Cowboy Caleb the liberal arts, grown-up stuff & random mischief

Sometimes They Are And Sometimes They Ain’t

Being the most femes gay-friendly homophobic blogger in the realm, my education in gay awareness is sadly lacking. Why it was only 5 minutes ago that I learned from my esteemed colleague Popagandhi as a result of this post on Tomorrow.sg that Transgendered people were not always gay.

Say what???

That explains a lot you know. As a young lad in school, we would move in packs to torment the faggots effeminate boys. That was 15 years ago, long before HBO made it ok to have gay friends.

Last night, I met an old friend whom I havent spoken to since I was 14. While chatting merrily about old times, I perchanced to ask him if another old friend had finally come out of the closet - after all, he had been terribly faggoty effeminate. Turns out that he wasn’t gay after all. Or maybe he was still hiding in the closet. But his lifestyle was that of a straight man.

Any transgendered readers out there? Perhaps some comments from you would be really great.

Eh Cowboy,

I think a very rough summary of the difference would be:

transgendered == having the brain of a man or woman, but having the body of the opposite gender

Hence they need to change their bodies to fit their brains.

gay == having the brain of a man or woman, but being physically and emotionally attracted to people of the same gender

Of course this is a very rough summary, almost too simplified, because there are various shades of different degrees in between.

the sexuality spectrum is rather wide. think of it as concentric circles, with the gender one being smaller. They can also exist mutually exclusive.
It’s good that you’re now more initiated, that’s one less for you on the bigotry scale! :)

I personally feel that transgendered ppl (as defined by Han) are real, but a rare few. However there are ppl who “want to jump the ‘hip’ crowd” or “trying to find one’s identity and happen to start on the sexual side first” or “had many battle scars of childhood that make them think others”.

I might be wrong, but I hope I am right, then there is hope for humankind?

and in the words of a celebrtiy blogger…

BAH!

Transgender =/= Gay.

When I argue about this, many people tend to say, “What the hell will straight men wanna go for a sex change?”

The problem don’t always lie on personal ego. Rather, transgenders choose their path to accomplish whatever they wanted to be.

I heard stories of people go for a men-women sex change, because he felt that he could be more successful in his career, or for cases such as in Thailand.

Homosexuals can’t choose, don’t get me wrong.

Cowboy, I think you should watch the movie “Normal”. It was shown on HBO a couple of months back, about this transgendered guy.
http://www.hbo.com/films/normal. Oprah also had an episode on this issue a while back.

Han roughly got the idea of it, Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual, it’s all about sexuality, sexual orientation, who you are attracted to.
With transgender people (I’m one myself), its not so much about sexuality or who I’m attracted to. It’s about self identity, and i guess also about how there’s a discrepancy in with the body and the mind.
I believe for example, most biological males cannot fathom the idea of going under the knife and having their reproductive organs removed and reshaped. But for transgender people, most of us have no emotional attachment to the organs we possess. Sometimes we abhor and loath it, because it’s like a constant reminder that we’re not the ‘right sex’, giving us so much problems.
Transitioning (the process of taking steps to alter the physical appearance) doesn’t alter who we are inside, we’re still the same person, it’s just the exterior that has been altered.

I’d also like to add that although transgenderedness is to do with identity, a transgender person can be ’stright’/'gay’/'bi’.

Might be a bit confusing,
take for instance, you have a transsexual man (who is biologically female, identifies as male), he can be stright (attracted to females), gay (attracted to males) or even bisexual.

Okay, so if we have a gay transguy, and he likes guys, shouldn’t he just have remained a female, at least got better chance of attracting guys?

There’s a difference, if he leads the life of a ’stright female’, he would have been percieved as a female by his partner. Which is not really in line with his gender identity.
Gay guys are basicly men who like other men, which is more appropriate.

It goes the same way for transsexual women, who are biologically male, identify as female, likes females.

But of couse, it’s still a minority, just as homosexuals are the minority in a given population.