'Hopeluiah’ – there can be hope

In this third segment, I was aiming at something better than the spreading of hate and nastiness. Maybe I am naïve but I do believe that people can be kind and generous. Well, some people, if not actually many,

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if some good came like Hope out of Pandora’s box. If out of the spew of unkindness that is so often and so willingly sent our way – that now and again there was unexpected decency and support - even niceness.

Out of Chaos – Excellence. Out of Disaster – Success. Out of Difficulty and Dysfunction – Love.

That’s what people need. But too often that’s not what one gets.

Out of Depression – Joy. Out of Wickedness and Unkindness – Pleasure. Out of Despair – Hope.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

I’m not an ordinary sort of person. I have attitudes, behaviours, characteristics, determinants, extremes, facets, guidelines, hangups, idiosyncrasies, which make me into who I am. I am one of those who apparently has ‘made the choice’ to be different. [I couldn’t keep this going past ABCDEFGHI – judgementalisms maybe, but I definitely can’t get past J.]

I’ve chosen to wear clothes deemed as currently appropriate to the female gender. And, since I am a man, this is seen as wrong.

‘They’ have taken it upon themselves to judge me, shun me, hurt me and shatter my life. After all, in the previous sentence how much was a stern fact and how much was transient opinion. Deemed? Currently? Appropriate?

Until recently I could see no way forward. I had no hope. I was alone and solitary. Driven by despair and hurt to the edge of life.

I had no one that I could talk to – as far as I knew. I had nowhere to ask for help, to beg for support, to hope for improvement. Plunging into despair, I refused to submit because I saw that as a victory for unkindness. There have been celebrities before who have announced their transition. Some have carried a few of their friends and colleagues with them into the startling new world of tolerance. So there may be hope. But the norm is for the person coming out as ‘so different’ to be disapproved of, abused in many ways and, in effect, shunned by family, friends and colleagues. The truth is that most people who become known as trans lose their families, lives, livelihoods and all the good things they once had. It is not enough for ‘Them’ that their new target has suffered for a long time under the pressure of hiding their real self inside an armour of drab drag. They must now be punished for trying to be ‘real’. Thanks – not.

But in the TIQ world, that gender-specific subsection of the loud and brash LGB umbrella, there is a slow growth and a hope that some change may come. The young seem to be more willing to be flexible. Some of them even seem to accept difference where their parents and grandparents see only wrongness. What would be the effect of a CHILD of a major celebrity announcing to the world that they were Transgender?

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This is the news from TIQ – your specialist reporting agency for ‘Beyond the LGB’ …… Listen Up ….

There was remarkable news today. There have been rumours but with no believable evidence in the mainstream news (no surprise), barely any on the Pink grapevine, and only vague hints even on social media or on any of the Tell-it-all-including-Guesswork sites.

And to my amazement – the rumours seem to be true.

Just a few hours ago, the mid-teenage son of the Prime Minister and the son of the U S President have both announced their arrival in public as transgender girls with the intention of moving to puberty-blocks, real-life test and age-appropriate surgery as and when approved.

Their transition is with the full approval of their parents who have stated very bluntly, ‘We prefer to have happy, live children than unhappy, dead ones. We know that we have made statements before this regarding gender, sexuality and tolerance but, we admit, this was before these issues made themselves felt in our hearts and the hearts of our lives. Perhaps we spoke before as children understanding nothing but now we can see clearly. We understand now that we should know and understand individuals rather than looking always at groups of people.’

The news has caused a furore amongst almost every group capable of making a coherent statement. The major religious groups – Protestant, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Methodist, Jewish, Muslim-Sunni, Muslim-Shia have failed to steer the line between ‘this is what our God says and we prefer live / dead children’. Other groups such as the Mormons, Scientologists and their ilk have, not surprisingly, sometimes been supportive and sometimes not.

The LGBT cohorts have gone massively over the top in announcing that ‘here is the great news that will change everyone’s thinking’. As if that were likely!!

In America, the NRA, CIA, FBI, FU, FU-FU, FIFI, ABC, CBS, DEF, DHS, GH, IJKL, MNO, PQR and every other group of initials has made statements which are often re-phrased, re-tracted, re-worded or otherwise made redundant within a few hours.

In Britain and elsewhere a quantity of similar alphabetties are making statements that are similarly crass or, perhaps more hopefully, completely bland. In addition, there has been an outburst of dismay and barely coherent outrage from those who refuse to accept gender variation or sexual variation or, indeed, more than ‘acceptable variation’ from what they deem to be the norm.

The two girls at the centre of this fuss have made one simple statement.

