LISA SALAZAR — BLOG

Who Made Me Gender-Role Police? The story is titled “About a Boy: Transgender surgery at age sixteen” by Margaret Talbot in the New Yorker Magazine (March 18, 2013). It talks about how many more females are coming out as transgender now than in the past. But as I reflected on the amazing progress trans people have made in recent years, it made me aware of my own subtle bias about gender-role conformity. Indeed, my doctors tell me that compared to twenty years ago, when it seemed that twice as many males transitioned to females than females to males, today there is equilibrium in the numbers, with as many females as males identifying as transgender. Margaret Talbot says this: In the past, females who wished to live as males rarely sought surgery, partly because they could “pass” easily enough in public; today, there is a desire for more thorough transformations. The subject of her story is a young transman named Skylar who underwent top surgery at sixteen, a much younger age than wou...

Ashley Love's Facebook page A woman said today that the medical condition transsexualism has been misrepresented & co-opted cuz of: Capitalism. Misgendering "campy drag images" cater to the lucrative gay male market more (Gay Male Hollywood own our images), & the "cross dresser, married w/ kids, or late transitioning narrative" is more sensational, drawing viewers. Hypersexualized/over the top images sell in this consumer culture/man's world. Lisa Salazar  As one having a "late transitioning narrative," let me tell you that there is nothing sensational about it. If there is anything scandalous that should draw anybody's attention is that some people have an issue with it. Had I been able to u nderstand what and who I was as a young person and had the medical understanding been then as it is today, my life might have turned out very different. The plain truth is that I knew more what I wasn't than what I was. The stereotyp...