Introductory Blog Post

Hi.  Welcome to my blog.  Allow me to introduce myself, I'm J.T., and I am a gay, transgender man, a gay "transman."  This means I was born female-bodied, but am masculine gendered and am so oriented as to be attracted to other men.  If that sounds bizarre, don't worry.  It took me a while to figure it out.  Too long. 

I'm starting this for several reasons, not least of which is that people have asked me to make this passing notion a reality.  The other reasons are
1.  Visibility
2.  Breaking Stereotypes
3.  Sharing Ideas
4.  Demystifying Gender and Transgender
5.  Keeping a Record
6.  Having Fun

That's what I've got so far.  That, and that there are some reasons I'm not writing this blog.  I am not writing it to pick up dates.  I am not writing to satisfy curiosities about my (or anyone else's) genitalia, surgeries, hormones, chest shape, earlobes, or the like.  I am not writing it to justify my (or anyone else's) existence.  I am not asking permission.   
 
1. Visibility:  It's important for us to be out, to be visible.  No, I don't think it's an obligation or anything, so I'm not demanding that people who choose to remain stealth come out of the closet.  But the more people know us, the more the issues we have to deal with have a face for them.  Questions of rights, social roles, and sometimes even our lives are personal, and they should be personal to more people.  Every person who meets a transperson and likes hir is one less person objecting to hir using the right public restroom.  And boy, do I wish the issues we deal with were as simple as negotiating pee space! 

2. Breaking Stereotypes:  Most of the images people have of transfolk are negative.  We seem to be portrayed as serial killers in movies, dying, victims of social injustice, entertainers, prostitutes, or just those people your mother warned you about.  And I do not intend to treat the subject of transgender persons (operative word: "persons") as though it is trivial or we are trivial or our lives are some kind of object lesson.  But we need more positive voices speaking up.  We need to show the world that while we struggle to be who we are, the struggle itself is not negative; our lives are not negative.  It's just so amazingly wonderful to gain freedom from fear, from social proscription, from a life that is so constrained as to dictate that we never so much as feel comfortable while sitting in a chair among others, lest we give away our true natures, and this wonder ought to be shared.  I suspect that many people who are not transgender will find that similar fears and proscriptions govern their own lives, and I hope that some (transgender or cisgender or whatever label is wanted or needed) people will use these parallels to improve life for all of us.

3. Sharing Ideas:  All of us are affected by gender.  Let me say that again:  All of us are affected by gender.  Whether we are happy with the gender assignment we were given at birth or not, whether we reject gender entirely, we are affected by gender.  Until you read this sentence, you probably were not thinking about the chair you were sitting in.  You would have just kind of expected it to work, right?  But if it broke, you'd think about it.  You'd look and see what happened, right?  Well, some of us just don't match up with gender in the ways people tend to expect without thinking.  And looking at our lives may give insight into what's going on with gender for all of us.  Most websites about transpersons are about the effects of hormones, or about how to dress, or about the crushing, soul-killing experience of trying to live up to those ubiquitous expectations that just don't fit us.  I want to write something different; I want to write about joy.  Writing is nearly magic.  While you read these words, your mind is thinking what my mind is thinking as I type them.  I want to show you the joy. 

More to come.  Thanks for reading so far.