Jasper: Face of Transsexual Womanhood 2009.

[Natasha]

Jasper: Face of Transsexual Womanhood 2009.

http://sophiaofthescythes.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/jasper-face-of-transsexual-womanhood-2009/
9/11/09

There is nothing like someone in the LGBTQ lobby doing the Cupid Stunt (If anyone remembers Kenny Everett) routine to really get transsexual women angry. Jasper Gregory has this belief that transsexual women should be "Out and proud" and "Accept they were born men" and he justifies this by saying that unless people "Think out of the box" and as transsexual women "Call themselves men in public" they are not going to gain "Visibility" his idea is that transsexual women should "Embrace their male femininity in a positive way".

1: According to Jasper, Transsexual women are really "Genderqueer males" expressing male femininity.

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Jasper's wardrobe: This Is What A Transwoman looks Like
http://jasperswardrobe.wordpress.com/

[jonnismith]

I am actually sickened by reading this confused persons Blog.

http://jasperswardrobe.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/this-is-what-a-transwoman-looks-like/
OMG he got his ears pierced and that makes him a transwoman? WTF.

I am not elitist but the only biology I share with him is that I am human that is it!
Please stop trying to say that you have the "trans condition" when you aren't trans-anything! Effeminate man, Gender variant yes, but trans? NO!
OMG then he goes on to say that transition is a choice! Again WTF!
http://vodpod.com/watch/2144312-transitioning-is-a-choice-radically-genderqueer-7?pod=jaspergregory

I am so sickened, so sickened now!

[Calistine]

Eh everyone has theyre own opinion. We all know that hes an idiot.

[placeholdername]

The mindset of a Tee-Gee person at its finest.  Kuddos to you, Jasper!

What do you mean by that?

[Sandy]

There are GG women who suffer from the severe heartbreak of hirsuteness.  Many go through the painful process of electrolysis to overcome the terrible mistake that nature has bestowed on them.

Others proudly display their faces and say that those who give in to the vanity of facial clearing are superficial.

So it is superficial to be made fun of in school because of a condition that you have no control over.

It is superficial to endure heartbreak after heartbreak because no man wants to date or be seen with a "bearded lady".

It is superficial to not want to walk down the street and be taunted by epithets that they should go back to the carnival.

To those that can endure that, and worse, my congratulations to you, but you are few and far between.

Just like this guy (yes I said GUY).  He lives in SF!  Not to say that he isn't in danger, but his chances of getting offed from some beer gut redneck homophobe are much less than, say, Tallahassee.

Also he claims (from his position of relative safety) that my feelings, my beliefs, my turmoil that I had to endure is superficial, yet his take on the world is more accurate.

You go "girl"!

It's the first time my computer wanted a rape shower and it wasn't from reading something from Peter LaBarbera!

-Sandy

[mzmartipants]

I'm kinda disheartened by this thread. You don't have to be disagreeable, to disagree.

[mzmartipants]

With all due respect to you, I can't agree with that statement.

And that's your right. But I'm not about to try and dictate how another person self identifies. Where's the line here, and someone who says transwomen aren't women?

[placeholdername]

Read the blog commets (including Sophia's).  You will find your answers there.

I checked 3 pages of those posts and found only one tangentially related comment by a 'sophia'.  My reason for asking is that the way you use it, to me it seems to have a disparaging tone.

[placeholdername]

Let me get this straight.  You read Jasper's comments, possibly watched his (yes I said HIS) videos too, and you find my comment "disparaging".  Ha! Way to go, Ketsy! 

From what I saw, he refers to himself as both male and woman so i dont care what pronoun you use.  And I wasn't SURE if you were or were not being disparaging, which is why I asked you, only you then redirected me to something else so I stated my opinion directly,

Second, IF I was right (which I don't state with certainty), then your comments are no better than his as they both attack a wide group of people, most of whom you (and/or he) don't even know.

But I might be wrong, so again I ask, what did you mean by the line I quoted?

[placeholdername]

He (Jasper) is a woman-hater, period. 

So you saying:

The mindset of a Tee-Gee person at its finest.  Kuddos to you, Jasper!
 
...

You're indeed the archetype of a transwoman/Tee-Gee woman, Jasper.  Yes, you are!

Equates to Jasper being a woman hater?  The only conclusion I can draw from that is that 'transwomen' and 'Tee-Gee' women are also women haters?

If you think Jasper is being an ass then just say that.  Couching your insults behind bold and italics only serves to make you seem self-congratulatory.

[Miniar]

Sarcasm doesn't come across well in letters on a screen.

:/ on topic again.

That guy needs therapy. >.<

[Alyssa M.]

For heaven's sake, people.

First of all, so you know where I'm coming from, let me state my opinion about gender variance (in the broadest sense, as in any behavior that varies from the gender assigned at birth):

Being trans is a condition more like cancer than sickle cell anemia, in that there's not just one way that it can happen, there are different levels of severity, that there is no way to make a uniform cutoff that says this is malignant and that's benign, and it affects everyone to some extent, even though in many people it is to such a small extent that it doesn't matter. I don't think that transsexualism is a totally different condition, just a much, much more severe case, to the point that the implications are very different.

