Miss Gender — A Video Podcast About My Transition from One Gender to Another

September 14, 2011 6:14 AM

Miss Gender — A Video Podcast About my Transition From One Gender to Another [via mefi projects]

"Miss Gender is a video podcast created by Jay Frosting and me about about my transition from male to female. I’ve been contemplating my gender identity since I was 13 or 14 and, now in my mid-30s, I’ve started to get my head around the reality that I’m transgender.

On the show we talk about how I came to realize I’m transgender, coming out to my parents and other family members, mulling over how to handle things at work, and simply trying to get the hang of being a girl."

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Honest and informative, Miss Gender gets into the emotions and dynamics behind transitioning as well as anything I've ever seen before. There's two 40-plus minute episodes posted so far, viewable via Vimeo streaming video or by subscription on the site or on iTunes. Audio-only versions are also available.

posted by item (25 comments total)

There is something deeply inspiring to me when individuals come to grips with themselves and make a major change in order to live--or at least try to live--a better life. It's like giving birth to yourself only perhaps more painful.

I'm looking forward to listening to this on an upcoming road trip when I'll need something for my mind to chew on. Thanks for posting.
posted by kinnakeet at 7:07 AM on September 14, 2011 [2 favorites]

I caught this and commented on it on Projects yesterday and am happy to see it here. It's a wonderful show that on a very simple level is about a very supportive friendship. Ashley's super honest and open and Jay asks a lot of great questions so it makes for a very moving, human experience.

Can't recommend it enough.
posted by inturnaround at 7:18 AM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

I feel like a schmuck because I found it too long/slow...
posted by Theta States at 7:20 AM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

I feel like a schmuck because I found it too long/slow

I had this, too. I switched to the audio version. The second interview (which I'm listening to now) is better and they both seem more relaxed.
posted by janepanic at 7:27 AM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

I haven't watched this yet -- I'm at work and on my phone -- but I just want to say how God. Damn. Proud. I am that people are transitioning so publicly, talking about it candidly, and just generally putting themselves out there as if we already lived in the better world we all wish was here already.

Fuck yes. Modern trans people are great.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 8:02 AM on September 14, 2011 [16 favorites]

"modern" ones? what do you mean
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 8:58 AM on September 14, 2011

'TransAmerica" was a great movie.
posted by Seymour Zamboni at 9:14 AM on September 14, 2011

people are transitioning so publicly, talking about it candidly, and just generally putting themselves out there as if we already lived in the better world we all wish was here already.

That's the path it will take to actually get there.
posted by polywomp at 9:24 AM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is so much better than usenet. Tone and expression matter. Text-only, I don't think I would have caught that the first video story of self discovery is coming from what seems like an almost quizzical place where Ashley has the distance to look at her past self with a bit of perplexity. It's not so much about feeling the hurt of the past as feeling sympathy for her past self, or at least that's how I saw it. It's an attitude toward the self here that I'd like to better absorb. Thankfully there's more video yet to see. It's hard to express what I'm feeling about this text-only.

Ashley, thanks.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:34 AM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

This, of course, alludes to you: ""modern" ones? what do you mean"

I mean when I transitioned, ten years ago, this sort of reach-everyone technology simply wasn't there. I could have written a book, which people would have had to buy, or kept a website (which I did, and a livejournal, but despite being in numerous blogrolls and the like, people only came to me when they were seeking out trans people). We've broken through into the popular consciousness in the last decade in a way we never have before, thanks in part to acts like this.

It gives me a happy.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:34 AM on September 14, 2011 [12 favorites]

Seymour Zamboni: "'TransAmerica" was a great movie."

I've never seen it, but having heard that the cis woman playing the lead got a cybernetic jawline in order to properly portray a trans woman I decided to skip it :)
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:36 AM on September 14, 2011 [2 favorites]

the cis woman playing the lead got a cybernetic jawline in order to properly portray a trans woman

Could you please explain what this means? I confess, I don't understand.
posted by item at 9:45 AM on September 14, 2011

"cisgendered" is the opposite of "transgendered". Felicity Huffman is cisgendered and they put Maynard James Keenan's face on her, basically.
posted by mkb at 10:17 AM on September 14, 2011

item: "Could you please explain what this means? I confess, I don't understand."

This comment has it:

I also have a slight issue with the way that Huffman had to be so visually coded as transsexual. (This is one thing I noticed from the trailers.) If she had looked just like herself, without the prosthetic jaw, the deliberately 'clumsy' make-up and the henna'd hair that looked a lot like a wig (all, for me, screaming 'fake'), I think the film would have been more politically transgressive and more threatening to its mainstream audience. But of course, you can't have Felicity Huffman looking like a normal actor playing a transperson. You have to make their transness visible -- which comes across, often, as ugly clumsiness.

