Diary

The summer is the time for gay parades. I had never been to any gay-pride event, so it was time for a change in this! Two weeks ago, Julia and I happened to be in Amsterdam for a weekend just when the annual gay parade was planned.

The Amsterdam gay parade consists of a lot of boats that go all the way along the Prinsengracht around the ancient center of the city. Most of the boats have been decorated and the people on the boats have all dressed themselves for the occasion. Some groups start the preparations for this months before the event and they get very beautiful results.
Of course the main color used on most of the boats is pink. And on board we saw a lot of guys dressed as girls and also some girls dressed as boys.

Some boats were decorated in very special ways. One of them had an inflatable love-doll on it that stood 25 feet high. And they had to deflate it time and time again because she needed to pass under the bridges! There are at least ten bridges along the route of the parade and every time this poor inflatable girl had to arch her back as if she was doing a giant's limbo-dance.

There were also boats that were about supporting an organization or getting across a point of view, like the Amnesty International boat: "Gay rights are human rights" and the AIDS fund boat.
In this category there was also a boat on which everybody was holding up a sign with a text starting "I want to kiss again..." How about "I want to kiss again in Iran"

The boat from Shell company was very remarkable. It had a great banner saying: "Shell colleagues celebrate Diversity & Inclusiveness" It turns out that Shell organizes get-togethers for gays and transsexuals within the company! That sounds like a fine example of acceptance on the job!

On the last boat we saw Boy George. I don't know whether it was really him or just a very good imitation and that doesn't really matter. I like his looks because he is not a transvestite, but still he is about as feminine as a boy can get...

It took several hours for all the boats to pass and in the end I began to feel quite cold. I don't envy those guys who have to stand half naked on one of those boats. And for them it was not over yet, because they had to sail the full length of the Prinsengracht, all the way to the Amstel where they would all get together.

Such a parade is fun to watch, but I do have some objections to it.

On the boats we saw lots of "Bearded Beauties". It is easy to understand why this is the case. These people want the world to see they are gay, but that doesn't show! So that's why you see a lot of transvestism on these boats.
To the general public this can be confusing. It may strengthen the prejudice amongst the public that all transvestites are gay. It may even give the impression that most gay people are transvestites. And that is not the case!

But on the other hand it is just a nice party and we wouldn't want to spoil that. I enjoyed it very much and so did the hundred thousand people who came to watch it, not to mention the millions of people who have seen it on TV!

---

When you listen to Gendertalk you hear so many people who claim they are transsexual. And maybe you have wondered how they can be so sure of that. How do they know? It is not a virus, there is no injury. There is really no objective way to determine whether someone is a transsexual. It is something they feel inside. They have a male body, but they say they feel they are women. Isn't that silly? What does it mean to feel you are a woman? How can you tell?

Those are very good questions. And believe me, I have struggled with those questions for years. And I went looking for information -- on the Internet of course. I found many diaries and stories written by transsexuals. They knew what was the matter with them. But I was looking for scientific material, Hard evidence, a litmus test, I needed to be sure.

And I did find material that was labeled 'scientific'. I found "The transsexual phenomenon", by Harry Benjamin, I found "The Man who would be Queen", by J. Michael Bailey.
Yes, Bailey's book! At the time I didn't know his book made many transsexual people very angry. I just thought I had found a reliable source of information.
In this book he presents the results of a research he claims to have done about transsexual people. In his view there are two types of transsexuals: Type one, which he calls the 'homosexual type' and type two, which he calls the 'autogynephilic type'.
He goes on to describe type one as misdirected gay men who want to transition because they think their attraction to men would be more acceptable and their chances of finding a man would increase if they were women. He also says these are the 'early onset' transsexuals, i.e. those who transition at a young age.
Type two is described as the group of misdirected heterosexual men, who sort of invert their attraction to women onto themselves, so that they can become the object of their own lust. He also calls this group the 'late onset' transsexuals, i.e. those who transition at an older age.

This book got me very confused. First of all, Bailey calls both types of transsexuals 'misdirected' in one way or another. Secondly I didn't fit into either of his categories, so the logical conclusion seemed to be that I was not a transsexual. Based on the book, one could even say that nobody is a transsexual. They are all just 'misdirected' people.

But the truth of the matter is that you only need to listen to your heart. You will know! I knew it! I was just looking for excuses for not admitting to this strong feeling. But that didn't work. The book didn't give me such an excuse. I felt the book just wasn't about me. Maybe I was a new kind of transsexual? The thought that Mr. Bailey could be all wrong didn't occur to me at the time...

---