My trans radar has been on the fritz lately. Every woman I see looks like a femulator!
For example, referring to the Femulator image that appeared here on Monday, Shukun commented that "After some extensive searching I came across a cast listing from that femulator's play. She's actually a genetic girl."
Who knew! The image came from a stage play at an all-male school. Other images from that school showed males en femme who were obviously males en femme. So I thought that Monday's Femulator was also a male en femme who had cranked it up a notch or two.
There are so many images on the Internet of purported femulators who turn out not to be femulators that I am always hesitant to proclaim someone a "femulator" when the proof is sketchy.
For example, the image above came from the DragFEST website of North Carolina State University. The person in the photo is named "Claire McKnight" and when I first saw her photo, I thought she was a cisgender female who participated in the DragFEST by emulating a drag queen (a "dragulator").
But other photos on the website that indicate that Claire is using duct tape to create her impressive bust. I have achieved similar results, so I know that it can be done, but is that evidence enough to declare that Claire is a femulator?
Hard to say.
It is a tough job, but someone has to do it. And if I am wrong on occasion, sobeit; I will just try to do better next time.
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German femulators, before the Nazis and after the Commies.
Wearing BCBCMAXAZRIA.
Many of us ( and I might add our spouses) have enhanced T-dar. We are constantly alert to our surroundings and always on the lookout to see if there may be another T person out and about. while our T-dar is enhanced over the civilian populations it is not always 100%on target. We just do the best we can and work towards general acceptance of all variations regardless of whether there is a congruity between their bodies and their attire.
ReplyDeletePat
Dear Pat,
DeleteI agree. We T-Girls (and others attuned to transgender interests) often have T-dar, but as you said, we're not 100% correct. I think T-dar (and Gay-dar) spring from intuition. I "type" (or "test") as a Myers-Briggs iNuitive, and I guess my intuitions are about 70 to 80% accurate. I think we should be careful not to say something to a stranger we "think" is transgendered - some percentage of cases, we'll be wrong, and we could offend a cisgender woman. We could even offend a transgender woman who may not be pleased that we point out they we "read" them.
Love,
Sheila.
I would never ask someone if they were transgender.
DeleteSimilarly, on your "womanless pick of the week - County Line High School", the shortest girl in the pink dress is clearly a cisgender girl who's helping along, and just happens to be in dress, perhaps for support, as she is not competing but in the full picture full of the competitors and the cisgender girls who helped (who are in normal informal but still girl clothes), the short girl in the pink dress is with the girls who helped, in the line below the boys. http://www.flickr.com/photos/celialooney/6865810955/in/set-72157629292074297
ReplyDelete