Maow! :9

Also: Why American Culture Is So Very Wrong:

2008-07-04T10:17:57Z

In the tv series Dead Like Me, several times people say things along the line of: "Can we stop talking about naked people now, I want to be able to eat my breakfast."

Arrrrrgh!

Which is why the old guy who frolicked about in the nude after he died was my hero.

It's happened.

2008-07-04T09:43:29Z

I've got the hots for a robot.

The Fuzzy is chuffed that something has made me take a proper interest in Transformers at last.

rahball @ 2008-06-23T23:56:00

2008-06-23T14:23:39Z

It was going so well, and then the poor clueless lad had his Awakening thanks to that damn sorceress who randomly seduces people at parties. And then he came across his friend-who-fancies-him in a male brothel, and suddenly out of nowhere goes "omg, he's actually hot", and then they *both go to a female brothel and have sexing with (separate) ladies instead.*

Please can has boys that *don't* need to try out Option One first?

(Plus, latest books I need from the queer bookshop: Evolution's Rainbow, Sissyphobia, and possibly The Porn Report)

Also, *whyee* does my doctor want me to go to the gym so badly? I do not wish to, as I am lazy, even if the results would please his eye. He says he likes me to be his last appointment of the night since I don't make him have to think (because I haven't got an Illness that needs diagnosing). I now weigh 62kg, which is 6kg more than before. I think it's in my arms and shoulders.

Mayhap I will become useful again

2008-06-11T10:20:57Z

The world has started giving me nice things again:

1) Frenchs Forest school rang up again and said oi, why haven't you paid for the fair this Sunday, and I said coz I never got your email, so they sent it again and now I have work on Sunday.

2) Stencil cutting people cut my stencils today, so I should have them in time for the school fair on Sunday, and don't have to use my crappy hand-cut ones, hooray!

3) Steve of Radical Leather is going to make me a custom leather chest-vest for only $150!

Maybe I will get sorted out and get back into airbrushed tattoos now. Get some proper displays done by the signwriting place up the road, etc.

rahball @ 2008-05-22T20:28:00

2008-05-22T10:26:20Z

Bah, I just spent four hours doing *something* with that new website. It doesn't look like four hours' worth of progress. Why do these things take so loooong? Oh, wait, I remember, it's because IE is evil. Couldn't they ban it or something?

Yes, yes, that could be acceptable...

2008-04-20T10:09:29Z

I think I might go and live here.

As long as it's not too tiny.

Lalalalala

2008-04-16T12:07:32Z

The new car overheated when I was trying to drive it to work, poor thing. Luckily there was a garage at a service station just up the road and they took it in for the day and fixed up the coolant leak that was causing the problem. Now we just have to get the diesel leak that is *wasting our fuel* fixed, and it might be functional again. In the meantime, I borrow my mum's little green car to go to work.

Still have not been attacked by hysterical men yelling "Aiee, there's a *girl* in our toilets!!" despite foolishly shaving off my new beard hairs that grow under my chin. I did this because my coworker told me beards grow back faster and quicker the more you shave them. But the downside when they've hardly even grown is that when you shave them off, they're *gone*! Not that it makes any difference, customers have been confidently calling me "the lady" regardless. Even the mentally challenged guy who lives at the end of the street in Willoughby where my car ran aground this morning thinks I am a girl!!

My nieces are coming to visit next week. I haven't seen them for a bazillion years, and they are now 15 and 12 years old! I hope they still like me.

PIFFLE!!

2008-04-12T09:28:04Z

Blasted landlords say they have to come and live in our house for 6 months to a year while their own house gets renovated.

This means we have to move back to blighted Hornsby and rent the Fuzzy's parents' unit there (which technically belongs to his grandmother) while we wait to get it back.

Pluses: Vastly reduced rent, convenient location for work, trains, we get the bond back...

Minuses: I spent 6 months figuring out how to get out of Hornsby the first time, there's no *sea* there, we won't want to go back to paying a zillion dollars in rent to move back here after however long... And I would rather live in the other house in Toowoon Bay except that it's a stupid impractical place to get to and is 75km/an hour's drive away from Hornsby.

Poot.

