Celebrity quest, the sacred feminine and food news

More from my recent trip to Provence, focusing on Cannes.
 
Celeb culture

Lizzy the Lesbian Lobster, who now travels with me, likes LGBT history and during our recent trip to Southern France she was keen to spot a few monuments to queer or possibly queer celebrities. Like the home (now a hotel) of American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda at Juan-les-Pins in the mid-1920s. I regard Fitzgerald as a very fine writer and I'm just about to start his novel Tender Is the Night. 

He wasn't necessarily bi but I'd call him 'sexually anxious', in much the same way that he was anxious about his social status in the Jazz Age that he describes so well. Some have read hints of his being homosexual in his writing, others merely that he was desperate not to be perceived as gay or bi or less than masculine. It doesn't matter to me; what is upsetting is that he should have had to live in a society where he could end up so preoccupied with how people saw his sexuality and how he could fear that he was in so may ways an outsider. A salute from Lizzy, therefore, for outsiders who struggle, here at the former Fitzgerald home.

And if the Jazz Age interests you, how about this amazing curvaceous villa on the Cap d'Antibes, about a mile from the Fitzgeralds', called Villa Aujourd'hui (Wiki article here).

Aujourd'hui is the French for Today, which was the name of the first owner's other home in Palm Beach. She sold it to Jack Warner of Warner Bros who entertained all sorts of Hollywood stars there. You can see over the bay to Cannes from this house and that's where we find much of today's Hollywood aristocracy hanging out at the film festival. Their handprints are outside the tourist office. Jodie Foster gets the Lizzy the Lobster LGBT award.

Cannes is not really my sort of place. Too much ostentatious wealth, designer shops and celeb culture. But I did appreciate the innumerable blue chairs that the public can arrange at will on the three mile long leafy promenade.

The famous Carlton Hotel, below:

 

Having just visited Grasse, the French perfume capital, I couldn't help being reminded of the famous 1990 advertisement for Chanel's L'Égoïste which was set in a mock-up of it (L'Égoïste ad). 

But one really great discovery in Cannes that I recommend is the Malmaison Contemporary Art Centre on the promenade. As I wandered past, I was in two minds about going in to see the current exhibition, but the work of Carole Benzaken was actually pretty nice in an excellent display space and, best of all, there is a pleasant rooftop bar, the Café Olympe, with a terrace that looks out over the promenade and the beach to the Cap d'Antibes and the Lérins islands. It's worth paying the low entry fee of €6.50 just to go to the café even if you don't look at the art.

Away from the luxury stuff, the old town of Cannes is like many along this coast, a steep hilltop village overlooking the sea. Now the shops in its main streets are restaurants selling overpriced pizza and burgers so has lost some charm. 

But at the top there's an old church, a castle and a tiny but enchanted public open space, the Square du Caroubier, with a carob tree and olive trees, palms and cycads, rosemary and lavender and other fragrant plants. The benches, walls, even the rubbish bin are covered in patterned tiles in collaboration with the Malmaison Centre.

 

Such a tranquil, fragrant spot. 

 

The Sacred Feminine 

In the castle at the very top of the hill is one of the oldest anthropology museums, which had a special exhibition of ancient images of women carved in stone, Démones et Déesses (Demons and Goddesses). I call it the sacred feminine, but no conclusions were drawn by the curators: are these stone-age statuettes (so often called "Venuses") cult objects? toys? something sinister? or have people simply always liked images of naked women with big boobies and obvious genitalia? It has to be said that France is probably the only place in the world where you can happily take your family to an exhibition of outsize genitalia without inhibitions. The twin domes of the Carlton Hotel above are a tribute to the breasts of local socialite La Belle Otero, after all! 

Prehistoric "Venus" from Greenland, carved in walrus ivory

Tearful siren. Sirens were half-woman, half-bird, from ancient Greece. Hybrid creatures were seen as tormentors of mankind and the story of Ulysses hearing siren song but not being devoured by them is famous enough. Condemned to be not fully woman may account for her weeping. I know how she feels!

I'm not sure the exhibition did my dysphoria much good but, anyway, it was interesting with some precious items. If you prefer something decent and wholesome that will bring you down to earth, here is a royal male personage decently clad in decorated Y-fronts from 6th-Century B.C. Cyprus. Princes in their underpants! Whatever next?

 

 

And as a last word on enthnography, here's one of those Polynesian carvings that, when I was young, was deemed by the likes of Erich von Däniken and others to be proof of alien visitation.

Now the Cold War is over there seem to be far fewer UFOs in the sky, and now the hippies have moved into software engineering, we seem to hear less about aliens, too. Bring back the nutters! ...What? No, I mean harmless ones!

More weird statuary next week as an antidote to current nuttiness. If that makes sense.
 

Foodie news

Well, that's enough on celebrity sexuality and divine bodies. More important than all that is the fact that, although the food where I live in NW Italy is excellent and is that all-healthy Mediterranean diet, there's not actually a lot of variation. In France, however, not only do you have good food, you also have greater regional variety and many foreign restaurants. Personally, I prefer to be adventurous and try new foods, so I avoid chain restaurants. Besides, chains are not as cheap as they claim. A small, local, family-run business is worth supporting,  especially as they take pride in what they do.

On my trip to Provence, therefore, I visited an Indian restaurant (which you never find in Italy) and enjoyed a curry; a Thai restaurant, where I enjoyed a stir-fry; and a US-style restaurant for a quality burger and chocolate brownie. 

