourselves. Our interests can change. Some of us even change sexuality. Sometimes this makes us closer to our partners, but more often I think it takes us further away from the person they loved.

I’ve said it myself. I said it to my partner at the time. I said it to my family. But while I retain much of the self I was I now relate to the world in a very different way and it also relates differently to me. 

I think this last point is very important. We might not change but the way the world sees us does. It can be something as simple as men now expecting you to walk through a door or enter a lift first (I still struggle with this one and makes for some awkward interactions. Actually many trans women will tell you that gender is irrelevant in that they let everyone through doorways first but men are socialised to do this. I think women are not socialised to do this at all. Try this as a woman and things get weird. In the case of man on man I remember the higher status male will let another through first even though this was not a conscious thing). It can be much more overt.

I used to love to hunt, but my hunting was wrapped in my relationship with my dad. It was always with him that I went and it was part of our thing. It was part of my identity that I was someone who went out and killed wild things and had wild adventures in the bush and came back covered in blood and the stench of wild things. But it was never something I pursued strongly under my own steam. When I transitioned my dad stopped asking me hunting and I have never gone again.

As soon as I started wearing woman’s clothing I felt very ‘natural’

It definitely feels better to be able to dress as you want to dress. For me, while it felt right to wear women’s clothing, it took some time for it to feel ‘natural’. Most of my pants did not have pockets in them. My shape was not conducive of a lot of women’s clothing (which I think is true for most women too on account of the varied body shapes and more fitted clothing). Bra’s were uncomfortable. Lace trim was itchy. High heels sometimes painful. The clothing hugged and exposed more than male clothing did. I was not used to moving in it or needing to be careful crouching down to tie my shoelaces while wearing a skirt. I was understandably very self-conscious.

There was incredible feeling of freedom and relief being able to wear it and I would say that it felt so right and natural. But what I did not say was that for many of my early attempts at staying in them for long periods of time I felt gutted that by the end of it I could not wait to get out of those clothes and back into my male slouchy wear. It did not help either that the stuff I wanted to wear was from a very idealised female image and in many cased this type of clothing is the least comfortable to wear.  It made me doubt my trans-ness. I wanted it but I was not comfortable. I felt like I had failed.

I did not know the extent of it

This is perhaps my biggest lie I have ever told and for that I have the utmost regret. I still sometimes say it. I said it because it took some of the responsibility away from me. It allowed me to deny that I knew what I really wanted. I said it because I wanted to believe it and I hid from the truth. Even my thoughts skirted around it. But I knew that I wanted to look like a woman. I knew I wanted a female body. I knew that I wanted to wear women’s clothing all the time. I knew that I wanted to change my name and be referred to as she.  

What I was really saying and could not admit to  was “I don’t know how much of it I can live without”. As a result I prolonged the pain and perhaps made it worse for everyone.

Hindsight is a lovely thing. I should note that despite these desires I did not identify as a woman until well into my transition. Even now that label does not sit entirely comfortable. A topic for another time perhaps.

I think it is worth challenging the memes of the trans world. They are not always our friends. They increase the doubt and guilt many of us feel. They can be very invalidating when you don't fit, and I have seen some of them used as weapons by trans people against other trans people. They can be damaging to ourselves and the ones we love  As hard as it can be, owning our own feelings and desires is important. Sometimes we suck (sometimes we suck a lot!) and I think that is part of being human. But we can always try to be better moving forward. What else can you do?

What Girls Are Made Of

Watch me cutting every string 
One by one 
See me cut out all the rot 
Bit by bit 
Watch me as I push you back 
Inch by inch 
I push you back boy 
Inch by inch 

~ Garbage, “What Girls Are Made Of.”

There are many battles being fought in popular culture at the moment. Battles against homophobia, racism, bigotry, sexism, and misogyny. There have been popular uprisings against the male-centric and medieval attitudes of comic writers, SFF legends and fan conventions are producing harassment policies for their attendees.

The controversially titled article in the New Statesman, by Sophia McDougall, “I hate Strong Female Characters” generates the usual polarised comments that are best avoided, typical of an article discussing gender imbalances.

McDougall’s main point is that male characters can have a full range of human attributes, female characters get to be ‘Strong.’ They still don’t get dialogue, a starring role, a front and centre position in the trailers, the posters and the media they are part of.