That Jesus dude

2008-04-09T14:36:20Z

I started reading the new translation of the New Testament, which is by an ancient Greek scholar, who actually understands the slang and metaphors, and can render its meaning in modern English as close as possible to the authors' original meanings.

I'm only partway through Matthew, and it started very promisingly, with Jesus saying stuff like don't be greedy and treat others as you would wish to be treated, and refusing to obey the stodgy old traditions. Later on, though, he starts to talk about punishment for bad people in the "next age", and I think he also said that the people who are good will get to judge the bad people. That doesn't gel with his earlier statements, as it encourages people to be greedy for goodness so they can get their revenge later on. The Fuzzy thinks maybe the earlier things he's quoted as saying may have been the real man's actual humanitarian message, whereas the later stuff was tacked on by priests and what-have-yous appropriating him for their religion.

The other problematic thing is that he *knows* what the prophecies of Isaiah say, so he very carefully and deliberately fulfils them. "Nooo, I'm not just tricking you all into thinking I'm the son of God by knowing all the prophecies, I really am him! Yes, really!" Although there's a funny bit that says no-one believes in him in his home town ("Oh, it's just Mary's son giving himself airs...")

Homosexuality and Civilisation said the two deadly bits of the Bible are Leviticus and Romans. Plus the misinterpretation of Why God Destroyed Sodom (which I think is in Genesis). Romans is in the New Testament, so will see what Paul's message really was.

The sad truth though, is we might have an accurate-as-we-can-get-it translation *now*, but for thousands of years they didn't - it was translated slapdashedly into Latin and from there into other languages, and that's the source priests and lawmakers have been using as an excuse to execute, torture and imprison queer people for all this time.

Well, hel-LO!

2008-04-09T09:45:20Z

I think the Fuzzy and I got pegged as members of The Brotherhood by another queer man today, as he served us in the RTA. It was rather odd, coz you see stuff about "If you see another transperson, don't be all 'whee, hello there, brother or sister!' or they'll hate you because they're not passing", so I wasn't expecting gay men to go all chatty and friendly for no apparent reason.

Also, I think we might have gotten our first poof joke, because the guy's supervisor, who had to come and do some thing on the computer for him, referred to our satisfactorily completed transaction as "F. A. B.", which as far as I know stands for nothing but "fab". We were like, "huh? what is this F.A.B?" and I was thinking, "why does he think we're the kind of people to whom 'fab' is meaningful? Oh, wait..."

Clearly there is more to this Visibly Gay thing than just dodging the baddies!

But it makes a change from old ladies patronising me with "dear" and "darling" (with the sweet-little-female-child inflection). Honestly, if I ever call a person younger than me "darling" or "sweetie", I want to be shot, before the infection can spread.

EDIT: Oh, PS, I stand corrected - the first guy liked us because we were Gay, the second guy liked us because we were Nerds (he told us the Fuzzy's dad's company should be XL5, not XL2), but was a little miffed when he found out we were Hitchhiker's Guide nerds instead of Thunderbirds ones. Still, he did his best to convert us, with his F.A.B. Those are pretty cool people to find working in the RTA.

rahball @ 2008-04-06T22:48:00

2008-04-06T12:43:04Z

Hahaha, the Doctor finally got sick of people fancying him. :D

eee

2008-04-06T07:04:20Z

Poor Fuzzyball got some tummy bug again.

Conveniently for me, it struck him while he was out overnight with some friends, and he seems to be now sleeping it into submission.

Honestly, he just had a "scary" tummy bug about two years ago (says he who hasn't you-know-whatted since 1994 and hopes to keep it that way as long as possible).

He is a saint when these things strike him, and doesn't hate me for running off and hiding out at the other end of the house instead of being of some actual comfort like a normal person.

This little phobia of mine is the number one reason I should never have kids. Imagine some poor kid getting sick, and instead of its parent holding and reassuring it, the parent squeals and runs away. Sort of guaranteed to destroy the child's developing psyche.

The worst thing about this issue of mine (and probably the reason for the phobia), is not the unpleasantness of the experience at the time, which passes away soon enough, but the fact that every time I see someone be sick, it *preserves* itself in my memory in big bright technicolour images. I can remember where I was, and what I saw infuriatingly vividly, whereas normal people just forget it, like I forget when I last had a cold and how many times I blew my nose... So I have to make an especial effort to avoid experiencing such things, otherwise I know I'll have yet another lovely addition to my mental scrapbook.

