Boundaries

[marshwiggledyke.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I'm really really a huge noob to all of this. Hallo!

I've recently come out myself as FTM, pre-everything, and have told my friends, who have mostly been really accepting. My parents have not been at all supportive, and I've been living away from home for about three months because of this.

My concern is that I want to be as much of a respectful, enlightened man as possible, but due to spending most of my childhood and adolescence on my own (it's complicated), I have a horrific understanding of social boundaries and knowing what is okay and what isn't. And now that I'm ID-ing as male, I'm getting called on some behavior that was previously okay coming from a butch dyke.

For example, a long-term friend who I've been on lots of road trips with, and have consequently shared a hotel bed with, recently told me that she's no longer comfortable sharing a bed with me, because I was male and she female. I'd never ever thought that our relationship would need a few extra rules because of the FTM thing, but now I'm thinking about it, and thinking about it hard. There's probably a lot of female spaces that I enjoyed that are no longer welcome to me (which is a little saddening, because I've had a lot of fond memories of the lesbian dive in my town) but I just don't want to be an asshole and fuck up my relationships with my female friends (or annoy female strangers, for that matter).

Are there any boundaries other FTMs could advise me on- stories of problems you've specifically run into when negotiating gender dynamics? For that matter, are there any women who would advise me on the kinds of faux pas you abhor in men, so I can not make them? Thank you.

I don't use the gents because I don't pass very well and it's not safe, but I really try not to use the women's unless it is an absolute emergency. :( It feels disrespectful.

OUT!wear Pridewear Selling Anti-Trans Woman T-shirts!

[rebeccasf.livejournal.com]

This afternoon I came across a company selling WBW t-shirts. Their home page states the following.

OUT!wear™ is quality custom Pridewear and Accessories "WORN WITH PRIDE" to promote visibility, unity and self esteem amongst Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans-gendered persons.To promote a positive image within our community, whether bold or discreet.

The womyn-born-womyn policy of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival is rooted squarely in prejudice and has aided the marginalization of trans women for 36 years. The selling of WBW items is clearly anti-trans woman and goes against everything in the companies own statement above. If you don't know what the WBW policy is, please read my (very) brief herstory of the exclusion of trans womyn from womyn only spaces below.

It's astonishing that an LGBt company would actually attempt to profit off the marginalization of trans women. I had made a few posts on their facebook page along with at least a dozen others, asking them to stop selling these items. I also sent an email to the addresses on their contact page with no response. A little while ago they deleted all wall posts and comments from their fb page they deemed negative while leaving many comments in support of the WBW policy at MichFest. They then banned everyone who posted comments asking them to stop selling the t-shirts from posting again. The deleting of the comments was especially sad because there was some really good dialog going on between a few of us and some of the supporters of the wbw policy. I feel like a good opportunity for discussion has just been completely nuked and will never appear again.

As a community, I'm looking for some ideas on how to respond. So far, there has been only silence and censorship from OUT!Wear. I think a good first start is to repost this on your own blog and ask your friends and all trans allies to do the same. I've reposted this already to the blogs below. I was thinking of trying to get a google bomb together to label them anti-trans. Also, they seem to be a large supplier of shirts and other items to PFLAG. If PFLAG truly supports the T, they should cease all business with them until they stop selling WBW gear. At the very least, OUT!Wear should remove any reference to trans people from their website since (at this point) it appears to be an absolute lie!

Let me know what you think!

Love and respect,
Bex Cat-herder


UPDATE 7/13/2011: Please see response from PFLAG below!
UPDATE 7/13/2011: OUT!Wear has removed all WBW clothing!

UPDATE 7/14/2011:
Maria of OUT!wear has issued a personal apology to the lgbt community, pulled all WBW merchandise and given refunds to all who placed orders!

x-posted to camptrans,mtf,trans_feminism,transfeminism

( A (very) brief history of the exclusion of trans women from women only spaces )