TRANSCEND Musings from a Transwoman’s Perspective
Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?
I
by Ora Uzel
’m right on the cusp between Gen Xers and Millennials. I grew up in the early to mid-90s and I’m presently listening to the Cranberries whose album is the inspired title above. Their sound and lyrics embody a unique kind of ennui that only the post-Cold War 90s cold embody. Peace amongst the superpowers had been declared as smaller countries were being obliterated (Bosnia). Kurt Cobain died. Even grunge was so grunge that it died with him. So for this Valentine’s Day, I’d like to embody the alternative/grunge aesthetic and be openly miserable for once. And I have good reasons. “I’m not into that.” Multiple men have told me this shortly AFTER they asked me out. As a transgender woman, hearing this phrase immediately relegates you from a lady with a gentleman’s respect to a hot mess being ignored, beaten and bloody in a back alley. It is one of the most insulting things a man can say (aside from flat out slurs). I think for them, they think they’re being nice about my “fetish,” but the truth is that my genitalia are a real and present anguish I experience multiple times a day. I have no fetishes about being a woman (any more than any other woman). I am simply a woman, and denials based solely on my genitals are devastating. “YOU’RE not into that?!” Neither am I!! I’m raising money for a five digit surgery. I have to look at and touch my genitals every single day and you don’t. The phrase “I’m not into that” is not only an immediate insult to transwomen, but it also objectifies all women by telling us that our genitalia are the primary factor of consideration before personality and even before physical beauty. It’s not just transphobic, but it’s also misogynist. It’s degrading to women everywhere and especially degrading to transwomen. When should we tell? This is the age old question for transgender people. When do I tell the person I’m attracted to about me being trans? On the online profile? Make it obvious? Hide it in the profile? Allude to it only? Perhaps mention it in conversation before setting up the date? At the beginning of the first date? In the middle? At the end? When does it become dangerous to not tell, as in they might “gay panic” (a real legal defense used) and try to murder me? I’ve always held to the rule that if I don’t tell them by the third date, then them murdering me is my fault (which of course is absurd). But the fact is, I’ve never made it to a proper date with a man. I’ve always been honest. And honestly, I think that’s a big contributing factor to why I’m still single. Sure I’m a discerning intelligent person in a small town… but let’s be honest. It’s my honesty that is the proverbial cock-blocker here. Further to that point, the majority of transwomen I know who have dated did not tell their men early on, but waited until the first date. But that’s such a dangerous game to play…
24 Co-ZINE | codbq.org/cozine
This is not the stereotype you’re looking for. A couple years back in Des Moines, two transwomen were headed up north for a funeral and stopped at a hotel. Shortly after checking in police arrested them for being transgender and black while using a hotel, or more officially detained on suspicion of prostitution and one arrested and charged to 30 days in jail for not having her prescription with her medications (later overturned, because that’s not illegal). The hotel staff initially called the police, because they thought they were sex workers. There is a common stereotype that transwomen are all sex workers. There is some truth to the fact that society’s ostracization of transgender people leads many to sex work for sheer survival reasons. But this is not the profession of choice for most transgender people any more than it is for cisgender people (person who identifies with the same gender as they were assigned at birth). This isn’t to say that being a sex worker is wrong – I’ll leave that topic for another time – but people are having to resort to something they don’t like or don’t want to do. Furthermore, the instance of fetishism among transgender people really is no more than cisgender people. Transgender people are no more or less sexually driven. Yet here we are, often still treated as if we are sex workers or sexual “deviants” when many of us are nothing of the sort. We have just as much right to be sexual as anyone. We can be sexual without being sexualized. If this article has a thesis, that’s it. We can be sexual without being sexualized. Instead of people not being “into that,” treating us like sex workers or fetishists at first glance, we deserve to be treated like human beings, to have people be into who we are as people, to be treated with respect for our personality and intelligence, to have people understand that we have physical issues we are trying to address to not just better fit what you’re looking for – because I want my vagina as much as you do – but also to become who we know we are. And we deserve to be allowed to be sexual without being chastised for it. Sexuality is natural and beautiful, and just as any cisgender person should be allowed to be sexual, so should we. So for this Valentine’s Day, I’d like to be treated like an average human being who is both sexual AND respected in all the aspects of love and relationships that we all wrestle with: respect, trust, friendship, commitment, and most of all communication. So to all the straight guys out there – reading a gay magazine? – please up your game. Learn to treat women with respect, regardless of what they’ve got between their legs, because they want what you want just as badly as you do.