Actually, yesterday managed to be the most super bad-luck day ever!

First, I had the weird Pains Of Doom in the morning.
Then in the evening I went to the Fuzzy's petrol station to get more petrol, and also went to the loo there and... oops, found out there was no loo paper after it was Too Late!
Then I was worried because the Fuzzy was going to the city to meet his friends for the "pub crawl", which of course was a stag night, and I was fussed at the idea of there being sexist parties to which I was Not Invited, *plus* ruddy Wayman had been teasing me at dinner about What Goes On at stag nights, so I was scared he might cheat on me...
*Then* I had my crowning moment when I scraped the Subaru *which has just had its paint job completely repaired* against a pole while trying to reverse it next to a pertrol pump.
And then when I moved it, I had the petrol cap on the wrong side of the car...
Then I went home and did nothing else wrong, except dream that I'd broken the laptop's screen, and that I lived in a big house with lots of queer friends and the psycho fundamentalist neighbours next door were trying to kill us...
Meanwhile, the Fuzzy met his old school friends, and I think they were having an all right time except one friend got tossed out of the strip club for pinching a pile of the fake tipping money. And then the Fuzzy, who was the only one who hadn't drunk any alcohol, got attacked by his Bug. Then he had an interesting trip home on late-night public transport, still feeling crook. He probably should have just stayed at his friend's place.
And he got back to the car and lots of birds had pooed on it.
Then of course, he had to tell me about the Bug when he got home, so I had a Panic and went to sleep downstairs and fuss about whether I would catch it...

Hopefully that was all our bad luck for the year!

I made up another new word!!

2008-04-03T08:39:26Z

"Bignorance"

That is all for now. :)

rahball @ 2008-04-03T03:07:00

2008-04-02T16:00:46Z

We found the visitors' entrance to Torchwood on Google Maps!! :D

Someone else did, too, it seems, if you actually search for "torchwood", but their pin is too high, it needs to be about 10m south, in front of that obelisk thing.

More exciting uni budgeting

2008-04-02T14:10:31Z

Here was me, thinking I'd have to get a Student Loan so I could go to uni. Then I remembered. We have a thing called a credit card! It has a lower interest rate than a loan, a credit limit of $6600, (which they keep trying to increase to $9000) and... we already have it!

Various budgetings reveal that going to uni will reduce my basic annual income of $14,500 to about $10,500, requiring us to live on about $680/week instead of $750.

But! We're not paying for petrol any more and lo, I get a *travel concession* which reduces the cost of a travelten bus ticket to $23 per week. That's more like it.

It's looking like it's fairly safe to stick the uni fees on the credit card and pay them off incrementally if we start to run out of money.

Plus!

Old car came back today. It has been all fixed up and is booful and ready to sell. Almost. It still needs the other pedals taking out of it and the old steering wheel putting back on. And the numberplates exchanging with the new car. But still...
And we paid the Fuzzy's dad for the parts to convert the new car. Dunno if he'll have time to convert it before I need it for holiday plaster, I think I'm starting on Saturday the 12th.

Also, I think it might be time to go in the boys' toilets, as I have fuzz all over my chin and rampant adolescent pimples all over the rest of my gob. When I went to watch the Fuzzy's gymnastics class tonight, and went to the loos, an eight-year-old girl stared rather worriedly at me and I felt guilty.

And my poor ole phone needs repairing, as the letter t has died and the 1 is not much better.

Oo! Oo!

2008-04-01T17:31:08Z

One of the new senators from WA (no, *not* Washington) has an FTM partner, and the local newspaper wrote *two* sensible articles about him!

Lookie! And lookie again!

I think I am becoming a compulsive blogger.

Yes, Centrelink. Thank you, Centrelink.

2008-04-01T15:45:54Z

Silly me, expecting that any contribution the Government might make toward a person's tertiary education would be even slightly useful! What was I thinking?

Theoretically, AUStudy nets you the princely sum of $355.40 per fortnight to study full time (good lord, a whole $177 per week).

The course I was thinking of doing costs about $2500 per semester.

