Showing posts with label Dr Benjamin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr Benjamin. Show all posts

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Transgender Stealth

Every once in a while here in "Cyrsti's Condo", I head to the library and dust off a volume of the "Trans Stealth Diary's"
None of the entries are mine. I have ran the entire spectrum of thoughts on the subject. From envy to disgust, I have thought them. How could my transsexual sisters run off and disappear? Then again, if I had the chance wouldn't I?
Here's the easy answer. No I wouldn't. In fact I'm thinking of jumping off the deep end and getting my first tattoo ever-with a trans logo-in a visible place.
Then again, I will be truthful and say this is a relatively new thought pattern with me.
As I so love to do, here's a little stealth history and perspective from another source: The Women Born Transsexual" Blog.
As always, I'm going to throw you some teasers and give you a link for more from Susan.

"Some folks have claimed the Doctors expected transsexuals to go absolutely stealth after they had SRS.
That absolute stealth represented the best possible adjustment  for post-op women in particular.
Dr Benjamin wrote some awfully Pollyanna sort of bullshit during the 1950s.
Actually it might have sort of been possible for a few people in those days to absolutely disappear because records were kept on paper and it was easier for people to build real identification out of some pretty sketchy bits and pieces of paper.
I know because this was still sort of possible in the late 1960s early 1970s.
After 2001 those of us in the US had the Department of Homeland Security, TIA and so many private information gathering agencies that Big Brother knew when you went out partying and how many drinks you had.
There are a whole lot of sisters I really look up to, mostly public figures like Andrea James, Jennifer Boylan, Julia Serano.  Not to forget lesser know sisters from the blogosphere like Mercedes Allen.
Most are more or less out, even if they don’t walk down the street wearing a t-shirt.
You kind of have to be if you want to do anything, including speak your mind on issues of public interest."

Susan is just warming up to the subject. Read on:

" I’m forced to wonder why so many of the trolls who hide behind aliases to spew hate while touting their own superiority due to their being stealth with perfect lives come off as so mentally ill and maladjusted.
As far as I can tell too many sisters have allowed themselves to be sucked into believing that they are somehow failures if they don’t manage to attain this ideal of absolute stealth.
I’ve known too many sisters who withdraw from life rather than accepting that which they can not change about themselves and moving on from there.
A friend of mine died a couple of years back.  She was incredibly flamboyant and knew antiques with Road Show Appraiser astuteness.  But she unhappily withdrew from the world nearly 20 years before she passed away.
Stealth doesn’t seem like a mentally healthy way to go about dealing with transsexualism.  It comes off as being ashamed of something one was born.
Not being ashamed doesn’t mean wearing a t-shirt, more just treating it like any other thing one could be born with that makes someone different from the majority of people."

Bravo Susan! Go here to read the whole post!

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