1. I enjoy being a girl
Russell Grenning
It was the immortal Peggy Lee who belted out the song with this title and what a girl
she was! In the parlance of her era, she was one hell of a dame.
In its own way, it was an early ode to feminism and the ladies lapped it up and, for
them, it became somewhat a hymn to femininity. “I’m proud that my silhouette is
curvy, that I walk with a sweet girlish gait..” I’m sure you get the drift and men went
wild went Peggy performed it with such pazzazz.
Nowadays these simple, innocent pleasures are not just the lassies but, it seems, for an
increasing number of chaps who want to also enjoy being a girl – or at least giving it
their best shot.
I thought of Peggy when I read about a transsexual prisoner in Scotland, Ms Paris
Green – formerly Mr Peter Laing – who, having been sentenced to eighteen years for
a particularly nasty murder, was sent at his request to an all-female prison last month.
He had no sooner arrived than he started having what were described by prison
authorities as “casual sexual relations” with other inmates. There is no need for me
to explain that Paris/Peter is a pre-op transsexual, is there?
She/he has been removed to a special section of a men’s jail and is being closely
monitored while she/he waits for gender reassignment surgery which, naturally, is
being paid for by the British taxpayer. After all, let’s be reasonable here, Paris/Peter
does have her/his human rights.
I’m not sure if Paris/Peter was having some final flings before the major operation to
decide just how far her/his gender reassignment should go and, given her/his obvious
liking for the womenfolk, I wonder if she/he will be a lesbian when she/he has the big
final chop? I’m reminded of the surgeon who cheerily remarked to a transsexual after
the final operation, “You can still have and enjoy erections, they will just have to be
somebody else’s.”
If you thought that Dr Frank N Furter of The Rocky Horror Show fame was a frightful
piece of work when she/he introduced herself/himself as the “sweet transvestite from
Transsexual, Transylvania”, you would be very much mistaken - despite his having
his wicked way with both Brad and Janet - when a comparison with Paris/Peter is
made.
With two other men – or should that be just “with two men”? – she/he duped and
lured some unsuspecting man and then tortured and bludgeoned him to death and
casually munched on ham sandwiches while they watched him die in agony. They had
paid for the sandwiches by flogging the dying man’s mobile phone.
The sentencing judge described the murder as “particularly gruesome” and “utterly
depraved”.

2. Insiders at her/his prison told the local media that she/he had a particularly foul mouth
and that her/his conversation was a non-stop stream of obscenities. To have your
language remarked about in such a way – even in a women’s prison – really puts you
at the top of the class, obscenity-wise. It would be a daily struggle to maintain your
supremacy.
Hopefully when Paris/Peter does go, in a manner of speaking, all the way and
becomes a fairly reasonable facsimile of a girl, the process will also imbue her/him
with some of the nicer feminine qualities of charm, sweetness, gentleness and
compassion. I seriously doubt it – there are no signs at all that demure will ever be
used as an adjective for her/him.
So Paris/Peter is no poster girl/boy for the transgender community but I have no doubt
that they suffer terribly from ridicule, exclusion, prejudice and out-right hatred. It
cannot be an easy path to follow.
I recall many, many years ago a famous amateur drag queen who went by the name of
Mother who would happily go to night clubs and dance alone under the whirling
mirror balls in front of wall-sized mirrors in a bizarre drunken attempt to appear as
Marilyn Munroe. By the end of the evening, the blond tatty wig would be wildly
awry, the chiffon dress soaked with putrid sweat, spilled scotch and spittle but Mother
was happy in her own private world.
Nobody dared ever tell Mother how absurd, even sad, he appeared. During the day,
Mother was an 18-stone inter-state truckie called Cliff and was a man mountain of
hair and muscle and no bloody nonsense at all. It was rumoured that Cliff was married
with children.
When I heard that claim, I was reminded of a joke by American comedienne Joan
Rivers who often made her daughter, who allegedly had trouble getting a man, the
frequent butt of jokes. When daughter told mother that she wasn’t sure about her
latest beau because he liked to now and again slip into a frock, Joan told her, “Marry
him, you will double your wardrobe.”
Who remembered that November 20 last was the Transgender Day of Remembrance?
It was celebrated – if that it the right word – nationally to remember transgender
people who have been the victims of violence and even murder because of who they
are.
Well I did although I didn’t attend as I simply didn’t have a thing to wear and my hair
was a mess.
In any case, November 20 was “Go home on time day” sponsored by The Australia
Institute and BeyondBlue and it tries to promote the message of a work/life balance. I
tend to go overboard sometimes when I embrace a cause so I certainly ensured that I
was at home on time by not leaving the house at all.

3. But it was not a wasted day at all – I toasted, several times, Her Majesty The Queen
and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh who got married on that day in 1947
as Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten. Despite my partner’s
sometimes tastelessly strident claims to the contrary, I am not old enough to have
attended.
I also remember reflecting upon the works and legacy of Diocletian who became
Roman Emperor on that day in 284AD but the rest of the day faded into the mists of
time after rather a lot of Loyal Toasts.
The United Nations which is usually pretty quick off the mark making high-minded
pronouncements and protocols and such about everything has been a tad slow on the
matter of transgender rights. It was only on June 17, 2011 that the UN Human Rights
Council passed a resolution recognizing the human rights of transgender people. It
was hardly by a landslide – 23 in favour, 19 against with 3 nations which couldn’t
quite decide if they were Arthur or Martha and abstained.
Incidentally, since I am an old-fashioned sort of chap always observant of old-world
traditional courtesies, I am concerned about when I should start opening doors,
walking on the kerbside, drawing out chairs and all of that vis-a-vis the Paris/Peter
types one encounters in polite society. I’ll be dammed if I am expected to act as a
respectful gentleman towards some truckie who throws on an off-the-shoulder number
but I would like to show some appropriate good manners to, well, the complete
models. Where does one draw the line?
Like so much of what the UN comes up with this the human rights area, Muslim
countries which are in the grip of Sharia law are hardly going to warm to this idea
given that homosexuals can – and are – executed by being sometimes stoned to death.
But the irony is that it would be dead easy to be a transsexual/transvestite/drag queen
in such strongholds of fundamentalism – who really knows what is under the full
burqa? This has already been exploited by male suicide bombers who carry explosive
devices under their full flowing robes – if they can slip by security checkpoints
carrying ordnance it should be dead easy to go about wearing frilly knickers
underneath.
Whitney Houston once reflected, “I like being a woman, even in a man’s world. After
all, mean can’t wear dresses, but we can wear the pants.”
Like so much else in her brilliant but tragic life, she was wrong, wrong, wrong.