As for French regional cuisine, I enjoyed pancakes from Brittany, a savoury one with cheese, smoky bacon and mushrooms to start with, and a sweet one with Nutella and whipped cream (they have a whipped cream machine there that provides endless cream, like in some fairy tale). It makes a change to drink cider or apple juice with your meal. I also found a Corsican restaurant where they had Corsican beef on black bread ... black not because it was rye bread; no, it was black from squid ink, and that made it quite squishy! The pudding was a pinsa, which is like pizza bread but topped with chocolate sauce and hazelnuts and it was HUGE but really delicious. 

Top marks, though, to the Bistrot de Grand Mère right at the top of the hill in Cannes that served me a three-course Normandy-style lunch that for quality, quantity and price was unbeatable: a huge piece of pork terrine with crusty baguette and salad; a big, packed bowl of roast guinea fowl with onions, mushrooms, vegetables and cream sauce; and finally a double sized chocolate mousse. I go nuts for French chocolate mousse (especially if it's double size). The small spoon to eat it with was cheekily shaped like a shovel! I spotted this place after that disappointing line of overpriced pizzas in the road up to old Cannes from the swanky end of town and it met my needs perfectly. It pays to look around and not settle for the nearest.

Another good French experience was at the Café des Musées in Grasse where just two waiting staff worked with an efficiency and a charm that was super professional. The roast pork tenderloin with veg there was really good and the chocolate mousse (essential, see above) was perfect. 

When I got home after ignoring my slimming regime so thoroughly, I found I had barely put on weight. I must've walked it all off!

Sue x 

What if everyone is transgender?

 Ten years ago I posted a question as to how many transgender people there are. The answer is unknown and unknowable, for various reasons but mainly because no-one agrees on what constitutes transgender or even male and female; because the overwhelming majority of gender variant people are in the closet, totally unknown even to the internet, only to themselves; and because often gender variance occurs for a while in someone's life rather than throughout it. 

Suppose we stop assuming, because of lack of evidence or through prejudice, that trans is or is not X number of people and take the opposite standpoint: what if everyone is actually trans? Perhaps the gender binary is an illusion caused by social and reproductive expectations for many people, especially those promoted by the aggressive people who usually dominate societies, and most of the remaining population simply fall into line for simplicity's sake. If left to their inherent sense of self, would people actually feel totally masculine or feminine as is claimed? We don't know, any more then we can claim that there are clear male and female forms. I've made more than enough references in my blog over the years to trans people going back to ancient times and arising in all cultures and locations. Transgender is very much a thing.

Supposing you took a significant random sample of people - I'm talking tens (ideally hundreds) of thousands, not the usual trans studies that involve a few dozen or maybe a few hundred out-and-proud trans people - and actually asked them honestly, privately, anonymously, without fear or favour or ability to be traced, how they felt about their own masculinity or femininity, what the answers might be. We have very little information on this and all discussion of trans people is either from haters or from the tiny number of trans people who are out and those who study that tiny minority.

I hear it said that sex is all about reproductive organs or gametes, completely ignoring intersex conditions. I hear it said that genes don't lie: it's XX for girls and XY for boys, completely ignoring the mixup of conditions like Turner's Syndrome (X) or Klinefelter's syndrome (XXY). Stangely, no-one seem to point out that, on that basis, all boys have one girl chromosome, which should surely give us the two sexes of female and transgender? I hear it said that trans people are simply mentally ill; apparently, threats and abuse seem to be the proposed cure. I hear it said that transgender ideological terrorism is converting people to believe that they are something they are not. And so on and so forth, anything to try to pretend that trans people don't actually exist or shouldn't. I said I would not transition and the reason is that I don't trust states not to turn against beneficiaries of previous government policies. Having said that, I thought it unlikely that trans policies would be reversed in my lifetime and yet, when you look at Russia, the USA, Britain, Hungary and other places, maybe my caution was well founded. 

So as my short contribution to Transgender Awareness Week, leading up to Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20th, I'd just like to ask the haters what on earth they're talking about as the evidence for there being a gender binary is laughable. How about if everyone is trans apart from the outliers, those naturally very masculine or feminine people? Could it be that you haters are simply too scared to admit or embrace who you perhaps really are, that is someone not at the extremes of a gender spectrum? 

So as many rich and powerful people in the public eye focus on trans bashing to draw attention away from their own corruption and incompetence, banning a handful of trans sportspeople from participating here, encouraging conversion therapy there or turning a blind eye to transphobic violence, I rest assured that this current game of trans Whack-a-Mole can never work in the long term because nature just keeps creating trans people and most of them are invisible and out of reach. 

Tomorrow we remember those who tried to live authentically but died for it. 

 

Sue x 

Hiding in plain sight, with Goth gold

 I'm still on my travels and since I have a nosey relative buzzing around me today, I'm going to make a relatively short post. 

The thing about nosey people, or relatives (who all by definition feel have the same right to know just whatever it is they want about you), is that they actually rarely notice the glaringly obvious. Here I sit typing with my lovely long manicured nails, in my female clothes - flat fronted trousers, tights, blouse and cardigan (nothing glaringly feminine but certainly far from masculine) - and it goes unnoticed. Blow your nose or go to the bathroom, though, and they're all agog! 

In fact, this relative burst in on me when I was dressing and caught me in my knickers and didn't notice those. They're not pink and frilly, admittedly, but they are definitely women's not men's. 

