Trans creativity, March: from punk to opera

 Although transphobia is pretty rampant right now, I don't despair as I see a lot of transpositive things around, especially in the world of the performing arts. Indeed, as transphobia becomes increasingly associated with inhumane, crazy leaders such as Putin and Trump, I expect other better regulated nations to oppose transphobia. I'm coining the term "Posiblogger" for those of us who write positively about trans achievements and progress, which continue apace despite the hate in some corners.

Last month I focused inevitably on pop music because of the massive influence of the Sanremo Music Festival, always an LGBT-positive event. This month I'll focus on alternative types of music, starting with words from a rather different musician, John Lydon, otherwise known as Johnny Rotten, who will be performing in Genoa, Italy, this week. In a long interview in my daily paper he is asked "what is punk according to Johnny Rotten?" His reply: "Punk is fleeing from all those horrible traditions, from uniformity and restrictions, and instead being what you want. ... Punk is being true to yourself and not to a system. That's Johnny Rotten's answer." That did resonate with me as being trans also involves being true to yourself, being what you want and not conforming with the system. 

So as I sit here in my torn fishnets sticking another safety pin in my ear, let me tell you about what gender non-conforming things I've found in the world of the arts this month. Sorry, Johnny, but actually it's mainly about opera this month, which - a bit like British pantomime - has always had a defining tradition of crossdressing roles from its inception. Here are some items I've spotted elsewhere in the music press.

 

Castrato roles

Thankfully, we have banned the unjust and cruel practice of creating castratos but there is a huge revival of interest these days in music from the era when they dominated the musical stage. Such roles are now usually (though not always) taken by women, such as Cecilia Molinari, a leading mezzo-soprano who has shown great interest in working en travesti in male roles as, for instance, Orpheus in Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice, as Ariodante in Handel's opera of that name, and, of course, Cherubino in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, traditionally a 'trouser role' for female singers. A female voice and a male voice are never the same even in the same registers so these days there are compromises to be made. There are, of course, high male countertenors who sometimes take female roles. (Whole books are written on this so we'll keep the topic short this brief here.)

 

Islam and the West

Interestingly and encouragingly, a traditional female role, the Duchess of Crakentorp in Donizetti's La fille du régiment was taken by a man in the latest production at the Muscat opera house in the Sultanate of Oman, an islamic state. Islam is uneasy with things that in the West attract little notice, such as open signs of affection or consumption of alcohol, so producers of Western opera have to tread carefully with certain scenes with kissing and booze to avoid local censorship. Nominally at least, modern Islam also disapproves of heterodox sexuality and gender expression (the Koran itself seems to me to be somewhat less squeamish) so given the gender bending that's always been inherent in opera, this recent acceptance seems a positive sign that the less fundamentalist corners of Islam might be mellowing further as regards gendered roles. 

 

Contemporary opera and productions with gender nonconformity

Here's a brief run through other opera productions this season that involve crossdressing/trans/gender-nonconforming roles:

- Olga Neuwirth, a contemporary Austrian composer, whose 2019 opera Orlando, based on the ultimate gender switching novel by Virginia Wolfe, continues to see this acclaimed work of hers performed.

- Romain Dumas, another contemporary composer and conductor, is still awaiting the opportunity to have his opera Les mirifiques aventures du Chevalier d’Eon (The Amazing Adventures of the Chevalier d'Eon) performed. The Chavelier d'Eon is, of course, Charles or Charlotte de Beaumont, Louis XV's diplomat and spy and something of a patron saint of the trans community. 

- Another contemporary composer, Mikael Karlsson, has written the opera Fanny and Alexander, based on the Ingmar Bergman film. Its recent, sold-out world première saw countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as genderless character Ismael. The opera is in English and here is Ismael's scene (15 minutes):

 

(I'm pleased that modern "classical" music is moving away from the dissonance that was so prevalent when I was younger! I like the background graphics here, too.)

- a new production of Les Brigands by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) - best known for composing the can-can! - is in decidedly queer mode in Barry Kosky's "divine" production playing in Paris this summer. Here's the trailer:

 - Just as an illustration of the typical crossdressing fun of opera, Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) wrote a short one-act comic opera Mavra in 1921-22, which a recent production has twinned with the better known one-act comic opera Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) - the one with the famous aria O mio babbino caro - as part of last year's centenary commemorations of Puccini's death. In Mavra, a girl smuggles her lover into her home disguised as a female cook. 