Assuming a semester has seven fortnights in it, the AUStudy just about pays for the course. Hooray!

But what about actually running the household?

My current contribution to the finances varies between $200 and $700 per week. The Fuzzy's is a steady average of $500. The rent alone is $400/w. The total cost of house, car, us, etc. is probably between $600 and $700/w. Very little wiggle room there, ladies and gents.

What's that, Centrelink? If you earn more than $236 *a fortnight* your AUStudy payment gets *halved*? And if it's above $316 it goes down to 40%?

So, I can cram in work around full-time study, make enough to pay the bills, and fuss around declaring my income to Centrelink, and the government will give me $70 a week. Which covers commuting to uni, and two days' worth of lunch. Woot!

Once again Centrelink triumphs in the fight to Make The Lazy Bastards Help Themselves.

My Brilliant Career Idea Number Five Zillion

2008-03-31T15:34:06Z

So, there's a course called Bachelor of Design in Visual Communication offered by UTS (which is probably the most convenient uni to get to from here - catch the bus to Central and walk down the road).

From its content, it looks like the qualification to wave around if you want someone to actually give you a job in print media/web design.

Now how did I get on to this? Well, if I sit down and think rationally, it becomes apparent that the only things I have some real degree of competency in are pushing words around and, to a lesser degree, knocking websites together.

Then I come across interesting-sounding jobs like this one, advertised by ACON, and go "oo, imagine if I could do that!" (read the "information pack" link at the bottom of the page to see all the interesting duties the person who gets this job will have)

I wonder if I can even afford to go back to uni.

blahblahblahdiscourseblahblahblah

2008-03-31T13:25:14Z

They're talkin' politics on free_speech_ftm again.

I blame Queer Theory. Honestly, they make up this whole fanciful world for their heads to live in which has almost nothing to do with real people. And then some poor transperson comes along and the queer theorist throws a fuss because the transperson's existence mucks up their theory.

How are all these artyfarty genderqueers going to effect their cultural revolution when the man on the street could not only *not* relate to their issues, but not even understand the language they say it in? Man On The Street finds it much easier to understand the simple transsexual story of the "man trapped in a female body, taking medical treatment to rectify this".

How are they ever going to achieve anything other than "oh, there is this group of people called genderqueers who are unhappy with the designations of 'man' or 'woman', so if someone tells you they're genderqueer, remember to refer to them as 'ze'?" What else can people who have already picked their gender do?

Maybe they don't want to do anything really except stand in their little universities in America and yell. And publish books. And go to other universities and yell at each other there over how to deconstruct the gender binary.

It's like when I had to try and explain to the Fuzzy about how I had an issue with X or Y aspect of being female because it Meant Stuff. He has never believed in stuff meaning stuff and gets on just fine without it.

Seems people would like the phenomenon of transsexualism to mean something, but it doesn't mean anything! It's a variation of the human condition that pops up often enough that doctors have given it a name and, due to some good work on the medical ethics front, offered us a "treatment" we can take advantage of. If you're female and you need to be a man, here's the path our society offers you.

I suppose it's like religion, really. You want people to know what Christianity entails, you have to preach it. You want people to take up Gender Deconstructivism, you have to let them know it's there. And then, if we're lucky, some Gender Deconstructivists might get elected to parliament and make a nuisance of themselves, preaching on about Queer Values and a Binary Culture, instead of keeping the hospitals and roads in good repair. Nuffin' changes much.

Im in ur pants lookin for ur penis

2008-03-27T08:34:47Z

So, we're at work, and the radio announcer is having his regular chat to the Seven News guy about what's on the telly news tonight, and guess what comes up as the "other interesting story of the day" - the man in America who "claims to be pregnant!" I don't actually hear the rest of what they say, because I'm busy loudly scoffing at "claims to be", although I do hear "was once a woman..." so I know I am indeed talking about the right person.

And then my boss has to try and understand it, although I don't see why it's such a difficult concept - if you start off with a female body, and you make a baby, you make it the female way. And then he mentioned "the operation" again, and we managed to agree that no, the poor fellow couldn't have had "the operation", or he wouldn't be able to make and/or birth a baby in the normal way. (*)

On balance, I think I'm glad I didn't hear the rest of what they were saying. I'm sure it wasn't along the lines of: "the fellow's just trying to start a family and look at all the trouble the idiotic medical profession has given him over it!"