People see what they want to see. I'm finding this method of dressing unisex or androgynously or whatever you want to call it is working for me. I know I am dressed as a woman outside my home even if not presenting as one but no-one pesters me about my being trans. It's a compromise between safety and privacy on the one hand and my daily need to be feminine on the other. I wrote a piece with the same title in the same situation three years ago (here) but I'm now all-in and I practically never wear anything from the men's racks any more. This system won't work for everyone, of course - and I will freely admit that it's not 'me', the true Sue - but given the increase in anti-trans attitudes in certain countries, I mention it as a compromise that might work for other trans people.

I will be writing up my very pleasant trip to San Marino next, once I am back at home. But for inspiration and as a taster, here is some Goth jewellery I saw there that was found in the territory. It belonged to a lady who was not just a Goth but an Ostrogoth living in the fifth or sixth century, presumably a wealthy women, maybe a princess. The original pieces have largely been dispersed to other museums around the world so these are copies in the San Marino State Museum. I think they're beautiful.

 

We've all dreamed of being a Goth princess, right? 

I also tried a local San Marino wine appositely called Goth gold (oro dei goti) which is an amber coloured sweet dessert wine that went very well with my fruit sorbets. Yes, I've been trying the local food and drink, inevitably. A lovely trip with truly breathtaking views from San Marino City on the summit of Mount Titano. Here's the view from my hotel:

Watch this space. Have a nice weekend.

Sue x 

Getting older (and uglier?)

 Well, my last post certainly seems to have generated a lot of interest, if the infallible Blogger stats machine is anything to go by. 

I guess the styles of our formative years have a bearing on how we see ourselves. Don't get me wrong - I no longer dress like a teenager of the 1980s, fun and desirable though that style may be (or not!), because I am a mature woman of the 2020s so, yes, my leather pants and boho blouse are now 'in' and rara skirts are not. 

I believe trans women are women and should follow contemporary fashion, as any other woman can if she so chooses. I know ultragirly clothes are especially attractive to trans girls as they compensate for years of forced masculinity, but if you want to be treated as a woman then behaving like one is important, and that includes style, which is always a key signal to others of one's own intent. Should you dress as a polka-dot goth lolita if you want to? Absolutely! But you will get noticed, which is fine if you like that, but if you're like me and would rather get on with life without being pestered or pointed out as someone odd then it's better to blend in and appear in something similar to what other women around you are wearing. 

I'm not sure that the ubiquitous 'casual' style of the moment is that great, although it can at least be cheap and easy to wear. But I am becoming very conscious that I am getting older, less flexible, more tired and it's a struggle for my face to look anything other than flabby and wrinkly. Losing weight fast has, I think, left me with wobblier skin on my face. I don't like how I am looking in photos any more - it's hard to take a good picture now that doesn't make me look jowly. It bothers me a lot because it's giving away more than I would like - no, not so much that I am aging but that I have had the crushing disadvantage of having had to go through male puberty and the damage to my femininity that results from that.

A lovely trans friend has emailed me saying how ugly she is -  according to her, at least, and to the nasty folk she seems to insist on listening to. Actually, she is gorgeous, with beautiful natural blonde hair and a lovely mouth and cute eyes and I would love to have even half the pretty features she has. But I can't easily reassure my friend of her beauty when I am having doubts about mine. It's hard not to feel that ugliness has set into my features as time has passed. Again, I don't have the natural advantage of as much female hormonal development as other women and that's bothering me more than before.

As for clothes, tottering on five-inch heels is no longer my desire - I'm not sure it ever was - but three-inch is still tolerable. Elasticated waists are a godsend and Lycra smooths out so much.

I did ask my genetic female friends recently about what I should change in my style so as to represent my aging better, in terms of hair, makeup and clothes, and they said that these days it's the thing for a woman to dress younger, to colour her hair and to wear it how she wants. Hearing that was encouraging as I have long since settled on a hairstyle that I love and I think suits me perfectly ("Carrie" in darker tones, by Noriko) and I'd like to keep it.

I do notice mothers and grandmothers in Western Europe dressing similarly to their daughters and granddaughters. Now any age, it seems, can opt for attractive, contemporary and stylish. Gone are the days when old ladies were expected to dress like old ladies! Here on the continent of Europe I notice very many older women (70s/80s) wearing leather leggings, short skirts or brightly coloured shoes. (A small, fluffy, gormless-looking dog carried in a basket or handbag really adds to the look, too!) 

I thought this look might have been a bit too much for a night out last month for a woman approaching retirement but, no, the somewhat seethrough blouse, leather skirt, mesh tights and high boots is perfect now even for a woman of my age. 

So thanks to my friends for their reassurance.

More food festivities

As mentioned last post, it's foodie time on the riviera. 

Roast chestnut festivals are the thing in most of the mountain villages in the province this month with huge smoking braziers in every village square. 

You won't be surprised to hear that pumpkins are being celebrated in various places, too. 

And codfish! Always a traditional staple food, but usually salted or dried. 

Mushrooms continue to abound and I treated myself to these beauties, which I had just cleaned and washed when I took this photo.

I then chopped them smaller and stewed them up with lots of the amazing local garlic from Vessalico (a village up the road that's renowned for its garlic that's twice as spicy as the boring stuff you get in a supermarket), and with the wonderful oil from the local Taggiasca variety of olives, a touch of the local vermentino white wine and my own home-grown parsley, mint and chilli pepper. Fresh local produce pretty much guarantees a delicious dinner.

This girl likes to eat. Thankfully, my clothes have elasticated waistbands and stretchy Lycra these days!

