The Tranny Pack. Charlie Bauer PhD. Gscene Magazine. June 2014
Fever rages in the US about Trans terminology on RuPaul's TV show, 'Drag Race.' Again, and I bleat on about this ad infinitum - it all comes down to the language. I mean to say - even the title is a direct association with macho culture. Now there's subversion at work.
I say again, I can chose to say that I’m a dirty, stinkin,’ rotten, filthy homo (because I am). Jaysus - even my friends call me this. But if someone else called me it in the street? Hmmm. Well, I’ve realised by now that they only want a reaction from me, so I just shove my pudenda high and head off along my way. But sometimes it’s different. In that scream across the street, there’s usually a morsel of hatred. If you respond, then you open up the (usually violent) conversation that ensues. If you’re alone, vulnerable and/or off your face, it can get very nasty, very quickly.
Before the big homogenization of the LGBTQI…
culture that happened as result of HIV and AIDS - in my hometown, at least, it
was common for women to be referred to by gay men as ‘Fish’. I’m not getting
into any prosaic reasons why this could be, other than to say it was yet
another barrier in the breaking down the terminology of the closet.
And we’ve always reclaimed words, the fact
that RuPaul chooses to do that in mainstream media is a debate within itself. The
fact that a Black Trans person is up there and accepted within mainstream cultural
media, surely goes somewhere to answering the visibility question. Misogyny
towards Trans women exists and is still very real, but this is not that, so put
down that claw-hammer for lord’s sake.
As you know, again old-fashioned of me, but
I’m a big fan of contextualization. And Vaudeville. And RuPaul is modern Vaudeville.
She’s that wonderful intertext between the mainstream and the street. That
humor that surrounds us and is aimed back at ourselves, is only received from a
point of privileged power. As a matter of note, take a look at the way Jewish
humor works - the most sophisticated humor on the planet, yet never taken
literally. Even an old goy like myself is in on those jokes. Whoops – I’ve mentioned it – humor – that dirty word, again.
RuPaul has only ever exploited RuPaul. RuPaul
has not changed gender as she has become famous to gain a wider audience. RuPaul
still isn’t compromising. The battles for Trans people to be here are hard
fought and hard won and RuPaul had that same fight. A fight that was started
when the, then lowest common denominators, - the drag queens and the whores - pushed
back on June 29th 1969 at The Stonewall Inn.
Granted, nothing has been helped by the
freak show/drag show of daytime television but the community has not been put
back by the mention of the word Tranny
and She-male on American Telly, sorry,
television. Granted, this terminology was generated within the heterosphere,
but it has also been used as an internal tool by the ideological separatists in
the name of everyone else within the acronym. No-doubt the same separatists that
won’t consider self-identifications such as ‘Drag Queen’ or ‘Cross Dresser’ to
be included within the Trans umbrella. But this rigidity about who is Trans and
who is not fails everyone - Trans being a point of movement and not necessarily
a final destination.
So, just to get this straight, lots of
people are included within the capital T of the acronym. Gender bender/drag/occasional
cross dresser. Straight boys who dress as women, aren’t ridiculing, subverting
or kidding anyone, neither are they being disrespectful to the Trans (or female)
community. And I’m sure what begins as fun soon changes into something
altogether more liberating for some of these men. Anyone who expresses gender
differences and fluidity are surely welcome here. Anyone, for whatever reasons
and for whatever period of time. Sorry to all concerned but the closet is open
for business.
In May 2012 I wrote an article about my
meeting with Trans man in Invercargill on the southernmost tip of New Zealand.
His partner was in the northern Island but he chose to stay in the frozen
south. He told me about the Whakawahine (3rd gender) within
the Māori and Samoan cultures. Cultures who both respect and honor the Trans
people within their communities where they stand alongside warriors. In the west, the war paint is somewhat
different.
I also remember an episode that took place
in South Wales in the early hours of October 3rd, 2009. Drunken Dean Gardener and Jason Fender taunted a pair of
cross-dressed men who were walking along the street in wigs, short skirts and
high heels. When bare-chested Gardener threw a punch, one of the men landed two
lightning quick blows, rendering Gardener and Fender unconscious in under 30
seconds. The cross-dressers regained their composure, linked arms and wandered
off again into the night.
The police were eventually called and
all concerned were, of course, arrested including the cross-dressing cage
fighters the straight boys chose to pick on that night.
The verdict? Gardner and Fender were
tagged and given community orders as a result of their Trans-phobic aggression,
while the cage fighters walked free. And nobody mentioned the fact they were
dressed as, or identified themselves as women.