Confession: When I was around the age of 13, I had a subscription to Seventeen magazine. And yes, it did mold me into the mainstream at the time. Fashion, boys, drama, makeup, all that shit. It makes me shudder to think about it.
Today, I read an article out of the November 09 issue (thank you twitter) and my jaw almost fell out of my mouth. Right on the cover it says “My Boyfriend Turned Out To Be A Girl.” “Girl” is in pink, by the way. Apparently, a girl was dating a transguy and had no idea, and he (who probably wanted to protect himself) didn’t tell her. But yeah, the whole article was basically saying how transpeople are out to trick everyone and how they’re all big liars. Great! They just wrecked a whole bunch of young people’s minds. I mean, kids that read that magazine usually tend to be mailable, and wow, that’s just a wrong way to introduce the concept of gender variance.
Ok, so maybe writing about it while riled up isn’t the best idea because my thoughts don’t quite come out right, but STILL, you need to read this article.
Reading Material:
X-Ray Introductions 
How dumb. It seems like the article is sort-of fair, and uses the proper pronoun throughout… yet all the headlines elsewhere are ridiculously stupid. Also, that thing at the bottom about deceptive dudes kills me.
Uh…. wow. I think the article in and of itself isn’t offensive… these exposés on boyfriends and how girls get hurt and omg feelings tur lurve!!!!! First of all, I can’t believe that I once subscribed to this magazine and actually cared about some strangers relationship problems. The part that bothers me is the insensitivity towards trans issues. This girl says she was so upset that he didn’t reveal his secrets to her…and that she had revealed of hers to him. I think there’s a huge underplaying of emotions that transpeople may feel. I took a Sex and Gender class in which we read personal stories of transpeople at different stages of their transitions and there were stories of how children couldn’t tell their parents even though their parents were incredibly liberal. I also am bothered that really what ensued between them was separation and some high school cheating… but somehow that is tied into transculture. Wtf is that? It’s really bothersome.
HA! What a funny article. I think that the best part is what they COMPARE TRANS- TO! They compare being trans- to: doing DRUGS, lying about age and having CHILDREN, and looking for other partners behind the person’s BACK.
The reason why they made that an article is because people love thinking “ohh, this is taboo, it’s WEIRD.” People sicken me. That article completely made me ticked off, especially the person’s smile in their picture. I want to smack her and say, “Wipe the smile off of your face, lady. Good job at telling everyone who knows you about him, something that isn’t your business or anyone else’s.”