10/10/2009

Self Defeating Success Story

Today one of my twitter friends, Adult Film actress Wendy Williams, happily and proudly tweeted that her friend and fellow porn star Danielle Fox was coming out of seclusion at long last after recovering from successful SRS.

For any reading this not in the know, SRS is short for Sexual Reconstructive Surgery, the end result of transition for many trans women.

Although I'm Intersexed, I still count myself as a Transwoman because until learning about my IS Biology through medical tests 7 years ago, I believed I was a trans woman and lived as most live, jumping through all the same hoops just for simple recognition.

So for me, hearing one of my sisters has reached and surpassed her goal is always joyous news. So, wanting more info about Danielle, I followed the link in Wendy's tweet.

My first problem is that the link lead to a site about Gay Porn News, on which the story of Danielle re-opening her website was posted.

Trans porn that depicts a transwoman fucking a guy is NOT Gay porn, because regardless of the fact the woman in question might have a penis, the sex shown is heterosexual. I am sick to fucking death of cis gays appropriating transwomen. Classifying Trans Porn as Gay Porn is just another way Cis Gays ungender us, because it gives the uninformed the impression that transwomen really just are gay men who took their feminine side to extremes, and not real women at all.

My second problem is with Danielle herself. But not for being trans.

I'm proud of her for going the distance, achieving her dream. So many transwomen who want SRS never reach that plateau. And having now seen her new pussy I can say she definitely had good work done. There is no absolutely no physical signs that she was ever male.

I also completely understand her having worked in porn all these years. It paid for her transition, it paid for her surgery. It keeps her off street corners and out of alleys. It keeps her fed housed and clothed. Many transwomen have to do porn not only to fund transition but just to survive, since in most of the world we have no human rights protection, no job equality, and can't support ourselves outside of sex work. More power to Danielle in that she actually enjoys her work.

No my problem is with her website.

I have no quarrel with her returning to porn Post-Op. She clearly enjoys sex work and it's provided a good living for her. I see no reason she can't proudly display her post-op body as ever she sees fit.

But why did she have to call her new porn site Sex Change Tranny?

She's post-op now. If she wanted to she could just go do normal straight porn as good as her results were. Not that she has to hide. I'm glad she's proud of being a trans woman.

But outside of porn the word "Tranny" is as bad as the word "Nigger". It's a hate word, a derogatory slur designed to belittle and dehumanize us, to render us little more than perverted caricatures of real human beings. No transwoman likes being called a Tranny and reduced to the mental image of being just a confused gay man in a dress.

Danielle is a porn actress. Given the rationalizations I've heard from porn companies defending the use of terms and words that are universally proven to perpetuate bad stereotypes, I'm sure she did it to both keep her ill-informed cis chaser fans happy and to be easier found in Google searches. After all, the ignorant masturbating perverts who lust after us but can never be bothered to LEARN about us won't put "Trans woman" into a search engine to find T-Porn. They'll always use Tranny or Shemale. Because they can't be bothered to learn the right way to refer to us, and assimilators like Danielle can't find the spine to educate or correct them.

That's my problem with Danielle. She's become a collaborator. She's selling out her sisters in order to assimilate and be accepted without really being accepted. She's perpetuating damaging stereotypes against her own kind and inviting the world to view her as a freak rather than as a real woman. She's doing the haters' work for them, helping to let masturbating tranny chasers blissfully remain ignorant of trans womens' realities so she can keep being a success in porn as a freak novelty act.

She may as well have called her site "Man with implants and mutilated genitals", for all the damage her complacency will do her sisters. Because she sure as hell isn't doing sweet fuck all to teach anyone to see anything beyond the stereotypes.

She's the porn version of a Gangsta Rapper, saying nigger 6 times in every verse of a song. Those who don't know any better will hear these black rappers talking about themselves in this derogatory way and think that makes it perfectly okay and never learn any different until someone gets hurt.

A transwoman perpetuating use of the word Tranny is the same thing. All the cis people who don't know any better will see a transwoman do it think that means it's okay to say it.

Every day I see privileged white teenagers on the bus saying nigga this and nigga that and completely oblivious to the true impact of it. If I were a WOC I'd bitchslap them for it. But I AM a transwoman, and I refuse to let ANYONE, even other transwomen, throw "Tranny" around like it's accurate without telling them where to stick it.

I am Intersexed, and trans and a WOMAN. I am NOT a tranny.

And neither are you Danielle. You are a woman, NOT a "Tranny". Grow a spine and tell your fans that. You're among the most public visible transwomen on earth, and you're beautiful. Use it to TEACH the bastards, not perpetuate their marginalizing us.

Be a porn star all you like. I would if I had the body to pull it off.

But don't be a traitor to your own kind.

7 comments:

  1. Shaman thankyou for the kind words but now I will give you my opinion from the tg adult porn side. "Tranny" is just a term like "shemale" that was derived mostly by the Porn Community to appeal and or sale dvd's to the market. Sadly most people still believe that men who are attracted to transsexuals are gay but we know that not to be true. I think the slang term though picked up by mainstream therefore feel its acceptable. As a transsexual woman I dont have a problem with the term but that could be because of my chosen career.

    I also want to let you know the reason Gay Porn Times picked up the story was a favor to me, not because he felt it was "gay news". He has a following for Tg news and every once in awhile will put up my press releases.

    Finally for the use of the word "sexchangetranny", I think again its about porn and the terms used to sale dvd's, websites etcc. Danielle has been a huge spokeswoman for tg issues and I dont think she sold out but only took the term back and used it in her favor.

    Not sure if my post makes any sense LOL

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  2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncVF66WVLas

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  3. The word 'tranny' is nothing. How about 'IT'S GOT BIG HANDS! That's a MAAAN Maury?!'

    Are you reading this 'Twilight?'

    ~BB~

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  4. To Wendy - *HUGS* You make perfect sense to me. Thank you for reading this and replying.

    To Danielle - *Cries* Check your YouTube E-Mail.

    To BelluciBlog - I fucking HATE Maury's "Man or woman" shows. I hate Maury too, he's pondscum.

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  5. Society changes slowly. Accept the change it gives you with gratitude as you slowly and non-confrontationally push for more. Be the tortoise who wins, not the hare who exhausts himself running as fast as he can.

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  6. Here you wrote:

    "But outside of porn the word "Tranny" is as bad as the word "Nigger". It's a hate word, a derogatory slur designed to belittle and dehumanize us, to render us little more than perverted caricatures of real human beings. No transwoman likes being called a Tranny and reduced to the mental image of being just a confused gay man in a dress."

    But in a later blog essay, you don't have a problem with a movie named "Ticked Off Trannies With Knives."

    Hmmmmmm.

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  7. Actually I do have a HUGE problem with the word Tranny used as a movie title. My point with THAT article was about tryiung to turn such idiocy to our favor whereever possible instead of alienating potential allies with censorship campaigns.

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Thanks for commenting, try to NOT be crude or mean-spirited. You can disagree with me without calling me a fat bitch etc.