For the first time I am siding with those transmen who say "for god's sake, don't let *them* find out we exist!" I was like, "2GB, you give me back my people, you have no business even mentioning us!" Bluh.

(*) This may be the crux of the problem, upon reflection. People have no idea *what* a transman has "down there", and because he's some kind of "man", he must have male-shaped bits (and not a vagina), surely? Although it's probably not wise to explain to people exactly what a non-op transman *does* have, as their heads might implode.

Herdy Gerdy!

2008-03-26T10:52:22Z

I just love this game. :)

Here is a complimentary review by some people who enjoyed the game more than they hated the dodgy camera...

Screenshots!

Gerdy is playing his herding flute. He has penned some doops. He has also trapped a gromp next to them. This is a bad idea, as the gromp will use a fishing line to hoick the doops out of the pen and eat them.

Gerdy being chased by a gromp.

Some bleeps in the snow. They use their helicopter tails to fly.

Two gromps recovering after beating each other up.

Cars and Marriage

2008-03-11T14:01:29Z

We are getting a new car! It is older than our current car, but it's diesel, so we can convert it to run on second-hand vegetable oil (= free petrol! freee!). Also, it is a well-aged bluey-grey 4WD, which better suits we hippie low-income market-stall people than the nice white middle-class Subaru sedan we started with (though we have managed to bang that up a little, too).

And... I have finally remembered to have my Marriage rant!

When everyone thought I was a Gurl, I had absolutely no desire to get married. It was an outdated ritual designed to show off one's heteronormativity, and turn one into a Wife and a Mrs.

When I started turning into a boy, I suddenly got these feelings that when they made gay marriage legal, I *would* like to do it. I was concerned by this, because I was supposed to have an ideological objection to it. But then I started reading more about marriage, and civil unions and Relationship Registers and things, and I got annoyed. See, it's not just about the ceremony, and the dressing up, and all your friends having to give you prezzies. It's like this scary legal contract. And I got this feeling, like you're giving the government permission to spy in your windows, you're telling the government who you're having sex with! And then, if you break up, you have to go to the law again to say "oh, please, great authority, let us come unattached now", as though it's some business of theirs! I find that aspect of it too intrusive, so now I am back to Not Wanting To, By Golly!

In other news, my Third Chest Hair is growing back! (it fell out due to old age) Hopefully it will soon be joined by some more.

Puberty, Round 2

2008-03-09T13:47:58Z

I haz pimples on my back.

And my forehead. And my cheeks.

And while I'm at it...

2008-03-07T14:36:53Z

Below the cut is the basic essay I wrote to give to family and friends explaining the transsexual experience. Those who have had it thrust upon them (usually at the same time as The Revelation), have said they find it very helpful. It's FTM-focused, but it tries to provide a broad explanation that makes sense to cis-people and hopefully gives a clear voice to all the feelings of trans-people (eg., if I had written it without consultation, I might have left out the concept of "sex identity", which I know some other trans-people feel more acutely than me). No doubt I have still left something out, but eh..

Understanding Transsexualism
For friends and relatives, from an Australian female-to-male perspective

A friend or relative has just told you they're transsexual.
In the past you might have known that some people in the world choose to change sex, but since you’d never met one, thought no more about it.
Now you have to think about it.

If it seems like the world has gone mad and is crumbling away around your feet, it's not. Yes, having a transsexual friend or relative will force you to think hard about human sexual identity. It will force you to examine your own prejudices and preconceived ideas. But it is not the end of the world. It is not the end of their life (or your life) in Society As We Know It. For them, it is a happy new beginning and it can only be made unhappy by the negative reactions of other people. Remember that it is the people closest to the trans person who have the greatest power to cause hurt (whereas most strangers will neither know nor care, and thus be harmless). Therefore, do not say "freak" or "pervert" or "monster". Make an effort to understand this phenomenon, and understand it as a part of your friend or relative's life. It has taken them a long time to feel confident enough to express this aspect of themselves. They may have been afraid or unready to explain it to you before now. Please do not punish them for their honesty. They have spoken up because they want to show you the person they truly are.

