Paula's Place

Paula's Place

Sunday 20 November 2011

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I started writing this post about a month ago, since then we have the television screening a series about a group of transgendered people meeting up at weekends which follows their progress, and the international day of remembrance.   Both of these have served to raise awareness of girls like us.   I am sure that there is still a lot of confusion in the minds of most people about who we are, what we do and why we do it.   Heck there's still a lot of confusion in my mind! so back to my original post;-

As cross dressers we have a low profile, almost by definition we do not want to be noticed as cross dressers.   The aim is to pass as a genetic girl, not to stand out but to blend in, Stana has written here http://www.femulate.org/2011/10/better-read-than-dead.html and here http://www.femulate.org/2011/10/dressing-to-please-yourself.html about when we stand out from the crowd.   I hope that when I do stand out from the crowd that it is in a positive way.   As I have said elsewhere I try not to look like a transvestite or a clown, I want to look like a well presented lady out about her business.   I suspect that is how most of us feel when we do mange to get out, we don't want to be objects of attention.   On a personal level that is good and understandable, however I wonder what most people think about cross dressers, who and what they think we are.  
Eddie in sultry mood

If someones sole contact with the trans community is what they see on the interweb then we are doomed!   While blogs like Femulate, Call me Meg and I hope this one are of some help, I suspect that they are almost exclusively viewed by cross dressers.  
Grayson Perry
The sheer amount of trans pornography that is available suggests that A/ it is popular and that B/ a lot of people are getting their sole impression of trans people this way.   This is worrying because as with all porn it is a simple objectification for the third persons sexual gratification, in other words nothing to do with reality.   How often when trying to explain ourselves to someone do we have to make it clear that it is not about being gay, it is not about sex, maybe the proliferation of this porn is partly to blame.   I say partly because there is very little else in main stream society about us.   In the UK we have two cross dressing heroes, Grayson Perry the artist and Turner Prize winner and of course Eddie Izzard, these two have a fairly high profile but they are far from typical so that most peoples ideas (if they any) of cross dressers are limited.   We need more heroines to come forward and explain to the populace what we are about, to educate our children and talk to our media - just as long as it's not me......

1 comment:

Arianwen said...

Nice post here Paula! There is just too much to digest here to limit to just a short comment. I will now have to answer your blog post with one of my own. Thanks for the food for thought!