Transgender on TV

Transgender and transvestitism are becoming more ok on the appropriately abbreviated TV. In the last month alone I have caught the following shows.

BBC2 ran a programme on Transsexuals in Iran, watched by 1.7 million UK viewers, portraying how this Islamic country allows gender change but not homosexuality. More sex change operations are carried out there than anywhere apart from Thailand. Admittedly, for some it seemed the only way to have a legal gay relationship, and others have suggested that it is part of an Iranian program to stamp out homosexuality. Crossdressing is only allowed if you are scheduled for surgery, hence transvestitism is illegal but transsexuality ok. Triple standards.

C4’s Cutting Edge documentary Sex Change Soldier aired on 20 March 2008. Jan Hamilton, formerly Captain Ian Hamilton was a British paratrooper officer who served in the Gulf War and Afghanistan. S/he is the first British Army officer to complete gender reassignment but was dismissed from the army and cut off from her family. (Wiki)

Sexcetera ran episodes on shemale parties and visits to Fairplay Imaging‘s crossdressing services on Staten Island, NY.

Married US senator to be William Baldwin cannot end his affair and love for his transgender shemale lover in Dirty Sexy Money, the new hit US show.

Gorgeous lesbian and sexily named Portia de Rossi (she changed her name at just 15 after the famed character in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice) from Sirens and Ally McBeal now appears in Arrested Development. In a currently aired episode she is passed off by her daughter Maeby as a pre-op transexual to her school chums as her mum is getting more attention than she is and trying to date one of the high school seniors.

In the same show Barry Zuckerkorn, the Bluth family attorney, played by the Fonz, Henry Winkler is portrayed as having ambiguous sexual preferences including transvestite hookers.

Back to Portia, who wouldn’t? She is now dating Ellen DeGeneres since coming out as lesbian in 2004/5. First she feared Hollywood’s reaction then she had problems convincing anyone she was gay!

Portia de Rossi and spookily similar seeming Joely Richardson, who plays Julia McNamara coupled up as a gay relationship on Nip/Tuck in 2007, an episode about to air in the UK. Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy says that was no accident “Since the show is always about the search for identity”.

Julia’s coming out to her ex-husband Sean and fellow surgeon Christian leads the men to offer vile anti-lesbian insults. Apparently,the scripts brought back some of de Rossi’s own early experiences. “It makes me remember all the people I had to come out to and how often I had to come out,” said de Rossi, “People think you just hold a press conference, but you don’t – you tell individuals. And you cross your fingers with every single person you care about, hoping that they’ll love you just the same.”

Opening words

Lost for words?
A wordsmith’s writer’s block struggling to pen the opening lines of their next triumphant trilogy is nothing compared to the jihad of gender identity struggle. Both the bigger picture of society’s defines and the microcosm of personal confines penalise the freedom of identity exploration and expression.

Unworthy labels
In 18 months being out/ed as first a crossdresser, then transgendered and now transsexual, I have struggled to find appropriate labels. As fast as I accept one that I hitherto feared then it loses its power.

Perhaps that is why I use transgendering, the verb defines my undefinition, charts my journeyed course, and fathoms my fluidity – as all gender and sexuality should be – fluid.

We are, I am, human first, gendered second and sexually orientated third. Perhaps I am human, first, second and third. I am humansexual, have fallen in love with a person, their gender is secondary, our sexuality irrelevant. To say I feel part of a third gender is to simply turn a false binary divide into a three way split when androgenous Adam before the Fall was hermaphrodite and bodily united with his unborn Eve, made male and female.

A term I floated for myself was freemale, accepting my birth sex/gender – though that was debated for the first 2 hours of my existence – and giving myself the freedom to express that maleness in a more free and female way.

The gender fuck was in being fluid, not trying to pass and wearing my exploration on the sleeve of my blouse.

On March 26 the London Times published the anguished article of a young 20 something crossdresser caught in the turmoil of whether to tell his girlfriend. The posted comments suggested therapy, he come out as gay, and the usual trite ignorant assumptions.