A year and a half after trans people inexplicably became the central focus of the 2024 Presidential campaign - a campaign won by the candidate promising to end so-called transgender “mutilation” - three trans women made appearances on the red carpet at the Met Gala, heralds of a flailing moral panic and a kinder, more creative future.
I love this article, genuinely, but as a trans person it feels a little weird that while you repeatedly say "trans people" you never mention any of the other trans people who showed up. I know it wasn't your intention but by not mentioning these other trans people and repeatedly treating trans women and trans people as interchangeable terms, you're erasing other trans people. You don't have to focus on them or anything, but you could have at least acknowledged that there were other trans people there.
This year we also had Sam Smith and Janelle Monáe, both who ID as nonbinary, and in 2021 by my count there were six trans women in attendance including Nikki de Jager and Valentina Sampaio. It is hard to track this event, especially now that the internet is trash, but I did just wanna mention those two and the trans women and just people who've been there before as well. And I def never believed it was malicious, I just know Sam Smith and Janelle Monáe deal with a lot of erasure and misgendering. They also absolutely pushed boundaries and I bet a lot of little trans kids saw them and felt like they had a future too. We all deserve to see ourselves, all of us, very much including trans and disabled people.
You first. There is absolutely nothing wrong with pointing out that people who deserve to also be acknowledged have been ignored. Unfortunately since two of these people are nonbinary I am not surprised, given that a large portion of our own community (the trans community) believes we don't belong and should shut up and go away. The question is, are you one of those people or are you just being obtuse and defensive for no reason?
Oh Mike, I’m pretty sure that in 9/10 cases you will walk right by a transgender woman and not even know it. Just like I suspect that if you weren’t told, you would not have been able to identify the transgender people at the Met. Odds are you’ve even looked a a few women and thought they were very pretty, not even remotely aware that they are transgender.
One can pretend all they want, no problem. But all that makeup and surgery does not remove the y-chromosome. So genetically they are still male and do not belong in women’s spaces.
Those 3 transwomen -- compound word like "crayfish" which ain't -- are still not women, i.e., adult human females [sex]. They're kind of perpetrating a fraud to even suggest they are.
HA HA HA! You boys can't stop telling on yourselves! Coming in here, all fascinated with the dolls. It gives me great pleasure to tell you the feeling and interest are not mutual. You need to clock off of here and go get yourself a cold drink, because girl, you are thirsty!
Probably only "fascinated" to the extent of wondering about similar pathologies like why some people seem to have a rather desperate need to chop off various body parts.
You edited your comment to change "Maddie" to "Matthew"? 😉🙂
But I had been thinking that neither Matthew/Maddie nor Ari nor all other transwomen will ever qualify as women (adult human females [sex]) as they don't pass the requisite go/no-go tests, i.e., ovulation and menstruation ... 😉🙂:
🙄 Not really by choice -- some necessity to disabuse any lurkers who might be overly fascinated at the thoughts of "changing sex" -- a medical and biological impossibility.
You are a man and so are the three people you wrote about. You can lie to yourself all you want you cannot force everyone else to indulge in your lunacy.
That is so cool! I never thought I'd say this: "God bless the Met!"
This is a reminder of what we all learned from "The Devil Wears Prada": Clothes ARE power and fashion IS politics.
A great recent book on that subject, by the way, is Anne Higonnet’s study "Liberty Equality Fashion," about the political function of fashion shifts led by three captivating women (one of them Napoleon's first wife) circa the French Revolution. I like to think that the transgender movement isn't simply a revolution in body-identity issues but in fashion as a form of political display. When so-called "men" dare to wear "women's" clothes, and "women" to wear "men's," that liberates us all from the textile fascists!
-- Jennifer Keay Davidson, 73-year-old SF transbroad
I always love your takes, Ari. This one is so important because it's so downplayed, as you mention several times, by the idea that things like this hold no material benefit for trans people, and these are all just wealthy people anyway. The Met is the perfect venue for a feeling like this. It's BECAUSE it's where all the world's wealthiest and most powerful people congregate that it's so powerful that trans people - especially women, and especially a black, disabled trans woman - were there.