They act in stereotypical ways, kicking ass and kissing some random guy. Taking control, like strong women.

As a male writer, I mostly agree with McDougall’s arguments. I recognise that men are the primary demographic of comics, women who enjoy the stories and art of this medium are stepping into a world where attitudes haven’t changed much in 100 years.

Me, I’m not a comic book fan. I like a good graphic novel, but serial comics are something I grew out of when I left high-school. 2000AD was always a big influence from my childhood and on my writing. 2000AD was also quite unique in my reading experience, with really well written stories like The Ballad of Halo Jones, a female soldier in a dystopian future (written by the legendary Alan Moore). There was Judge Anderson the Psi division colleague of Judge Dredd. Even male dominated series’ like Rogue Trooper had female GI’s.

Halo Jones wasn’t “strong” she was just a woman trying to get through life the best way she could.

I like to write female characters. Three of my novels feature women as the lead protagonists and antagonists.

Else, from Tankbread, is a complex person. She starts out as a fully grown, but completely new person. A woman with the mind of a newborn. As a clone, grown for consumption by the world’s zombie overlords, she has a life’s worth of development and experience to go through in a short space of time. Tankbread is as much a story of her self-discovery as it is the story of saving the world, even after it has ended. Else develops as a character, through set-backs, discovery, exploration and ultimately tragedy.

Her experience is important because she goes through the stages of life from infant to adult in a month. She is vulnerable, violent, intelligent, curious, creative, selfish. She learns all the things that make us human, joy, sadness, humiliation, wonder, hate, love and grief.

In the following two books, Tankbread: Immortal and Tankbread: Deadlands complex female characters take the lead roles again. Perhaps more importantly, complex women have supporting roles too. Some assist and others oppose. But all are detailed and human and certainly much more than “Strong.”

Engines of Empathy (currently under contract for publication) also has a female lead. Charlotte Pudding is a self-described single, professional woman. She is intelligent, recently orphaned and employed using her college degree in computer psychology to help customers better interact with their empathic appliances.

When she finds herself drawn into a quest to save the world she deals with a range of situations and antagonists. Some are male, some are female. All are weird and fill Empathy Universe with a thought provoking and often humorous story.

In the sequel, Pisces of Fate, Charlotte’s brother, Ascott, is the main character in the story. He is supported by Shoal, a girl that he feels very strongly about, but her personality is entirely her own. She saves him (more than once) and like all good characters, she has a depth to her that includes good and bad. She has her own ambitions, motivations, beliefs and values.

I write characters like this because I love a good story. I like characters that struggle and suffer and succeed and find love, are struck by tragedy and get angry at the injustices of the world they inhabit.

For me, “strong” women aren’t enough. They need to be as complex and detailed and flawed and interesting as the male characters.

Was Joan of Arc transgender?

Joan of Arc or John of Arc?  Let's take a look at the evidence.    Picture from Wikipedia.

This is a claim that pops up on the internet from time to time, but no one seems to give any evidence for it beyond the fact that she wore men's clothes.  That on its own doesn't prove Joan (or Jehanne, as she signed her name) was transgender.

Joan claimed that the saints who appeared to her in visions told her to wear male clothing, and it is possible she simply did it because the voices told her to - or at least because she believed it was what God wanted her to do.  Joan was not mentally unbalanced, but she was very religious, and it's clear from the letters she wrote and the testimony she gave at her trial that she genuinely believed she was a divine emissary sent to do God's work.

We also need to consider how Joan herself might have understood the concept of gender identity.  Medieval Christians believed everything happened according to God's plan.  If God made you a peasant, then He meant you to be a peasant.  You couldn't decide you didn't like being a peasant and wanted to become a duke.  God had made you a peasant and wanting to be anything else was rejecting God's plan.  It was heresy.  Cross-dressing was actually a crime and was ultimately the reason Joan got executed. In her letters (you can find them online here) Joan consistently called herself "Jeanne la Pucelle" - Joan the Maiden, which strikes me as a really odd thing for a transman to call himself.  In my view it's highly unlikely that Joan thought of herself as someone who'd been issued the wrong set of trouser furniture and was really a man.  I think she would have considered herself to be a woman on the basis of her anatomy, which she thought was mandated by God.  But that doesn't necessarily mean she identified as a woman, or was comfortable with being a woman.