What is transsexualism?

A transsexual person, either male or female, feels that they are rightly a member of the opposite sex to the one they were born as.
Those who start off male and become female are called MTFs (male-to-female) or transwomen, and those who start off female and become male are called FTMs (female-to-male) or transmen. MTFs are much more visible and many regular people do not even know that FTMs exist.

Today's science cannot give a definitive explanation of how the phenomenon of transsexualism comes about, but experiments with other animals such as rats and monkeys have shown that changes in pre-natal hormone levels in the womb can result in offspring that persistently behave like the opposite sex. It is likely that something similar occurs spontaneously in humans. Some transsexual people know they are the wrong sex from early childhood, while others take longer to make sense of their feelings.

Having recognised their feelings, transsexual people may choose to take action to make their bodies more accurately match their minds. These steps include taking the sex hormones of the opposite sex (which, in FTMs results in a remarkable masculinisation, and for MTFs allows them to grow breasts), depilation (for MTFs to remove body hair) and having surgery to modify sexed body parts. The individual trans person chooses which of these medical options to pursue according to their own needs (and budget). The process is called "transitioning".

There are many estimates for the incidence of transsexualism, ranging from as low as 1 in 100,000 to as high as 1 in 2000. No-one knows for sure, as there has never been an official census. There are certainly enough trans people in society that transsexual conventions in the US attract thousands of attendees while sympathetic surgeons are kept busy reshaping bodies. Here at home, despite our much smaller population, the government has seen the need to establish support services such as the Gender Centre, which provides resources and education. One of Sydney's trans-friendly medical services, the Taylor Square Private Clinic, usually receives one new transsexual patient per month.

You might hear transsexual people also called "transgendered". A lot of fuss and bother goes on over these two terms and they do not have simple established meanings on which everyone agrees. This is partly because people do not use the terms "sex" and "gender" precisely…

Sex and Gender

Sex and gender (along with sexuality, which we will look at later) are important aspects of human identity, inextricably entwined with reproduction. They are the factors that determine what sort of mate you want, how you go about attracting that sort of mate, and what sort of mate you appear to be to others. Because reproduction is second only to survival as a biological imperative, everybody (even people who do not actually want to make babies) feels its compulsion.

Sex – This has the variables "male" and "female" (as well as "intersexed" for a small proportion of people). In biology, if an organism makes eggs, it is female and if it makes sperm, it is male. This definition works for humans as well. Male humans have the organs and anatomy to produce and deliver sperm. Female humans have the organs and anatomy to produce eggs, receive sperm, and gestate babies. Sex has nothing to do with society, it is a purely physical trait.

Gender – Gender has two basic variables: "boy / man" and "girl / woman". It could be argued there are additional categories, such as "metrosexual" vs. "bloke". Gender is a concept made up by society to explain the roles and behaviour expected of males and females within that society. In our society, the genders "man" and "boy" are attributed solely to males, while the genders "girl" and "woman" belong to females. Therefore, when a person identifies another person as male or female, they will also instantly attribute "boy / man" or "girl / woman" to that person.

Can you understand the difference? Society has made up gender so it can tell members of each sex how to behave. It expects males to be boys or men, and females to be girls or women. Transsexual people are problematic for society, because they are females who feel they are really men, or males who feel they are really women.

Born to hate footy

The trouble with sex and gender is that although society thinks it can tell people what they are, individuals come with their own personal convictions about it. These are the result of inborn predispositions interacting with cultural information and they are impervious to pressure from society. We can term these aspects of a person their sex identity and gender identity. Normally, a person's sex identity and gender identity will match with what society expects, but sometimes the two are at odds. This sort of thing can happen with many aspects of human experience.

Consider, for example, an Aussie male who has no interest in football or cricket. His culture has taught him what cricket and football are and that Real Men enjoy them, but his natural inclination has still been to say "No, I find that very boring." No matter how much his mates tease him and try to drag him along to games, it will never be his thing. Transsexualism is the same. The transsexual person must learn what sex and gender mean (as everyone does while they're growing up) before he or she can say "wait a minute, I'm not one of those!" but the inclination to reject the wrong gender and gravitate toward the right one has been there since the beginning. And just as teasing cannot change the footy-hater's feelings, nor can disbelief or hostility change how a transsexual person feels. These feelings are ingrained, and are just part of who the person is.

