Oh-ho-ho stop me Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before
"What's Victoria's Secret?" he asked.
Nobody answered.
"She used to be Victor!"
I heard this joke this morning in my Design class. It was very upsetting right off the bat, and I found myself reacting, instead of, as I prefer, responding.
As the collective groans went up, I said, over the top of them, "oh, wow, great, transgender jokes. Hilarious." The room went dead silent. We locked eyes, the student who told the joke and me. He started to stammer.
"Oh, I didn't mean anything offensive by it," he managed to spit out.
"Yeah, but it was offensive. It's really gross, actually."
"Okay, but I didn't mean to offend anyone with —"
"Usually, when people offend someone else, they will —"
A photo posted by Seranine Elliot (@aggressivefrontpocket) on
Class resumed. We had assignments due this morning, so we had all put our projects up on the back wall and were preparing to talk about lines and continuity and contrast and emphasis. When the instructor handed me a jack-o-lantern bucket to put my grading sheet in, I didn't understand that I was supposed to fold my paper into quarters, and then also pass the bucket around.
"I'm sorry," I said to the teacher, after he'd explained it directly to me a second time. "I'm a bit distracted."
"Yeah," he lamented. "Sorry about that."
"Oh, I'll be fine," I answered, passing the bucket along.
"This is how we can tell you never went to church," my friend Erica quipped, trying to cheer me up.
"Is that the giveaway?" I smiled back at her.
Critiques went on, but I kept mulling over this problem in my head. I knew the joke was offensive, and even the guy who told it knew. He'd let it slip before considering the audience. I've done that millions of times. I have a lot of room to forgive that construct on its own merits, because I know it so well. I also usually have a lot of room to forgive ignorance. After all, a year ago, I might've made the same joke, because I had the same ignorance. (Remind me to tell you some time about how my Ok Cupid dating profile, right up until I realized I was a girl and shut it down, contained the term "she-male.")
I'm sure that the guy who told the joke thought it was a harmless play on names. And many trans women do adapt their birth names into a feminine form. In a space like this, where I felt empowered to speak up because we were at a school with "Safe Zone" and "Trans Safe Space" stickers everywhere, where I felt like there was institutional readiness to defend me, where I was not afraid of repercussions, I was able to challenge the joke. But I wasn't able to quite explain why it was offensive, only that it was. And that's what made it a reaction and not a response.
I had more reactive thoughts, but I was able to recognize them for what they were pretty quickly, and, after biting this guy's face off, I was able to reject these thoughts, to refuse to act on them. I'd remembered how, for example, at The Art Institute of Seattle, I was told to go directly to the Dean of Student Affairs if anyone gave me any abuse for being trans, because the school had a zero-tolerance policy on that kind of behavior. Which means that, had this been a class there, I would've been within my rights to have this guy removed from the program, removed from the school entirely, for not realizing that the joke he was about to tell was offensive before he told it, and then not ever actually telling it.
And I feel like that's a bit extreme. It's like when we have a passenger plane shot down by an RPG in the Middle East, and three Americans and a Canadian die, so we send in The Whole Fucking Army and bomb the shit out of the village the RPG was fired from, and then install a new mayor there, bring our soldiers home, and promptly ignore their PTSD and missing limbs. It's not an appropriate, proportional response. It's a reaction, a gross overreaction, and it makes everything so, so, so much worse. While critiques were in progress, I sussed this all out. And now, I have my response.
This joke isn't just offensive because it mocks and then erases Victoria's own narrative, whatever it may be. It's offensive because it gets people killed.
This same joke, told in a different setting, say, a bar, about a woman who is actually at the bar, can also be meant to be harmless and inoffensive. Maybe the one telling it has the sense that it's cruel on some level, so they make sure that the woman at the bar can't hear. Maybe someone who does hear it is a drunk guy who had been trying to work up the courage to go ask her if she comes here often.