Consider this quote from my good friend and fellow FYTQ blogger Nicole: "I thought I was a boy but I was a very uncomfortable boy."  Perhaps Joan experienced something similar.

Identifying as a man would have been a sin, but Joan could have rationalised such feelings by believing that God had called her to dress and behave as a man for His own special purposes.  This would have allowed Joan to accept feelings of gender identity that were against church doctrine.  Ultimately though, we just don't know.  The letters and testimony that survive don't give us any information about Joan's gender identity, or whether she felt comfortable living as a woman.

Menswear would have been a practical option for Joan, both on the battlefield and in terms of deterring sexual assault.  (Men's clothes at the time consisted of trousers attached to a jacket with laces, and getting them off would have been a task and a half.)  But Joan was clear that she didn't just wear male clothes for practical reasons, she wore them because she believed God wanted her to.  She felt compelled to present herself as a male, even though she clearly saw herself as a woman.  It wasn't just clothes either, Joan also wore a male haircut.

In the end, we'll never know if Joan of Arc was transgender.  There just isn't enough evidence.  But it is possible, and it opens up some even more interesting questions what it might have been like to be transgender in the Middle Ages.

Gender Dysphoria and my experience

Gender dysphoria is the feeling a person has that their assigned gender does not reflect the gender they are. From a diagnostic perspective, Gender dysphoria is listed in the DSM - V – Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5^th edition, and has the following diagnostic criteria:

A. marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months duration, as manifested by 2 or more of the following indicators: [2, 3, 4]

1. a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics (or, in young adolescents, the anticipated secondary sex characteristics) [13, 16]

2. a strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics because of a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/expressed gender (or, in young adolescents, a desire to prevent the development of the anticipated secondary sex characteristics) [17]

3. a strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender

4. a strong desire to be of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

5. a strong desire to be treated as the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

6. a strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

B. The condition is associated with clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning, or with a significantly increased risk of suffering, such as distress or disability

This diagnosis replaces an older diagnosable disorder called Gender Identity Disorder, or GID. I needed a diagnosis of GID to be accepted for genital reassignment surgery and I passed it with flying rainbow colors :D (funny how it feels like a test rather than a confirmation of what you know is true).

A diagnosis of gender dysphoria is not a diagnosis of transsexualism of which there is none. You don’t have to be a transsexual to experience dysphoria and actually you don’t need to experience it to be a transsexual. For example, I pretty much have no symptoms of gender dysphoria because I have resolved them through my transition yet I still consider myself a transsexual. A whole host of other queer/trans/other types may experience it, or something similar. I love how this ‘diagnosis’ takes into account alternative gender identities and I think it is fantastic non-binary people are given recognition.  

Another thing to note with this diagnosis is that it does not require you to hate your body. Traditionally we are indoctrinated by various trans communities that you can only be transsexual if you have a strong hatred for your birth sex body and that you desire surgery. This is not a requirement for being diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

I’m starting to believe more and more that being a transsexual has become an identity that you can choose. I think this is the same in regard to gender and sexual identities. A woman can have sexual attractions solely to women but this does not require them to identify as a lesbian. A person might not feel they are male or female but this does not require them to identify as non-binary. As such I don’t think you can diagnose someone else as transsexual. This is something only you can decide for yourself. But in a lot of ways this label is a red hearing anyway. I think many of us focus on whether we fit the label instead of focusing on your distress and how you can resolve it.  

It is a very hard thing to describe what it is like to experience gender dysphoria. When gender dysphoric folk talk about it, it seems to be a combination of a number of different things from social to physical. One thing that is often overlooked is that people experience dysphoria in different ways. Not only that but the strength of these feelings can fluctuate, particularly with age, life changes and other stresses. Puberty is a particularly distressing time for many trans people as this is where secondary sex characteristics start to emerge. It seems to be true for many of us that when unresolved it tends to get worse over time, or at least our tolerance of it weakens. I find it interestingly my dysphoria vanished for short periods of time when newly in love – I have heard many stories of tans people meeting someone and feeling like they are ‘cured’. I imagine huge euphoric moments like when someone ‘finds god’ can mask feelings of dysphoria for a bit. As far as I know it always comes back.

