Negative

Sorry if I scared anyone, but you all can set one worry aside now: My HIV test came back negative. Whatever is wrong with me, it’s not AIDS. A couple of friends have theorized tuberculosis, but that’s not too likely. Chest x-rays showed nothing and anyway, I got a TB test as part of jail intake and that was negative.

Cambridge is a busy little town

I just got around to reading Calliope’s Blog and identified with the following line, taken from a description of life in her community.

Twin Oaks is a busy little “town.” The sight of “some ugly broad” in a pink miniskirt doesn’t carry shock value for very long. Gender drama is transitory.

This is also the happy situation here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My roommate Stacy does in fact go all around town in a pink miniskirt. She wears a pink miniskirt when she’s not in the mood to wear some other color of miniskirt. Regardless of the color, she has little shock value around Cambridge. Now this isn’t because she passes as a teenage girl. Stacy– while not deserving of vulgar words (who is, really? I presume that’s the source of the quotation marks. Calliope must be quoting somebody else’s thoughtless words.) Stacy — doesn’t pass. And yet people hardly pay attention. Everything here is transitory. Gender drama was before our time.

Transcend

I should mention that I went to one of TransCEND’s events for the first time last week. Transcend is a program of CCA, where I got my HIV test, so of course I was invited to their next event. I was glad I went, and I definitely would like to go to more of their events. As at Fenway, we’re all sworn to confidentiality over what we see there, so instead I’ll talk about what I didn’t see there.  With my 6:00 pm curfew, I didn’t have time to stay for a survey they were doing for trans people who have experienced homelessness.  I met their fairly liberal criteria and I certainly would have participated if I had time.  No, I’ve never spent a night in a shelter or on the street, although I did sleep on the floor of my office that one night before I had a key to get in Stacy’s place.  I’ve been kind of homeless though for the last three months in the sense that I haven’t had the financial means to pay rent anywhere or buy my own food, and so have been relying strictly on Stacy’s compassion.  And yes, there have been consequences for my health, my risk of STDs, and my exposure to violence.  I kind of think at least a little bit of the survey would have applied to me.

Being myself

In a recent thread on crossdressers.com, a few of us discussed the goal of “just being ourselves.” The first step, of course, is knowing just what that means for each of us. What do I want to be? How do I want to be? What is Sonia’s ideal for just being herself? The context of the original question was to ask how to avoid conforming to pressures and expectations of society, doing things that women are “supposed” to do, including, for us transwomen, going to extra effort to appear to the public as women are “supposed” to appear. Sadly, the answer for most of us identifying as TS involves not going to all the effort necessary to appear in public as passable as we can, or at least not all of the time.

That was me this morning. I got very little sleep last night and was really dragging this morning. Out the door very late, with a droopy face, no makeup, and worse, black hairs sprouting out here and there on my face. My first stop on the way to work was at the watch shop. I had dropped my watch off last Friday and then forgotten to pick it up. Inside, the clerk was helping one person on the phone, and another person was waiting to be helped, so I milled around in the store waiting my turn, and meandering closer to the counter as I sensed that my turn was coming up. I was standing right at the counter then, although facing away to look at some display, when the clerk said “ma’mm? Can I help you?” I turned to face her and she startled and said out loud, “Oh!” as her instincts told her she had mistakenly referred to a man as a woman. I’m guessing that another instinct had her preparing to apologize immediately but that this instinct was silenced when her conscious thinking caught up and told her, “no, that’s not right either.” Her mouth closed and her composure returned as I began explaining, with as much cheer as I could muster, that I had dropped off a watch last Friday…. She was fine then, we carried on typically friendly customer conversation, it turned out to be only the battery, $13 and I walked out the door with a working watch on my wrist again.

So, such is my sad fate, but I was being “myself.” This morning, that meant doing the best I could in the circumstances. It meant understanding possible reasons for the reaction I got from the clerk, and being ok with it. It meant feeling a little uncomfortable that I subjected her to my rough appearance, but being pleased when she recovered just fine. A little sad that I’m not always “together” enough to look better in public, but happy with my willingness to go about my business as myself. Sad that I’m not always the prettiest transwoman around Harvard Square, but still happier to have the public see me in whatever state I’m in than have them not see me at all.