“My name is Jessica Herraldo and I speak with my friend in London, Anna Rubenstein (amended for each country). We have met several times over the last year or so. Without intention, we began to discuss the pressures of living so close to the public eye. One of us made a comment which was misinterpreted and suddenly we were both talking about how to tell our parents that we were girls. We were not boys who wanted to become girls. We were girls, always had been, always would be and yet due what we felt was a physical deformity we had been labelled at birth as ‘male’. We knew this to be in error and needed to tell our parents and talk about how we could manage the change.”

“We decided that we would tell our parents at the same time on the next occasion we met. We have both presented as ‘male’ for some 15 years and this has been very stressful. It has been a pretence. We are not now ‘pretending’ to be girls; the truth is rather that we have had to pretend to be boys despite our internal certainty that that was wrong. Now that we are open about it, there will be other stresses but we are confident that we will be able to cope because we have people who love us and support us. We know all too well that there will be those who will not tolerate our issues and may not even tolerate our existence. We know this yet we do not understand it. Perhaps we are too young to understand hate and intolerance and the willingness of some to force people to behave in particular ways.”

“In the weeks since our outcoming, we have spoken with many people. There is complete agreement that our psychological characteristics are female. We are too young to have determined our sexuality but have been advised that the percentage of transgender people being LGB is much the same as it is in the general population, that is 2 to 4%. We’re certainly not abnormal. One doctor told us we are one component on the spectrum of human behaviour. We are not wrong. We are not weird. We are not freaks. We are TIQ.”

“To those who can listen, we offer a number of categories, of minorities which have at times been bullied, abused, persecuted for their external or internal characteristics – because they were seen as ‘different’. And we do not understand why some people see different as wrong.”

“The words we include will upset some – that is not the intent. Our intention is to say to EVERYONE – you belong to one or more of these groups. Hurting others is not the way to recover from hurts done to you. Perhaps you are White, Black, Brown, Yellow, Greek, Russian, Mexican, Mixed-race, Blind, Deaf, Disabled, Mentally ill, drug-addicted, alcohol-addicted, nicotine-addicted, other-addicted, abused, abusive, bullying, bullied, religious, irreligious, atheist, agnostic, tall, short, thin, fat, intelligent, stupid, red-head, bearded – the list is truly endless. Or Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Pansexual, Asexual. Male, Female, Questioning, Transgender, Intersexed – and Facebook has some 50 sub-codes. Married, Single, Widowed, Divorced, Monogamous, Monandrous, Communal, Nymphomaniac, Satyrous or whatever. Car-owning, Bicycle-riding, Horse-loving, Dog-owning, Cat-owning, Train-spotting, Gun-owning – every one of these will have people who support, people who dislike and even more who don’t care. What gives YOU the right to tell others how to behave?”

“Some of these people, they claim a religious justification for what they do. But one religious guide says ‘Judge Not that ye be not judged’. Other guides may say similar things. We are sure and certain that we can say to these people, ‘If your god made everything then he also made us, she made these bodies with these characteristics of body and mind of heart and soul – so he will judge us on how we have coped and how we have used our free will to honour what has been given to us. To the less religious and the non-religious we could give other answers. We can summarise most of these, perhaps a little childishly but we are still young, as ‘Be nice and do to others as you would have them do to you.’”

“Another of our advisors, a priest, said ‘If we believe that everything is done according to God’s plan then the fact that, from an age before you were able to understand the concepts of god or of religion, both yourself and Anne have consistently and repeatedly stated that you were girls – then since God does not make mistakes, your need to transition must be part of God’s plan for you.”

“We are not trying to change the future. We have no intention of being figureheads for the advancement of LGB rights because our issues are not about our sexuality. Nor do we intend to be spokespeople for the TIQ movement which does concern itself with the spectrum of gender. The best we hope for, the maximum we hope for, is that we will be left alone to be typical girls in each of our countries. Yes, we are members of a group which may be even 1% of the population. Our parents have access to resources which can identify thousands of loud and noisy minorities which number as much as our 1% or more or sometimes fewer. We are not special. We belong to a minority. You are absolutely entitled to disapprove peacefully of our minority in the same way that we can, if we wish, disapprove of any other minority.”

“I finish with the end of another story ….. and when the troubles of the world had been let loose, the last thing remaining in the box was Hope. We have hope that you will let us get on with our lives.”

“Thank you for listening to me, Jessica Herraldo and to my friend Anna Rubenstein.”

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The news a few days later was not good.

