Monday Is Here Once Again

Hi Everyone! It’s Monday and that means the Monday Edition of TGF hits the web. Today we bring you Ronnie Rho’s copious This Week In Transgenderism featuring stories on the most talked about TG in NYC, a photo of Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler looking more like a little old lady than anything else, news about Eddie Izzard, a belly dancing TV in Sweden and an interview with the man who brought us The Rocky Horror Show. (More about that in just a moment.) Don’t miss TWIT.

Next up we have a contribution from Miss Linda Jensen about a crossdresser in Canada who takes her two week vacation en femme. She does this at her summer cottage in a close knit rural area. How does that work out? Get all the details from Linda Jensen.

Now back to the Rocky Horror creator, Richard O’Brien. For years and years I thought everyone in the world knew that he was a crossdresser, at least. His show did more than anything elase to provide young (and some older) crossdressers an excuse to dress up in a corset and high heels in public every week. You didn’t need to play Frank N. Furter at the late night picture show, you could say, “Oh, I’ll just be straight old Brad” ’cause you knew he spends a large portion of the story in that corset and heels. It seemed only natural that the creator of the show would have TG tendencies and that in the world of show biz he’d be pretty open about it.

Well, it turns out that Richard O’Brien spent a long, long time trying to get comfortable with himself as a transgender person. And that was after the success of Rocky Horror. He did a lot of therapy over his lack of a firm gender identity and finally it took a melt down of his whole personality (within the last decade) for him to come to terms with his trans identity. He blames his trouble on the two gender system that we are all raised in. You must be either a boy or a girl and there’s no other niche for people with liquid gender identities. Now he has accepted himself as TG and is at last able to talk about it in a public forum.

(You must read the interview in The Times (available through TWIT!) to learn all that he reveals about himself and the genesis of his Rocky Horror characters.)

At the time The Rocky Horror Picture Show came out I was so in the closet that I never would have believed it if you told me how much I would change and grown concerning my transness over the years. That lack of a niche gave me real problems in the ’70s and early ’80s. Without any guide to follow I was hoping to just keep my head down, act like a guy and plod through life without anyone learning that I enjoyed looking and acting like a lady now and then. Just shows how things can change in ways you can’t imagine.

I just spent the entire past weekend en femme. That would have been unthinkable to me in the ’70s. Admittedly a lot of the time was in the house getting shaved and ready but every time I went out of the house it was in feminine clothing. (I haven’t done a long period of dressing up for awhile since the third day of shaving can get a bit dicey. Mostly I tend to dress up two to three times a week.)

I’d have to say that it feels great to be able to wear what I want and do the things I want. But, no matter that it’s been years and years since I first stepped out of the closet and even though I know that in 21st century America, in the vicinity of a major city, there is a greater awareness of what transgender means — I still have issues about being around other people while dressed. That early trauma around dressing up rears its head. I may tend to not look directly at people on the street or when sitting in a restaurant I may not scan the tables around me since I don’t want to catch anyone’s eye and make them take a good look. I still tend to worry about what people around me who were also raised with that two gender thing are going to think of me. I’m amazed that Richard O’Brien had the same concerns and I’m glad that he’s been freed at last.

If you read Linda Jensen’s post on Amanda’s crossdressed holiday you’ll see that Amanda is as happy as a clam that the folks in her small vacation town all accept her as Amanda. For many of us that’s the icing on the crossdressing cake; we get to wear the clothes we want and people treat us like they would treat born women.

The important thing though is that Richard, Amanda, you, and I have all gotten to a point (or will get to the point), where we will dress like we feel and won’t worry about what anyone else thinks. We’re making the world change every day and we’ve changed a lot ourselves. Most people fear change and the idea of fluid gender or a third sex makes most people shudder at the least. That’s why there’s more work to do. Let’s all be out and proud. We were made this way and there’s nothing wrong with us. If the dress fits — wear it!

That’s it for this bit of editorial opinion. Now go on and read the rest of TGForum!

Category: TG Forum News, Transgender Opinion