Now, while his judgment is impaired, he is challenged with things he was not prepared to be challenged with. "If she 'used to be Victor,' then she was born a man!" he might think. "Does this make me gay?" he might think, which is usually not happily followed with, "oooo, I should figure that out for myself," but rather, "I'm no faggot." With fear and loathing. "Maybe instead of one of us, I'm... one of them."
Maybe Victoria only feels the mood in the bar shift out of her favor. Maybe she only notices that all the friendly, interested glances have turned to confused and angry ones. Maybe someone blocks her way when she tries to go to the bathroom, and insists she use the "right one," the men's room, instead. Maybe she ends up not going to the bathroom at all. Maybe she goes home, safe on the outside, and kills herself. Or maybe she's dragged into the men's room and forced to go. Or maybe she gets beaten up. Maybe she gets raped. Maybe she gets murdered.
That's a lot of maybes. But not the imaginary maybes of trans-women-are-men-who-want-to-attack-our-daughters-in-bathrooms. It's the maybes that are very plausible backstory to the kinds of killings that keep on happening. Whether some guy at the bar actually destroys Victoria, or whether she learns to hate herself so thoroughly that, in the end, she destroys herself, these jokes, these mock narratives, are often key elements of the setting. Sometimes they move from the background to the foreground, and become catalysts.
And if that happened in any state but California, the murderer's
defense attorney would be able to legally argue in a court of law that Victoria was to blamefor her own murder.
That the defendant was "so shocked to
learn that their victim was gay or trans that they had no other recourse besides violence." That Victoria shouldn't have been out in public as herself. That because she
didn't hide who she was, she was more or less asking for it.
Who said I lied, because I never, I never Who said I lied, because I never
When critiques ended, we were put on a short break. I went up to the guy who'd told the joke in the first place, and gave him one of my cards.
Nothing's changed I still love you, oh I still love you
A photo posted by Seranine Elliot (@aggressivefrontpocket) on
"I hope you know, I don't have any prejudice against anyone," he said. His body language said he didn't want my card. That he didn't need it because he didn't hate anyone.
Only slightly, only slightly less Than I used to
"Yeah, but we sometimes still say shitty things because we don't understand. I'm inviting you to get to know me," I said. "I blog about stuff like what happened in here earlier," I continued, as he took the card grudgingly. "Because I think it's important. I'm going to write about it soon."
In computer programming, one type of problem we run into is the "syntax error," which, as the name suggests, is an error of language. You may have, in your mind, the perfect programmatically logical solution, very clean and elegant, but if you don't put it into the exact terms that the compiler requires in order to understand what you are trying to say, it will fail to process. It may even process in unexpected ways, leading to actions you never could have predicted. But usually, it just stops completely.
This has become analogous to how my interactions about being trans have been with some people who are religious. I knew from the start that a scientific or statistical argument would never resonate with a religious person, because their religion is the lens through which they see reality. A Woman of Science would not accept biblical arguments as valid, in the same way that many a Man of God chooses his own interpretation of his religion over any empirical argument.
What I have to communicate is not unclear. The way in which it has to be presented in order to be deciphered correctly is what eludes me.
The most common thing I've heard from Western religion is that capital-G God commands us to love one another above all else. I'm on board with that. I've written elsewhere about my realization that I actually love everyone. The idea of a synthetic social control mandating that everyone who subscribes to it must love everyone else in the universe doesn't really upset me. I think it's a basically good thing that would lead to basically good actions.
Where we may differ is on the definition of love (as a sentiment one has for others). I describe it as "desiring health, safety, and happiness for someone." I'd love for someone to offer me the Christian definition of love, because I am only able to argue from a position of ignorance about the other side's definition, but I can't help but imagine that it's essentially the same. The core of it, the simplest form, is probably identical or nearly so.
I was walking, today, through what I suppose I'd call the quad at Everett Community College, and I passed a trio of what I colloquially (and I hope inoffensively) think of as "Jesus People." I paused and turned back because I thought I recognized one of them from before. Like, Before, before. She was talking to someone else, offering encouraging superlatives and generally trying to be pleasant and supportive of a stranger. This made me smile.