So if you're trans and can sing, you might want to consider a career in opera! There's plenty of scope for alternative gender expression just in this season's offerings, as you can see. For more on this theme, I also wrote about opera and musical theatre six months ago here: Trans Creatives, October '24.

 

Nest month there'll be more on the visual arts. If opera isn't your thing and you've been missing painting and sculpture, I can recommend beautiful Franziska from Frankfurt's recent post about her visit to an art student exhibition in Düsseldorf, Germany, here: Weekend trip crossdressed: the class of 2024. 

Sue x

Underwear on the line, or the girl who kept goldfish in her shoes

 So it's been much more like spring this week ... apart from short, sharp showers that the weather men have not predicted. One evening I had to rush out to gather in my washing in as a heavy shower hit and, although I succeeded in keeping the washing reasonably dry, my shoes got quite wet. Ballet flats have low gunwales! They weren't properly dry by next morning so I left them outside in the sun. A dry day was promised and so I went out shopping for a couple of hours ... and another shower hit. When I got home my shoes were full of water! I could've kept small fish in them! These weather men have a lot to answer for!

They're dry now and don't seem any the worse for the experience. The goldfish order has been cancelled.

I'm also able to dry my - ahem - more feminine garments outdoors now because of the improved weather and the fact that the partition between me and mini-Trump next door has been fully mended and filled at last. Before that, my outdoor washing was pretty much visible to anyone next door and you don't want anything too obviously feminine being seen if they think you're a guy. Avoid awkward questions is my policy.

I'm afraid my slimming drive has been a bit of a failure recently. Ongoing poor weather over the month has resulted in a need for large quantities of chocolate to keep up the spirits. It's the only remedy!

 

So I'm looking forward to the clocks going forward on Sunday as that officially endorses the lighter, longer days that are necessary for good health.

Also, I decided to eat lunch out one day at my favourite restaurant and they were hosting a party that evening with live music and had produced canapés for it and they used me as their official taste testing guinea pig. That was before I ordered lunch! So kind of a fail there. But given that the lunch was super delicious and they gave me a discount, I'll accept the expanded waist without too much complaint. By the way, fresh salmon marinaded with tangerine sounds weird but is amazing.

They often do live music there, in fact, and have photos of lots of music stars who've graced the Sanremo Festival and local music clubs over the decades. I daren't reveal my ignorance of who they all are. For instance, I just call this photo of theirs, "the guy who trod on a Lego". 

As mentioned last time, I've been going through this blog to save it in case of any need to migrate. At the same time, I've been continuing to go through it methodically adding labels to posts and mending broken links where possible. There are over 700 posts so this takes time!

 

Looking ahead

This weekend I shall be observing the partial solar eclipse (safely - never look directly at the sun), planting chillis, lavender and more herbs, and maybe I'll do my face and hair properly. 

I've just booked a trip to San Marino for the week after next, another location on my planned tour of microstates. 

 

A dip in the archives 

Going through my blog reminds me that I haven't posted a dip into the archives for a while. Here's a post from November 2012 describing meet-ups with other girls in the bars and Indian restaurants of Brick Lane, London, with recent updates on venues and websites. 

Link: The Brick Lane Set

It's partly a tribute to my fun friend Ann Drogyny (in red) who passed away last year. Gone but not forgotten.

Have a good weekend.

Sue x

Spring cleaning ... in more ways than one

 How to do business with the USA if you're trans. 

This week the weather has improved a lot and there's a new smell in the air here, of warm beach. I sensed it as I walked along the promenade in the sunshine today. It's time to open the windows and get the garden furniture out. I've been able to eat my lunch outdoors every day since Sunday, at last. Normally here you can do that quite a few times over the winter but not this year, as I have already lamented.

 

We have a bumper crop of oranges outside the front door this year. Sadly, they're the bitter ornamental variety and no good for eating. But they look jolly.

So yes, it's time for spring cleaning, planting herbs and generally getting busy. First, though, I've decided that my working time over the next week will be dedicated to completing the saving of this blog in an alternative format in case it needs to migrate. So far Blogger has been run by Google and I use Apple products and these companies are still, as far as I can judge, the more hippy, less Trumpy ends of the US IT industry, so I don't expect an immediate problem. But it's clear that the USA is going to pot fast so I'd like to be sure of my continued existence in electronic media. Frankly, the sooner the rest of the world can dump its reliance on US products and services, the better. There's a huge potential for European and South Asian development in the IT and other sectors now; an unexpected windfall. 