I started to feel aspects of gender dysphoria as a child. It was like a slippery eel I could not quite grasp right on the edge of my consciousness. Something was wrong. I remember wishing I could play elastics with the girls and I would watch them from around a corner at school. I thought I was a boy but I was a very uncomfortable boy. I felt very lost and at odds with many of the expectations of being a boy. I resisted being part of the culture of masculinity.

So how did it feel for me as an adult pre-transition? It was not a hatred of my body. I admired my own strength. I liked using my male equipment but I had a sense of wrongness. Dysphoria for me was that sense of wrongness that was often very undefined. Sometimes it was just a low murmur on the edge of my brain but it could also feel like a nightmare you can’t wake from. Dysphoria was sometimes a feeling of being filled with filth that I could vomit in a never ending stream but without actually feeling physically sick.  Sometimes it was like I was living inside an alien body and I was in there looking out. It was as if I was itchy wearing my own skin.

I would close my eyes and in my mind’s eye my body had curves. It was so real I felt like I could touch them and it was always a shock to open my eyes and not see them there. I often felt I had a phantom vulva and found comfort in pressing the place it should of been. I think that is an interesting aspect of dysphoria that it seems to be related to our internal image not matching our external reality. It is not body dysmorphia in the sense that we do see our bodies as they are. But just like anyone we can be body dysmorphic too, particularly around how masculine or feminine we perceive our features to actually be.  

Birthdays and Christmas were always times of depression for me and I often still respond to them that way. I would get ‘male’ gifts which would just make me weep inside. I would of given anything for a pair of earrings. I mean yes I liked the machete and Metallica t-shirt I got one year and I put them both to good use. But I was left feeling pretty hollow and more and more like nobody actually knew who I was.  

On the social side being considered male made me cringe and squirm – particularly when lumped in with the boys such as when segregated at school by gender or being the butt of gendered jokes. Often when I went shopping for clothes I would be overcome with depression and longing. Dysphoria for me involved a lot of longing – longing to shop in women’s clothing shops, to have been born a girl, to be called she, for a body I did not have.

I never really felt at odds with my penis until I had sorted out other things like starting hormones and dressing as a woman. Before then I always did have a kind of vagina envy but never felt actively distraught about having a penis despite it’s inconveniences. At some point it became the elephant in the room in my head, and not because I was well hung. Imagine you had a big purple pink growth out the side of your body that moved of it’s own accord that everyone said was normal. It felt kind of like that. I found it fun to play with and it was good for scaring the neighbors but it did not belong. It became such a foreign thing I just had to get rid of it – it was a bit like the feeling of having a deep splinter and just needing to get it out. I never realised how big that elephant was until after surgery. Shortly after I realised that I had this massive space in my mind that used to be consumed with the awareness of it.

One interesting aspect of my dysphoria was I would often look at women with duel perceptions. I would see a good looking woman and part of me would find her sexually attractive, but on the other I was full of envy. Often that envy could feel like attraction (though let’s face it, with my sex drive as it was then I was attracted to a lot of people). The envy sometimes left me feeling very bitter. I know some transwomen have reported that after transition what they thought was an attraction to women was actually their envy.

In short dysphoria made me miserable. It consumed me. It impacted on my relationships with everyone and everything and my mental health. I chose to resolve my gender dysphoria before it buried me.

Blog Mistress Nicole

Gender and the pill

How people understand the concept of gender is a topic that fascinates me, and today I'm going to talk about how contraception has influenced our understanding of what gender means.

In the pre-scientific western world, and for many people today, gender was all about procreation and was essentially the same thing as physical sex (that's a whole 'nother post, and we'll get to that later.)  Men fathered babies, and women had babies.  Easy.  And like all simplistic explanations, it's incomplete and doesn't hold true in all circumstances.  But for most people biology was destiny and the world really did work that way.

The reason the world worked like that in so many cases was that people couldn't reliably control their fertility, but in 1960 the first contraceptive pills were approved for use and that began to change.

If you think about it for a while, you'll see that effective, readily available, relatively safe contraception is one of the most important inventions in human history.  In terms of the effect it has on how we live our lives, it's comparable to agriculture, antibiotics, and the internet.  Contraception allows us to fit procreation around all the other things we want to do in life, rather than having to fit our lives around any pregnancy we or our significant others happen to have.  It should be obvious that contraception has revolutionized women's lives in particular, and allowed us all a level of freedom our great-grandparents simply didn't have.