A photo posted by Seranine Elliot (@aggressivefrontpocket) on
When the person she'd been talking to walked away, I said, "I think I knew you from here before..." and she said, "right, from acting or something? We hung out with Zorana," and I said, "yeah! That was it." We chatted for a moment, and I offered her one of my cards. She asked, "what was your name before, again?" and I answered, "it was Jason."
"RIGHT," she said, "I knew it was like Jason or Jacob or something." I said it was good to see her again, and said she was welcome to chat with me via my Facebook link from the card. I started to leave.
And then, she asked if I minded if she prayed for me.
I said I'd feel sort of selfish accepting a prayer when I'm really not doing too badly, in the grand scheme of things. She expressed that offering prayers, the process of it, was a gift to her, so it wouldn't be selfish for me to accept one. That made me smile, too, and I said, "I do need to find a job." So, she ran with that.
It started plainly enough, with phrases like, "Lord, I just thank you for bringing us here together today," and such. But eventually she hit a point where she had to use my pronouns, and she said "him." She seemed to have a little cognitive dissonance about it, which is appropriate, I think. I let it go and waited for the next one. "His." "Jason."
"That's not my name," I said, interrupting her prayer. "And it's 'she,' 'her,' and 'hers,' not 'he,' or 'him,' or 'his.'"
"But that's not how I know you," she said.
"But that's not who I ever was," I replied. "My name is Seranine."
"Who you were is who God made you," she answered, or something to that effect.
"If I was created by God, then I was made with a woman's brain in a man's body, and if that can't be a mistake, then it was done with a purpose." I spoke quietly, but firmly.
I declined the rest of her prayer, and moved away with a wistful smile. I was happy because she was out there, making her occupation loving others as honestly and completely as she knew how. And I was sad because that love came with conditions.
Surely if there is a God who is capable of all things and is infallible, They can love everyone everywhere without conditions. Even I can do that.
"I love you," she called out.
"I know," I said. "I love you, too."
The good news was that I am sure we both meant it. We both meant it with our own definitions of "love." That's a good start.
I found this on my Facebook somewhere. I'm going to actually answer them all right now:
1. "When Did You Decide to Switch Genders?"
I never switched. Therefore, I never decided.
What a person asking this question is usually trying to ask is when someone realized they were not the gender they'd been designated at birth, and/or when they acted on that realization by beginning physiological transition processes. I first began to realize that I'd been incorrectly designated male at birth (DMAB) on August 10, 2014. I began transition more or less immediately.
2. "What's Your Real Name?"
Seranine Elliot. I had it legally changed on September 3, 2014. The "nine" part sounds like the number. Most people just call me "Sera," which basically sounds the same as "Sara" or "Sarah." The full name rhymes with "Caroline" with a schwa for the "o," including stress and inflection.
Keep in mind that a legal name change is not free. Many trans people choose a new name for themselves, but do not necessarily have the resources to get it legally changed at the same time. Many trans people are also reluctant to release their previous name, because it is usually used to harass, abuse, and/or disrespect them.
3. "Can I See a Picture of You Before You Transitioned?"
Sure, here's a whole pile of them. Pre-transition and/or pre-realization pictures show trans people under
duress. A picture of someone who is not able to be their authentic self
can be painful to even think about, let alone share. I publish mine because I want to shed light on my own process, so cis people can see for themselves how ordinary it all is, how human, and so trans people can see that it can be done, even for someone who didn't realize she'd always been a girl until she was almost 40.
4. "I'm Impressed - You Look Just Like a REAL Woman!"
This is meant to be complimentary, generally, but it necessarily implies that trans women are not actual women, which is false. I haven't personally heard this one to my face, yet, but I imagine that I'd probably reply with a thank-you, followed immediately by an explanation of why that's considered an unkind thing to say to a trans woman.
5. "Have You Had the Operation Yet?"
I suspect that most of the people who ask this sort of question are so overwhelmed by their curiosity about something they are usually completely unfamiliar with that they forget they are asking these questions of another human being. And human beings, broadly speaking, do not enjoy talking details about their genitals with most other human beings.
