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Pop! Quiz: What's your take on the "hot trannie mess" mess?
We got word today that Project Runway winner Christian Siriano is working with GLAAD to clear up some of his comments regarding transgender individuals, particularly equating "drag queens and trannies" to "white trash women and trailer parks" in a recent interview. Siriano (who of course made the questionable phrase "hot trannie mess" a national sensation) insists that doesn't mean any harm with his comments, and clearly, as a self-professed "very flamboyant gay man", isn't prejudiced against people who challenge traditional gender roles. The article goes on to say that Siriano is working to remove the slang "trannie" from his vocabulary, but doesn't specifically address the catchphrase that he (perhaps unwittingly) inspired. We've been advised by the Center for Transgender Equality that the word "trannie" is never acceptable, and the way that the catchphrase caught on has seemed a bit troublesome to us from the start. Do you or your trangender friends find "hot trannie mess" offensive? And have you used the phrase yourself, regardless? Submitted by on Fri, 2008-05-30 14:59. |
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eh...
I didn't think anything of it.
i never got the impression that christian was dissing transexuals/transgenders (same thing, right? just making sure) I didn't really know what he meant by something being a hot "trannie" mess. I am not transgender, so maybe that's why i thought nothing of it...but at the same time, i thought "surely he's used this around people before being on PR....so i am sure he knows what he is saying"
Btw, i am surprised people are raising hell over it NOW. this sort of thing bothers me. a person can go on saying the remark over and over again...yet for some odd reason, months later or what have you...people suddenly have a fit over it like it's brand new. he's been saying it since like his first episode of PR...eh, i don't get it. *shrug*
A lot of my gay friends
A lot of my gay friends throw around the words "fag" and "faggot" constantly. I loathe the words and don't find them any less insulting coming from the mouths of homosexuals. I don't find this "hot tranny mess" situation to be much different.
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.
But there are some real "Messes" out there!
I live in the Lower Nob Hill section of San Francisco where all the transgender hookers live. And some of them really are "trannie messes". I know it might sound bad but I am also transgender and I feel compelled to find a way to seperate myself from those that are hookers and doing a horrible job at trying to cover (i.e. look like the opposite gender). I don't not dress as a woman because I would be really ugly. I guess if you don't see some real "messess" you don't have an understanding of what I am talking about. I love Christian and totally feel where he is coming from.
All of us just need to take a step back and let people be people and not be offended by everything someone says. There really are some "Hot Trannie Messes" out there. People just need to get tougher skins.
And by the way, when I was growing up it was the word Queer that was considered ofensive to most people. We always called eachother fags and faggotts. I know how bad these words can hurt because I used to get beat-up everyday when I was in school.
The "lady" on So You Think You Can Dance the other night was horrible. I know it was probably a joke on their part but there really are people out there that dress and act like that. Now of course they probably have a serious mental illness. I know that people with Schizophrenia (sp) sometimes hear voices that say they are the opposite gender when they are not.
They give all of us a bad name!
Lighten up please!
agree with 3 comments above somewhat
I think the problem is when you give the words license to others, and they find it funny. Like the Saturday Night Live people feel free to say "hot tranny mess" because a gay person said it first. Same with South Park, which seems to use "gay" negatively all the time, even though the show seems gay friendly. Taking "ownership" of possibly derogatory terms -- queer, fag, gay -- allows all people to feel free to use them. But this doesn't seem to be true for other communities -- the N word being the best example.
BTW, frenchjr25 I'd love to chat with you somehow. I am transgender myself but do not present myself as such -- it's so confusing so I'm very sensitive to gender assumptions.
All I can say is that as someone who
remembers growing up hearing the word "faggot", "fairy", "homo", etc, and who still hates hearing young kids say "That's so gay", I have to respect the wishes of those representing transgender folks. That's why when Mara Kiesling of the Center for Transgender Equality told me that it was their group's position that "tranny" is never acceptable, I made sure to never use the word again.
Perhaps it is the journalist in me, but I truly believe words matter and tell us a great deal about how society views us. That's why I think it's important that GLAAD has convinced most every majoy news outlet in the country it's not acceptable to use "homosexual" when talking about gay people (except in clinical terms). There is a huge difference between "Brokeback Mountain, the gay cowboy movie" and "Brokeback Mountain, the homosexual cowboy movie". We all know which groups prefer the word homosexual and why. So if "tranny" offends transgender people according to Mara, then that's good enough for me.
homosexual/gay
I hate the term "that's so gay" too...but i do tend to joke with my friends about us being "big homos" and whatever....so eh, i guess i am a hypocrite...
