Her Name Was Steven

[Inphyy]

Hey everybody,

Today a documentary on a transsexual post-op women named Susan whose biological name was Steven, appeared today on CNN.

I was mesmerized by this documentary at first but as I sat my derriere on the couch and began watching this...It soon became apparent that she was just confused about the community as she herself was about her.

About three-fourths way into this, she was at an conference and said that trans-folks shouldn't have rights because society still doesn't understand what transgendered is or means...

Whether if society knows or not doesn't mean we shouldn't have rights! Rights are rights and should be given naturally.

Also she made a comment saying some trans-women looks like "men in dresses."

Who is she to judge? When she herself is judging people who are in the same group as her.

This is how I broke it down in my mind.

If you go to a motorcycle club meeting and say you hate motorcycles and that motorcyclists shouldn't be allowed to bike and that they are f-ing stupid.

That may be the right time but sure as hell isn't the right place and likely afterwards your butt would be kicked.

Same with trans-rights, don't go to a event and than go against your own group!

I felt demoralized but speechless, depressed but sympathetic, angry but understanding.

Overall it was a good documentary but in my own personal opinion, I think a different trans-women should have been followed; As because of now, that since trans-folks aren't in the limelight of society; The few ones that are out there will be the true veiling that society will believe us all to be.

However, this is my opinion and if you want to watch Her Name is Steven it should be on for one more day tomorrow on CNN at 5 P.M. cst. 

[Janet_Girl]

Susan is a semi-powerful transwoman that can actually do good for our rights.  Wait for part two tomorrow.

Her story is so much like many, that I hope that by getting it out there we can raise even a little understanding.

[Flan]

I think it sucked, lots of stereotypes and stupid.

the biggest thing I (and meghan) noted was where she said she would "end the experiment" if she didn't get a job. (as if transition was something I got out of bed one day and decided to throw away most of my money in the process for lols)

[Inphyy]

I think it sucked, lots of stereotypes and stupid.

the biggest thing I (and meghan) noted was where she said she would "end the experiment" if she didn't get a job. (as if transition was something I got out of bed one day and decided to throw away most of my money in the process for lols)

Exactly. She still hasn't found herself and I for one would like a trans-person whether MtF or FtM who truly knows 100% who they are, why they are the way they are.

I know many trans-women who have gone through so much and were confused about themselves at first but over time came to truly know the women they are.

Ironic and funny that this is Susan's Place, the owner of this site is named Susan and this documentary was about an girl named Susan...I think it would be way better if the Susan we know were the one doing the documentary! 

[JillEclipse]

sounds like the black guy who walked around in a trenchcoat with swastikas on it and a Nazi officer's hat and said he was a Nazi.

[Julie Marie]

Stanton caught a lot of flack about some of the things she said back then.  The trans community had pretty much ostracized her for the things she said.

Stanton was thrust into the limelight when this happened.  The T community came after her.  She was clueless about the T world when she was outed and many of her comments showed that. 

She was asked to be a guest speaker at Be-All.  She had never been to a T convention before that and she was shocked by what she saw.  Thus the "ugly men in dresses" comment.

No, she was not the person to represent the T community.  Donna Rose is far better.  She had a few pieces of advice for the clueless Stanton too.  But it was our over-anxious community who recruited Stanton and put her up there as our representative without ever checking into the type of person she is or learning what her views are.

Sure, Stanton was a klutz when it came to being our spokesperson but it was the T community who really blew it by attaching us to someone we knew nothing about.

[JillEclipse]

Exactly. She still hasn't found herself and I for one would like a trans-person whether MtF or FtM who truly knows 100% who they are, why they are the way they are.

I know many trans-women who have gone through so much and were confused about themselves at first but over time came to truly know the women they are.

Ironic and funny that this is Susan's Place, the owner of this site is named Susan and this documentary was about an girl named Susan...I think it would be way better if the Susan we know were the one doing the documentary! 

For me personally, the whole point is being confused in who i am. i enjoy being confused, really i do. sometimes i want a girls body...a few minutes later im comfortable as a man. one day im gay the next day i'm not. some people are really like that.

[juliekins]

Unfortunately, many drive by viewers watched the show and may think that Susan speaks for us all. If they are sharp, they will recognize Donna Rose as our more accurate spokesperson.

I cringed when I saw so much much of the show done with "Steven", before going full time. She was claiming to be female, but showed her more masculine side for maybe the first hour or so. Thereafter, she was filmed actually undergoing her metamorphosis. To some degree, it may give the viewer the false impression that we can kind of turn on and off a gender switch.

I did like her son Travis. He was very cool with everything, and should put to rest those critics who talk about doing 'permanent damage' to her children. As for Susan's wife, she did choose to leave. I will give her credit for having hung in there for awhile, but I would have thought better of her if she appeared on camera. She seemed pretty self focused on her economic losses that 'Steve' had caused. Then again, she decided to file divorce papers.