I'm no longer bothered about having lost my Facebook account to hackers six months ago. Given that Facebook's focus was increasingly on adverts or clips that might be of interest rather than what my friends were up to, and given the Zuckster's increasing cuddling up to Trump, and given the harvesting of personal information that's always been FB's policy, I think it's time to dump it and US-based social media sites like it. They're not very safe. As one alternative with a trans focus, I'm thinking of getting more active again on TV Chix, a UK-based trans forum that I didn't use to like much as it was quite sleazy once but seems less so now. There have been some good suggestions for other sites and platforms from other trans bloggers recently, like Izzy here and Lynn here.

I'm sorry for American readers of this blog, who are pretty well adjusted and humane to judge by their comments and other reading preferences, and who probably share my disgust. But the reality is that US tech lords' current bullying, spying on, threatening customers or encouraging threatening situations are actually bad business moves. As American businessmen of Trump's generation are so fond of saying with a shrug when they ruin a community by shutting down its main source of employment or terminating a useful service: "it's just business". Or even "it is what it is, cupcake", a phrase beloved of The Donald, which he cheerfully uses with a shrug on occasions such as his brother dying or the pandemic killing over a million US citizens. People are quitting US businesses and markets fast right now. But if a country elects a failed businessman to run a government of dysfunctional psychopaths, what can you expect? And if cold approval of suffering is how the US administration approaches business these days, then we shrug at the shrinking US economy and state simply that it is what it is, cupcake. 

Sue x

Dysphoria attack, and getting away

 It's been a strange week. A dysphoria attack, a few days away, a long lonely walk across the mountains at night, and a unexpected miracle.

 

Dysphoria attack

Last weekend was the flower festival with marching bands and flower-decked floats. On Saturday it was raining and I decided to stay in and go to the main parade on Sunday. But on opening the Sunday morning paper and seeing the big photos of Saturday's marching majorettes, female dancers in leotards or fancy frocks, I had a real meltdown. I don't have much body dysmorphia, thank goodness, which is why surgical transition has always been an unlikely option for me, and I keep dysphoria at bay by dressing as a woman every day and enjoying other more feminine items and activities, but some things can trigger real anguish about my gender and for some reason dancers in costume is one of those things. Ballerinas in pancake tutus particularly, but drum majorettes, too, even gymnasts. Maybe it's the skimpy outfits and motions, both designed to emphasize the female form, that thing that I don't fully have. Combined with bad memories of how my sisters were always being packed off to ballet classes, ice skating lessons and the like (none of which they ever took to, incidentally) and I would have loved to do but wasn't allowed to because "it's not for boys". 

Gender dysphoria stinks. Transphobes have no idea and no care.

Go away, just go away. Please just go away. AaaAAurrRgh!!! :-( [Photo tribute: Hugo Martinez]

So I avoided the flower festival altogether, which is just as well as I would've felt pain.

 

A break in Nice, France

I went to Nice during the week. It's not far but the journey there and back is so slow and difficult that it's easier to book an apartment or hotel and stay overnight as they are really cheap at this time of year. This actually saved money as Nice's restaurants are overpriced and I could cook for myself in my apartment. I wanted to spend time in homeware shops and media outlets, see the famous Saleya flower and herb markets, and do a bit more sightseeing. I was partly successful in all of that but even 48 hours wasn't enough. 

Some photos:

The Bay of Angels lined by the famous Promenade des Anglais under a moody sky with occasional divine beams from above ...

The great cascade in the fortress above the city ...

I love the Greek-style mosaics on the citadel, the site of the original Greek city of Nikaia ...

 

The staircase telling the story of Odysseus and the various unsavoury characters he meets, such as the Cyclops, Circe the witch, and sea monsters ...

 

I'll spare you more of these but I loved them. Modern Port Lympia lies near to where human habitation has been dated to 400,000 years ago ...

The Saleya street market stalls are very pretty, including spices, local lavender and soap ...

 

Among other things, the soap stall sold bars made of asses' milk. Cleopatra would approve, no doubt. (Personally, I prefer not to invest in businesses offering Egyptian goods - they're usually pyramid schemes!)

So it was a good little break. 

 

A night in the mountains

It's 25 miles (40 kilometres) from home to Nice as the crow flies (or, more aptly, as the mountain eagle soars, or as the seagull skims the waves). But the journey is always slow no matter what means of transport you choose, and the geography of the area is largely to blame - narrow winding roads, frontier posts, steep climbs, tunnels ... 