Fortunately, I am a cat.
I have not had Genital Reconstructive Surgery (GRS) or an orchiectomy (removal of the testes). (UPDATE: I had my orchiectomy on January 22, 2016.) If you really care to know when I have either, the best way to find out, honestly, would be to follow my social media. I'd go with my Facebook Public Figure Page, if I were you, but if you don't care about a by-the-minute level of detail, and just want to read a nice summary of it all whenever I get to writing about it, following this blog will do.
6. "Can You Still Have Orgasms?"
Much like #5 above, this is generally not good acquaintance-conversation fodder. The general rule is that if you wouldn't ask it of anybody else, you should probably not ask it of a trans person, either.
I am, in most arenas, an exception, because I have publicly and repeatedly said that I welcome questions as long as they are civil and respectful. My short answer to this question is, "yes." My long answer is probably another entire blog post, at least.
7. "Do You Take Hormones?"
Like most medical issues, this is usually considered private and personal. I am, again, an exception, because I am deliberately sharing my progress with as wide an audience as possible.
A photo posted by Seranine Elliot (@aggressivefrontpocket) on
My specific drugs, doses, and changes to either are usually not too hard to find. I tend to post about them on my Instagram, and share those posts to my Facebook Page. Right now, my Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) regimen is 2mg estradiol, 200mg spironolactone, and 5mg medroxyprogesterone daily.
8. "Wow, I Actually Find You Kind of Attractive - Great Job!"
I've actually heard this one, or some variant of it, a few times. Like #4, it's meant to be complimentary, but it's not hard to see why it isn't. It's objectifying, for starters, and it also makes a pretty bold assumption about someone's motivations for presenting themselves in whatever way. Whenever I've dressed up and put on makeup, which is most of the time when I leave the house, I've literally never done it with the intent of pleasing anyone else in any way. I do it primarily because it feels right.
It also says that you believe that the trans person you are saying this to is not normally seen as attractive by anyone, so they should be happy to hear that you, at least, find them somewhat attractive, so their future will not be as loveless and bleak as you had imagined it would otherwise be. This is kind of a horrible sentiment to share with anyone, for any reason. Even if someone is conventionally "unattractive," pointing that out to them in this kind of backhanded manner is as cruel as any other way of pointing it out. Chances are, they know how they are seen by society at large.
For myself, yes, there is definitely an element of trying to present to the culture, but since I'm a trans ambassador, I worry less about maintaining that presentation than I imagine most trans women do. I'm also fortunate enough to be slim and have relatively little body hair, on a body that was kind of androgynous to begin with, and is also white enough to be treated as capital-W White. Which means people more readily accept me as a woman, all other things being equal, than a trans woman who is comparably dressed, but darker, or with more body hair, or broader shoulders.
9. "Is It Okay to Still Call You 'He'? Sorry - It's Just Confusing!"
(I adapted this question to me; their version shows a presumably trans man to support the text.)
It's not okay to call me "he," because my gender is not male. I appreciate how it could be confusing for people who were around me before I knew who I was; until August of 2014, I'd never directly questioned the gender I was designated, either, so we all just moved along acting as though I was a guy. If I'd been called "she" then, or some other female pronoun, I would've been upset. That's because people tend to not like being called a gender other than the one they think they are. (Which is not necessarily the one they actually are, and yes, I realize that that opens the door to the idea that a trans person only thinks they are a gender other than the one they were designated at birth. But I basically used to think I was male, whereas I now know that I'm female. I've done the work in challenging and examining my own gender, so I'm no longer operating on an assumption. I'm dealing with an absolute truth.)
If you are a cis male, imagine that everyone, everywhere called you "ma'am," or "miss," and referred to you with she/her/hers, instead of he/him/his. As someone who knows himself to be male, and who understands that to be an absolutely true part of your core identity, that would be immediately distressing. It would feel frustrating and degrading, and if you had no way to get most people, most of the time, to gender you correctly, it could even feel overwhelmingly hopeless. And all of that is the very common trans person's experience.
