I was enamored during my first San Diego Pride in 2003. I’d began transitioning in early February of that year, then went to my first trans peer support group in late May, and then agreed to staff the trans booth in July. Frankly, I can’t remember whether or not I marched in the trans contingent in the parade that year, but I remember doing so in subsequent years.
After that, it didn’t take long for me to be immersed in the local trans community.
During the next few years I attended the Pride festivals and looked for trans related Pride products only to never find any. So in 2007 or 2008, the group of us in charge of the trans booth created our own and bought, out of our money, items to give away at the festival. We created one inch round buttons of the transgender flag, and actually little 4-inch by 6-inch transgender flags to give away.
In 2008, I created a round 2-1/2-inch version of a Trans And Proud button, as well as a round 2-1/2-inch Trans Ally button. These buttons featured a trans flag as the background. As I recall, I gave most of those buttons away at the Transgender Day of Remembrance memorial event at The San Diego LGBT Center that year.
It was then, and still is now, important to be out and proud as a trans woman. Some trans separatists argue that one shouldn’t be out as trans, arguing that if one really wants to be a woman then one should follow the schema of the early versions of the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care which had one go completely stealth after transitioning from one’s assigned sex at birth and one’s target sex. I never subscribed to that point of view, instead embracing the concept Harvey Milk had for being out:
“Gay brothers and sisters … You must come out. Come out … to your parents. I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives … come out to your friends … if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors … to your fellow workers … to the people who work where you eat and shop. Come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene.”
Civil rights for the LGBT community are moving forward in America in significant part because through the years so many have come out.
To me, that’s what Pride events around the country, including here in San Diego, are all about. Being out and proud.
For trans folk, it’s owning our whole lives as our own. It’s often hard to be out, and it often means suffering. Many of us lose our jobs; many of us have difficulty finding housing. We often lose friends during transition; we often lose our family relationships.
But sometimes being out isn’t about us entirely. Sometimes we don’t see the changes in the law and society that we desire; sometimes we’ll see setbacks.
But sometimes it isn’t about us; it’s about those who come out after us. It’s especially about the trans youth that are coming out in larger numbers than ever before.
This is what Pride is about for me – being out and proud – fighting for the ordinary equality of those who come after us. It’s a legacy of our love for our community’s youth that we join the struggle – just by being out and proud.
This is a perfect example of the difference between transgender and transsexual. A transsexual has a brain that is sexually differentiated at doss with their body, and they desire, primarily, to be whole. For them, their life before transition was pretty much a nightmare and they want to move on. Transgender is about transgressing societal norms for political and/or sexual reasons, and they want to rub society’s nose in that transgrssiveness. They don’t want to fit in. They want to make people uncomfortable, and then demand that they hide their discomfort. Being out, for a transsexual is simply returning to the Hell they escaped. For a transgender person, it is their reason for their behavior.
And yet here you are, obsessing over a transgender blog on an LGBT website. You and “sd woman” are such a common feature here that there is no way in hell that you can deny being part of the transgender community. Don’t you think it’s time that YOU moved on with YOUR life and stop obsessing over what transgender people do and say?
It amazes me, it really does, that people who make pronouncements about how “real transsexuals” move on with their lives, themselves refuse to move on. I do agree with you though, in that real transsexuals do fix their problem and then move on, living their lives as members of the opposite sex…… which is something you seem incapable of doing. Maybe you should seek professional help, to escape this “Hell” where you are trapped, or at least to help you learn to act like a sane person.
I would say that the only one obsessing is you, obsessing over forcing an identity on people who don’t care for it. Sorry, but you have no idea what my life is like. I am not at all happy with the very real harm, both to transsexuals, and to other women, done by the transgender extremists, and I do not hesitate to speak out against. I also speak out in other forums on issues that are important to me, like being pro-life, opposed to the mistreatment of the underprivileged, and against the loss of accreditation of the local community college. Transgender issues occupy a relatively small part of my time. I check in occasionally to see what the latest silliness is, or to respond to someone’s response to me, and I occasionally write an article for my blog. But beyond that, my life is pretty boring.
So, sorry, but nope, the clue meter says you haven’t one…
“Transgender issues occupy a relatively small part of my time.”
Could have fooled me, Mr Usher! You feel the need to comment on every single post that Autumn makes here, and from perusing your blog, it is obvious that you spend a whole lot of time reading and writing about transgender blogs and websites. If you have time for other things, then you must be living some 72-hour days! And yet you claim not to be obsessed!
I see that now you have a new transgender activist to obsess over….. Dana Taylor. Pretty sad that she had an epiphany and abandoned you hateful trolls to side with the transgender folks, no? It’s always sad for haters when one of their own grows a heart…… or a brain. I don’t know what you are angry about though, since you are just as much a transgender as these activists, except like Dana was, you’re in denial over it.
But hey, I know your history, and that for years before this, you were trashing other people in various online forums. Good ol’ Tommy Usher, “More than a transvestite but not quite a transsexual”, and always so nasty to others. Some things never change.
ROTFL! Most weeks I post once or twice on my blog, and I usually comment here about once a week. Hardly a major amount of my time. But, alas, you, and the truth, have very little in common. So, are you still pretending to be a radfem? Or are you Sandeen’s best friend forever?
Oh, and while I could personally care less, I do find it interesting that you are allowed to violate the Hell out of the supposed rules here. But then you are Sandeen’s pet meat puppet…or is more sock?
Mad? Nah, I’m having a blast watching you prove my case for me.
Interesting how you chose to use the word “mad”. Freudian slip?
You are so mean and nasty, but then you were like that even before Rebecca divorced you. Pretty sorry, forcing your wife to be the breadwinner, but then you never could keep a job anyway. I bet your daughter is really proud of her dad!
No, not a radfem (whatever that is). Not friend of Autumn either. I’m just a person who reads this and other blogs, who is sick of seeing trolls like you trashing everybody who is trying to do some good in the world.
Alas, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are not nearly as clever as you think you are. So, the crap about MWMF was just a ruse? Now, if we are going to talk about being obsessive…. Hmm, only one person I know of is so obsessed as to have done the digging you apparently have. So, what have you been up to Lask? Still lying about having had SRS?
BRRRRRRRT!!! Wrong again, Howie!
I wonder how Liz will react when she reads some of the crap her dear old dad has been spewing here and elsewhere on the web. Let’s find out!
My, aren’t you the little cyberstalker….
Oh wait, I just remembered who you are….
The queen of the non sequiturs…
I am an activist for leading a normal life.
I am an activist for lot living in a LGBTQ ghetto.
I promote the one thing every TS woman and man wants, to be normal and to have a normal life with a normal job.
I fight freakism and the fetish lifestyle.
Anne
Yes, a reasonable stance.
The trans community has nothing to offer a former TS woman who wants a normal life. Being out as trans, is being out as being abnormal.
Anne
Of course, that is what “transgender” is all about…forcing normal people to accept something “abnormal” as being normal.