Through drunken additions on Facebook I recently became the acquaintance of Kai “Vanderbilt”. That’s not her actual name, but we decided on that pseudonym because of google searches or black helicopters or something, I really wasn’t paying attention. I was just picking out funny surnames. Kai works on a site called wehappytrans.com and is a transgendered person herself. We talked a lot about gender issues and a bunch of other things, because for some reason there are still issues of misunderstanding surrounding the whole community. We also talked a bit about her site and its mission.
C-Who are you as a person?
K-25, former Detroiter, graphic / web designer, glasses enthusiast
C: So Wehappytrans.com, what exactly is it?
K: It’s “a place for positive trans* perspectives”, because the media is saturated in negative portrayals and negative stories about the gender transgressive community and we want to highlight what a positive, beautiful, affirming experience it can be.
Be it “transition” or just dropping the bullshit.
A lot of the focus has been on the 7 Questions series, where folks record a video responding to 7 Questions framed to prompt positive responses.
Designed, run, and written by trans people, but not necessarily just for trans consumption.
It’s also purple.
C: It is. So being trans can be positive? I thought it was all jerry springer episodes, butt injections and people threatening people with heels on subways?
K: Speaking for me, my experience has been blissfully positive and even more normal feeling than my life was before. My family, friends, girlfriend have all been not only accepting but actively supportive, beyond my wildest dreams. Unfortunately my experience isn’t the norm — but being trans is about finding happiness, no matter what. Nobody transitions or comes out or changes their appearance to feel worse about themselves.
C: I think that it’s hit or miss and you build up these thoughts in your head of how bad coming out can be or what good things you expect and sometimes it exceeds them, sometimes it doesn’t.
At least those are the experiences I’ve seen. You never get what you expect.
K: For sure. Transition hasn’t magically fixed all the demons in my head, or my bad habits. And people will get very invested in their appearance during transition, and hold unrealistic expectations of beauty, and it just gets messy.
C: Can you give a little info on Transition as opposed to transvestite, and how sexuality plays into the whole thing.
K: Transition is whatever it means to you, be it physical or hormonal, involving surgeries or not involving surgeries. As a formerly straight male transitioning to a fairly butch dyke, there’s a lot of middling that goes on in my case. I don’t intend on changing my voice for example.
I can’t really speak for the transvestite community, in fact I’m not sure if that’s even the preferred nomenclature — but there does seem to be a distinction between people who identify as crossdressers / are involved in drag and people who just feel more comfortable when their exterior matches their interior. There’s obviously plenty of overlap / evolution between the groups as well.
Though I feel the stereotype is that transness is a very sexually oriented thing, I feel that my new life is notably less sexually charged than I was previously, which is good for me. Wearing women’s clothes doesn’t turn me on, I just feel more comfortable.
C- Damn, we just saved queer studies majors like 9 credits in three paragraphs. Let’s keep it going,
Do you find it offensive to say someone identifies as female? As opposed to just calling them female?
K- I find that I’m personally not offended by nearly as many things as some others in the community are. I don’t know how I feel about calling myself female, but I know others wouldn’t have it any other way. (This is Kai’s second attempt at this sentence the first was an odd Kafka-esque kind of thing)
C- On the concept of LGBT, is it wrong to group everyone together like that? With so many sub groups and differences I feel like that term just kind of ropes them all off into an “other” category, because it’s easier. It’s the sexual identity version of colored.
K- Well, ideally we wouldn’t need to group together at all. But in the current atmosphere we all undergo similar prejudice so it’s fair to say we’re kin. As a trans woman I’m sometimes confused for a gay boy, which I’m unequivocally not. And when some people think about gay men they imagine a ‘closeted’ trans woman.
But yeah I prefer QUILTBAG thank you.
Q – Queer and Questioning
U – Unidentified
I – Intersex
L – Lesbian
T – Transgender, Transsexual, Two-Spirit
B – Bisexual, Bigendered
A – Asexual
G – Gay, Genderqueer
C-How are we going to fit that on a snappy sign? What about people who are born hermaphrodites that self identify as reversed hermaphrodites? Like if my penis was above my vagina, but I wanted it the other way around. What would you call me?
K- Still intersex. [stamped]
C- Okay here’s a tricky one; I’m born with two vagina’s?
K- Gay, jk.
C- All people born with extra genitalia are now gay regardless of who they like, take that science.
K- I mean it’s whatever. If I want to call myself cis I’m cis. Nobody gets to find out but my doctor and my girlfriend.
C-So have you undergone surgery or hormonal treatments?
K- It’s considered pretty boorish to ask about trans people’s genitals. Again, I don’t take offense, but nobody gets to find out but my doctor and my girlfriend
I have been taking hormones though. They’re lovely.
C-Well you can feel free to ask about my genitals if that makes it any better. I’m not doing anything special with them though so it might not lead to anything interesting.
K-Nah I don’t really care to know. It perhaps wouldn’t be such an issue if it weren’t asked so damn often. It’s very clear that people feel entitled to know what I’m packing just because I’m gender variant — starts to feel a bit like a freak show type dealie.
C-I really thought I could turn this entire interview into an in depth discussion of my genitalia, guess not, but that is a fair point. I think it’s an understandable if over asked question though, I think we as people all wonder what’s going on down there in general and especially when we know something may be different than we previously assumed, But it’s also very trite and invasive at the same time. It’s the equivalent of shouting show me your vagina. I hear it’s peculiar, which is not an accepted way of speaking,
K- Hah, well yea and maybe someday we as a culture will progress to the point where we’re all open about our sexuality, but for now it’s a way trans people get treated differently than cis people, and that shit’s dumb.
Make sure to visit Wehappytrans.com and check out the site and maybe you can get a little bit more information about a community that you should know about. Also if you ever get a chance chat with Kai she has a great sense of humor and is incredibly easy to chat with.
Dead Dear 
Reblogged this on SEXed.