Finding friends in the computer age

Some common cries for help on the message boards of the various TG online communities are location related:

• I’m going to be in <location> on <date> on business. Can someone help me find something safe and fun to do in the evening?
• I live in <location>. Anybody else live in my area?
• I’m thinking of going to <club> this evening, who wants to join me?
• I’m moving to <location>. What are the social groups/support groups/friendly clubs in this place?

So here’s a pie-in-the-sky proposal I’ll call Sonia Net, that could answer these questions and more.

People

Sonia Net (SN) is a social networking system with features familiar from other social networking services. Everyone in the system has a profile, they can specify a geographic location that is their “home”, and they have friend lists. You have your personal calendar. There are groups with membership lists. There are visibility settings where a person can specify who can see what information of theirs.

Places

Now some less ubiquitous features: SN includes “places” in the style of Yahoo’s upcomng.com’s “venues.” A place has a name and a geographic location. A difference is that SN places also have a spatial extent. It can be a radius or a polygon. Places can be things with political boundaries like cities and states, they can be weakly defined like metro areas, they can be rather small, like someone’s house.

You can let SN know where you are in quite a bit of detail. You let SN know what “place” you are in in various ways. There is your “home” or default place specified in your profile, places can be specified in your calendar.
Your calendar can know your commuting routine, for things like going to work every day, and of course can keep track of all your scheduled activities, including places. You can tell SN where you are at the moment, either by directly entering the information, or by connection to an electronic location device such as a GPS cell phone.

Thus your location can be known on a number of levels of detail in both space and time. Similarly, your social network can be described in a number of levels of detail–all people, group members, friends, friends of friends, and so on. Visibility settings let you specify who can can see your location, on arbitrary levels of detail on both. Maybe you want to let the public know you’re in the Midwest, let friends know your calendar scheduled itinerary, let members of your “square dancers” group know that you live in Topeka, and let members of your “ghostbusters” group know your current location at all times.

Organizations

A SN Organization is something that is not a person and which has some presence outside of Sonia Net.  Some examples would be any sort of business or establishment, anything incorporated, or any self-identifying group of people.  Organizations can be associated with SN places, SN groups, and really, in most ways, they have all the properties within SN that people do, except they are designated as being organizations rather than people.

Events

SN Events have features commonly found in internet-based invite services such as Evite.com and Upcomming.com.  They can be one-time events, regularly scheduled repeating events, or irregularly scheduled repeating events.  They can be associated with SN organizations, places, and so on.

Ratings

Community-driven rating systems are great ideas that are spreading everywhere.  eBay, Hot or Not, Urban Dictionary, Slashdot.  These work when it is clear what attribute is being rated.  Sometimes there is only one:  eBay sellers are rated on reliability, Hot or Not members are rated on appearance, Urban Dictionary definitions are rated on accuracy.  Slashdot post ratings consist of a numerical rating  paired with an attribute such as funny or informative.  In SN, a number of different attributes might be useful for organizations, events, or even people.  Attributes can be defined and controlled by their owners.  That is, people can control their own rating systems, and for SN organizations, events, groups, and so on, for which they are the designated owner.  A person might want others to rate them on appearance and on their restaurant reviews.  People who shop at a store might want to rate it on “TG friendliness.”  Most stores would probably be ok with that.  On the other hand, if people started rating bars for “cruisiness,” bars that wanted to discourage that kind of behavior might turn off that rating.

Moderation

Community-driven moderation systems work well in combination with ratings.  A user rated more highly on moderation capability can be given more moderation power.  This allows moderation tasks to be distributed over a hierarchy of users.  Dmoz.org and Wikipedia are examples of huge moderation hierarchies.  This moves moderation towards a meritocracy, and away from the dictatorship model used my most online forums.