I went by train. My journey home back to Italy was awful as a tree fell on the tracks between Menton, France, and Ventimiglia, Italy. This is a normal occurrence, along with rockfalls, floods, etc. and you have to adapt to the dynamic landscape if you live locally. But it's how the railway is managed that is the main problem and French railways have always been arguably the lousiest in Europe. They promised a rail replacement bus to Italy and kept promising and after two hours of false promises I asked them if they weren't just talking rubbish and why were they wasting our time when we could have been making alternative plans. 

Since there are no cross-border buses and cross-border taxis cost an unbelievable sum - more than three nights in a hotel! - I took my suitcase on wheels and walked most of the 12 km from Menton to Ventimiglia up and down the winding mountain road that runs through the steep craggy landscape of the border lands where the Alps hit the Mediterranean (illustrated in my post here). If they hadn't wasted my time I'd have been at Ventimiglia by sunset; as it was I was mainly walking in the dark. I didn't spot any wolves (though perhaps they spotted me ... and licked their lips as they loped silently along, keeping pace ...) Anyway, the rare bus that serves the sparsely dotted mountain hamlets of the frontier country caught up with me and took me the last 4 km to Ventimiglia from where getting home was easy. 

You may think me nuts but I've always sworn that if you want to get from A to B without fuss then your own two feet are a sure guarantee that you'll get there and within a certain time. 

 

Miracle

And when I got home I found that the crooked mini-Trump next door had got his latest set of workmen to place the new panels in the dividing wall between us, a job that's been waiting for four years and which I was just on the point of asking the relevant arbitrators to intervene on. The job's been done very well and professionally and without a word. He may have sensed my bad vibes or something. This gives me greater privacy and what TGirl doesn't want that?

Altogether a very strange week.

Have a good weekend. And please soothe any dysphoria you may have with a pretty frock and your favourite perfume.  

Sue x

The life aquatic!

 The frogs are back! Ribbet! It's good to hear some frogsong for the first time this year. Not as much as the first year I was here when the whole mountainside was thrumming with frogs. The long drought of 2021-23 decimated the amphibian populations but I hope they'll revive.

Mind you, it's been so wet this winter that it's been a bit like living as a frog myself. I'm worried my trans nature might make me instinctively hop off to spawn somewhere. My income won't feed 500 tadpoles so donations please to Sue's Pondlife Nightmare Fund, link below.

And talking of pondlife ... no, actually, we won't take a look at the other side of the pond today. Instead, I'll just report that carnival time here in Southern Europe has produced some interesting costumes, floats and parades with ample opportunity for alternative presentation for those who want an opportunity to crossdress that is culturally sanctioned. 

 

This weekend, by contrast, it's the Flower Festival. One of the main industries here on the Riviera of Flowers is out-of-season horticulture that provides cut flowers throughout the winter months. Tomorrow, 11 local towns and villages will parade themed floats covered in flowers. It's the first time the parade has reverted to the pre-pandemic route so that anyone can watch for free and I hope I'll be able to see it properly.

 

The good stuff

In contrast to the transphobia that oozes through the airwaves these days, I wanted to share three items of trans-positive news from Europe that may have been overlooked by mainstream media in their quest for controversy and sensation.

- Poland has just opened its first dedicated LGBTQ+ museum in Warsaw (website in English: QueerMuseum Warszawa). Its communist and catholic past has suppressed and sidelined LGBTQ+ people and it's good to see queer confidence emerging in Eastern Europe in ways like this.

- The tiny country of Liechtenstein has quite good gay rights. Last year the 25-member parliament voted 24-1 in favour of marriage equality for same-sex couples, which came into force at the start of this year. This despite the ruling prince's personal disquiet about this. The country lags behind on trans rights but this adds to pressure to improve these. And it also puts a bit of pressure on that similar tiny principality, Monaco, to do something to improve its poor LGBT rights.

LGBT Liechtenstein flag. It's a map of the country. It is.

 

- LGBT and body positivity advocate and singer, Big Mama, who made a great impression on so many last year at the 2024 Sanremo Music Festival, is to be co-host of the Italian televisation of this year's Eurovision Song Contest. I have little interest in her music but as a boldly 'out' queer advocate, I think she's amazing, so I'm pleased to see her public profile increasing. 