‘NEWS UPDATE‘

The body of missing Jessica Herraldo has been found. So far, there have been claims from 26 groups taking responsibility for her kidnap and killing. These include the following : The Catholic League against Indecency; the Texan Pro-Family Collaboration; the Neo-Nazi Purity Association; the Republican Breakfast Party; the Mayflower Wives of Virginia; Abortion even for Teenagers; Cull-or-Cure and nineteen others whose claims appear rather less plausible. There has been no statement from her parents nor from her British collaborator Anna Rubinstein.’

‘To give a flavour of the statements being made by these groups, one has stated that

‘Jessica was taken from her parents’ care as they were provably incapable of correct parenting; she was escorted to a re-education camp. Her claims to need specific medication were reviewed by a team of eminent doctors and assessed as faulty, unlikely and improper. For reasons as yet unknown but completely separate from these self-assessed pseudo-medical claims, her condition deteriorated and despite our best efforts she died at the camp.’

Other statements have much the same tone of self-righteousness and certainty. We do not intend to identify which group made this particular statement.

‘The President has announced that, to quote, ‘firm measures will be taken to ensure that attacks on decent citizens belonging to any targetable minority will cease. America used to be proud of being an amalgam of many peoples, of being the great mixing-pot of cultures from across the globe. The murder of my daughter and the repugnant claims by so many groups that they take responsibility and that they appear to be proud of their actions is wrong in so many many ways. I can envisage no god who could take pride in the destruction of a child. It is men who have done this. Vile men or likely some vile women too. I say this as your President. As a parent, I have no comment at this time.’

‘In further news, : ‘The son of the Republican Leader of the Senate has been found dead having committed suicide by stabbing himself 22 times shortly after a press statement that he was going to tell his estranged father that he had been in a homosexual relationship for 7 years and that the couple had adopted 2 children. The father, President of the Massachusetts Pride in Marriage Society has commented ‘I’m a bit upset but I haven’t spoken to the boy or even seen him for some years. And he certainly didn't come to my house yesterday because he knew what I would say to him.’.

‘In New York, there has been a series of attacks on nightclubs, discos and specialist shops. A group calling itself The Faithful claims responsibility. There have been no deaths and no significant injuries but 27 people are missing. The group claims to have taken these people to a re-education camp where they ‘will be taught the biblical truths that homosexuality deserves death; that transvestism deserves death; and that true marriage is between a man and a woman only.’

‘In Hollywood, the actors Charles Jensen, Andrew Bellew and Tony Samproso have announced that they will, in future, often be in public as their cross-dressing ‘sisters’. They are all well-known already for their active love lives and, later, we have interviews with several of their girlfriends who apparently know about this and are supportive of their behaviour. Tony stated, ‘We’re not like Jessica but we want Jessica to be proud of us’.’

‘In Foreign news, all three daughters of the Prime Minister of Pakistan have been accidentally killed leaving college where they were studying. Their car was apparently mistaken for that of bank robbers. Their mother said that ‘they had died honorably’. It was thought until today that the Prime Minister had two daughters and a son.’

‘In France, M Molineux, the leader of the Congress turned up in a fetching red dress commissioned especially for him for the occasion by Chanel. The dress, of crushed red velvet with a white leather trim was accessorised both by a unique handbag from LVMH in opposite arrangement and a matching fascinator. His wife watched from the gallery in a dazzling white tuxedo edged in red, obviously also designed by Chanel to match, and joined him for the news conference afterward.’

‘In Rome, the Pope has announced that the Vatican Choir is to be reformed after a gap of 300 years. There will be auditions for new choristers. The choirmaster, Fr Pederasti, gave details of the scheme for castrati to be tested for voice and suitability. ‘This is a great day, it is 302 years since we had a proper choir, now we have such a wonderful opportunity. It is like a fairy tale come true.’

‘In London, a group calling itself ‘Open and Out’ has announced the imminent release of the names of 53 Members of Parliament who are primarily homosexual but have denied it publicly within the last year; 94 Members who have had mistresses within the last year; 47 Members who frequent BDSM clubs; a list of 22 unnamed Members who have, er, specialist youth interests; 17 Members who have transgender or transsexual relatives, that is children, siblings or in two instances ‘wives’. It is expected that there will be several resignations tonight on both the government and opposition benches. On a more positive note, Open and Out has announced the formation of a Trans-Support Group which will meet weekly at the Houses of Parliament.’

‘In the After-News Discussion Forum, we will be talking with some of the people who have been most vociferous about the change in public opinion after Jessica and Anna announced themselves. Today, several of them have announced the formation of a new group called Hope-not-Hate. We will hear from them and how they see a future which might be an improvement on what has happened today. … Oh, I’ve been handed a note that a second super-group , Humanity AgainsT Extremes or HATE is to be formed of groups who, to phrase this carefully, ‘are less supportive of extremist and minority gender and sexual groups’.