Sue x

Transgender arts and culture, February 2024

 Some of the spectacles with a trans theme I have spotted from around the world this month.

 

Music

1) I wrote a lot about the huge Sanremo Music Festival earlier this month (Body, mind and Soul; and A carnival of camp; and For all the transphobia, there's understanding out there) and I'm pleased to see that the openly bi and trans-ally contestant, BigMama, who made the most impression on me, was invited to the United Nations in New York to speak at the Arts for Global Citizenship event for young people. She spoke about bullying, body shaming and discrimination of all kinds, which she herself has suffered from significantly. I think as trans people we can relate to all that.

2) Obviously, BigMama benefits from a half century when being openly LGBT+ is legal. I notice a book out (Non Tocchiamo Questo Tasto (i.e. Best not press that key) by Luca Ciammarughi) about classical composers of past centuries who could reasonably fall under the queer umbrella and how they surreptitiously defied censorship in their works. Could be interesting. There has, after all, been a recent biopic, Maestro, about conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein that was able to present his bisexuality to modern audiences.

Carnival

It's the carnival season, which is especially celebrated in Southern Europe and Latin America, although there's also a significant one in Basle/Bâle/Basel, Switzerland. I mention it as many of these are centuries old and have always provided an opportunity for people to go about in disguise. In places like Basle the costume traditionally covers all the body; in Venice, say, you may get away with just a mask, but wearing an all-over disguise is more in the spirit of the event; in Rio, the skimpy outfits are for the boldest only!

As, traditionally, you don't ask who's under the disguise, this annual opportunity to go about dressed differently has always been a godsend to trans people who need the chance to dress but without giving themselves away. In English-speaking countries, Hallowe'en has the same kind of usefulness.

It's also an opportunity to be very creative and wear something astonishing. These items from Venice:

Photo by Massimo Telò

Photo by Shesmax

Who can say who's underneath these extravagant female costumes and china masks?

The Venice Carnival is ongoing. The carnivals in the Canary Islands are famous for their more open opportunities for drag and crossdressing. Gran Canaria's drag queen parade is the largest but there are other such parades on other islands, and it's common for people to take the opportunity to present as another gender for whatever reason or none.

These events, where normal life is upended and ordinary people can let their hair down, are thousands of years old and have always been an outlet for trans people. Such cultural outlets will always exist. For a bit more discussion of these events, see the second part, the "Dip in the Archives" of my post here.

 

Photography

Queen Bees by Luigi Lista

Luigi Lista has been following the trans community of Naples for six years and his book of photographs, Queen Bees, was published last year. Sleek Magazine's short review, translated (poorly) into English from a longer interview, is here, with lots of his photos: 

Queen Bees

© Luigi Lista

 

I hope you've enjoyed the extra day this month!

Sue x

A carnival of camp!

 I’ve had a surprising amount of interest in comments on my last post, on Facebook and elsewhere, on the camp funfest that is the annual Sanremo Music Festival, so I thought I’d expand on that. 

Here Storm Pulcinella is bucketing down as I write but that doesn't stop the loony tunes festival. I'm not prepared to watch all 5-6 hours of TV every night just to report back, but it's proving quite fun, even if Sanremo town centre is virtually off limits to ordinary mortals. 

The main venue is the Ariston theatre, that for much of the year operates as a four-screen cinema:

(c) Fotogramma : adnkronos

2024 sees a fabulous stage, an outstanding presenter, varied music, lovely flowers (all grown locally through the mild winter), and lots of peripheral events... I'm not sure that John Travolta's rendition of the birdie song accompanied by fluffy dancing ducks was the high point of his career, but hey!

 

(c) Il Gezzettino.it

 

Big Mama, twerking in tomato-red tights with trans symbols on, dedicates her song to the queer community (thank you). Alessandro de Santis, one half of Santi Francesi, performs in a rather lovely glittery floor-length black evening dress. Ghali has sparkly bracelets and earrings that look very feminine. Marco Mengoni wears leather culottes by Fendi that look like a skirt. And is that a skirt that one of the boys of BNKR44 is wearing? Or some kind of Tarzanesque loincloth? Who cares, it’s not boring trousers, so that’s good.

Of course, being a giant national event, it attracts politics, such as Ercolina 2, a cow protesting against the EU Common Agricultural Policy (successor to the original Ercolina who was famously granted an audience with the Pope in 1997 whilst protesting about milk quotas). Ercolina 2 appreciated the Sanremo Green Carpet to the extent of eating some of it! Well, it is organic!  

The carpet tastes lousy, but the flowers are good! Ercolina 2 at Sanremo 2024. (c) Liguria Notizie

The event is heavily mediatized, though, and only about one third of seats in the Ariston theatre are available to music fans; the other two thirds are for radio and TV people, music industry execs and the like. Ditto the vast cruise ship with DJ and outsize LED screen flashing messages to shore all night.

The first festival was held in 1951 in the theatre at the casino, and the huge Ariston theatre was then built to house it from 1977. The event spawned the Eurovision song contest and if Sanremo council had remembered to renew an old contract with the government, Sanremo would have hosted Eurovision in 2022. The winner of the song contest gets a trophy, a guaranteed music career, and, better still, a municipal drain cover with their name and song on it!

(c) Tonino Bonomo: Sanremonews.it

No complaints so far from the local homophobic bishop this year that it's too camp. In fact, a very conservative Catholic organisation, Opus Dei, has just put out a list of pop songs that its faithful may enjoy without guilt. 