Away

Last month I spent a couple of days in nearby Monaco to avoid the crush of the Sanremo Music festival. Next week I am spending a couple of days in Nice, the nearest big city to me, to do some shopping, including buying makeup, and some more sightseeing. Nice is not far from home but hotels are exceptionally cheap at this time of year so it's an easy treat that means I don't have to rush.

Sue x

More breast expansion

 Back in November I was pleasantly surprised to note that my breasts seemed to have increased in size. To update on my previous post on this when I wasn't completely sure that my breasts had grown more, I'm quite certain now that they have. 

It's odd because I experienced rapid, noticeable and quite painful breast growth 15 years ago when my body and mind seem to coalesce around my needing to live much more as a woman. After that, things just remained as they were but now I have had this further growth, this time without any aches, and despite losing weight and so reducing in size everywhere else. 

Why I'm not getting that ache I had last time they expanded, I don't know. 

I have never taken hormones and never would without close medical supervision. (I've seen too many trans women damage their health by self-medicating, and even some under the doctor have developed significant side-effects.) So I'm not sure why this expansion is happening. Let me make it clear that I am definitely not complaining, I'm delighted, especially when some poor trans women on hormones grumble that they're not getting the development they'd hoped for. I'm somewhere between an A cup and B cup now. I recently read this size described as Yoga Breasts. 

I have a couple of trans friends who have naturally developed C cups. Which is bad news in their male-dominated jobs but makes the rest of us jealous when they come into their own at the trans club. Maybe I'm heading for a gorgeous cleavage, too! One can hope.

My favourite bra for everyday wear at the moment is Marks & Spencers T-shirt bras in polymers (polyamide/elastane/spandex mix) rather than my previous preference for their cotton ones. They come in three-packs in various shades - nude, white, black, blue, pink ... but work well with many types of top. They're underwired and for the first time I really feel that the wire has something to support. They're also very soft, pleasantly comfortable to wear and I find the satin finish quite pretty for a straightforward item. Another recommendation, then.

 

Apart from being called "Madam / Ma'am" by shop or restaurant staff, there is little more affirming for me as a trans woman than putting my bra on in the morning and, now that I have something to fill it, I feel really good. To be honest, I can't stop staring at my chest in the mirror now! Is that bad? 

I did wonder whether to post a photo of my new growth but even with my bra on that sort of pic tends to attract the wrong kind of reader. I'll think about it (and so will the wrong kind of reader!)

 

Quicksilver x 3

Healthwise, I'm feeling quite a bit better this week and the quicksilver in the thermometer is back to normal so thank you for your kind, supportive comments. 

There's also this new sculpture near the entrance to the swanky new 5-star Europa Palace hotel here, which represents a shoal of anchovies, a local prized fish, swarming into a bait-ball. Anchovy shoals are so often described as quicksilver and this seems to capture that well, although I'm not sure the effect on the side of the building is as impressive as nature. Judge for yourselves.

 

And talking of Mercury (see what I did there?), I was delighted to see the planet shining bright on Saturday night after decades of missing it (clouds, wrong location, forgetfulness ...). I took a photo but it was too faint to show well. You can see for it yourselves, though, as it's currently near its greatest distance from the sun, which is why it's easily discernible, and close to bright Venus at sunset.

 

Positive

Have a good week, and I hope next time, despite the derangement that's coming out of Washington (and Moscow and Beijing) these days, to be able to share additional positive trans news as there's a lot of good stuff for us going on worldwide.

Sue x

About as popular as a hedgehog suppository

 I've not been too well this week. A combination of a cough, hay fever exactly as I had at this time last year, and toothache from an old problem tooth that no amount of expensive dentistry has ever resolved. I think I'd best have it taken out. As you can imagine, I've not slept very well. 

I bought this toy crab at the Oceanographic Institute in Monaco the other week. I was looking for another companion for Raimonda the Ray but there were none in similar sea-green shades so I have gone with a contrasting red. Its lugubrious expression caught my eye and it looks somewhat like I feel at the moment!

I had planned a blog post earlier this week about hiding in plain sight but I just didn't feel up to it. Next week instead, I hope. 

I've borrowed the title of this post from a British political vlogger who made me laugh with it. The vlogger used the expression to describe Trump's popularity rating in the UK at the moment. I spend much time wrestling with the problem of why stupidity and malice seem to be so prevalent, and now more than ever in my lifetime, and what to do about it. I can only make my little suggestions for coping in the hope they help others avoid trouble. Stay safe and, mentally, try to stay grounded in the current madness by focusing on what make you happy, not on the news.

Have a nice weekend.

Sue x