Overall, parts of the show were okay, while others were very uncomfortable-especially Susan's total ignorance or empathy for others plight within our community. Maybe she sowed what she reaped during her firing and subsequent  unemployment period. Didn't it occur to her that those same rights that she didn't feel should be extended to all members of the gender community were in fact coming back to bite her in the tail? Had those protections been in place, she would never had been fired on the basis of her gender transition!

[Janet_Girl]

Susan is like a lot of us.  She is still finding out who this woman Susan is.  She was thrust into the limelight because she lost her job in a very public way.

And she rushed through the procedures to SRS, and she is still finding out who she is,

[sylvie]

Well i just finished watching it tonight.  Was she the best choice for the documentary.  That depends on your opinion.  IMO She was thrust into her transition before she was really ready to do so when she was outed.  Then she was thrust into the forefront and the limelight.  Not the best place to be, and yes she has brought some of her own hardship upon herself.  I however agree with Janet.  Susan is still learning who she is.  Some of her comments were hurtful yes but that could be attributed to her lack of exposure (can't find the right word without being ugly) to the community. 

As for the exposure that this show has put out helping.......Last night I went onto the CNN site since I missed the show.  The comments that were there were not encouraging to say the least.  All of the haters came out and denounced her and what we go through.  They felt so bad for "his" family and what he is putting them through, and that he's a perv/freak/etc....

My opinions anyway for what it's worth.

[Jester]

Because this is politics, it's complicated.  Susan's struggles were pretty identifiable and definitely something that has come up for trans people in the past.  She is a government figure, and the backlash is actually what really got me.

"If Jesus was here he'd want you terminated."  I'm atheist, but I know enough about Jesus to know that killing wasn't really on his agenda.

I feel bad that she had to go into a life so public and... democratic.  Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with democracy, actually I am because I'm an elitist.  Anyways, her statements about transgenders not deserving equal rights was just as confusing to me as it was shocking.

It's good that she has some media power, but I really don't think that Susan has the strength of character, just like so many politicians, to bring about any real sort of change.

The documentary'll bring some awareness though, which is nice.  So... good that the documentary exists, bad that such a bowing and ingratriating person is charged with "fighting" for us.

The important thing is whether or not she'll do enough to be deemed a "hero" by the public opinion.  I don't think that she can.

[Stealthgrrl]

I had a variety of reactions to the show. I wanted to slap the son for continuously referring to her as "he", but then, she never seemed to object, either, which I find perplexing. Maybe it fits in with the not standing up for T rights. Maybe Susan has been making (political) compromises for so long, she can't stop trying to please everyone. Add to that the new-transie trait of longing for acceptance and to be liked, and it doesn't add up to a person you want speaking for you on controversial issues.

I felt for her. I did. I would have died to have a camera following me around in those very awkward, figuring-it-out transitional days. A lot of the show made me cringe. I was like, "I did that" and "Why on earth did I DO that?" both.

She had the businesswoman look down very well, but her casual look needed a lot of help.

I thought the "real life test" was to see whether a person can survive as the "new" gender. But she had SRS while still unable to find a job. And yes, that "experiment" statement rattled me. Experiment?

She was very open with everybody, down to talking to her church group about her parts. Ay yi yi. But of course, everyone who transitions is doing it for the first time, feeling their way, and while genetic girls have years to learn and make mistakes before they are expected to be women, we don't. Genetic girls can get their fashion disasters, experimental personas and social pratfalls behind them when they are 15 and it's all expected. For us, it's like TA DA, you're on, good luck. So my heart went out to Susan even as I cringed.

I couldn't decide if I admired her or if she was an idiot for not doing something about her voice. It's courageous to say, this is me, deal with it, but it says "male" to everyone she opens her mouth to.

As for the "men in dresses" comment, it was an unbelievably tactless thing to for her to say out loud, knowing she's in the spotlight. But having said that, I'll say that I've met trans women who had had nothing at all done and were clearly women anyway, and I've met trans women who had had the whole schmeer done and they still struck me as having absolutely masculine energy, or "men in dresses", and I walked away thinking, yikes, why did you do this?

I expect Susan's story may be very different, say, five years down the road. I know that it took me two years of living 24/7/365 as a woman before i felt at home and easy doing it. 

[Arch]

I had a variety of reactions to the show. I wanted to slap the son for continuously referring to her as "he", but then, she never seemed to object, either, which I find perplexing. Maybe it fits in with the not standing up for T rights.

Children are a special case. Susan is still the boy's father, so I cut him (Travis, the kid) some slack. Some of my trans friends have kids, and the trans men are mostly still "Mom" and the trans woman is still "Dad." Don't know about the pronouns, but the thought of a certain person I know going out to a restaurant and being called "Mom" is very comic.

[Sandy]

My kids still call me dad.  That can never change.

But in public it can turn heads when my daughter will say "She's my dad". 

-Sandy

[Hikari]

My problem with this is that I was raised with the idea that it is one's responsibility to learn about the things they have.