Besides, any more anti-queer abuse from the bishop and Big Mama might well crush his head like a walnut between her gigantic thighs! (Only kidding, bishop; though she might not be!)

It's a commercial pop show, so of course it's camp and a bit gender-bending. This is the creative world for you. And that's why everyone loves it.

The winner will be announced at the end of Saturday night's TV marathon.

 

Weight loss

Only half a pound off this week; I've lost focus a bit. And maybe that glass of wine to celebrate January is at fault! It'll be better next week.

Sue x

Winter fairy

 Now to talk about pretty things. Although these last two weeks have been mainly cold, clammy and grey, and my mood sinks in such weather and in the shorter days of winter, I watched a video earlier of someone making a winter fairy garden in a basket, with evergreen plants like holly and ivy, a tiny pool of water in the centre and unusual pieces of wood, stones and other material. The end result was lovely and it inspired me to tidy up my garden that gets very messy and neglected in winter.

I remember how one of my sisters loved fairies when she was little. Her favourite books were the little Flower Fairy volumes by Cicely Mary Barker. I won't put an example up here as they are still in copyright and trademarked but you can look at the website of her estate here: Flower Fairies: Meet the Fairies. 

There were many other such fairy books at home, beautifully illustrated by superb artists such as Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite ...

"Fairy Islands", illustration by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite for the book "Elves and Fairies".

I loved these books, too, but I was supposed to be a boy and they were definitely only for girls so I had to pretend to hate them and I was quite nasty to my sister about them out of sheer jealousy and the pain of having to stick with gender norms. Abuse passes down the line... 

But I still love fairies. I don't believe in fairies, but I love their delicacy. As I've said before, being trans is not just about the clothes.

 

"A fairy" by Arthur Rackham; pen, ink & watercolour.

So maybe I'll make a fairy garden, too, with plants and water that might attract delicate winged creatures like butterflies or dragonflies. I do like the little animals here, mainly small reptiles. But remember,

    Newts and blindworms do no wrong, 

come not near our fairy queen.

(Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream)

Another magical thing happened yesterday. Occasionally, when the air is very clear, you can see the island of Corsica from here. It's not just a question of good seeing, though, but refraction since the whole island, even the highest peaks, are actually below the horizon, 200 km (125 miles) away and more.

Corsica, from western Liguria, January 21st 2024, by Paolo Valbusa on Facebook

Corsica is often visible in late May when the setting sun reflects off the last snows on the highest mountains and makes the whole thing an ethereal pink, like a blancmange floating on the sea. It's an amazing sight. I'd never seen it in January before.

Maybe it's true that the best things in life are free.

Weight loss

In my bid to become a fairyweight transwoman, I've lost another 3 pounds (1.36 kg) over the last week (although my bathroom scales were doing some very odd things this morning - maybe the battery's running low). That's over 18.5 pounds (8.4kg) so far, with 31.5 to go. 

You Spotted Snakes, by Will Shakespeare

You spotted snakes with double tongue,
⁠Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,
⁠Come not near our fairy queen.

⁠Philomel, with melody
⁠Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby:
⁠Never harm,
⁠Nor spell nor charm,
⁠Come our lovely lady nigh;
⁠So, good night, with lullaby.

Weaving spiders, come not here;
⁠Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence!
Beetles black, approach not near;
⁠Worm nor snail, do no offence.

⁠Philomel, with melody
⁠Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby:
⁠Never harm,
⁠Nor spell nor charm,
⁠Come our lovely lady nigh;
⁠So, good night, with lullaby.

"Titania sleeping in the moonlight protected by her fairies", by John Simmons

 

Sue x

The art of making things disappear

 I have decided to be ruthless with my weight loss this winter. I am tired of being overweight: I feel uncomfortable, ugly, self-conscious and unhealthy. I know the various reasons why I got to this weight but I also know how to go back to being slim. 

So I have made a clear target and timescale to lose 50 pounds (23 kg) in the six months between November 1st just past and May 1st next year. That will leave me at my ideal weight.

In the first week I have lost over 5½ pounds (2.5 kg), which I am very pleased with. I expect weekly losses to become harder to achieve as I approach the right weight but for now I'll enjoy the high achievement figures!

Wear a bra every day

I was intrigued to read about the Bra-tober challenge by Paula Gaikowski on the Femulate blog today. The challenge is to wear a bra all day, every day for a month if you are not full-time femme. 

The bra is probably the most characteristically feminine garment there is. If you don't have breasts, you don't need one; women have breasts, men don't, therefore these are not for men, goes the logic. Well, actually, you don't need a bra if you do have breasts, and some men have breasts, too ("Meatloaf has a very nice pair," says Hugh Grant in Notting Hill), but it's become an item that apparently women cannot do without! Like those kitchen gadgets that apparently transform your mealtimes. 

The first time I put on a bra it was the weirdest feeling. I was totally aware I had it on as no other garment I had worked in that kind of way. Some trans women like the feeling, even the discomfort, as it makes a statement about their femininity that their body can't really ignore. Until you get used to it, that is. I wear a bra every day now, it feels right and normal, and in the mornings the issue is no longer whether I get to dress as a woman today but what style and colour I should choose. Although I don't present as female in public at the moment, all my clothes are women's items. My bra is simply one item appropriate to wear with the rest of them. It's not as good as being full time female, but it's enough to keep me reasonably content.