I have, unlike many trans people I know, no problem at all with cis people telling trans stories, but only if they tell them well. Caricatures are caricatures. Her voice bothers me, too!
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 10:20 AM on September 14, 2011 [3 favorites]

Felicity's crazy jaw is interesting to me.

Do many people assume that all transgendered people look sort of halfway between male and female. Are people wandering around thinking that transgendered people look like the cross-dressed cheerleaders at the powder puff football game?

I know Ashley (and Jay). Ashley's makeup is more skillfully applied than mine is.
posted by 26.2 at 1:15 PM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

There seem to be two One True Narratives for trans women knocking about the mainstream media: one is the super-young kid who was done with transition in her teens and is sleeping her way through a series of unsuspecting blokes, showing off her nasty surprise to each; the other is the "tragic" late transitioner who never really passes, has a deep voice, and for whom everything is a struggle.

Stories like Ash's -- and mine -- don't really get told unless we tell them.

I will not dominate this thread. I will not dominate this thread. I will not dom-- I WANNA BE A WITCH
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:06 PM on September 14, 2011 [4 favorites]

Do many people assume that all transgendered people look sort of halfway between male and female. Are people wandering around thinking that transgendered people look like the cross-dressed cheerleaders at the powder puff football game?

I think that is the assumption of many people, because the trans people they notice are the ones that stick out the most. They are for the most part completely unaware of the trans people they pass by on the street or the grocery store that just blend in.
posted by polywomp at 2:07 PM on September 14, 2011 [2 favorites]

I noticed the slow pace but I think that was mostly Ashley and Jay carefully considering their words. This is heavy stuff. It was mainly heartwarming and inspiring to (cis) me but I can only imagine what it would mean to a teenager in the same place that Ashley was 20 years ago.

Ashley's makeup is more skillfully applied than mine is.

Those make-up tips at the end were awesome! Very cute and I learned something - so many primers. I'll stay tuned no matter what but maybe I'll finally figure out eyeshadow, too.
posted by pishposh at 3:23 PM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm really glad Ashley and Jay have chosen to do this. Similar to ArmyofKittens, books and text message boards were my only resources for transgender "voices" when I was coming out to my parents. Coming out to my friends when I finally transitioned (far later than I would have wished, but let's not dwell on regrets) was much easier because I had vlogs like these to show them.

Aside from humanizing trans people, these videos also allow cis-folks to sate some voyeuristic curiosity (it's a normal urge, I don't blame people for having it... just in how some choose to express it) without being accidentally offensive.

For an FTM's perspective, I enjoy referring people to Jonathan's channel. This video in particular is among my favorites because it describes many incidents in my childhood so well.*

* Sadly, sans Alan Rickman.
posted by Wossname at 4:19 PM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wossname: "Jonathan's channel."

oh my god I fucking love that guy.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 10:43 PM on September 14, 2011

I came in to recommend my favorite trans youtuber, freshlycharles. His vlogs are incredibly thoughtful and powerful and while I only have really ever lurked there for the two years or so that I've followed, I feel lucky to have just been able to share in his transition.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 5:08 PM on September 16, 2011

The most recent big trans story in the UK is the transsexual girl who returned to school recently as a girl. The first few days of coverage in most daily rags were pretty appalling -- I believe it debuted in the Mail and the Metro (the Mail's free sibling, widely distributed on the Tube) as something like "Sex Swap Boy Returns to School Dressed as Girl" -- but once mother and child consented to be interviewed the tabs have been falling over themselves to be supportive. Even the comments on the Daily Mail article are of the "let her be happy and get on with her life, sheesh" persuasion.

It helps that said mother and child are both articulate and photogenic, but the episode as a whole still represents an enormous leap for trans people in Britain. It's difficult for all but the most trenchant of wankstains to look into the face of a happy, well-adjusted girl and scream for her to cut her hair and put her boys' uniform back on, after all.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 1:25 AM on September 18, 2011

I was going to FPP it but I'm ill this weekend and too tired to form complete sentences that don't read like they were painstakingly assembled by carefully-trained animals from parts of other, better-written sentences. Besides, I'm a little too MY SINGLE ISSUE LET ME SHOW YOU IT.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 1:29 AM on September 18, 2011

articulate and photogenic

Ding ding ding!
posted by Theta States at 3:26 PM on September 18, 2011

Yeah, I'd love for it not to be important, but for winning over the Daily Mail it really is.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:45 AM on September 19, 2011