This is not just sexual freedom, it's also the freedom to define what gender means in ways that have nothing to do with reproduction.  Caring for children is no longer an inevitable part of womanhood, so we are free to explore definitions of womanhood that don't relate to childrearing at all.  We can also start to explore the idea that gender identity sometimes has nothing to do with our reproductive organs, and there are many different ways we can identify.  We aren't automatically stuck with one of two roles in life according to whether we have indoor or outdoor plumbing.

Yes, I know it's a silly pun, but it's better than a stock photo of some contraceptive pills, isn't it?

As far as most western societies are concerned, this is a new development.  It's so new that we've only just begun to explore it as a society, which is why many people today still see gender as a question of indoor versus outdoor plumbing.  To me, this is really exciting.  I can't wait to see how our understanding of what gender is evolves over the next 50 years.

The make-over of Merida

I feel kind of under pressure to put up a good first post. How does one kick off a blog? 

I thought about writing about myself. Despite being a terribly interesting trans queer type person I get the feeling that 'all me' trans blogs are pretty common. I want to do something a bit different to that. Certainly I have some stories to tell and I will be telling some of them. But I decided for this blog that I wanted to take a bunch of different kinds of queer voices to collaborate and share each of our own perspectives on life as a queer, trans, or otherwise people. 

To start I thought I might talk about Merida. Merida is the star of Disney Pixar movie called ‘Brave’. This is a story of a headstrong young Scots woman, proficient rider, archer, and experienced in wilderness survival. Brave is not about a girl in a hopeless situation that needs rescuing, but a girl in a situation that is partly her own making and it is up to her to sort it out. The main story in the movie is in many ways about a conflict between what a girl is expected to be and what a girl is – and this is shown in Merida’s relationship with her mum.

Disney is known for a raft of movies with beautiful and often helpless princesses just waiting for their prince to rescue them. In Brave, Merida out guns all the boys and rejects her arranged marriage. She is fiery, stubborn with a strong sense of self. In no way is she a ‘perfect princess’, or a perfect person, and I think that is partly what makes her really awesome.  She is in many ways very ‘real’.

The picture of Merida on the left is the original from the movie. She is wearing clothing that is pretty practical for the outdoors – a thick warm dress, nothing fancy. She is kitted out with her favorite bow given to her by her dad,and she is ready for action. She has the craziest wild hair of a girl who does not give a stuff about making it pretty.  Hey body looks much more realistically proportioned than a lot of other princesses. Her face is of the young girl she is – it is not an idealised beauty and actually is decidedly plain for your traditional Disney princess.  

Merida was just been crowned as Disney's 11^th princess, on the 11th of May no less, and the picture on the right is her animated character make-over for this occasion. 

Wtf Disney? Where is her bow?  Why is she now so skinny?  What happened to her can’t-give-a-stuff hair? What’s up with the huge eyes?  What is with the off the shoulder dress? Would Merida honestly want to look like this? I think she would be horrified. What message is this sending to girls? 

Actually I can easily guess why they re-made her this way. If you put her next to all the other princesses she sticks out. This is a way of fitting her in with the crowd, pulling her into the flock to make her everything the character hated. She outshines them all and shows them up to be stereotypes of femininity. Perhaps this was an attempt to put Merida in her place.

You know, normally I have a little bit of respect for Disney. I had a friend who was able to have their gender reassignment surgery courtesy of their employee health insurance. I think this is awesome in an American environment where most medical insurance providers don't cover this.  

The change in design just speaks to me of something I feel is happening everywhere. It seems to me that equality of people is under increasing attack – this is equality in terms of gender, race, and ‘class’ and freedom from religion. This is something I have observed in my lifetime.  It is like the ‘opposition’ is getting desperate and is redoubling its efforts to put people in their place?

I have so many questions - why do we still have religion? Why are women still not being payed the same amount as the equivalent male in a job? Why are kids still being abused? Why do some people think it is acceptable to rape someone for any reason? Why are childrens' toys and clothing becoming increasingly gendered and sexualised? Why do we keep electing government's whose only concern is the betterment of a small group at the detriment of everyone else? 

These are things I want love to explore in this blog. I also have my own thoughts on being a post op queer trans kinky person and some of the lessons I learnt in my journey. 

I hope to see you soon!

Blog Mistress Nicole