If you aren't able to dress every day, or dress fully, there's always the choice of underdressing. Of course, in trans speak that doesn't mean not wearing enough, or not being smart enough for the occasion, but wearing women's clothes under your male ones. Since my theme is disappearing, you can, in my view, wear a bra to work if it's a well-fitting and discreet one and your clothes on top are loose and opaque. Go for it; it will make you feel more complete and your colleagues won't know. Nor need they know about your panties (don't forget to wear a belt!) Of course, some trans purists refuse to mix and match their female wardrobe with their male one. I can understand that, but for many it's needs must.

Caramac

Back to food! I'm sorry that Nestlé have chosen to discontinue the Caramac bar, which they bought from Mackintosh's (caramel + Mackintosh = Caramac). 64 years of sweet treats terminated - boo! 

I remember the first one I got from a vending machine at the very old-fashioned Acton Swimming Baths some time in the 1970s on the recommendation of a friend. It cost 5p then. Caramac was essentially a very smoothly milled fudge, and I got hooked on them! That's not why I'm fat, though. Well, maybe it is.

Sue x

Dress sense

 I'm away staying with relatives and I have various things, administrative and otherwise, to do. My suitcase is full of articles of female clothing but ones that enable me to maintain the femininity that makes me happy but deal with business in my official male capacity and not 'out' me as trans. I would prefer to be all female but the world isn't geared to that right now, and my relatives certainly aren't. (In fact, just last night I heard one scoffing to his girlfriend at a system of gender-neutral noun endings that's being increasingly used in languages like Italian that have two genders for nouns, masculine and feminine. It's the same for Spanish, French, Portuguese and such.) So my trousers, shoes, hosiery, tops and underwear are all off the female racks, but when combined don't give away that I'm trans. There are a lot of ways of dressing in the 2020s that are equally valid for either sex or anyone between. My long nails haven't aroused comment yet. I dislike the semi-stealth I'm in, but survival overrides true authenticity right now. 

Still, I feel feminine in myself and obviously much more so when I dress as a woman, which is now virtually all the time. And I don't get asked awkward questions or feel threatened or mocked.

Yesterday, I had to be in Switzerland. It was cold all right and I was rather missing the palm trees on the coast where I live! I'm glad I wore warm tights under my girl trousers. Here's Switzerland in winter, then. This is Lugano on the lake of the same name:

 

Today I had a Covid booster at a pharmacy in Milan. Nice young lady doctor, very efficient and friendly with all customers, old and young. My jeans, sneakers and blouse were not all that dissimilar to hers. Except she had a white tunic on too, which is just not my style!

I'm going to take it easy this weekend and tackle more bureaucracy and administrative stuff on Monday. In my girl clothes, of course. I hate boy clothes and always have. One day my legal status, my face and my clothes will all match, but for now we deal with circumstaces in this way.

Sue x

Is it crossdressing if it was male fashion once?

 As a kid I tried to justify my wearing girls' clothes by claiming that men in the past used to wear the sorts of things I liked to wear: silk shirts with lace, stockings and suspenders, high heels, etc.; or else that certain men wear certain things that are more usually associated with women such as Scottish kilts or dancers' tights. This was a kind of legalistic interpretation of the notion that boys mustn't dress like girls - kids are all barrack-room lawyers, aren't they? - and that therefore I wasn't really dressing like a girl (even though I was), just in case I got caught and interrogated. This was also before I knew that being transgender doesn't equate to being a boy who wants to be a girl. 

Things seem to have become more fluid, clothing wise, and a lot of clothes are essentially unisex or not obviously gendered now. This partly explains my last post about soon replacing any remaining menswear in my wardrobe with womenswear. A lot of the time, as with jeans, say, who can tell any difference? Apart from looking at the label. 

But there is also a trend towards people selecting clothing that is more obviously associated with the other gender. I have seen many men in skirts in recent years for presumably no reason other than that they prefer to wear them. And who doesn't? 

My motives for wearing skirts are different - I want to look and feel feminine and be treated as a woman, not a guy in a skirt. But going back to my younger years, how could I justify why I wore skirts in an age and culture that still thought trans people were weird? (OK, it's not that we're not deemed weird now, but nothing like to the same degree.)

Hence my legalistic interpretation of whether or not each and every item of clothing was or was not for women. The whole ensemble was never examined in this way and, yes, I was dressed as a girl all right, no doubt about it, and that's what I wanted to look like. 

A trans friend used to be in a rock tribute band and therefore was justified in wearing a long wig, fitted top and leggings as it was part of the act, and even at home the odd clothes were deemed acceptable by the wife. Rock and roll yeah! Until my friend forgot some panties drying on the radiator and the wife realised that the rock band excuse was not the real justification for the feminine clothes. Sadly, they have split up and I suspect, as is often the case in these scenarios, that the bogus justification upset her more than the fact her husband was trans.

Finally, I don't pretend to understand anything about manga/animé and the whole graphic and games culture associated with these art styles but time and again I come across mention of the character Astolfo, who is a guy who dresses girly because he likes it. Originally a warrior in Renaissance epic poems, notably Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (a piece of literature that, for my part, I found excruciating in my student days), Astolfo has become a crossdresser in his modern animé reincarnation, which is fine in my book. But the justifications for men wearing softer, prettier garments, using Astolfo in this meme that has been doing the rounds, do remind me a lot of my own justifications as a youngster, which were exactly along these lines:

Being cutesy is very fun and it's good that non-trans guys increasingly seem to be choosing to wear something frilly, pink or soft again, as men used to do. If you like it, go for it. After all, some great men have indeed gone for part of this look, though none of them for all of it. More's the pity!