Maybe I'm wrong, but there just isn't any research that has the ability to differentiate between the transsexualism-as-disctinct or the trans-spectrum theories. My opinion is a hunch based on how complicated the human brain is and the diversity of experience I observe in the world. I haven't read anything that seemed like anything stronger than a hunch, the various brain-sex studies included.

Given that, both sides of this debate (i.e. the WBT versus the Tee-Gees, so snidely dismissed as NOKD, hating on transsexual women who have a firm gender identity and choose stealth -- how charming on both sides) need to get a grip and realize that you're not all that special and other people might be simmilar to you, even if they are not the same. Jasper's offensive opinions (as presented in that critical blog post, I'd surely admit they are offensive) only prove that there are offensive jerks among those who describe themselves as "TG." Kinda like there are offensive jerks among the "spectrum" people, the "WBT's," the "AG/HTS," and every other constituency.

Jasper is a jerk, at least as portrayed in the blog, but hardly representative of the many self-identified TG or GQ folk I have met in his dismissal of those who transition as fully as possible.






edit -- It might seem I'm insinuating that Jasper's views were misrepresented; that's not my intent. I just didn't feel like watching those YouTube videos on my lousy slow collection, so I'm just trying to make clear what i'm basing my opinion on; i.e., the blog post.

[placeholdername]

I read some of the stuff in his blog and I didn't find anything particularly jerkish, but I admit I didn't read all of it.  What I saw was occasionally interesting and most of the time wrong (IMO).

What I found interesting: the idea of 2 sort of categories for sex, somatic and behavioral, which results in 3 for sex/gender:

somatic sex
behavioral sex
gender

The first two of which he claims are biological though not necessarily the same.  His idea, and where I think he goes wrong, is that transexuals fit as male somatic sex, female behavioral sex, female gender.  He then categorizes himself into that group (at least in the specific posts I was reading).  The issue is that he says to embrace the male body + female behavior as transsexual/transwoman which justifiably drives a lot of us crazy since for male bodies are the thing we hate most!  But here's where Jasper went wrong: embracing ones own male body is a *male* behavior -- whether by sex or gender is irrelevant.  Jasper does say there can be middle grounds in all those categories so in my opinion he more fits as male sex, male/female behavioral sex, male/female social gender, which means that 99% of what he says is irrelevant for people who consider themselves women by gender/behavioral sex and unfortunately born with XY genes (or a close approximation to that idea).

Thinking about it more, 'behavioral sex' just seems like a different word for brain sex, so I guess what we're left with is the wacky idea of embracing a male body despite identifying as a woman so whatever, I don't know.

Personally I prefer to think of male/female/man/woman/boy/girl/vanilla/chocolate/strawberry as descriptive words rather than anything that speaks to the "essence" of something or someone, but that's just me.

[dyssonance]

The problem is the argument of Identity.

Jasper identifies as a woman.  Expressly, as a Transwoman, in very specific terms.

Jasper knows about those blogs because they are where he gets a great deal of his information -- TS-SI is one of his favorite locales.

I have watched all those videos and read all the posts, all the way back to his first few where he was more concerned about clothing and how it sexually charged him.  The stuff about how women seek to be women because they want to be an object of desire is not something many will want to read.

Anyone can identify as anything.  Nothing wrong with it.  But arguing on the basis of identity, well, what about those people who identify as dogs?

No, not in the same stupid sense many of us have heard, I mean literally.  Think Furries.

If you are snickering or giggling or getting a bad feeling when I say that, not that that is the effect of identity politics and arguments.

They do not do anyone any good, and actually serve to obscure not only the actual meaning of the social nature of Gender (which is NOT an issue or question of identity), but the ability to argue around it.

Jasper can be described -- accurately -- as a man.  Descriptively, he doesn't even fit the social understanding of what transgender is -- outside of his small circle, no one in the general public is actually going to buy his spiel, because he doesn't even appear to be trying to transition (and, in fact, a part of his claimed identity is that he is non transitioning).

I am not a "friendly" to the WBT/HBA/TS crowd, but in this case, their arguments are closer to the truth as Jasper speaks it, than to the reality of the situation.

Jasper's self defense post is dismissive, passive aggressive, and disjointed -- he is reacting emotionally to reading there (and here, as he remarks on this thread's presence).

If identity wins out, and the deconstruction of gender is a valid goal, then he is a face of those who are not transsexual, but otherwise transgender.

His claim, though, goes beyond himself, and is asserted over others.

He is appropriative, sexist, cisprivileged, and very annoying.

He's welcome to his identity.

But that doesn't mean I can't describe him as otherwise.

[heatherrose]

Can't we all just get along?

Ummm...isn't there enough room, under the great big, happy, pink,
purple and blue striped umbrella for all opinions and forms of "transgender"
expression? Who is any of us to say anyone is wrong. If the twink says
(s)he is "transgender" then (s)he's "transgender".

[Miniar]

What pisses me off is that he suggests he knows what's the best course of action for "all" transsexuals.
He doesn't say "here's what I choose to do, it's right for me", he says "it would be better if everyone did it my way".

