Laci, I am so sorry that you experienced that hurt and pain. I've had much the same experience and its no fun and not one of those droll occurrences that one likes to chat about. Some of them can be extraordinarily frightening, depending on with whom they occur and when.
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But, the public takes it's cue from the media, Beyond. To have what Serano writes about is also to have what Lia wrote about and what Laci experienced.
I've thought for a long while that 'people' who do, think and react the way Laci described do so because they 'think' they should somehow be able 'to tell.' Not wishing to admit that their ability to 'chose' the '
>-bleeped-<' from a line-up is non-existent, they have to find a way to relieve themselves of the knowledge that their picker hasn't the ability to tell one beautiful woman from another in terms of how those women developed as human beings.
And I bet, just bet, that when "Jennifer" told him, that the entire conversation involved Jennifer in some way belittling him, at least in his own mind, about his inability to 'recognize' Laci as a woman who came to her womanhood through a transition of her body to match her brain. And he felt the sting of that in himself.
It seems to me that most cises think they
should be able to tell and that the media have helped to inculcate that idea quite deeply. That a huge minority, or perhaps a huge majority, of us go about our lives and people don't know if they aren't told is not something that they readily wish to acknowledge to themselves.
So Laci gets branded as an "excellent female-impersonator" when she is actually an "excellent female." Period. People in USA, particularly males, have been raised with the idea that they can 'know' what's mostly unknowable: that someone has an STD, for instance. That they should be able to suss-out when a natal female transsexual has matched her body to her brain. After all! There are all those 'clues' that any observant and well-heeled person can
see! Imagine him, secure, confident and well-groomed man NOT being able to tell! A major
faux-pas!
Not!! The Media tends to encourage such thoughts and reactions because the Media believe them themselves, like the advertising people who are just as hooked by advertising as the rest of us.
The Media
still portray us as deceptive or pathetic as Serano says. Some of the Media have decided that they should change some of that depiction. But, as Laci's story illustrates, the change will not outrun the perception among cises that they should somehow automatically
KNOW our developments, just as they know when they stub a toe! Automatic.
It's like "The Invaders." How do you tell the aliens from the earthlings when they are indistinguishable from one another? That seems to be scary for a lot, the majority, of Cises.
Nichole