I personally feel like no matter who people are...we all feel this weird thing where we feel like "oh its okay for US ONLY to say it..because we know how to use it as a joke and not an insult...." - - make sense? i've seen it with every gender, race, etc...whether that makes it right or not...i can't say....but...eh...just another topic to look into deeper i guess.
I am curious about this using the term "gay" and "homosexual" differently...because I've never thought about it...I know the word gay is used more than homosexual when people come out or whatever the case....but i did not know that there was such a difference really...and i don't know why certain groups (what groups?) prefer one word over the other. yeah, my ignorance shows i guess....but eh, that's why i come here sometimes...to be educated. ;-)
The difference between "gay" and "homosexual"
Homosexual is considered a clinical term, it describes what you do, or who you prefer to sleep with, but it doesn't describe how you feel about it. The word gay is generally used to describe someone who is out of the closet, happy to be gay, Out and Proud, while homosexual (as in "self-hating homo" or "married homosexual") can be used to describe someone who is ashamed, in the closet, a man who has a wife and pretends to be straight to the world but is privately homosexual (Larry Craig, Jim McGreeey etc.) and so on. There is a difference between the Gay Community and the closeted, homosexual populace who refuse to identify as gay. Anti-gay groups routinely use the word "homosexual" because they hate the idea of gay people being Out and Proud -- Gay!
Hope that answers your question. If you have any more:
http://askgaydrbill.blogspot.com
hmmm
Even if i were to say to someone "I am a homosexual"...that, to me still means i am gay (who i sleep with/what my sexuality is) but that doesn't mean i am closeted or ashamed of who I am. When I hear the word homosexual, i don't think of someone being closeted....I think about what it is...a person who is attracted to the same sex and sleeps with them..I know that we use the word gay...but to me, there never was a difference...they were just 2 different words with the same meaning...
I never even knew about the way people felt about the two words....at least, me and my group of friends never discussed it and i haven't met anyone who felt this way....
I see nothing wrong with the word homosexual...I guess the media makes it sound different or something?? I can't remember. is that the case? do people seem to make the two words have two separate meanings?
..and yes, homosexual is a more "clinical" term...but even though i am gay, open and all that other stuff....i am still a homosexual...if you're somebody who has sex with the same sex...whether open OR closeted (unless you're bisexual) then that is still homosexual (i know it's clinical but it is what it is)
There are people who can/do make the word gay sound bad. i had an old teacher who made it sound bad. I understand your explanation...i guess I don't agree with it, er people who feel that way. then again...maybe it's a generational thing or something. i have no idea.
Sexual?
The main issue with the word "homosexual" is that it is commonly used, especially by conservatives to emphasize the "sexual" aspect.
For example, while it is legimately true that a "gay" person is also a "homosexual" (or perhaps a "bisexual") the presence of the word "sexual" focuses on the sexual aspect of our lives and relationships, as opposed to such things as love.
Indeed, this is why conservatives like to use "homosexual" in preference to "gay" where possible. In this way they can send a subliminal message that gay people are all about sex. This is particularly important when trying to stimulate opposition to gay rights.
Consider how often this comes up around various issues. For example, when arguing against any kind of (positive) mention of gays in schools (such as tolerance or anti-bullying programs) they decry efforts to "sexualize" kids, as if it were impossible to discuss gays without also discussing gay sex. This is not the case with "heterosexuals" of course, and they think it's perfectly possible to discuss straight people and straight relationships without going into any detail about heterosexual sex lives.
This bleeds over into some of the most ridiculous notions. I've been in arguments with bigots who feel that gay men or lesbians holding hands or kissing on the streets are making a "sexual" statement but who don't feel that straight couples doing the same thing are. Certainly if a child asked his parents about a straight couple kissing in the park they would probably give a love-based explanation rather than launch into a talk about what men and women do in bed.
But in the case of gays they feel that what we do sexually is inextricably linked to our very existence. The history of the nomenclature bears this out because in fact the word "homosexual" predates "heterosexual". Straight people never felt the need to define their sexuality except in relation to us, and still do. How many straight people actually use the word "heterosexual" to describe themselves for example?
