Tag: society

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Trans Or Trans-Attracted: You’re Meant To Be Happy

 

Not happy FB blog
You came to live continually happy and getting all you want. Why aren’t you?

Relationships don’t make a person happy.

Having that transgender lover you want isn’t going to make you happy.

Having that new job, or that car you want, or that money you’re wanting won’t do it either.

When you satisfy a desire, you feel the satisfaction, sure.

But notice: over time, that satisfaction (and satisfaction is what you mistake as happiness) fades as it is replaced by new desires.

  • That relationship, job, car or amount of money, no matter how wonderful at first, comes with inherent disappointments:
  • Relationships inherently are made of unmet expectations, frustration, trust issues and growth. Yes, you can be happy in them. But it’s often a roller coaster.
  • Jobs nearly always include frustrating bosses or colleagues, unwanted stressors, and rarely satisfying pay. No matter how much you make or how satisfying the work. Jobs and happiness are rarely in a long term relationship.
  • Cars come with traffic, car repairs, worries about it getting stolen, parking fees….money comes with…well you know.

No.

Whatever material thing you’re wanting is like any satisfied desire. Once you get it, once it is fulfilled, you want more, or you discover more is possible.

But happiness is borne of in-the-moment-awareness of your recognition, your acknowledgment that your life is a delightful journey, orchestrated by you in every moment. When you get to that recognition, life becomes what it is meant to be: a continuous string of joyful experiences.

It takes a while to get there, not because it’s hard, because it’s easy. It takes a while to get there because you have to gradually slow the influence of your old way of living: thinking that life is hard, that you must work hard, that relationships are hard, that trans women are elusive, that men don’t like transgender women, that all trans-attracted men are gay or chasers….and on and on and on.

You are meant to live a happy life. It is as near as you saying that you want that, then doing something productive about it.

And when you find yourself happy, you get everything you’re wanting. Easily. Including that relationship, that car, that money and that job.

Not happy, why aren’t you?

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Parents who get being trans like a boss

We love it when parents get it. Then take the effort to transform themselves in the same way their children are transforming.

It’s not an easy path realizing your child is likely transgender. What we think is remarkable is when a parent’s love for their child trumps what they think their child should do be or wear.

Case in point: This woman’s description of her own transition as a mother of a transgender child. Her concluding paragraph says it all:

I push through my discomfort and do what I can to explain all this to the people I know or encounter, hoping to help them undertake the minimal work to call transgender people by language that reflects their true selves. If parents would let themselves feel proud and amazed, instead of scared, when their kids grow and change, they might just grow and change themselves. And if they’re very lucky, their kids, like mine, will help the world grow and change, too.

We really appreciate the phrase “minimal work”. It really is minimal to change one’s language. Compared to what transgender individuals go through to own their transition, changing one’s language is simple. But also really powerful.

We’re glad to see parents embracing their transgender children. It’s just more evidence of the world shifting to embrace these wonderful people.

And it’s more evidence supporting your coming out of the closet trans-attracted man. The shame you may feel about being attracted to trans people is self-inflicted. You don’t have to feel that way.

We can help you.

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Scarlett Johansson Gives Up Trans Role

Black Widow

It’s being reported that Scarlett Johansson has chosen to no longer participate in the new film where she would play a transgender character.

In a revised statement, released today, the actress says:

In light of recent ethical questions raised surrounding my casting as Dante Tex Gill, I have decided to respectfully withdraw my participation in the project. Our cultural understanding of transgender people continues to advance, and I’ve learned a lot from the community since making my first statement about my casting and realize it was insensitive. I have great admiration and love for the trans community and am grateful that the conversation regarding inclusivity in Hollywood continues … While I would have loved the opportunity to bring Dante’s story and transition to life, I understand why many feel he should be portrayed by a transgender person, and I am thankful that this casting debate, albeit controversial, has sparked a larger conversation about diversity and representation in film.

We figured things would work out in this matter. Too much momentum has already been generated moving trans performers to center stage. As we reported just moments ago, with Cassandra James landing a spot on General Hospital, with Alexandra Billings performing wonderfully as a judge on Goliath with the show Pose moving to its second season, the season of trans actors is at hand.

Scarlett is no idiot.

We love seeing things going positively in all directions. Being on the right side of history always feels better. Of course, the right side in this case is yielding such roles to those more apt to play them. Scarlett also isn’t struggling. With so many roles under her belt and with being the highest paid actress from 2014 – 2016, she certainly doesn’t need the money.

That said, there’s news that her decision was intentionally made to save her iconic role as Black Widow. At the time of this writing, Forbes is saying:

Even if we give Johansson the benefit of the doubt that she merely saw the true-life crime melodrama (think American Made) as a juicy role about a “tough woman” who assumed a male identity to succeed in a male-dominated arena, the outcry has been fast and furious: Tokyo drift. Speaking of Tokyo Drift, couple this with the controversy over her playing the lead in last year’s Ghost in the Shell adaptation, where she technically played a Japanese woman whose mind and soul were transported into the body of a white lady, and I imagine the actress decided it wasn’t worth it. There was little chance of Johansson scoring awards consideration or even much acclaim unless the movie turned out to be a stone-cold masterpiece. Even then, it would be hounded by the controversy which would have become the prime narrative around the otherwise run-of-the-mill studio programmer which would need positive media attention to survive alongside the tentpoles. Whether it would have made any money is an open question (Dallas Buyers Club, with a huge Oscar boost, earned $55m worldwide on a $5m budget in 2013/2014), but it wasn’t worth the possibility of doing PR-related damage to the Black Widow movie.

Frankly, we don’t care why she ditched the role. It was the right move.

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When a playmate means something

Ines Rau
Playboy’s newest playmate: transgender model Ines Rau.

There have only been a few times when Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine used it’s societal prominence to score a strategic win for human rights. The first was the magazine’s debut itself. For it recast women as sexual beings deserving of a right to sexuality. Ironic. Because the magazine is regarded by some as a sexist objectifying rag.

Everything can be seen in multiple fashions depending on your story.

As an icon of early American sexuality, Playboy used it’s culture-shaping influence, literally, to influence a number of women’s causes, including abortion rights in the 60s and 70s. So says a University history professor in a recent Fortune Magazine article on the subject.

“In its heyday in the 60s and 70s, Playboy was supportive of mainstream liberal feminist causes,” says Carrie Pitzulo, an adjunct history professor at Colorado State University and author of the 2011 book Bachelors and Bunnies: The Sexual Politics of Playboy. The magazine “was considered an empire; a cultural leader at that time.”

The magazine’s stance on women’s reproductive rights, Pizulo says, “helped move the culture in a freer direction for everyone.” And its advocacy reflected Hefner’s personal espousal of sexual freedom in every form.

Right around this time, eight years before Roe v. Wade, Playboy took another daring move: featuring a black woman for the first time, in March 1965, as playmate of the month. 1965! Ballsy approach Hef, for we know at that time the civil rights for African Americans was in full swing. As it was announced that Jenny Jackson would be the March playmate, as you’d expect back then, cis-het white males were up in arms:

cis-het-white rants

Today it’s the same thing as Playboy prepares to make history again, again at a crucial social moment, by featuring transgender model Ines Rau in its pages. As the second quote above shows, history is repeating itself. There are a handful of people lambasting the magazine, pulling their subscription or threatening to do to. But you can bet there are just as many Playboy subscribers (and likely far more) salivating for the upcoming issue so they can feast their eyes on the beautiful Rau. Just as there probably were cis-het-white men secretly salivating to feast their eyes on a naked Jenny Jackson.

History does repeat itself it seems. But there is always ALWAYS progress.