Some people honestly do not know trans people's pronouns, and are visibly agitated while they try to figure them out. I suggest simply asking someone what their pronouns are. Not what they prefer, but what they are. Just like your pronouns, they are simple fact, not preference. Once they've told you what their pronouns are, do your best to respect them, and apologize if you fuck them up. If you do those things genuinely, it will be enough.
10. "What Does Sex Feel Like for You?"
Just like #6, there is a short answer ("fucking amazing"), and a long answer which is far too complex to dump into a survey-level post like this. It would also require co-authoring, or at least getting an okay to talk about some experience(s) in detail, which is, again, way too much for this particular post.
Rest assured that I am not personally shy about talking about sex and my own sexuality. However, I do want to be respectful to past and present partners, and I am also determined to present a balanced picture of who I am as an entire person, so I am reluctant to focus too intently on these topics before I've delved into plenty of other things that are only related by being parts of me. That is, you will probably see a post about my return to World of Warcraft long before you see the post about what sex feels like for me.
11. "Wait - If I'm Attracted to You, Am I Still Straight?"
If you are a woman, then, probably not. If you are a man, then, probably yes. (This is a much more complex question than it seems like, and it's got an answer even more complex than that. As soon as I've developed or found a better model for explaining it, I'll share, but in the meantime, these are more or less correct responses.) If you are unsure about why this could be considered offensive, then consider the same question posed by a person of the opposite gender to you.
12. "Which Bathroom Do You Use?"
In public, gender-segregated bathroom situations, I use the same bathroom as all the other women. Just like #11, it's easy to see how this question is offensive if you imagine someone asking it to you.
13. "So What Surgeries HAVE You Had?"
Like #5, this is usually considered private, personal information, like any other medical information. And as in other questions here, I'm not generally shy about answering them for myself, while explaining why the question is usually considered offensive. I've had no surgeries yet, per se, although I have been getting electrolysis on an hour-a-week schedule since November 7, 2014. The only major surgeries I intend to definitely get as of now are GRS, and a chondrolaryngoplasty, also known as a "tracheal shave." That reduces the appearance of the Adam's apple.
Just like most of the things I share about my life and my transition, if you want to keep up on details, my Facebook Page is a good place to start. If you want more long-form analytical kinds of pieces and don't care about knowing that I've had GRS the instant I've actually had GRS, then this blog is all you need to track.
14. Using Words Like "Tranny" and "Shemale" (Even Jokingly)
Yeah, these are slurs, which means their primary purpose is to degrade and dehumanize people. You should avoid using them, unless your purpose is to educate, as I'm doing here. I suppose if your goal is to actually degrade and dehumanize someone, then these are appropriate words to use, but if that's your goal, that's kind of awful, to be honest.
15. "What Did Your Family Think? I Mean Really... It's Kind of Selfish."
My immediate family, to my knowledge, is fine with it. I know firsthand that my brother, his wife, and all of their children are very supportive, and have been from the moment I told them. My parents, though I still very rarely speak to them (I've actually only called them once in the last few years, on Mother's Day 2015), are also, at worst, fine with it, as far as I've been able to tell.
My kids know by now, I'm sure, because their mother knows. She found out at some point after I started publishing this blog, since I found out that she found out when she posted an unsurprisingly very-off-topic comment on the latest post at that time. What any of them truly think of it, I don't know. Whenever I'm finally able to actually see my kids again, I will probably write about it here.
There is nothing selfish about being one's authentic self. What is selfish is to demand that someone else deny their very identity so that you can feel more comfortable. The whole idea that it's necessary to "protect the children" from uncommon genders and gender presentations is absurd for two reasons: one, kids don't have trouble wrapping their heads around them until or unless they are programmed to by their adults, and two, cis kids don't need protection from being uncomfortable because someone failed to model empathy and objectivity for them; but trans kids need protecting from misinformation and ignorance about trans people in general, and from violence, whether they do it to themselves, or someone else does it to them. They also need to be able to see healthy, happy, and safe role models. Role models like me.