Having our material needs - healthcare, IDs, bathroom access, etc - taken away is obviously damaging, but what necessarily precedes all of that? Us existing. Us having a need for those things in the first place because we are trying to exist as trans in society. And what precedes that is knowing. The most dangerous threat of all to trans rights is our right to know about ourselves - the one being played out in school libraries, classrooms, internet censorship, FCC pulling shows featuring trans characters. I'm just a little older than you and came out in my mid-30s. The single most devastating thing to me was being in a total knowledge blackout about trans people until I was in my mid-late 20s - and by then I figured it was just too late for me. The same knowing that a young trans girl recognizes in Hunter or Aaariana is the knowing that I got in my early 30s from following random trans men on Instagram - many of whom were transitioning in their 30s or 40s like I was considering - who were documenting their transitions, seeing what the process looked like, seeing their joy in the "after" photos, and describing their own journeys into "knowing" in the captions. And Elliot Page being on the cover of TIME was certainly no small factor. They can take books off of library shelves - they can't prevent a teen from scrolling the news and seeing these women on the front page. I didn't have to scroll far in AP's - AP!! - coverage of the event before the photo of Hunter came up.
Don't forget about Lux Pascal! She was there.
I love this article, genuinely, but as a trans person it feels a little weird that while you repeatedly say "trans people" you never mention any of the other trans people who showed up. I know it wasn't your intention but by not mentioning these other trans people and repeatedly treating trans women and trans people as interchangeable terms, you're erasing other trans people. You don't have to focus on them or anything, but you could have at least acknowledged that there were other trans people there.
That obviously was not my intent! I wrote this after watching the red carpet. Who did I miss?
This year we also had Sam Smith and Janelle Monáe, both who ID as nonbinary, and in 2021 by my count there were six trans women in attendance including Nikki de Jager and Valentina Sampaio. It is hard to track this event, especially now that the internet is trash, but I did just wanna mention those two and the trans women and just people who've been there before as well. And I def never believed it was malicious, I just know Sam Smith and Janelle Monáe deal with a lot of erasure and misgendering. They also absolutely pushed boundaries and I bet a lot of little trans kids saw them and felt like they had a future too. We all deserve to see ourselves, all of us, very much including trans and disabled people.
omggggg go touch some grass
You first. There is absolutely nothing wrong with pointing out that people who deserve to also be acknowledged have been ignored. Unfortunately since two of these people are nonbinary I am not surprised, given that a large portion of our own community (the trans community) believes we don't belong and should shut up and go away. The question is, are you one of those people or are you just being obtuse and defensive for no reason?
I do not fit in your binary questioning actually hehe
Staggeringly tone deaf considering the political pushback against the Met Gala.
I didnt see women .. I saw three dudes in a dress.
Oh Mike, I’m pretty sure that in 9/10 cases you will walk right by a transgender woman and not even know it. Just like I suspect that if you weren’t told, you would not have been able to identify the transgender people at the Met. Odds are you’ve even looked a a few women and thought they were very pretty, not even remotely aware that they are transgender.
One can pretend all they want, no problem. But all that makeup and surgery does not remove the y-chromosome. So genetically they are still male and do not belong in women’s spaces.
Those 3 transwomen -- compound word like "crayfish" which ain't -- are still not women, i.e., adult human females [sex]. They're kind of perpetrating a fraud to even suggest they are.
Still, you found your way here. You've shown yourself, loverboy.
Matthew: youll never be a woman.
HA HA HA! You boys can't stop telling on yourselves! Coming in here, all fascinated with the dolls. It gives me great pleasure to tell you the feeling and interest are not mutual. You need to clock off of here and go get yourself a cold drink, because girl, you are thirsty!
Matthew, I don't know how to break it to you but you don't pass and no one on earth except for your fellow degenerates has any sexual interest in you.
Flirt!
