Passable or not passable, what if a girl was NOT passable??

[TsVanessa69]

I am taking part in a documentary about influential trans woman in Chicago, and was ask to search you tube, and make response videos to subjects that I felt personally effected me and my life.
This is the first response video, I would love for both the guy and girl members to take a peek and share your feedback.



when I do public speaking or post blogs, I do speak openly and honestly and from the heart.

[JohnnyWalkerBlackLabel]

I'm sitting here listening to your youtube Vanessa and I'm impressed by you being open about your history and I have nothing bad to say about your video response. I do however laugh at the word "passable" because what you said around 4:30 into the video is key to this whole thread. The 1st time I heard the word was not from a straight man, or a gay man; it was from a transsexual. A transsexual who spent about 40 to 50k on their body and felt because of that they could speak down on someone who hasn't yet reached their level.

I just wanted to point that out, because many times guys take the blame for words like this when in reality if there is ever a confrontation between 2 girls one of them is ALWAYS throwing this word out to insult the other party......

JWBL

[yodajazz]

What you said was well put and a healthy outlook. However, I could understand a trans woman who wants access to all that other women have. 'Passing' would be avoiding discrimination and other issues that trans women must deal with in society. That being said, I see your approach as being the best, because society needs to see living examples to help it change.

[AllanahStarrNYC]

I think that was a very intelligent and well thought response Reina, because in the end all that matters is self acceptance and love. You can be the most beautiful, 'passable' ts in the world but if you don't accept, love, or are comfortable with yourself you will be just as miserable as someone who has a complex about not 'passing' and lives in shame of it.

Not everyone is dealt the same cards in life and some girls will have to deal with this issue, other girls won't. It's like beauty, not every single GG is born beautiful. Yet everyone expects every transsexual to be beautiful. A ts woman who is more obvious obviously has different issues to deal with in society as opposed to a ts woman who gets by.

I think this self acceptance comes with age- there is a point, at least there was for me, when I realized that I had to stop letting society, others opinions, or even a man give my my worth.

The fact that I am a ts is really just second nature to me, I don't even think about it. It's really a liberating thing to feel ok with being who you are and simply not giving a FUCK.

[bte]

What you said was well put and a healthy outlook. However, I could understand a trans woman who wants access to all that other women have. 'Passing' would be avoiding discrimination and other issues that trans women must deal with in society. That being said, I see your approach as being the best, because society needs to see living examples to help it change.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I agree with everything that Vanessa says. I have a friend who still dresses as a man, but identifies as a transsexual. When I asked her how come she doesn't make the change such as taking hormones, dressing as a girl, and getting surgeries; she said she was worried about passing. Its a shame that a lot of people seem to be focused on passing. Our society tends to judge people based on looks and its a shame.

[TsVanessa69]

What you said was well put and a healthy outlook. However, I could understand a trans woman who wants access to all that other women have. 'Passing' would be avoiding discrimination and other issues that trans women must deal with in society. That being said, I see your approach as being the best, because society needs to see living examples to help it change.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I agree with everything that Vanessa says. I have a friend who still dresses as a man, but identifies as a transsexual. When I asked her how come she doesn't make the change such as taking hormones, dressing as a girl, and getting surgeries; she said she was worried about passing. Its a shame that a lot of people seem to be focused on passing. Our society tends to judge people based on looks and its a shame.

Thats what I was speaking on.
I was almost like your friend, many people who do identify as trans, sometimes don't live as trans because they are scared. So basically they are forced to live a lie.
I made the video to reach those girls like your friend.
NO I'm not pretty and no I'm not passable, and many times on here in flame wars with girls like even Mimi, they would say how manly I looked.
But its too late. I stopped giving a fuck about 10 years ago.
I'm trans, and I'm ok with that.
Maybe you can show your friend my video and the original video I responded too and manybe it will trigger something in her mind where she says she will at least give it a try.

[rockabilly]

It's truly what's on the inside that counts.

[TsVanessa69]

What you said was well put and a healthy outlook. However, I could understand a trans woman who wants access to all that other women have. 'Passing' would be avoiding discrimination and other issues that trans women must deal with in society. That being said, I see your approach as being the best, because society needs to see living examples to help it change.

But I do have acess to all that other woman have.
In my neighborhood, I am active in events, socialize with everyone and even play with their kids. Its never even been mentioned, or at least not in front of me.
I also go to church on Sundays and everyone there treats me just like anybody else in my parish.
At my job, my co-workers love having me around, and I blend in with all the other females at my workplace, we make jokes and talk shit about men, money and kids. I fit in, its not acting. It comes natural.
I know I'm trans and I just do me. And I am blessed to say, people respect me.
Now on here I'm not Miss Popular, but thats ok, the popular girls on here, some of them are not so popular in real life. So I'm ok not being pretty and not being popular, because I have respect for myself, and I am respected where it matters.

[rockabilly]

" To thine own self be true " bravo Vanessa.

[tgirlzoe]

These last few months have radically changed my position on that.

I came out as trans at 16, fought with my parents for a couple years about it until I went off to university and transitioned at 19. I quickly went "stealth". I lived off-campus with different people for a while, I bounced around a lot. I had a personal policy of telling people I was trans if it looked like I was really going to get the room but that got harder and harder. So then I didn't tell a girl for a week after I moved in, the next girl I didn't tell for about 6 weeks and then I decided to just live on campus the next quarter and so I moved on campus, into the girls' dorms and I didn't tell the school (though you'd assume they would notice something in my records) and I didn't tell my roommates (it was a suite of 4 girls in 2 bedrooms). After that, I stopped telling people.