16. "How Do You Have Sex?"
Just like #6 and #10, there is a short answer ("usually lying down"), and a longer answer which requires other people to be okay with me sharing intimate details, and for me to simultaneously have the time and energy to do so, and for my social media presence to be in general showing a relatively balanced and accurate view of who I am as a whole person, not just as a sexual being. So, I'll probably write about it eventually, but I wouldn't suggest you wait around for it with, dare I say it, bated breath.
17. "Are You Sure You're Not Just Gay?"
Oh, I'm very sure I'm very gay. I mean, I could be gayer. But I'm pretty fucking gay. This isn't a very good question to ask someone who's come out to you as trans for a couple reasons.
One, gender is not sexuality. I've always been predominantly attracted to women, and ever-so-slightly-but-mostly-just-theoretically attracted to men. My sexual preference didn't change. (I had thought it might, but it's shown no real signs of shifting.) All that changed was my understanding of my reference point to it. That is, I'd assumed I was male, so I saw my self as straight, or straight-preference. I've always actually been female, so I've been gay or gay-preference all along.
Two, it presumes that they've not considered this angle themselves. And that's pretty presumptuous.
18. "So, You're Transgender - That's Like Being a Drag Queen, Right?"
No, because drag queens are men who are pretending to be women, because entertainment, while trans women are women who are actually women, because reality. There can be some physical commonalities between some trans women, and your average drag queen, so I don't actually find it to be completely impossible to understand the origins of this question. That said, I hope you can all understand why it is usually going to be hurtful, and is definitely ignorant.
19. "Why Don't You Try Harder? Nobody Can Even Tell You're a Woman!"
(I adapted this question to me; their version shows a presumably trans man to support the text.)
I haven't gotten this question yet. Mostly because I "pass" pretty well when I've shaved and done my makeup and put together a decent outfit, which is most of the time when I leave the house. But also because, at least in fairly liberal western Washington, people tend to realize it's a shitty thing to say.
A photo posted by Seranine Elliot (@aggressivefrontpocket) on
I've seen some raised eyebrows as people worked to determine what I was without being told during this current quarter back at the community college. Since two of my three classes each day are arts classes involving paints and clay, I haven't bothered doing makeup or dressing up ever, for the most part. I've also stopped scheduling electrolysis around massive time windows, to allow for me to grow out enough facial hair for my electrologist to actually get ahold of and remove, without being seen in public. But even so, everyone here just seems to get it.
The short answer to why this is a horrible question is best summed up in this Erin McKean quote: "Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female.’" The long answer, which is a much broader concept, but which answers this question, and many others, is the subject of a future blog post on where gender is.
20. "So You're a Transvestite?"
No. As in #18, these are different things, although they can be understandably confusing from the outside. A transvestite is a man who enjoys dressing and presenting in ways most commonly associated with women, and not men. Another term for "transvestite" is "cross-dresser." A woman is a woman who dresses however she dresses.
21. "Stop Trying So Hard - You Look Like a Drag Queen!"
This is definitely disrespectful, and shows a pretty profound lack of empathy. Nobody's said anything like this to me, but it should be easy for anyone to see why this kind of statement is problematic. Just like #19, it gets into society policing appearance to a nearly-codified extent; but gender isn't determined by clothing. Clothing can help you figure out your gender. It does not actually make gender.
You can test this, if you don't believe me. Or if you are bored. If you are a cis man, go put on a dress. If you are still a man, congratulations, you have confirmed that gender is not determined by clothing. If you think you are or might be a woman, congratulations, you're probably trans, and you've got me to talk to about it. If you go change back into "guy clothes" and you feel like a guy again, congratulations, you are probably genderfluid, which is, itself, a gender, and is not determined by clothing, although clothing may influence your perception of which expression is more prevalent to you at any given time.
My best advice in general for approaching a trans person with your curiosity and questions is to ask yourself a few questions, first. Questions like, "would I be okay with someone asking me the same thing?" and "can I probably look these terms up myself, and not bother them with questions they probably get all the time?"
