On a more personal scale I admit that I am concerned about things like my own and others' appearance. I still have big issues about that. But those are my issues. It can be really easy for me to project my fears and concerns onto someone else and potentially say or do the wrong thing. I call myself, to some degree anyway, socially inept. I have gotten better at the social stuff as I have gotten old.

We live in a world where appearance and appearances are everything. We all get bombarded with the images of perfection all day long; in print, in media, on the internet, everywhere we turn. We cannot get away from it. These images give power to those above so that the people below can be made to feel lesser human beings. Those who are insiders have the power and ultimately can be oblivious to the plight of others. Those on the outside do not have that "luxury". We must understand the power circles in order to SURVIVE in the world. You can get killed because you are wearing the wrong color in the wrong part of town. What I find fascinating to watch is the power struggles that occur in the microcosm of our own community, such as a White Anglo Saxon male human being who changes their gender and still attempts to hold onto male privilege not realizing that the moment they said I have to be a girl and made the change society took that male privilege away. I find it fascinating to watch a caring sensitive butch dyke transition to that role of male and become the very kind of man she hated as a butch dyke. When he realizes that he has achieved the white male privilege and assumes the power role that has been given him. He soon forgets what it was like to be the oppressed no matter what comes out of his mouth about equality, he just became more equal than the rest of us and he can and often does wield that power with the same negative connotations that have always been there, it is often directed at the community that he has sworn to lead. He has forgotten where he came from.

Everyday I can chooses to buy into the rhetoric or I can choose to be myself regardless of the outcome.

The rhetoric is where we get into trouble. There are trans people that have gone stealth because that is what they needed to do. There are others who want to deconstruct gender and gender identity and make us all sexless. This is where, as a "trans gender" community we fall apart. Some of us would like to go stealth in the world and others want to deconstruct the world. The problem is when we can no longer have discussions about the things that are common to us all because the stealthers and the deconstructionists are unwilling to allow the others viewpoint to be valid. WE ARE ALL VALID AND OUR BELIEFS ARE ALL VALID, BUT ONLY AS RELATED TO OURSELVES as individuals. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, FORGET THAT. Our beliefs can only be about ourselves and can never be about anyone else!!!!!

So, you may ask, how do we get things accomplished such as anti-discrimination laws, health care for everyone, affordable housing, JOBS? I would say, stop bickering about the personal and get together, talk and LISTEN to each other, define the common points and ignore the rest. I know that this is way more political than I wanted to write, but all the rest is bull2#$!

We need to learn how to be with each other before WE can affect change. Those in power have a vested interest in keeping us from communicating, because by doing so they can pass laws against us like DOMA.

I do understand that I am speaking about really huge issues by comparison to the topic of appearance. But the underlying issues we face are really about the bigger stuff. It colors the way we think about each other and about the way we think about ourselves. When we try to live up to our own idealized image of what we think we should be we will never feel adequate about ourselves and can have a tendency to project that inadequacy upon each other. You may not like what I am saying but I am just holding up a mirror so that you can look at the truth. It is my own reflection that still haunts me and can color my own impressions and images.

The statement reported in the Florida newspaper attributed to Susan Stanton, in which she is said to have claimed, "I am not like those other trannies," is the face of our own fears. It can haunt us for decades until we put away our pettiness and get over our own arrogance and fear. Not one of us has the right answer for others in terms of who we are as individuals, but I believe that we can come together and solve our more global issues.