Quick change
Whenever I'm feeling a little down, one of my favourite distractions is to play around with makeup on my face. I was feeling unusually sullen yesterday so I did lots of different looks. Here's the ones that made it into documented record.
Natural's not in it
Hmm, I don't think I'm really that good at doing "natural"...
At home he's a tourist
..unnatural, on the other hand? I'm your man!
Glass
Some sort of rockabilly dreamin'?
I love a man in a uniform
It's been a very very long time since I last wore this femme fatale wig, or indeed a wig of any description.
Now I remember how uncomfortable they are...
This has gone in the bin along with all the others. The days of wigs are over.
Anthrax
And as for this wig, it's positively ancient!
I didn't know I even had it until today when I was chucking old clothes away. I decided to give it one last go though it smelt very musty. It's now in a bin bag waiting collection.
I was meant to be working, but doing these makeovers really cheered me up. Now I have to do the work today. Damn.
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Notes on faking it
Got weirdly upset last week about the impostor incident on flickr. I've normally dealt with these things quietly but somehow this one bubbled over and almost added up to a weird campaign on my Twitter, Facebook and flickr. I'm very grateful to all the people who supported me, but a mention from a friend about my reaction during the day of the "campaign" gave me pause...
@icelandbob
@the_draGnet it must REALLY annoy you that someone tried to pass off your lovely torso as your own, Good job......
Thing is, it really did!
But why did I get so put out? I guess there are a few immediate reasons why this incident got to me...
- The offender didn't back down immediately when challenged privately
This irritated me because I normally expect pathetic microbes like this faker to submit immediately to my will. - I've been fighting a chronic illness for the last few weeks - feeling pretty fucking low to be completely honest, for pretty much the whole of July
This probably made me more than usually needy of attention and, dare I say, love? - They chose a faceless torso shot rather than anything with my face on it
I felt an unaccoutable and probably quite complex and embarrassingly revealing rage at this choice.
Look back in angora
All these minor factors and more led me to erupt and run my lynch mob into town campaign, but deep down, the existence of fakers in the online trans community is something we should all be angry about.
Friend and tranny blogger (retired) Becky Envérité is a great champion of outing the fakers. She once described herself as "the James Randi of Tranny Fakers".
Floating, as I normally do, in a slightly vague and rarefied cloud of pseudo intellectual distance, I used to find Becky's regular bitch hunts a little... dare I say, visceral. Let's just say I was glad someone else was doing it, not me.
But now, I think that I was plain wrong. These fakers need to be challenged and eliminated. People along the trans spectrum all walk a tightrope. We're viewed with a mixture of suspicion, prurient fascination and outright hatred because, deep down, the trans haters, the trans beaters, the trans killers, suffer from the delusion that we're all trying to fool them in some way. To snare them in a trap created by some sick desire to fool them. To make them look fools for accidentally being intimate with a transperson.
Reaction formation of course, but it doesn't make such individuals any less dangerous. Quite the reverse.
And these transfakers, who are using other people's photos as their own, be they photos of genetic women, doctored photos of themselves superimposed on models' torsos, or (as in my incident) photos of other transgendered people, are playing right up to the haters' prejudices. By creating their fake photostreams and profiles, they're building up a compound picture of the trans community as a desperately insecure, fake, lying bunch of cowards hiding behind fake pictures of real people. In turn they're surrounded by a fawning coterie of commenters and admirers all too keen to reinforce the lie with a facile few words of coy praise. It's almost too pathetic to be dangerous, as Becky herself mentioned in response to my original tweet.
@BeckyEnVerite
@the_draGnet makes you wonder what mental somersaults they go through to actually gain validation from the comments they get on stolen pics.
But nevertheless they're laying mines in the already treacherous ground we have to tread; undermining the porous soil of our self images. In many ways, in the transgender war, they're actively collaborating with the enemy by spreading their deceitful propaganda in our name.
So they must be outed and shamed.
The comedown
The sad thing is the offender will never realise the harm they're doing by perpetrating these falsehoods. I imagine them to be sad, closeted, possibly isolated or lonely individuals - fantasists who can only dream about gender identities they'll never have. Part of me wonders whether they deserve my sympathy rather than my approbation.
That's why, despite my deeply felt need to act on the incident, I felt misgiving tinged with guilt when I discoverd my faker had removed their flickr account, undoubtedly as a result of the comment bombing I had inflicted using my friends as my weapons.
There's never any winners in war. Only losers.
It's just that some lose more than others.
And some are bigger losers than others.
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Fakr
So someone called Svetlana Shlueva added me as a contact yesterday on flickr. She claims to be a young transsexual woman in transition on her profile. Her photos are certainly convincing!
I couldn't help noticing though, that one of 'her' photos was actually of me from earlier this year.
Here's her version, ironically titled "This is true"
And my own.
Update - 19:46
Thanks to everyone who helped!
Now I just feel a bit dirty...
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Dangerous days
Rachael was special
Gaff had been there, and let her live. Four years, he figured. He was wrong. Tyrell had told me Rachael was special. No termination date. I didn't know how long we had together... Who does?
Love / trust
Deckard: Do you love me?
Rachael: I love you.
Deckard: Do you trust me?
Rachael: I trust you.
I can't rely on my memories
Deckard: Say "Kiss me".
Rachael: I can't... rely on... my memories...
Deckard: Say "Kiss me".
Rachael: Kiss me.
Deckard: I want you
Rachael: I want you.
Deckard: Again
Rachael: I want you.
[pauses]
Rachael: Put your hands on me.
The business
I'm not in the business... I am the business...
You chickened and ran
Deckard: Remember when you were six? You and your brother snuck into an empty building through a basement window. You were going to play doctor. He showed you his, but when it got to be your turn you chickened and ran; you remember that? You ever tell anybody that? Your mother, Tyrell, anybody? Remember the spider that lived outside your window? Orange body, green legs. Watched her build a web all summer, then one day there's a big egg in it. The egg hatched...
Rachael: The egg hatched...
Deckard: Yeah...
Rachael: ...and a hundred baby spiders came out... and they ate her.
She doesn't know
Tyrell: I'm impressed. How many questions does it usually take to spot them?
Deckard: I don't get it, Tyrell.
Tyrell: How many questions?
Deckard: Twenty, thirty, cross-referenced.
Tyrell: It took more than a hundred for Rachael, didn't it?
Deckard: She doesn't know.
Tyrell: She's beginning to suspect, I think...
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I'm a Musician, writer, photographer, designer, transgendered z-list celebrity. Insomniac's boyfriend. Tragic glamour and sleepless nights are my fellow travellers. Skinny jeans and pointy shoes are my mode-us operandi. I like cats. Especially the ones who talk. Oh, and David Lynch.
