Cliques- really annoy me, so here's my rant about something that's been bothering me for a long time now. If I offend, I'm sorry but maybe this will start some meaningful discussion and maybe some people will see themselves and realize something from this. Maybe I was naïve thinking that just because we're all in somewhat the same boat and have the same beginnings in our lives that we would all be accepting and understanding of one another, but it just amazes me how many different hierarchies we as trans-people have formed.
I see these cliques in almost everything related to being a CD- maybe this is the irony of wanting to be like a girl, girls can be pretty mean (ha-ha).
So I go on Flickr, post my pictures, comment on other pretty girls pictures hoping that these pretty girls will stop by my humble page and perhaps leave a simple "nice". No I get comments from guys with hairy bodies in pantyhose, or guys jerking off, all types of stalkers, but the pretty gurls I admire, and gush so profusely to, ignore me. The pretty stay with the pretty I guess and I don't fit in that group. I've seen this behavior in myself at times and I don't like it, I try not to judge too much (other than the hairy thing or not trying).
I work up the nerve eventually to go out the club- cliques again, only even more so. This one group at the club I go to cracks me up- Butch gurls who put no effort into being girly (picture Norman Bates wearing his dead mothers dresses-LOL (oh don't write about this it's a joke..but kind of true), they walk and talk like men but just wearing a dress, and they look down on me like I'm some sissy fag they'd just as soon ignore. Then there's the militant types-they don't understand why you aren't like them, you need to come out of the closet, be full-time for the good of the cause. The club is an odd place for a newbie going out for the first time- the passable stay with the passable, the pretty hang out with the pretty, and the wallflowers sit on the sidelines hoping someone will say hi and maybe make a friend. I know we're all different, I wasn't expecting to learn some secret handshake and we'd all be laughing together, but I wasn't expecting the high school cliques, the standoffishness.
Now granted I live in the gritty upper Midwest and were not known for being generally warm and caring people (I do live in the murder capital after all) but we need to be a little nicer to each other, we are unique in this world, maybe more so than any other group of people in the world. So have your cliques if you must, but be gracious and smile and say hi, be nicer. I'll try too.
Love, Jennifer