Now before I get into what I have to say let me make it clear that I'm by no means advocating that a trans-woman (or trans-man) frequent some place that it is clearly anti-trans. Rather what I'm question is the need to always specifically seek out places that are to quote "trans-friendly". Now in this example I personally don't have a dog in the fight one way or the other and really I'm probably not qualified to make the comment I made since I really have no hair of my own and am relegated to wigs in the first place. However, me being me, I didn't let that stop me. What I had to say was that perhaps instead of worrying about if the stylist was quote "trans-friendly", perhaps they should seek out a stylist that was simply talented and professional. It seemed to me that a talented and professional stylist should be able to give the person the style they wanted (within reason obviously) and do it the "way they wanted"; whereas, if they were able to actually locate a "trans-friendly" stylist - that person may or may not be capable of doing a quality job. Look, I appreciate those people and businesses that are friendly towards anyone, not just LGBTQ people, but I also want to get what I need and hopefully good value for what I pay for and as such in a case like this I think finding a quality stylist would be the best course of action. Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps I'm naive, but that's my line of thinking.
Extrapolating this out a bit further, I know my ultimate goal is to simply fit into society as a *woman* - the fact that I'm a "trans-woman" versus a "cis-woman" is something that I'd like to not matter. Now again that's quite possibly overly naive on my part, but that's how I'd like things to be. The way I see it, if that's what *I* want from life then shouldn't I be willing to frequent any business out there - at least any business that's not out and out transphobic (that is a word isn't it? <G>)? If I go out of my way to only give business to those retailers and service providers that have earned a "trans-friendly" label aren't I being at least a touch hypocritical? Now if those businesses deserve my patronage based upon the services and value they provide then yes, the fact that they are "trans-friendly" would be a "tie-breaker" if everything else is equal or even reasonably close. But to just out and out exclude regular businesses because they haven't earned a "trans-friendly" reputation - I simply feel that wouldn't make me any better than those people/businesses that aren't "trans-friendly".
Perhaps this will be an unpopular viewpoint, it wouldn't be the first time I've had one of those, but I really and truly do believe that far too many in the LGBTQ community - especially the "T" portion of that community - put far too much emphasis on this and perhaps they should take a look in the mirror and give some thought to whether or not they are doing what is really and truly right.
And just so I have a nice thumbnail for this post - here's a picture of me from the other day - I believe it was the day I went to the chiropractor (that was a complete waste of time, but that's another story for another day)... Pardon the squinting, the sun was a killer that day. I suppose I need to replace these silly photo-chromatic (I think that's the term) glasses with a pair of actual sunglasses. That's what I get for trying to be lazy and not have to carry both regular glasses and prescription sunglasses. Lesson learned...
- M
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