Trans-and...

This year's reading started out more as pulling together different leftovers than following a specific theme. Despite that, themes emerge.

One of the leftovers was that after reading several memoirs by transgender people, I suddenly remembered Tula and wondered if she had a book:

My Story by Carolyn Cossey   

Tula was a model who got some attention for being in a James Bond movie (For Your Eyes Only) and the video for "Some Like It Hot" by The Power Station. 

Tula was her modeling name, so the book, My Story, is by Carolyn Cossey. Also, I discovered that she has another book that she wrote before that, I am a Woman. 

As the books were published in England, they can take some tracking down. I may read the first one later.

There were two things that I found most interesting.

One was the ways in which it was similar to but different from Christine Jorgensen's autobiography. There were similarities with family and upbringing. Jorgensen tried to conform for longer, but that disconnect was always there. They both started feeling immediate improvements in mood and energy once they started getting estrogen, which apparently their bodies needed but were not making.

They were born about thirty years apart, which may be a part of why Jorgensen tried conforming for longer, but also affected what was available to them, as well as the awareness.

Cossey states that she has an XXY chromosome pattern; I don't know if that information would have been available to Jorgensen.

In addition, Cossey took pains to point out the difference between a transvestite and a transsexual.

Her book was published in 1992. There were two movies I watched in that time period, one of which gave that same definition, though added to it.

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995) 

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)  

From To Wong Foo...

Noxeema Jackson:  When a straight man puts on a dress and gets his sexual kicks, he is a transvestite. When a man is a woman trapped in a man's body and has a little operation he is a Transsexual.
Miss Chi-Chi Rodriguez: I know that.
Noxeema Jackson: When a gay man has way too much fashion sense for one gender he is a drag queen.

I am not sure if that was right. 

Well, the definition of drag queen seems to track, but I think there might be a wide spectrum of clothing choices and reasons for them and how it relates to gender and all of those things. 

I mean, I think the reason they were making a point of the definition is to help legitimize transgender people, and terminology changing over time is pretty normal. Like, yes, it's okay if you think transvestites are perverts, but that is not our issue. 

I really only hear "transvestite" now when people are talking about The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

I guess it makes me wonder if there really were people who just put on the clothes for kicks, or if there were other things going on that they were not able to talk about and maybe did not yet have words for.

If people use different words now, that probably doesn't matter that much; the important this is being respectful to the people you are dealing with now.

For those movies, with all straight actors I questioned if I should even watch them. I figured that, if nothing else, that's where Hollywood was at the time. That will relate to some of the other material.

Priscilla was originally supposed to star the performers it was based on, but then they wanted bankable starts with no drag background. I think this is why the choreography wasn't that good. I thought the actors did a good job with their characters, but they were not good dancers. You can't tell me that in the country where they had just made Strictly Ballroom two years earlier that they could not do better than that. 

Anyway, I am going to say two more things, fully aware that this is not my wheelhouse. 

One, I mostly hate drag due to its tendency to be so garish and over-the-top. I know it can go many ways, yes from Paris is Burning but also from To Wong Foo (Vida Boheme especially was lovely), but a lot of what I see is just so clashing and loud! I understand it can be celebratory and that I can be repressed, but as preferences go, it's not my thing.

A memory that sticks with me is an episode of either Jerry Springer or Maury Povich. I didn't watch either regularly and I am not sure, but they were doing drag queen makeovers. Friends and family were there, and were thrilled with their straight looks. That seems like it might have been kind of awful for the made over people.

At the time, what really struck me -- and maybe my distaste for the over-the-top factor colored that -- was the way the drag seemed to scream "Look at me, but don't see me."

I totally could have misread that; some of it might have just been playing a role and one that didn't feel too close to them. If that was the case, their loved ones being glad to see those looks go might not have mattered. 

But maybe it did. 

This leaves me with a complicated, multi-part wish. It's for everyone, not just LGBTQIA+ people, but they need it too and possibly more.

I hope that you get to know yourself and find things that you like about yourself. Yes, that will probably be kind of a process.

I hope that you will find places and situations where you feel safe being you.

I hope that you will find people who like and respect you as yourself.  

If you don't show yourself to everyone all the time, that can be okay. I hope the times when you may be concealing things are not too awful, but I still hope you get all of those three. 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/11/transgender-awareness-reading-memoirs.html