‘We will try to keep you up to date with the enormous quantity of events that are occurring as a reaction, as a counter-reaction and clearly as an over-reaction in the Jessica Herraldo situation’.

‘It may get me into trouble but I’m going to make a personal statement. First a great statement from the past that I am proud to repeat even if amended slightly ‘I may not like what you say or do but I will defend your right to say it and do it’. Secondly, there are a quantity of minority groups to which I do not belong and whose statements, aims and activities I do not understand – but I will not condemn any group provided their aim is not to hurt me and mine. Now I do wonder how many of the haters could say something so lacking in hatred? Why do they hate minorities so much? Why do the majority have to hate minorities? How many minorities are actually a real threat?'

‘I suppose it doesn’t really matter ‘why’. It is enough that so many minorities are hated. And I – I am a member of a minority, probably several minorities if I think about it. Probably some minorities that the so-called and self-designating majority actually doesn’t like. But when you examine any individual – almost every single one belongs to a whole package of groups and almost every one of those is a ‘minority’. And some of those are hated. Beyond belief. Beyond rationality. Beyond logic. Beyond comprehension.'

'Have a nice day – if you can. '

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It’s now a week since those ugly events. And I have to say that I think things have calmed down amazingly. Even more to the apparent surprise of the majority – and don’t we have to believe some of what the media puts out – there has been a backlash and a remarkable turnaround in public attitudes to cross-dressing and even to transgenderism.

People have picked up, at last, on the statement that ‘for many of us ie transvestites it is only a preference of costume’ and that the behaviour of individual people is really only of significance if it causes benefit or disbenefit to them, personally, as individuals. And that doesn’t happen very often. And that only refers to the costuming of a person. I do agree that transsexuality is a more complex decision by any such individual. And how often does anyone go up to another and say ‘I want to have a personal assessment of your genitalia so that I can check whether you are using the appropriate toilet facility!! Wow – Gosh!!

What has become apparent is that the generally ‘Silent’ majority is beginning to be active. And most of their reaction is against the killers!

As an example, in the terms of one leaflet which is headed : ‘We do NOT like what you do and we do NOT defend your right to kill merely because you disapprove.’

Others put it more bluntly ‘Killing Jessica was WRONG’ and gradually this turned into a new campaign best labelled as ‘Hating is Wrong’.

Amongst the most influential events was the Oscar ceremony where a huge number of people wore trans-clothes. What was most interesting was that there was no element of ‘drag’. The new designs were clearly male versions of feminine couture - a truly startling costume. But the difference was in the material, the colours and the cut. Carla Jensen, Anita Bellew and Chloe Samproso were three of the arrivals. They were each wearing what I could only call a gorgeous dress, but styled for a man's body rather than for a woman. That is to say, to be mildly blunt, they didn't have boobs. But their dresses, or perhaps I should call them man-dresses were each lovely. Long swirly trousers – strangely almost indistinguishable from dresses; wide-legged shorts which looked like skirts; tops in all the wondrous variety of colours restricted to women for the last hundred years. And subtleties of cut, sleeve, shoulder, pocket, frontage with frills and froth. To keep things simple, all three still had the buttons on their side!

Clearly as part of a deliberate plan, there were others who took on the new style. And all the men went with all the relevant accessories, bags, necklaces, bangles – but now with calculated restraint. Many men took to heels, maybe only an inch and a half to twice that, but nonetheless the change of posture was obvious and noticeable.

The picture of Jack Hargreaves and his girlfriend Lyndi la Claire on the red carpet for the Oscars was on every front page. He was wearing the same general style – in effect a long tunic evening suit with wide-legged trousers looking very like a dress. The effect was emphasised by the material which was a soft jersey and silk combination in dark red shading to pale rose with white trim. He had extensions in his hair and then it had been styled into a long bob, very pretty too was the verdict from the fashion watchers. His girlfriend, Lyndi la Clair, was wearing the new feminine costume – a masculinised version of a normal Oscar dress cut to de-emphasise her excellent frontage and with an almost total lack of frills – but unlike men’s clothes for so long – she had the same colour palette as Jack in reverse. There was a delightful picture of the newest male heartthrob, Jack Hargreaves, with his girlfriend at an after-Oscar party and he was rubbing his feet and clearly saying ‘these heels are killing me!’

