Trans Universe

(This piece is what I submitted for the book called “Trans People in Love,” published by Routledge, June 6, 2008.  The editors are Tracie O’Keefe and Katrina Fox.  “Sex and the Single Trannie” is Chapter 12, on page 111.)

By Monica F. Helms

“NO! I refuse to believe you!”

“Sorry, Monica. Once you start hormones, you’ll lose your libido.”

“I will NOT let that happen.”

“You’ll have no choice.”

“We’ll see about that.”

One may ask, “What does libido have to do with love?” This is, after all, an anthology of transsexuals and love and very little about sexual desires. That maybe so, but I cannot separate the strong connections between all of those parts of my personality.

Most people understand that humans are extremely complex biological organisms that have the capacity to experience a large range of emotions, including the elusive one known as “love.” They also can feel a multitude of physical sensation and understand what they all mean, especially sexual pleasures. Over the course of the last decade, I’ve experienced love and sexual pleasures on so many levels that it would be hard to isolate one special moment or one special person. Others in this book may have a partner or someone special, but I don’t. Yet, I have loved and lost enough times to know what the experience feels like.

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By Monica F. Helms

(for those who have read this on The Bilerico Project, I added a new paragraph toward the end.)

I know that by expressing my opinion about this word in an article, I will make a lot of my trans friends angry. Seems that the quarterly label issue is brewing yet again and right on time. This article of mine came about because of an article my friend Donna Rose wrote on her blog called, “Tranny: Just a Word?” Please note that Donna happens to be one of my closest sisters, but like family, we can disagree on things. This is one of those times.

Human beings have a propensity for figuring out ways to verbally put down other people. Americans are absolute experts in this “field,” especially during a war with another country. In Wikipedia, you can find hundreds of words used for just ethnic slurs alone. It’s more fun for American to burn bridges rather than build them. If ethnic slurs are so prevalent, then it stands to reason that slurs directed at the LGBT community would be also in abundance. The questions now become, “Are some of these words actually worth getting upset about?” and “How do we neutralize them?”

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