Transgender people: do you know/have you met any?

:(

Also, I knew about Bimble for a long time before he passed. There must have been some thread where I mentioned some research I'd done on intersex individuals that he found interesting. He IMd me one night and started talking about that and told me he was FtM. After that I think he felt like he could talk to me about it because he would often do so especially when he was having troubles.

I have only met one once so far as I know - there may well be dozens as I am not a particularly observant type around people.

Anyway, this one appeared as a particularly flamboyant woman - all leopard prints, bright lipstick and so forth - in an otherwise very sober meeting. She was also being very loud, scatty and indiscreet, so once I twigged the effect was totally drag-queenie. Certainly the ladies were all giggling along naughtily at her conversation.

I say 'twigged', but actually she announced in a very loud voice that she was transsexual, which was at least partly on-topic in the conversation. The really funny thing was that as she talked about this she continually kept tripping up and had to correct herself to 'transgender', which made me wonder who exactly the more pc terms are meant for.

bashful people who blush at the syllable "sex"?

the only one I really knew was Bimble; there was a professor I think at Spring Arbor University (Free Methodist university I went to for a year) who was MtF, but he didn't get the surgery done til after I had left; I don't think I ever knew who he was...

I know a few. I've met many.

have worked with several over the years, but that's about it

Well, Bimble was one for starters of course.

whoah I did know this.

:(

My position, as I said upthread, is that I didn't really 'understand' why someone would need to make such a change that required moderating their behaviour for the rest of their life, talking to one of the girls that knew him well, I added that all the things she does (walking, picking up a knife and fork, scratching yr ear) doesn't have to be done ina qualified manner.

from the little i know about the subject, i think it is actually just the opposite - transitioning to the gender they most identify with means they can ~stop~ having to self-consciously moderate many of their behaviours.

anyone seen Prodigal Son? very interesting doc about a M2F, but actually ends up being more about her brother.

amy bloom also has a really interested book on this: Normal

*interesting

I have some odds and ends of books that I pick up just around, and one called Transgender Warriors was and has been really fascinating to me. Favorable review here.

from the little i know about the subject, i think it is actually just the opposite

I was basing that on hearing that people do go to 'feminising' classes, to learn walking/wine-glass holding, speaking, etc...

Anecdotal evidence, sure, but.

A guy who used to work where I work transitioned after he left here (he had come in for some consulting work a couple times so I had met him as a man). He dropped in again once after this, I guess in the "living as a woman" phase and I didn't recognize her; pretty passable as a woman. Later got the surgery and moved to the Bay area. And someone said she was living with another M2F.

I know a couple of M2F transgender people. One of them I knew for 3 years before she mentioned this fact, and I almost fell off my chair with surprise.

Normal they have at my public library, I just put it on reserve. They do not have the one Laurel recc'd but it sounds interesting too.

I read a book called Born A Boy, Raised A Girl about David Reimer (orig article the book developed into here). Reimer's physchologist/doctor was a guy named John Money, who I guess was orig a big leading supporter of transppl & research abt transppl. HE...he is a man I would like to figure out.

I know a few. I've met many.

I'm surprised at the number of people who say they have worked with transgendered people. Those who worked with transgendered people, what were your/their jobs? (I mean, I know transgendered people have jobs with other people, so I don't know why I should be surprised. Maybe b/c I've held quite a few jobs but I'm as sure as possible that I have never worked with a TG person. Closest would be a guy I waited tables with who lived as a transvestite for a couple of years while he was prostituting, but I don't think he identified as a woman.)

I have known one TG person, a MTF who was in a couple of my college classes.

Im in IT. You don't see the public working on a helpdesk, so.

(also, ISP work is heavily skewed with nerd/alt lifestyle types anyway quite often)

My mom had a friend who was also a coworker of mine at one point who has since decided he identifies as a woman. I haven't really seen him since the change. It was sort of surprising though, because (1) he didn't come off as feminine at all and (2) he was just physically very unwomanlike and probably does not make the greatest looking woman -- he was sort of stout with a bald head and a turtlish face. He also seemed happy and funny and well-adjusted when I worked with him. One never knows, do one.

The person I mentioned is a software engineer, quite smart (Caltech graduate). I didn't pick up on any feminine characteristics the 2 or 3 times I was around him before the change. In fact, when a coworker told me i had to have her repeat it because I was sure I had misunderstood her.

The only one I know of, and not peronsally, is the author Poppy Z Brite, who I was a huge fan of in college and met a couple of times. Recently I learned through twitter that Brite now identifies as male and goes by Doc. But harder to do that because though she always had a big lgbt following, the early celebrity has made it hard for her to transition from she to he. It's interesting to me ...and a brave step, because you are really inviting people to know you from the inside out, and there's a certain openness that you have to have...I think about it a lot,

Whoa I used to love PZB's stuff in high school. Did not know that!

I never read PZB but I know of her and her cult following. I didn't know that either. interesting!

Jan Morris' memoir "Conundrum" is really interesting, if you want to read somebody talking about transitioning- she was a great writer anyway, and her life was amazing.

now that I think of it, I guess I've known/know four transgender people, not the two listed upthread. I kind of forgot about some folks.