The next day, Jack was seen out wearing a new and startling design – again with the very wide legged shorts, with a minimal join at the hem – looking to many like a skirt. And the material was pale pastel green with a darker trim complimenting the shirt which was dark with pale trim - and frills and ruffed sleeves. But somehow still overall giving a masculine style. Obviously this was a planned event as several of his entourage were wearing similar but less emphatic styles.

Not surprisingly, within days, there were high street shops selling similar outfits. New words joined the vocabulary – two-way; and, for example, ‘madress’ once the tabloids had decided that man-dress didn’t work! But these new coinages faded quite quickly when Jack and his fans and his friends just started talking in terms of ‘dress’, ‘skirt’ even sometimes blouse.

Next on the celebrity circuit was a flock of top-level sports personalities; some from the NFL, some from golf and a couple of basketball players well over 6 foot tall. On one of the chat shows, they got to talking about how difficult it had been to find suitable clothes until man-dressing had so recently become more visible and available. The two players had mid-length skirts, as there was already less of the silliness about pseudo-trousers, and pretty blouses – but the outfits had clearly been made to suit as there was no pretence of a bust-line which would have been the case if they had simply found a blouse for themselves. Their comments again made it very clear that they were men who loved dressing not in any way pretend-women.

It was the next night that there was the first of the Tall-girls. These were some other basketball players who were not just interested in dressing with the new wider range of materials and colours. These were three teammates who would, if it had been feasible, become the girls they felt themselves to be since they were young. Enormous growth and amazing sports skills had forced them into the sporting world, where they were very comfortable as players but still deeply hurt by their inner difficulty. They all agreed that sporting success and resulting celebrity and financial security had been such that they did not feel that they any longer suffered from true trauma or even torment – but they did feel that their lives could have been very different and very differently pleasing. But at least they could now dress as they wished. Vin was wearing a simple (but long) A-line dress with two petticoats to fluff and bulk up the base. Laverne was the more feminine of the two, with a strapless evening gown, in pale-brown to contrast marvellously against his dark chocolate skin, emphasising his, er, pectoral muscles as well as two well-placed necklaces. Towards the end of the show, two of the players from the previous night arrived to express their support.

Ojay and Rick both made it clear that their preference was for dress, but as Rick said ‘if we want to dress nice then why should we be upset if other people want to dress but for different reasons. We’ve well signed into this ‘Hate the Haters’ thing. We don’t hate nobody – and we don’t see why anyone should hate us. I can understand if people hate what I do if it’s nasty or cruel or violent – but to hate the outside or the costume – what’s up with folks like that?”

It was one thing for celebrities to take on the challenge of the new styles but there was still uncertainty as to whether the trend would hit the high streets and become accepted as ‘a new normal’. Nobody but the most extreme in the trans world or in the fashion world expected man-dress to become THE new normal. Very few expected it to become widespread – but there was some strong feeling that man-dress would be quite widely acceptable. The fashion magazines were quite clear that most ‘new trends’ had actually been forecast as much as fifteen or eighteen months before. This gave the designers time to design, the manufacturers time to make the goods and the advertisers and trend-setters to push the ‘new’ styles. It was widely agreed that the man-dress style had broken the normal sequence – and that this was totally due to the trigger of Jessica’s outing, kidnapping and cruel killing.

It was some time before makeup became more of a mainstream activity for men. There had always been some men who had used a touch here and a touch there, but perhaps the trigger event for that was when the world-famous Italian hair-stylist Ricardo del Traverti opened his new salon offering makeup for men – and that Ben Bristow, the chairman of Youth International, was amongst the first to turn up for a session. Others soon followed.

To make it clear – this was NOT a surge of men looking for feminisation or as a precursor to a sex-change. This was just ‘ordinary’ men who liked a wider variety of clothing. They were fed up with drab, grey-blue-brown-black dullness in rough well-wearing materials and simple styles. No more.

Jack and others made it very clear. His speech at the New York Clothes Fair was pretty well-rehearsed. ‘We love clothes. We know that men used to be the peacocks. With all the materials, colours, styles and so on that have been the prerogative of womankind for many decades. We aren’t trying to take over. We’re not trying to go back in history to some archaic patriarchal style of living. It’s just that we love pretty clothes and see no problem in sharing our preferences with anyone who thinks like us. If you don’t like what we wear or how we wear it – then you are at complete liberty to dress as YOU wish. Just don’t put me in a box. And certainly don’t put me back in the box labelled ‘boring drab’. The only box I’m willing to be in, today, is ‘a man who loves clothes’.

But, gradually, more people became comfortable with man-dress as a new popular style of dressing. And, amazingly, the number of people pressing for actual transsexual surgery dropped slightly.

I do still believe that there is Hope even when your life feels like Hell and there’s too many people who Hate.