[Sandy]

What pisses me off is that he suggests he knows what's the best course of action for "all" transsexuals.
He doesn't say "here's what I choose to do, it's right for me", he says "it would be better if everyone did it my way".

That is what lit me up.  He presumes to know my situation better than I do and that I was deluding myself by saying I am a woman.

He can do anything he bloody well wants, I don't deny him his own identification.  But when he tries to re-identify *me* we're going to have issues.

-Sandy

[mzmartipants]

The problem is the argument of Identity.

Jasper identifies as a woman.  Expressly, as a Transwoman, in very specific terms.

Well, gender is a social construct, and in that it means there's a societal aspect to gender. In terms of defining what a transgender woman is, you have to look at how each gender is socially constructed, or how we all see gender. When I look at pictures of Jasper, I see someone, from my view, that is gender fluid or genderqueer.   

Jasper knows about those blogs because they are where he gets a great deal of his information -- TS-SI is one of his favorite locales.

I have watched all those videos and read all the posts, all the way back to his first few where he was more concerned about clothing and how it sexually charged him.  The stuff about how women seek to be women because they want to be an object of desire is not something many will want to read.

I'm not sure why anyone would not want to talk about it, since it has a name: ->-bleeped-<-. I do think there are such persons, I just think I am not one of them.

Anyone can identify as anything.  Nothing wrong with it.  But arguing on the basis of identity, well, what about those people who identify as dogs?

No, not in the same stupid sense many of us have heard, I mean literally.  Think Furries.

If you are snickering or giggling or getting a bad feeling when I say that, not that that is the effect of identity politics and arguments.

They do not do anyone any good, and actually serve to obscure not only the actual meaning of the social nature of Gender (which is NOT an issue or question of identity), but the ability to argue around it.

Well, I might consider him a dog, if he was socially ACCEPTED or VIEWED as a dog. Just because he identifies as one doesn't mean that the world thinks of him as one.

Jasper can be described -- accurately -- as a man.  Descriptively, he doesn't even fit the social understanding of what transgender is -- outside of his small circle, no one in the general public is actually going to buy his spiel, because he doesn't even appear to be trying to transition (and, in fact, a part of his claimed identity is that he is non transitioning).

Exactly!

If identity wins out, and the deconstruction of gender is a valid goal, then he is a face of those who are not transsexual, but otherwise transgender.

Except that it makes no sense to say that you are gendering yourself if you are seeking to destroy gender.

What bothers me in this post are things said like:

It's safe to say that Jasper is a braindead fool.

or

Eh everyone has theyre own opinion. We all know that hes an idiot.

It's not far from "he's not really a woman" or "that's a man." There's no data or information to parse, it's just a verbal assault. It's like saying "we all know he beats his wife". I wish more people would bring their big girl and boy panties/underwear and debate issues and not engage in the politics of personal destruction.

[heatherrose]

But when he tries to re-identify *me* we're going to have issues.

I do not believe you need concern yourself, Doll.
It appears (s)he has issues enough, as it is. 

So now we'll ask Susan to create several more forums or just modify some existing ones, or even just make some sub forums, after all we want to make sure we remain inclusive here.  Sooooo....

1. Transgender Noun Variant
2. Transgender Verb Variant
3. Transsexual Noun Variant
4. Transsexual Verb Variant
5. Jasper Issue Variant

Give me a friggin break folks.  Just let everyone define themselves come up with their own definition of who and what they are and sit back and watch the chaos.  This place is just like the weather; If you don't like how you're looked as or don't like the definitions just wait a day or two and they'll certainly change.

It's no wonder folks in and out of this community are shaking their heads.  I can just see the law makers sitting around drafting new beneficial policies, when there's a sound at the door; Knock, nock, nock.  "Come in!", "Excuse me sirs' but I just received another email from a place called 'The Transgender Coalition' they need to add to some of the terms.  Apparently there is a whole new group those who are verb leaning and those who are nouns...."  "What the F&@$...

[tekla]

Its funny, I've seen this person about.  Can't miss him.  First of all old Jasper is almost always in too-short shorts in a city where half the people don't even own shorts cause you can't wear them that much.  Also, Jasper tends to look like a rainbow threw up on him a little, and looking at his pictures, he tends to like that look.  I guess that's why I'm not in any of them, my idea of adding color is to put a bit of gray on to accent the black - still...

What is interesting is Jasper's assertion - rare in the community that is being depicted (that Alt. deal where Burning Man crosses with the Radical Faries and the Steampunk people and the hipsters) is that we are all like that.  Very few in that crowd think or believe it - much more the opposite, that they are on a higher evolutionary plain of radical self expression and its decidedly not for everyone, and that most people should not do it.

But perhaps within that cocoon, and Jasper is in that pretty deep, it begins to look like everyone can, and perhaps should live that life.

Far from being right or wrong, most of this just proves that San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.

What is kinda funny to me is how people without much of a life, can criticize old Jasper, who if nothing else, is out and about. Sure, Jasper might well be playing the fool, but at least there is an awareness there that that is what is going down.