It was kind of interesting but disconcerting to see that one friend who had been cool with being part of a larger "queer" art community in SF in the early 90s got very, er, straightlaced once her surgery was done. Once she was post-op, she just wanted to date a normal dude and be a wife and live in the suburbs and really wasn't into gay activism / lesbians / drag queens /performance art "weirdos" / marginality in general. I guess for me that was when the penny dropped that a deliberately "anti-" stance is something that some queers identity with for life, and for some people, it's a kind of temporary zone while they are on their way to something more gender-normative on the other side of surgery/drugs/transitioning in the case of transgender people, or more gender-normative on the other side of assimilation / focusing on yr career / getting on with life in general. Queerness doesn't seem all that at stake for some people.

I had a big argument with a str8 friend about transgender people once. She was saying (I'm summarizing here) "I feel when I see an obvious transgender person like they are forcing me to be in some kind of play that they are putting on, like I have to pretend to not notice that they are transgender- I feel sort of co-erced into being a prop for their identity". I was annoyed by this argument and just said "What makes you think that this person living their life in gender X or Y is somehow for or about YOU-as-spectator? It's not about you, it's about their autonomy." It was weird, because she was a smart, not-homophobic person, she was cool w gays and lesbians, but trannies, specifically, triggered this reaction.

I have never met one, but I'm sure in my travels I've probably passed some and didn't even know it, the medical technology is getting so significantly better that you cannot tell anymore.

Only ever met one, an RAF helicopter pilot, M2F. Quite disconcerting the first time I met her, looked like Grayson Perry dressed as a woman, even though she was wearing her flying suit. Can't imagine what it must have been like to come out to your fellow pilots and other personnel, the military's not renowned for it's touchy-feely side of things.

Those who worked with transgendered people, what were your/their jobs?

one worked with me at a coffee shop in college, the other did our phone service/system installation at my current office. I'm probably forgetting others, certainly in SF there's plenty

Link to an entry about her FTM transition on PZB's blog if anyone's interested http://docbrite.livejournal.com/766469.html

I met one a few years back when she came to my house to service my washing machine. Christina was her name, MTF. Cool person, huge hands.

I published PZB in the late '90s and haven't been in touch for years, so... whoa!

Yeah I know. She blogged about 12 months ago about how she isn't writing any more and please don't ask her to kind of thing, but the FTM transition thing was something I only recently learned...though all I could think was, well I guess that explains the detailed sex scenes in Exquisite Corpse :)

a series of bad choices punctuated by the lighting of cigarettes

this is rather fine, i'll be passing this line off as my own at the soonest opportunity

I've been in a few bands with a man->woman who dated women and always thought of her as a her, nothing else really. She's a really great person and in all my years of knowing her all of our friends have been supportive of her. Never asked if she had an operation or anything, never really thought it was my business.

Also years ago i lived w this girl who dated a guy who wore fake boobs and was pre-op and I dont know if he ever went thru it. They were crusty art kids but he was definitely into it as a lifestyle choice. I took my girlfriend at the time on some double dates with those two where everyone was cross-dressing, which was pretty fun!

uh PZB is now F2M?
wow.

LOVED HER BOOKS AS A TEEN!

yeah, she was #1 on my list back in the day, for sure

Known a few M2F through the comix scene. Always M2F for some reason.

Have met some. Don't currently know any well.

Used to be friends with someone who was living as a woman and once mentioned saving up for the op. Never did it; has grown a beard and is now introducing himself as his birth name, so I assume he's reconciled with manhood now. (Is it unusual for someone to get that far and change their mind? A friend of a friend seems to be a pretty similar story too.)

A friend of a friend of mine is F to M (rather visibly so) and I *think* his partner is, too, but he is literally so much "half of both" that I just can't tell.

xposts I loved PZB in HS too! (Caitlin Kiernan is trans, too, right?)

I know plenty of drag people, but afaik no transgendered ones.

PZB falls onto my list of people who's artistic output I don't partic. care for, but would love to go out for a drink with. She used to call herself a "non-operative transsexual" which I think is pretty cool.

Re work, of the two M2F women I know, one works as admin in my job (non-govt health org in Australia), so meets all the people who come in to the org
The other is a gynaecologist

I was talking with a friend (straight, male, usually very progressive) about Amanda Lepore and somehow we got onto the topic of whether she was a woman or not. He didn't come right out and say she wasn't, but he asked "Well, did she get ovaries? What about a uterus?" I changed the subject b/c we have a history of arguing, but I think, you know, must be nice to feel entitled to decide another person's gender/sex. (Also, in response to the story of the extreme possessiveness and abusiveness of her the ex-boyfriend who funded much of her surgeries, he expressed some sympathy for him, seeing as he was funding her "art project." Looking back, an argument seems justified....)

"So, if a woman gets a radical hysterectomy, she's not a woman anymore?"

I wouldn't label someone reactionary for that (the first part) - it's hardly outrageous to believe sex/gender to be biological.

must be nice to feel entitled to decide another person's gender/sex

don't think many people really pass this test of absolute non-decision, but 'it must be nice' to

It's just surprising and disappointing when I realize that people who I expect to be enlightened about what I think of as fairly mundane ideas about gender make statements like those above. Maybe my expectations are ahead of reality, but I know certain people whose understanding of gender and sex I expect to be on par with their thoughts on race or homosexuality. E.g., I wouldn't expect any of my close friends to oppose miscegeny, either.

idk, it's not clear your friend 'opposed' whatever it is we're talking about. if your expectation is that everyone accepts that our 'gender/sex' is whatever we decide, and not by anyone else, then yeah, you're probably a little far ahead of reality.

i think you can be okay with people's right to choose their gender and still believe that sex is biologically determined. i do at least. if nothing is biologically determined that why would a transgender individual need to 'trans' their gender? they would just be what they always were