Sex identity and gender identity, along with sexuality, are crucial aspects of the self, which is why it’s so important for other people to understand these aspects correctly. Most people are offended when their sex is mistaken, and straight people always hasten to clarify: "I'm not gay, notthatthere'sanythingwrongwiththat". Why? Because they don't want other people mistaking a crucial aspect of their identity. Transsexual people, prior to transition, have fundamental aspects of themselves mistaken all the time. Can you see how this might be jarring and why they might want to act to correct this confusion?

The transsexual experience

No two people are identical. Therefore, no two transsexual people are the same in the ways they come to understand their feelings, nor in the ways they explain these feelings to others. The sloppy use of "sex" and "gender" by our society adds to this diversity, as not all trans people make a clear distinction between the concepts. Regardless, there seem to be two general categories of transsexual feelings: one connected to gender identity and the other to sex identity.

Invisible gender

Imagine a female-bodied person. When you see this person, you naturally ascribe the genders "girl" or "woman" to them (depending on age and other factors). But this person feels that he is really a boy. "Boy" is not a gender our society allows for females, it is only for males. Nobody, upon perceiving unambiguous female secondary sexual characteristics, is going to guess that this person's gender identity is "boy". Therefore, the female boy finds that an important aspect of his identity is completely invisible to society and constantly mistaken. When this situation becomes intolerable, he will say: "I am of a gender that only belongs to males. Therefore I must become male in order to become visible." He has to change his sex in order to be recognised as the gender he has had all along.

Where's my one?

This is a fundamental feeling of misalignment with one's sexed body parts, which stems from a mismatch between body and sex identity. Some transpeople find it intolerable that they should have been born with the "wrong sex's" reproductive organs and go so far as to characterise their sexed body as a birth defect. Others feel it more mildly, perhaps as a need to "block" particular body parts from their thoughts, or a disappointment that certain strongly desired sexual acts are not possible with the equipment Nature has provided. Sometimes, trans people can have experiences akin to phantom limb phenomena, where they feel the presence of a body part they do not actually have.

Sexuality

Do not confuse sexuality with transsexualism. Sexuality is the sex of person one is physically attracted to. In popular parlance it has the variables "heterosexual / straight", "homosexual / gay" and "bisexual". It is also possible to completely eliminate the person’s own sex by describing their sexuality as "androphilic" – attracted to adult males; "gynecophilic" – attracted to adult females; or "ambiphilic" – attracted to both sexes. Using this definition, both straight women and gay men are androphilic, while lesbians and straight men are both gynecophilic.

Transsexual people may be androphilic, gynecophilic, or anything in between. In general, a person who is androphilic or gynecophilic prior to transition will remain androphilic or gynecophilic after transition, although a number of people do seem to expand their sexual horizons (becoming ambiphilic). It is a misconception that transsexual people are simply homosexual people who are ashamed and want to turn "straight". It is true that an MTF who is androphilic starts off looking like a gay man and ends up looking like a straight woman (and a gynecophilic FTM starts as a lesbian and becomes a straight man), but there are also gynecophilic MTFs who end up as lesbians and androphilic FTMs who become gay men. Thus, sexuality is a sufficiently independent aspect of human identity from sex and gender that it has no direct bearing on transsexualism.

Other gender-variant people

Hopefully, having read this essay, you now have a good idea of what a transsexual person is and where their feelings come from. You can see that because society only allows certain genders for certain sexes, a trans person must change their apparent sex (through modification of secondary sexual characteristics) in order to be recognised as their correct gender. The term "transsexual" refers to this process of changing one’s apparent sex. The term "transgendered" takes more of an external view, saying "here is a person whose gender is not what we would expect from looking at their body". Those who prefer the term "transsexual" object to "transgendered" because it implies their gender is changing somehow. From the trans person’s own point of view, their gender never changes, only other people’s impression of it does. On the other side, some people object to "transsexual" because it can be confused with "heterosexual" and "homosexual", sounding like another sexuality. In general, "transsexual" is used for people who strongly desire to modify their body’s sex (or apparent sex), whereas "transgendered" includes transsexual people along with some of their gender-variant cousins. These people may defy gender norms, but do not wish to permanently modify their bodies.

