I am not your tragic trans narrative
http://feministing.com/2011/05/31/i-am-not-your-tragic-trans-narrative/5/31/11
By Jos
It seems whenever there's a profile or personal narrative of a trans person in mainstream media it has to be somehow tragic. And I'm so over it. Because I think we're amazing.
There's one kind of narrative about transition that makes it in the mainstream: I was suffering constantly, I knew I was in the wrong body, so I had to transition. The folks in these profiles can afford to access surgery, another requirement of the story. As it played out in the (have we mentioned it's) completely awful New York Times profile of Chaz Bono, "the surgery," in this case top surgery, is presented as horrific bodily mutilation, an extreme someone's pushed to and that's OK only because they're suffering so much. Janet Mock does a much better job telling her own story, but it also follows this familiar structure.