Not what they meant?

Talking of interpretation, this recent item from the Church Times probably doesn't mean what it seems to be saying.

It made me chuckle, though.

A dip in the archives

Here's another one of the photos recently sent to me. This is me with my lovely friend Kate at the Sparkle transgender festival in Manchester in 2015.

I'm putting this one up as Kate is very sick at the moment and I'm thinking of her a lot and hoping she will pull through.

Sue x

Should I stand on a chair and scream?

I'm all for pointing out that being transgender is not just about clothes. Other interests and behaviours are involved as well and, in many ways, I think that is the key. I wear dresses because it fits my understanding of myself, not because they're a kink, a fetish, an interest, a persuasion or just the latest fashion must-have. I've never been into sports league statistics, overhead camshafts or acting tough. So that puts paid to my male credentials, right? And I like flowers, giggles and high heels. So that's proof I must be a woman, yes?

Let's look at this from the point of view of a mad episode this week with my back garden menagerie. In the last few weeks I've been talking a lot about the lizards and other critters who live in my plant pots. 

On Sunday evening I was watering the plants and noticed a tiny gecko on the wall, about an inch and a half long. Geckos are very common here so I took little notice, but when I'd finished and gone back indoors I realised it had gone into my living room. I was about to close the door for the night and, as there are slim pickings for insect-eaters in my home, I thought it best to encourage it out. So I picked up a piece of paper to guide it in the right direction but accidentally dropped the sheet onto the gecko, who responded by shedding its tail. 

This is an instinctual response by a number of reptiles to distract predators and it's an amazing tactic as the tiny detached tail with its bright colouration wriggled and writhed about on the floor. If I were a cat or other predator, I'd have been mesmerised by it. It was pretty fascinating even for someone who knew what was happening. That's the point: the potential predator gets distracted by the tail and so the bulk of the tasty gecko gets away. I was upset, though, that I'd been so clumsy and the gecko had reacted as though I were an enemy. Although the gecko will regrow its tail, the second tail is never quite as good as the first and there may be no scope for a third tail if ever necessary. I'm sorry about that, I really am. 

I couldn't coax the now inch-long gecko from under the sofa so I left the door open in the hope it would go back out in the night, even though an open back door is an obvious security issue for me. 

The next morning, Monday, there was no sign of geckos or burglars indoors so I shut the door and carried on with my day. That evening I went to water the plants again and the crazy thing scuttled back into my living room! Here it is, minus tail.

You're a stickler for trouble, my little intruder! Again, I grabbed the first piece of paper I could find and, gripping firmly this time, scooped the critter up, stepped outdoors and, as I would with a spider or insect, wafted the paper upside down to shed its load, forgetting that geckos have a unique grip. It clung on for dear life and no matter what shaking or fluttering I did, the wretched thing stuck to my paper, which I now noticed was my bill from the water company. (Ah, yes, a bill for water we can now use only during limited hours of the day! They still charge us full rate, the bandits!) Look, Gordon Gecko, you want to grip my water bill, you can pay for it! I clung on, it clung on and this tug-of-paw went on for some time. 

There is a scientific theory that geckos have such impressive grip because their skin is designed to have such close contact with the surface they are walking on that the electrons of the gecko's atoms exchange with electrons of surface atoms thus creating a tight bond. Other scientists dispute this theory. What I want to know, though, is if I rip this gecko off my water bill, do the atoms split and will there therefore be an atomic explosion? And if so, do I need to pay my bill? "Sorry, but my bill was destroyed in an act of war by our lizard overlords!" Could we parachute mini geckos into the Kremlin so when the KGB pull them off the walls the place is exploded brick by brick? A scientist friend tells me I am being fanciful. I dare say there's a Hollywood summer blockbuster script right there, though!

I digress! In the end, the gecko finally got the message, let go and scuttled off into the night. I've seen several of his still-betailed companions a number of times this week. 

But this brings me (finally) to the point. Traditionally, women are supposed to stand on a chair and scream when they see a mouse or even a spider in the house. But I think little creatures are quite cute, as long as they don't sting. Does this call my female credentials into question? 

A female cousin of mine went crazy when a gecko entered her house and she spent a frantic time trying to shoo it off the ceiling with a broom. One of my sisters would have had a fit if she'd had to deal with a writhing gecko tail! She hates all insects, too, and once missed a train because the station platform had an advertising hoarding with a poster with a caterpillar on it that she couldn't bear to look at. This is the sister who hates LGBT people and this general sense of fear and disgust for the unusual or potentially dangerous is, I think, the overarching driver of all her many prejudices. Indeed, behavioural scientists feel that a lot of religious, political and social thinking can be driven simply by one's innate fears of certain things. Emotions like disgust or terror can make a difference at the ballot box, and I don't think you need much scientific background to realise that. Some people are more worried by bugs or innovation or speaking or heights or strangers or whatever than others, and that affects their interactions. But it doesn't follow that women generally are driven by these phobias. My uncle can't stand non-fluffy animals either. Years ago I was staying with my grandmother when a bat got in. She was furious because a creature had got into her nice clean tidy home and was messing up the proper order of the universe. Bats live outside, people in; for her, that's the way it is! My uncle, then in his 30s, crawled into his bed and pulled the covers over his head in case the mad bat got him! I had to deal with it, wasn't able to shoo the frightened thing out, and got fed up with the gibbering and screaming from the other occupants of the house so I just closed the bedroom door on them, went to bed and let the thing flap and bang about my bedroom all night till it worked out which way was out in the cold light of morning. 