You may find transsexual people hanging around with other gender-variant people (eg. one of the drag queens in the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is an MTF). This does not make those other people transsexual, although they may be transgendered, as described above.

Homosexual people

As previously noted, sexuality is independent of transsexualism. Transsexual people may be of any sexuality, but the stereotypes of gay men as effeminate and lesbians as masculine and the popularity of drag shows in queer culture may lead to confusion. It is important to understand that men who act girly and women who act blokey are not necessarily transsexual (or gay!). Gay people are just men who have sex with men or women who have sex with women. They do not want to change sex in order to do this, they just want society to be more accepting of their same-sex unions.

Drag kings and drag queens

These performers enjoy dressing up as a flamboyant caricature of the opposite sex. It may fulfill an important personal need, but they are not transsexual unless they want to be the opposite sex in everyday life as well as on the stage.

Cross-dressers

People who feel a need to dress up as the opposite sex (generally in private, for safety), but do not want to make a permanent transition to that sex.

Intersexed people

People who are born with genitals that show both masculine and feminine features. Sometimes they are raised as one sex and later decide to transition to the other. Some intersexed people see themselves as a third sex, distinct from male and female. It can be argued that transsexual people become intersexed when they modify their genitals, and also that transsexual people are another form of intersex, born with the brain of one sex and the genitals of the other.

Further reading

Websites

FTM Australia, "About transsexualism" (and the rest of the website)
http://www.ftmaustralia.org/ts/index.html
This site is an excellent resource on everything FTM, but they do push the "man with transsexualism" (ie. "my female body was just a birth defect that I must correct") angle. Not everyone who feels the need to change their sex has this experience.

Why You Don't Want To Be A Woman Or A Man
http://www.transsexual.org/roles.html
A little nugget of wisdom from an MTF – we should not change sex in pursuit of some ideal of "man" or "woman", but to express our true selves (whatever they may be).

Feminist on Testosterone
http://www.cauldronfarm.com/writing/feminist.html
Raven Kaldera answers some important frequently-asked questions about FTMs.

Books

Just Add Hormones by Matt Kailey
By an American FTM. A funny and straightforward account of his transition and of the social issues transsexual people face.

Body Alchemy by Loren Cameron and The Phallus Palace by Dean Kotula
Both books feature photographs of transsexual people and their bodies, along with the subjects' own statements about their lives and transition.

The Testosterone Files by Max Wolf Valerio
Another American FTM's account of his transition, with plenty of insight into the differences between men and women that are orchestrated by hormones.

The curious sex lives of straight people

2008-03-07T13:24:46Z

But first... my Thug photo!

And... my voice is starting to change, coz I can now sing "What's My Age Again?" and "Stacey's Mom" at the correct pitch! :D :D :D

And now...

Today I have learned some interesting facts about straight men (or at least, those in the fiftyish age group)...

1) They really do think that your genitals dictate what you do in bed.
2) They try to understand queer relationships in terms of which partner is "the man" and which one is "the woman".
3) They think that gay = anal sex.
4) And, of course, that a "sex change" is some operation that doctors do, and *somehow* what's in your pants magically transforms the rest of you.

Today I encountered a fascinating theory as to why I might be becoming a boy. It seemed to be founded on the misconception that I was planning Magical Transformative Surgery (see above). It was that possibly, I preferred (receiving, of course) buggery to vaginal sex. I *think* the implication was that the Magical Transformative Surgery would safely remove the offending orifice, thus making vaginal sex no longer possible (in case I couldn't just *tell* my partner that I didn't like it). This makes "but have you tried just being a lesbian?" look very lame indeed.

I gave him the spiel about "no, if people want to do certain things in bed, they just *do* them, transsexualism is about females who feel they are really boys, and look, I'm not even *getting* any surgery, so don't worry about that TV show you saw where the man got SRS and then regretted it."

But, honestly, they're lagging even further behind than I previously believed. Society even tells them how to have *sex*! A one-minute explanation isn't going to help them, they need a full six week course. With diagrams.