How Stephen Became Stephanie and other transgender tales

How Stephen Became Stephanie – and other transgender tales

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Transgendered author being attacked and slandered – attempt to censorship through intimidation

As many of your know, I am a transgendered author who has been writing and publishing trangender fiction since 1994, which has been read and loved by readers all round the world.

I have never had a single complaint or adverse comment about any of my transgender stories in the past, but recently I spoke out for tolerance and inclusiveness in the transgender community on a on a TV dating site, after which I was attacked by a number of ‘trolls’.  The substance of what I’d written was positive and suggested that people within the trans community should be supportive to each other and not persistently  hostile and negative.  Unfortunately I was then vilified myself by the same small minority of ‘trolls’, who referred to my transgender fiction in order to attack me.

These attacks degenerated and became more and more personal, so I left the site in question.

I thought that would be the end of this persecution, but it still continued in the form of a threatening and intimidating email sent to my web hosting company. I chose to ignore it and treat it with the contempt it deserved, which proved to be the right thing to do – as the persecution stopped. In case you haven’t guessed, this despicable persecution and bullying happened on TVChix – my advice is don’t whatever you do post to any of the discussion forums on it, because your posts, however innocent, positive and innocuous will be attacked by sick people masquerading as members of the trans community who obviously don’t have a life and have nothing better to do.

I have posted a rebuttal on my websites, which includes the following words:

‘IMPORTANT NOTE: The stories in our magazines and books are works of transgender fantasy FICTION.

The stories are not true – anymore than J.K. Rowling’s stories about evil wizards are true. Because J.K. Rowling wrote about young people not having a very nice time at the hands of evil wizards in some of her books, it does not make her an evil wizard herself, anymore than authors of crime fiction or murder mysteries are criminals or murderers.

Some of our stories feature mothers, aunts, grannies, wives etc. who feminise boys or young men and turn them into girls. This is a common theme in transgender fiction and is about wish-fulfilment on the part of transgendered folk, who really wish that this could happen to them! None of it ever happened!

We have had to spell this out, due to attacks and slanderous allegations.

We believe in freedom of creative expression for transgender authors and artists. We are proud members of the LGBT community, and just as lesbians and gay men would be horrified about the idea of gay fiction being censored and vilified by a small minority of puritanical fundamentalists, we hope you will support us in maintaining that members of the trans community should be equally free from this type of politically correct oppression from these puritans who seek to put back the clock to the 1950s and attack the advances in artistic and creative freedom that were achieved in the 1960s and 1970s in liberal democracies.’

Please show your agreement by posting your support on this site and supporting me on my other social networking sites.

Amber Goth

Those terms TV, CD, T-Girl, TG, TS – just artificial constructs so don’t take them too seriously

Hi girls,

This is about a website called TVChix. I am updating this post in the light of the bullying and harassment I suffered on this website, which is also the subject of a later post on this blog. My advice is avoid TVChix. I joined TVChix because so many girls at last year’s Sparkle (2012) asked me if I was on it – so I joined it – briefly – a decision which I now regret.

As I was not new to theories of gender identity and how we acquire our sense of gender – or in the case of transgendered folk like us, how things did not work out quite as society and our parents expected, I made the mistake of posting to a discussion forum on TVChix, naively thinking that the people in these forums wouold be intelligent and well-meaning individuals.

As I wrote a Masters degree dissertation at Nottingham University in 1990 under the title ‘The Aqquisition of Gender’, I thought I could offer some new perspectives, which would be welcomed. How wrong I was.

In my original research at that time I concluded that traditional feminine and masculine gender role stereotypes were mainly social constructs – ‘nurture’ rather than ‘nature’.  This was very much in line with theoretical thinking at the time, which had possibly been influenced by feminist writers of the 1960s and 1970s.

I have since revised my views in the light of some more recent biological and medical research which has suggested that gender (rather than biological sex) is partly programmed i[i]n utero[/i], and that things can go wrong with this, so that the baby is born with a sense of gender which does not conform to biological or genetic sex.  (That’s us, girls!)

I discussed some of this a while back on this weblog.

These posts are probably the most relevant:

How can we help people understand transgender individuals?

Why did I want to be a girl? Gender Identity and Transgenderism

How did it start? When did I first realise I wanted to be a girl?

Gender Identity as a continuum, terms ‘Transvesite’, Crossdresser’, ‘Transgender’, ‘Transsexual’

I am not keen on the divisions into sub-groups within the transgender community, (for example TV/CD, TG, T-Girl, TS) and I am disappointed that members of one or two of these sub-groups appear to think they are ‘superior’ in some way or more ‘the real thing’ than others. (Bella Jay wrote about this recently in her preface in the 2012 Sparkle Guide.)