Women in Science

Friday Jessica emailed me in the early afternoon an asked if I was going to a certain talk at 4:00 that day. The speaker was Ben Barres, his talk was “Some Reflections on the Dearth of Women in Science.” A couple of emails and a little while later, we were walking down the sidewalk together on our way to this talk. I thought it was kind of funny that I was hoping to talk astronomy with her, but she was needing this as TG time, to quickly tell me a few of her latest stories, concerns, and frustrations. The lecture hall was packed. We got there just in time to get a couple of the last few seats, predictably in the center and furthest from the aisles, so that half a row of people had to stand up and let us by, but once there, it was fun to be sitting front and center at a Harvard lecture–with a big pink bow in my hair. Ben’s talk was amazing, staggering in its exposure of the horrible bias, prejudice, and discrimination against women in science. This week I’d been trying to catch a couple of women at work who I knew would be interested and finally had my chance today. Four of us stood around at the end of morning coffee and talked about problems, challenges, and Ben’s messages from the talk. It was an interesting moment for me in my transition, to be sharing with a group of women about our common experience.

What if I threw a party and no one came?

Still writing up stuff from last week. I tried to hold my first T Party event and it was kind of a flop. Andrea and I had had a good time meeting over lunch last month and wanted to do it again, this time including our mutual friend Jessica. Also, when I asked, both thought it would be fun if invited others and made a little group lunch out it. I had a few different ideas for whom to invite. I had talked to a couple of girls online recently that said they would like to do something like this. I had talked to a couple of girls in the past who also work in Cambridge and they thought it sounded fun, and then, I had my ten or so members of T Party. I sent out emails first, then sent out T Party invites. Everyone seemed to want to come, a few said they would, and then at the last minute, people had reasons they couldn’t come. It ended up being just Andrea and me. Most disappointing though, was that I asked people to respond on the T Party site and nobody did.

Their loss. Andrea and I had a nice time. I used the occasion as an excuse to get dressed up a bit. Full makeup and my pink winter dress. It was fun to be dressed up! By consequence or coincidence, I caught the attention of a man at the restaurant. He walked up to our table and told me how beautiful I was, totally ignoring Andrea. He proceeded to hit on me obnoxiously and persistently until Andrea and I just got up and left the restaurant. I think I didn’t handle it that well. Andrea thought I made a huge mistake when he asked if I had a boyfriend and I said no. She was thinking I should have said yes to discourage him. I realized the better answer a couple of days later reading threads on crossdressers.com. I was reading in the guy’s section and some guy was going off on people that ask inappropriate questions when it is none of their business. The better answer in the restaurant would have been “I’m not interested in answering that, and I’m not interested in talking to you any more. Now if you will please leave us alone.”

Attraction to men

I seem to be rather heterosexual, if in a queer sort of way.  I’ve heard many stories along my TG journey of people changing in their orientation.  I’ve heard the stories of CDs “learning to like men” and of TSs feeling a new and strange attraction towards men, a change that they didn’t anticipate.  I’ll share a couple of changes I’ve felt.

One change is that I’ve lost my aversion to facial hair on men.  I used to find it totally repulsive.  Not only did I not want it on myself, I didn’t even like to look at it on other men.  When I kissed my first guy with facial hair, (long ago, as a teen,) I really had to steel myself.  I noticed this change in my outlook, though, when I had my laser beard removal treatments.  Now my skin looked (somewhat, anyway) like girl skin.  Guys were now different.  I noticed it even more when I started plucking the remaining hairs, including all of the remaining clear and white hairs, and now had skin that not only looked, but felt like girl skin.  Having kissed both men and women, I was already well aware of the difference–the soft and supple texture of a woman’s lip, and the more firm and solid feel of a man’s lip.  Now guys were really different from me.  Somehow….that made them more appealing.

Another change I noticed was my reaction to Billy Bob Thornton.  I was watching “The Man Who Wasn’t There” last night, and thinking how magnificently masculine his face is, when it hit me that I used to find his face repulsive.  It seems I used to be repulsed by masculinity in general, and now, well, let’s say I’m increasingly finding it intriguing.

Where does this come from?  From the phytoestrogens in the soybeans I eat?  From socializing myself as a woman?  From my growing internal sense of being a woman?  From my knowledge of secondary sex markers?  I don’t know.

Regarding that last one anyway, I do get a kick out of seeing with new eyes that recognize secondary sex markers and recognize them for what they are.  Like, I’ve always known that women like men with big hands, but why do they?  If you asked me last year, I probably would have guessed something like they like the sensation of being touched or held by large strong hands.  Sure, that’s nice, but how about just the in-your-face visible message of “testosterone enhanced!”  That message sure gets my attention these days.