A straight person usually finds the word "heterosexual" somewhat awkward, again because of the presence of the word "sexual" in it. For all that we're a very sexual society our puritanical heritage still attaches a bit of a stigma to the word "sexual", as if to indicate something rather indecent.
Thus straight people, for example, define "heterosexual" marriage (two words almost never used together) as being about love and family, while conservatives define "homosexual" marriage as being about forcing social sanction of a sexual relationship.
Use of the word "homosexual" is therefore loaded. It was created as a term to describe a pathology which, at that point in history, was considered a mental illness. When the word was first coined in the late 19th Century there was virtually no organized gay community such as today. A majority of gay and lesbian people lived in (often extremely troubled) opposite-sex marriages. "Homosexuality" was an "illness" that threatened their "natural" marital relations.
Conservative usage of the word "homosexual" today is deliberately meant to hearken back to the days when homosexuality was seen as an illness or perversion. Even though it is less loaded in clinical circles today, the word still carries a strong sexual connotation with the general public. So I don't think it's a good word in regular discourse.
OoOohhh i get it....
The 'sexual' part of the word is what i was not getting....i had a total different understanding in my head....but with your explanation, that actually makes much more sense to me and i can actually see where that can be very uncomfortable.
it really is true...you learn new things every day... :-D
Really excellent answer, psionycx
Yes, traditionally homophobes have tried to say we gays are just about sex, not love.
Guess they think all those gay people who want to get married are just sex addicts wanting to flaunt their "lifestyle."
Out of the mouths of babes
So why did Christian escape the heat then, but not now? Was it because PR was a show about fashion, where cattiness and stereotypes are still thriving, so it didn't seem shocking in that context? Or was it also because of his youth and precocious manner, which made it seem "cute" to some, as if a 5-year-old were sayng it?
Personally I think the world is already too PC. As oversensitive, Orwellian committees keep declaring certain words off-limits, all that happens is the formation of new terms to replace them. Sensitivity is something that people should be concerned about on a personal level, not a mass level. I'll let someone know if I found something they said offensive, thank you. If we disown words like "homosexual" just because "gay" sounds nicer, than we are guilty of whitewashing our own heritage. Those who say "Brokeback Mountain, the homosexual movie" in a damning sense only get to us because we let them.
But the real point is, Christian's analogy was bad in the first place. Drag queens and trannies are not comparable to white trash, trailer park women. The idea makes no sense. Maybe he was misremembering Harvey Fierstein's monologue in Torch Song Trilogy, saying how drag queens would probably be swept under the rug as gay culture becomes more accepted, much like Amos & Andy was for African-Americans. (For the record, I'm just quoting Fierstein, it's not my opinion) I'm wondering if Christian has even seen Torch Song Trilogy. Or for that matter, Paris Is Burning...
So I picked up the phone
I really didn't know what to think of this when I first read about it. So I picked up the phone and called my 72-year old Transexual Dad.
She says: "The first time he (Christian) said that, I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair . . .I dropped a lit cigarette on the carpet".
We spoke about that and the word "tranny". . .perhaps it's generational, but she's not offended by the term at all (and uses it herself) but can see how some people might be.
But then, I'm not offended when my partner calls me a "dumb homo" and he's not offended when I call him an "insipid bitch" either. However, these comments in a different context would be offensive. As friendly as we are, I wouldn't be very receptive to my neighbor calling "hey Homo!" over the fence and I think my Dad would be taken aback if I called on the phone and said "Hi Tranny wazzup".
I am in total agreement with my Dad on the fact the everything has become too F-ing PC. . .but then we both can swear like sailors and don't care much for the word police.
I am NOT trailer trash.. just ghetto.. sometimes!!!!!
Long experience has taught
Long experience has taught me that the order of those who "get it" regarding transsexuality (not transgender) goes like this:
John Q, Public and Helen Homemaker
Larry Legislator
Lesbians
and last of all gay men........
I use the terms transie and tranny all the time for those who identify as transgender....the word is NOT inclusive to those who transition to be men or women regardless of the insistence by those who wish to stay in a gender never never land. Actual transsexual people have a birth condition, seek treatment for it and then go on with their lives. Transgender, on the other hand, appears to be forever.
As for trailer trash........I lived in an older mobile home when I first transitioned. It was a wonderful place to be, a nice home.