Justin Bond Is Living » News

Justin Bond Is Living » News:

For the record my “ambition” is not “to be both sexes at once.” I AM both sexes at once. My ambition is to articulate who I am clearly and effectively. I am not a woman and I am not a man, I am not a “cross-dresser”. I am a transperson. To me that seems pretty clear. To question or belabor it is completely unnecessary and transphobic. As is the phrase, “certainly he’s never been a conventional transvestite showboat”. Even if I was one it would be okay and these implied hierarchies of acceptable “trans-ness” are innately offensive. “He has too much inner life to be anything like a standard drag queen.” Just because I am not a “Drag Queen” doesn’t make my life or work any more or less important than if I was. What are Mr. Swanson’s assumptions about the inner lives of drag queens? I know this is said quite often but as far as I’m concerned it can’t be said enough. If it weren’t for certain drag queens and other gender variant individuals lots of gay white middle-class asses would be lots less comfortable and the landscapes of their “inner lives”‘ might be even more dim.

He used the word “preposterous” as a way of editorializing my childhood notion that I was transgendered and went on to state that my upcoming book, Tango: My Childhood Backwards and in High Heels is about “the necessity of inventing who you are.” No one invents who they are. That’s like saying a person chooses to be gay or trans. There is a difference between inventing who you are and accepting who you are. Accepting who you are, nurturing who you are and having the courage to put yourself out into the world as openly and honestly as you can is not an act of invention. It’s called living.