Probably only "fascinated" to the extent of wondering about similar pathologies like why some people seem to have a rather desperate need to chop off various body parts.
Look, I get it you're obsessed with me! Let it go. You'll never have me. HAHAHAHAHA!!!
🤭🤭🤭 Adorable.
🙄 More evidence of the pathology that afflicts you and most transwomen and transsexuals.
You edited your comment to change "Maddie" to "Matthew"? 😉🙂
But I had been thinking that neither Matthew/Maddie nor Ari nor all other transwomen will ever qualify as women (adult human females [sex]) as they don't pass the requisite go/no-go tests, i.e., ovulation and menstruation ... 😉🙂:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go/no-go_gauge
?? Drennen's post was on the top of my feed and since he didn't paywall it I thought to throw in my two cents worth.
As for your "loverboy", I think I much prefer the real-meal-deal, not a cheap, and non-functional knockoff.
You're still here honey!
🙄 Not really by choice -- some necessity to disabuse any lurkers who might be overly fascinated at the thoughts of "changing sex" -- a medical and biological impossibility.
That's a lot of words to say "I'm fascinated by trans women." But please, keep engaging and proving me right, you thirsty little boy.
🙄 A transman now heard from? But nice beard there sis.
Though if anyone is denial it's the transwomen and transmen who think it's actually possible to change sex.
You're all just transvestite men in drag, Zach. Cry harder, we're done lying for you tranny perves.
This is a beautiful essay and I am teary eyed because it’s not enough, not nearly enough for all of us, but it also means something important.
You are a man and so are the three people you wrote about. You can lie to yourself all you want you cannot force everyone else to indulge in your lunacy.
Aren’t we humans very deluded with our physical beauty too? Nightgowns for god of our vanities and trash to the Earth.
Beautiful, powerful piece.
That is so cool! I never thought I'd say this: "God bless the Met!"
This is a reminder of what we all learned from "The Devil Wears Prada": Clothes ARE power and fashion IS politics.
A great recent book on that subject, by the way, is Anne Higonnet’s study "Liberty Equality Fashion," about the political function of fashion shifts led by three captivating women (one of them Napoleon's first wife) circa the French Revolution. I like to think that the transgender movement isn't simply a revolution in body-identity issues but in fashion as a form of political display. When so-called "men" dare to wear "women's" clothes, and "women" to wear "men's," that liberates us all from the textile fascists!
-- Jennifer Keay Davidson, 73-year-old SF transbroad
I always love your takes, Ari. This one is so important because it's so downplayed, as you mention several times, by the idea that things like this hold no material benefit for trans people, and these are all just wealthy people anyway. The Met is the perfect venue for a feeling like this. It's BECAUSE it's where all the world's wealthiest and most powerful people congregate that it's so powerful that trans people - especially women, and especially a black, disabled trans woman - were there.
Having our material needs - healthcare, IDs, bathroom access, etc - taken away is obviously damaging, but what necessarily precedes all of that? Us existing. Us having a need for those things in the first place because we are trying to exist as trans in society. And what precedes that is knowing. The most dangerous threat of all to trans rights is our right to know about ourselves - the one being played out in school libraries, classrooms, internet censorship, FCC pulling shows featuring trans characters. I'm just a little older than you and came out in my mid-30s. The single most devastating thing to me was being in a total knowledge blackout about trans people until I was in my mid-late 20s - and by then I figured it was just too late for me. The same knowing that a young trans girl recognizes in Hunter or Aaariana is the knowing that I got in my early 30s from following random trans men on Instagram - many of whom were transitioning in their 30s or 40s like I was considering - who were documenting their transitions, seeing what the process looked like, seeing their joy in the "after" photos, and describing their own journeys into "knowing" in the captions. And Elliot Page being on the cover of TIME was certainly no small factor. They can take books off of library shelves - they can't prevent a teen from scrolling the news and seeing these women on the front page. I didn't have to scroll far in AP's - AP!! - coverage of the event before the photo of Hunter came up.