Anonymous Guest asked: “Seeing the same sky, drawing different constellations” - ooof. Like a ton of bricks. Not just because it’s poetic (it is), but because it is such a fantastic way to think about it. I could feel my brain shift. Thank you.
- sent as an ask bc I’m a filthy lurker with no cohost of my own, sorry
Thank you! (also thank you for the separate compliment on my painting 😊)
Several times in Paris is Burning there are trans women who refer to getting bottom surgery as "becoming a real woman" and my impulse as someone who transitioned in the mid-2010s is very much to respond with "you're already real women!" But, like, how facile is that? Are they making a normative claim about the definition of womanhood... or do they mean that's how society will see them and without surgery they have dysphoria and a higher risk of transphobic violence?
I don't mean to say that everything about gender theory was already fully developed in 1986 and these women wouldn't have benefitted from unconditional affirmation... but there's affirmation and then there's arguing about what words mean. These women were living in a society where they had to give up everything to live as women and they did. I think they were way past questioning if they were serious about it. So if they say "I'm still not a real woman," the correct way to see that from my cozy hipster house where I get my HRT covered by a Fortune 500 company isn't "how sad they didn't know then what we do now," it's "clearly that meant something different to them."