For example, I know how to adjust my carburettor, it isn't like I enjoy working on cars but once I got one I learned about it, since it is my responsibility. It would be my fault if I couldn't get to work because my Choke was stuck open and I couldn't get the car started. (BTW those people with fuel injectors you suck! you don't have to worry about nearly as much)

My point is, when this woman realised that she was trans surely it was her responsibility to learn about it. That would also reasonably entail learning about the community and their potential reaction. It isn't like everyone needs to be an expert, I mean it would be great if everyone were like Andrea James and make a whole bunch of websites to help everyone out, but that isn't what I am expecting out of people.

I know I shouldn't judge people, but this is one of those things that I have always taken as a moral responsibility. We all have enough time or can make the time to become at least generally familiar with the things that we deal with in our lives. There is no excuse for this woman's ignorance, it isn't like she just realised that she was trans, obviously she has known for some time.

[Julie Marie]

Like many here, I was having a hard time understanding how she could have been so clueless.  She was planning her transition yet knew almost nothing about the trans community.  HUH?

Once I realized this was a serious issue for me, I ate up everything I could about things transgender.  I analyzed myself, compared me to others, talked to people, joined several forums, moderated a couple, read books, looked at myself again, did more comparing, met new people, went to meetings and gatherings, entered into therapy, spent a lot of time in social scenes (happily) as me, and after all that I was still on the fence if I was ready for the realities I'd face if I transitioned.  From what I've read, it seems Stanton was just like, "Okay, I think it's time to transition." 

When this thing first burst onto the scene I'd talk to other TGs and they were almost reverent when speaking about her, like she had done something special.  She got outed!  She didn't do a thing.  But because she was in the limelight many TGs I spoke to simply admired her.

And that's a problem I've seen in the trans community.  We are so anxious to take someone and put them on a pedestal simply because they have a camera and microphone in front of them.

Overall, I felt Stanton didn't do us any favors, from her comments to the way she handled things.  I can see why some of the ignorant public remained ignorant.  Stanton did little to positively represent the issues we face.

[Dana Lane]

Stanton caught a lot of flack about some of the things she said back then.  The trans community had pretty much ostracized her for the things she said.

Stanton was thrust into the limelight when this happened.  The T community came after her.  She was clueless about the T world when she was outed and many of her comments showed that. 

She was asked to be a guest speaker at Be-All.  She had never been to a T convention before that and she was shocked by what she saw.  Thus the "ugly men in dresses" comment.

No, she was not the person to represent the T community.  Donna Rose is far better.  She had a few pieces of advice for the clueless Stanton too.  But it was our over-anxious community who recruited Stanton and put her up there as our representative without ever checking into the type of person she is or learning what her views are.

Sure, Stanton was a klutz when it came to being our spokesperson but it was the T community who really blew it by attaching us to someone we knew nothing about.

We definitely picked the wrong person to speak for our rights. At least at that time. I couldn't believe some of the things she said in the documentary. It was almost as if she was saying "I am a better transgender than they are" kind of attitude.

I am glad this documentary aired, though. It did show a lot of the struggles and how hard the path is for those that transition. You literally risk your entire future by making the choice to move forward. I hope this helps some folks understand this issue better and maybe not fight so hard against an all-inclusive ENDA.

[Arch]

My point is, when this woman realised that she was trans surely it was her responsibility to learn about it. That would also reasonably entail learning about the community and their potential reaction.

I'm sure she did research on the physical aspects of transition. But she seems to have been quite isolated from any trans communities. If she went into this with certain preconceptions/misconceptions, she probably filtered everything through that lens. She might have had one or two bad encounters with the so-called trans community, and that colored her thinking and led her to not investigate further.

I have encountered trans people who, in my opinion, were woefully ignorant. I think some of them expect to have all of their questions answered in one go, perhaps at a support group. Some of them aren't inquisitive types; either they only want the basics, or they don't like research and reading. There are lots of people like that in the non-trans world, so we shouldn't be surprised to find them in the trans world. The difference, to me, is that such people should be forced by circumstance (or should force themselves) to do the work and find out as much as possible. And that includes finding out more about other people like us.

There could be many reasons that combined to make her seem so ignorant. Being trans can be very isolating, and isolation can be a hard habit to break. Or perhaps her being outed so publicly made her move up her timetable. Or maybe she was still partly in denial that anyone could see her as "a man in a dress." Or maybe she was filled with self-loathing and didn't feel that she deserved to be treated with respect.

In the last analysis, I, too, was shocked by her ignorance. I think she failed in her responsibility to herself. And when she agreed to appear in a high-profile documentary, she failed in any responsibility she might have had to the rest of us. However, the extent of that responsibility is debatable. Some would say that she is responsible only for telling her story, warts and all, and for representing at each stage how she was thinking and feeling at the time.

It's too bad that she was and is so much in the public eye, but at least CNN provided an opposing view about a couple of Susan's most inflammatory comments. FWIW.

[Stealthgrrl]

My kids still call me dad.  That can never change.

But in public it can turn heads when my daughter will say "She's my dad". 

-Sandy

Yes, but she says SHE's my dad. Not "he."