My post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as you'll doubtless have gathered. This thing of women standing on chairs and screaming does show that male/female stereotypes do pervade our thinking much of the time. Each of us has our natural instincts, a collection of them, unique to us. I like geckos; I hate wasps. I have no interest in chick-magnet cars, either as owner or passenger; but I will buy every colour if I find a special style of tights I like. Does that make me more feminine, less masculine? Or vice versa, as I didn't scream when the gecko chucked its tail. Or am I just a human being with a particular range of behaviours, preferences and desires? An instinct I just can't shake, though, is that I am, deep down and in my core, a woman.

Well, that's about it from Sue's Zoos and Views for today. Never let the reptiles take over your life!

 Sue x

Kids are merely imagining they are trans, says the psychiatrist

 I mentioned briefly in my last post that I had friends to stay and that one is a psychiatrist who works mainly with children. 

A vein of humour can been mined when a psychiatrist turns up in comedy shows. One thinks of the psychiatrist who stays at the Fawlty Towers hotel describing the acerbic owner, Basil Fawlty, as having "enough material there for an entire conference". Or in the various incarnations of The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, where the President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, has a 'private brain care specialist' with a German accent who is often interviewed about the President's state of mind and invariably ends the questioning with the non-committal "Vell, Zaphod's just zis guy, you know". 

I'm pleased to say that my psychiatrist friend also has a strong German accent this makes him authentic in the best tradition! However, what he said about transgender children wasn't all that funny, I thought.

To summarise a long chat, according to his experience, his training and his school of psychiatry, no-one can know they are transgender until they are about 14 so that treating kids as transgender before then is wrong. This is because, prior to that sort of age, kids play lots of games, indulge in frequent role-playing and imagine their place in a made-up world. There is so much fantasy in early years, he said, that swapping gender role is merely an aspect of childhood play and it is inappropriate to treat that as a determinant for the future.

Now, no-one could argue that kids aren't full of fantasy and imagination. They love playing roles and pretending to be all sorts of things. But if this is a game, then I've been playing it for 50 years! The only variation in my feeling trans is the intensity with which that conviction has existed throughout my life. And whilst it is true that some people, especially children, do actually swap gender roles for a little while before reverting to their designated gender, there's a deepset innate sense in a trans person that their place in life is with the gender they experience and identify with, that it's no game and that they're not making it up. We do not have the vocabulary to describe this conviction nor are we able to say convincingly "I feel like a woman/man" since no-one can accurately describe what feeling like a particular sex is. Most people whose sex and gender match never even give this notion a thought.

So I said that gender dysphoria and childhood fantasy games might seem similar to an outsider, but that imagination had no direct connection with the trans experience. I also had to point out that his training, unlike that of a doctor, did not involve studying biology, and that fields like genetics, endocrinology, evolutionary biology, ecology and so forth reveal distinct possibilities that being trans is a natural and inevitable consequence of genetic makeup, of hormonal differences, of environmental factors, of evolutionary pressures and many other physical forces at work in nature which have nothing to do with the mind. I also pointed out that I had taken part in various studies into trans people, including the 2010 Kennedy/Hellen study on when trans people perceive their gender incongruence. The overwhelming majority have done so well before 14. I myself am typical in that I felt I wanted to be regarded as a girl when I was about 5-6 years old (there's a useful chart on p.4 of that study). And that's never changed. The main reason I have never transitioned, even though I would love to live as female all the time, is that the self-preservation instinct and social pragmatism have so far overridden my natural feminine instinct. When you are brought up in a brutal and judgmental environment, and society is not always accepting, acting safely is essential for survival. 

As far as his own field was concerned, I also pointed out that transgenderism was being regarded ever less as a condition requiring mental health intervention but more of a natural experience. The rewrites of the DSM, for instance, bear witness to that.

This all seemed to be news to my psychiatrist friend. He still suggested that the happiest life for me would be to conflate my feminine side with my masculine one and meet in the middle, which annoyed me, partly because I hadn't asked for some clinical diagnosis but mainly because my male side is merely a public mask for self-preservation purposes, whereas my trans feminine side is that actual real me and not some game. Frankly, this discussion left me feeling that psychiatry has limited benefits when dealing with trans people. I can see from my own experience of visiting gender clinics, from general discussions with trans friends especially transitioners, and from everyday interactions, that a lot of people who transition have underlying conditions such as autism or bipolar disorder, much more so than in the general population, and that they could benefit from intervention by psychiatrists to assist with informed, practical decisions on transition rather than the often precipitate or extreme approach that some trans people take as a result of those conditions (or indeed through peer pressure); but as for psychiatrists assuming that trans children are merely playing games, that is depressing and unhelpful and makes me wonder about the value and quality of that profession in dealing with us.

Oh well, I thought I'd mention this.

 

Heat

Wishing all my friends in Europe resilience in this heatwave and drought. I tolerate heat well but I confess that even I am having trouble sleeping in these hot, airless nights.

I let my herbs and salads flower and go to seed, which generates the next crop, and this also attracts little insects that in turn attract the lizards and geckos who eat them. I am now convinced that a tiny lizard has taken up permanent residence among my pots as I see her so frequently, either scuttling about or basking in the sun. I call her Laura. I don't know if the lizard is actually female, but she is to me. Should I see a shrink?

Sue x