These labels are artificial constructs, and at best are useful only in providing a vague indication of where an individual may think she is on the gender continuum at a certain point in her life. They also flag up to others who you are, but they mean very little. I found it disappointing that I had to pick one of these labels when joining TVChix, but my point is that what you pick is not written in stone for ever more. More than one might apply to you, and you may change your mind about which one is most appropriate. For example at present, I could have picked T-Girl, Transgender or Pre-operative Transsexual, but I am most comfortable with transgendered, as it is the most inclusive. Some people remain as self-identifying with one label all their lives, while others may move through several phases of transgenderism – get on at one point and get off at another.

That is why I am uncomfortable when, in chat rooms, members seek to ‘help’ other members by labeling them on the basis of what they themselves think, or claim to be certain of – often out of ignorance.

This has already happened to me in a TVChix chat room, when I light-heartedly asked what was the difference between a ‘T-Girl’ and ‘Trangendered’, because surely a T-Girl is by definition transgendered, as are ALL people who self-identify as TV, CD, TG or TS, – we are ALL transgendered, as is anyone who is uncomfortable to any degree about the gender role in which they find themselves, and wishes to dress or adopt the cultural and sociological characteristics and stereotypical behaviour of the so-called ‘other’ gender. This discomfort with one’s gender is sometimes called gender dysphoria, another term I don’t like.

A couple of the girls replied to the effect that these labels are all bollocks and we’re all mad anyway, which more or less sums up my own view; but one pre-operative transsexual took if upon herself to private message me to offer her ‘help’ about my ‘confusion’ regarding the terms ‘T-Girl’ and ‘Trangender’.

She seemed to think that whether or not one wanted SRS had some relevance to whether one was a ‘T-Girl’ or ‘Trangender’. In my view, it has nothing to do with it. And it is quite possible that at different times in one’s life, the answer might be ‘no’, ‘yes’, or ‘I haven’t decided’.

The presence or absence of a particular set of genitals between one’s legs has everything to do with your biological and genetic sex, but very little to do with your gender, and in seeking to live in the gender role of the ‘other’ gender, should probably be the last on the list of things you should think about changing.

Fortunately this view is starting to gain ground even in the NHS. If you are going to live in the ‘other’ gender, female hormones, FFS (Facial Feminisation Surgery), electrolysis, laser hair removal and voice coaching lessons are likely to have a much bigger impact on you success than what you’ve got ‘down below’.

It is in unwise to rush into SRS, thinking this is going to solve all your problems. If you are a huge, Neandethal-looking, hatchet-faced, lantern jawed, heavily-browed, grim looking person who never smiles (women smile more – so start by learning to smile!) – with a five o’clock shadow that comes back every three hours and you walk like a bricklayer and have a voice like Paul Robson – no one is going to think you are a woman, however much surgery you have between your legs. Sorry to say this, but let’s have a reality check!

There is absolutely no reason why you can’t dress as a woman and live as a woman if you are a very ‘big’ girl with very many obvious maculine physical characteristics – do enjoy life and go for it, be glad you’re transgendered – but don’t think that by labelling yourself ‘pre-operative transsexual’ and then getting your SRS without attending to other more obvious aspects which act as denoters of gender, you are suddenly going to convince ‘straight’ society out there that you are a woman.

Most people make up their minds about what gender you are in the first five seconds of meeting you – and it is probably the ‘Big Four’ indicators which are most important – pitch and tone of voice, facial characteristics, hair length/style, and the way you are dressed – in that order. The latter two are less important, as is clear if you’ve ever been into Vanilla, a lesbian bar in Manchester’s Gay Village, where you will see really dykey lesbians with very short cropped hair, or shaved at the sides, and wearing baggy jeans and a sweat shirt – but they are still recognisably women, because of their voice pitch and smaller facial features. (You will also see very pretty ‘femmy’ lesbians at Vanilla, so I don’t mean to generalise about lesbians in general).

At the end of the day, who cares anyway? If you feel your are a woman inside, then you are! The worse that can happen is that someone is going to recognise that you are transgendered – so what? Just be honest and smile! If you are upfront and friendly, people will accept you for who you are; they will either like you or not like you based on your personality, not on your biological gender or adopted gender.

My point is that perhaps it is better to start with some of the other practical things you can do, such as those listed above; I appreciate that these all cost money – although at present you can at least get the hormones and voice coaching on the NHS if you get accepted by a Gender clinic. (Yes, it is also still possible to get SRS on the NHS – but I wonder for how long, given the cuts?)

Anyway, as you can see, I love to write about these issues, but I’ll stop for now as I’ve probably already said more than my six penny’orth.

I love you all, whatever you label yourselves.

Take care in those six inch heels,

Love, hugs and kisses,

ambergoth (Kate Lesley)

(The above was the sort of thing I said on TVChix, for which I was attacked and harassed by trolls.)