Later, it became known among my close friends, who I was living with for years, but I kept it within that circle -- even in the circle, some people knew and some people didn't, my friends were good at keeping my secret. I had minimum wage jobs and such and none of my coworkers or bosses knew and I never felt like I should tell them. I was out about being bisexual because I am, because that's how I live my life (I was dating another tgirl in an open relationship for a couple years) but I didn't feel like being trans was a direct part of my public identity (private identity and history, of course, but more like a skeleton in a closet).

Last summer, I was involved with a very good man who I adored. I would have married him if he would have asked me; he was gorgeous, sexy, sweet, sensitive and creative. He was also religious -- he was rediscovering his Catholic roots. I was living in a religious commune that was Catholic/Orthodox/Anglican with a focus on the Anglican part (we were involved in the local traditional Anglican parish) so even if I didn't always live like it, I was religious too. He eventually convinced me that I could never really get married, that it would always be this separate thing, like a homosexual union, even if the other person and I and society saw it as heterosexual (as was with our relationship) because metaphysically, I was still male.

This, coupled with our breaking up because he went back to school (he did visit once after that last November and we had sex but I haven't seen him since even though we still talk a lot), was devastating for me. I just wanted to have a "normal life" and get married and raise (adopted, of course) kids. I was just looking for Mr. Right and I guess I realized that, as Groucho Marx said he wouldn't join a club who would have him as a member, my ideal man wouldn't want me because it would be too important to him to raise a natural family and have a certain marriage to a bio-female. So where was my life leading?

In a couple months, I unraveled years of transition. I stopped taking hormones. I came out to everyone at work, telling them that I had been born male and was returning to that because it was the right thing to do. They didn't believe me but I pushed the issue, showed photos and such and I succeeded in eventually convincing everyone. I even finally was able to get the management to let me use the men's room, but it involved regional management. I moved across town and started going to the Catholic Church there where nobody had known me as a girl.

A couple days after the big transition at work, where the management told everybody to call me by a different name (not my given name, I was experimenting), I put in my two weeks' notice. I changed my name to my given name legally and flew off across the country to visit a traditional (Latin Mass) Catholic monastery for a month in retreat. I was hoping to make a totally new start. A girl even convinced me I would be more handsome if she cut my hair and so she shaved my head with a #4 razor (1/2").

But I was so depressed and when I looked in the mirror I didn't know who I was. I didn't see a future possibility of me marrying a woman and having that sort of relationship. I would still get kids, maybe even biological if that still works, and I could have my little house and garden and everything I wanted. I also explored the possibility of religious life, being a monk or a friar though I'm sure they'd be dubious about accepting me with my history.

So I flew back to my town but I spent the first week back very depressed and drinking every day. The week culminated with me going to the local gay bar and hooking a cute, intelligent straight-acting gay guy. This was the first time I'd ever really had a guy attracted to me as a guy. We screwed around for a few minutes at my house and I was trying to put that out of my mind but there was a big difference between a guy being into me as a girl and this guy being into me as a guy. I realized there was no way I could be a gay guy either, it's something different.

So after a couple days of being depressed about it, on Tuesday, I decided that I was for sure going back to being my old self. I haven't told my parents yet (they had accepted my transition finally but my dad was still very happy, as much as he ever expresses emotion, that I had become his only son again). I don't have any hair anymore (which was my pride) so I've been playing with hats and spiking it. I'm trying to use it to play with a punkier look than before. Mostly, I end up looking like a butch dyke but whatever, at least it's female.

So after years of statements like "passing isn't a privilege, it's the point" and all this other focus on men's attraction to me being used to support my self-esteem, I know that I have to transition for myself, whether or not I ever get married (or if it counts), whether or not I am attractive to men, whether or not everybody knows (because many people know now!), I have to transition. So where I was a stuck-up, bitchy, prideful tgirl, now I am a lot more humble. See, yes, I have almost 5 years of hormones behind me but in other respects I am just like anyone starting out transitioning at 24 with a male name, short hair, no clothes (I donated all mine except for a suitcase of simple cheap men's clothes) and no hormones (I just re-ordered them yesterday so hopefully today or Monday I will get them). I don't pass and I have to look for a new job. I even have to come out to my parents!

So that is what passing means to me -- it used to be my whole focus of transition, being passable and stealth. But take away my name, my clothes and shave my head and out me to everyone, and I understand a lot better the position of transsexuals who I used to mock and feel self-righteous towards (though I'm still not 40 with a wife and kids). I am a lot more sympathetic and humble. I used to say that I didn't remember why I transitioned, that I was a girl simply because I was one yesterday and the day before and I just get up and go to work and live my life. Well, now I know why I transitioned -- because there is no life for me as a man, it's far too depressing and lifeless and what was true for me as a teenager is still true, that without killing my male self and living as a female I would likely end up killing myself altogether (either actively or just through drinking).

I have been the one to say that if you can't pass, you shouldn't transition. While I still believe that people need to be realistic and know the realities of living a transitioned life, I realize how much of an impossibility it is for many people to continue living a male life. It doesn't matter to me if any man is attracted to me again, I'm not going to base my self-image on that. If I walk down the street and I look like a crossdresser, that's the reality. If I'm never going to be able to go stealth again (well, it would be hard in this town anyway), I will have to accept the reality that I am a transsexual woman.

When my parents found out I was on hormones, they threw me out (I was 19 and had already been at university a year but it was summer). It took a couple years of not seeing them before they were desperate enough to have me in their life even if I was a girl. But my mom said that I should be open about my trans status (especially with men) and not hide it from my friends. I thought she was ridiculous then, I was happy being a 22 year old girl without strings. But now I am 24 and maybe a bit wiser, especially after the craziness of the past few months. I don't see myself being a trans activist, but if I can accept my trans status without being ashamed of it (I was quite embarrassed by it) then I have grown up from this experience.

I am a trans woman, passable or not.