I’ve been a proud and active staff member of the Transgender Resource Centre in SecondLife almost since its inception, billed as an open meeting place for transgender individuals to meet, provide mutual support and find friendships. Or at least that’s the organisation I loved and devoted almost every minute of my time in SecondLife to.
Being a part of the community that formed around the TRC was wonderful. I have met so many people, some are now firm friends, one has moved half way round the world to be with me. Talking to people and knowing you have made a difference, meeting people from the next town to the other side of the globe with the same hopes and dreams made life a little less lonely. For a long time it has been a major part of my SecondLife and breaks my heart that I have to draw that chapter to a close.
The TRC has undergone a sort of transition of its own, from nervous first steps to its current incarnation. What started as an open welcoming friendly meeting place has slowly changed into a small clique, that in many ways has become as bigoted as the people we battle against in our real lives for simply being transgender. If you don’t fit the mold, we can’t help you, we will make you uncomfortable, we will make sure you never come back.
For me, the goal of the TRC was to support the transgendered and not judge people based upon there expression of self or upon the communities in which they found a home. It’s now that I feel alone in this position that the TRC is no longer an organisation I can be a part of.
The TRC has a cancer eating away at its very core, and they meet every sunday in private.
There are more people at admin meetings than the actual TRC. A culture of political whispering has emerged. Real life romantic entanglements past and present ensure that policy is determined by personal attitudes and loyalties. Topics of discussion involve excluding a named individual that for no fault of her own has a RL disability that some find annoying. When really we should be working harder to provide more support, we’re working ever harder to exclude.
Making sure the TRC has a shiny middle of the road image is more important than the very people we’re here to support.
The first thing anyone told me about SecondLife is that every aspect of the human experience is represented somewhere, and thats been proven to me over and over. A huge tangled melting pot of cultures within cultures, where every lifestyle both fantasy and real exist in an uneasy harmony.
A support centre for the transgendered needs to span cultures, philosophies and lifestyles.
I’m going to build one that does. Where the only rule will be tolerance. Where mutual support is the first and only goal.
Hi Trin,
I obviously don’t agree with your understanding of the issues confronting the TRC or the events that transpired at the admin meeting. We certainly don’t exclude people who choose alternate lifestyles but we do set rules about how people should behave at the TRC. That said, SL is large enough for more than one group devoted to the interests of the transgendered population and so I truly wish you great success in helping others.
Kind Regards,
Jani
Mew. Goodluck with a new organization! The only thing I ask is that yoou limit sexual activities at your meeting group, there’s enough places out there for that kind of thing…
Other than that, I look forward to seeing a place where I can show uup and not be yelled at for being my little girl self. So send me a landmark when you get it going. :)
Purrrr.
Good luck, Trin!
I hope your new center works out well. I’m sure that it will help people in ways that the TRC cannot, and I think it sounds like a good idea.
I think everyone would agree that inclusiveness and open-mindedness are central to the mission of both centers, and everyone needs a place they can feel comfortable and welcome.
I think there’s room in the virtual world for all of us. Sorry your tenure with the TRC came to such a dramatic and unpleasant end.
Best of luck,
Asty
Hi Trin: I hope things work out for you two and your new place works out for you and others. What happen was not ment for you, and I am sory you feel that why. Has transgender people we have to live with what other people think and see us doing right in front of the world we or I hope not just going though this for sex. TRC is not a a pick up place we try are best to help each other like you have for me and others.Today we had two gus come in looking for someone to have sex with this is not what we need we need understanding and to become who we real are dear. I do wish you all the lock in the world and that your new center works for you and others. Shalom and Blessing dear.
Hi Trin, I want to make a few comments on this. The TRC is still an open and friendly meeting place; it’s
just that there is always going to be difference on what is open and friendly. For some people, walking
into a place where someone is sitting in a slave pose and calling the person next to her mistress, is
firstly strange and secondly threatening. I also want to point out that the person who you refer to
having a disability was suspended from accessing the TRC due to their social behaviour upsetting a number
of people. That person was given a support system of chaperones accompanying her to the TRC, and
guidelines on behaviour being stated. Last night, the TRC volunteers reported back on progress and we
unanimously voted to allow her back, and I’m very glad for her. SL attracts people who do not interact so
well IRL, and there are all shades from shy to severely autistic. Many places in SL will kick people for
their perceived rudeness, agression, obsessiveness, attachment etc etc. I’m not attributing all of these
qualities to the person you mention, but people should be clear that the TRC has worked with this person
where others would have got into an argument and banned them quite swiftly.
I’m puzzled by your statement that there is a cancer eating away at the core of the TRC, and that the
volunteers meet in secret every Sunday night. Jani set up the TRC and established that open and friendly
environment, and we have since then attracted hundreds of members. OK, where volunteers meetings have
more than the average turnout at any one moment in TRC, that’s because they are meeting at a set time and
people gather together at that time. People pass in and out of the TRC at all sorts of times and across
timezones. I’ve been there and it’s been empty, and I’ve been there with a number of us there and then
some go, some more come in - a nice flow. In fact today, while I was chatting to you in IM, a crowd
filled all of the sofas in TRC and after we finished I was nearly dozing from being up till 1.30am at the
volunteers meeting last night. Consequently, I didn’t really take part much, which was a shame. I would
also like to say that the flow of people in and out of the TRC puts a fair number of SL shops to shame,
and I’ve been in many!
The volunteers try to keep the place running, and share decision making. We are moving on from Jani
making most decisions and everyone thanking her for giving us this place, to there being more joint
decsion making, and difficult emergency decisions being referred back to the meetings for further
discussion by volunteers. This is a developing organisation, and all organisations will move through
informal to formal stages and have problems with each. That’s normal. As to meeting in secret, the
volunteers - including yourself - decided some while back to meet away from the main centre, to allow the
centre to always be open for people to drop in and chat, giving that vital peer support and social contact
with other transgendered people. We don’t meet in secret, it stops us from tripping over each other and
keeps the service running - and vitally allows volunteers to make democratic decisons.
You ended your post with the statement that your alternative transgender centre will be founded with the
only rule being tolerance. That’s nice and it’s also vague. What you call the middle of the road, is
what I call trying to have some common sense and some common ground, where fewer people are upset. It’s
also important to note that there is a substantial number of volunteers left in the TRC and a few hundred
members. We will continue to develop, work together, not resign when we don’t agree with something, and
we will continue to deliver our peer-led service to trangsendered people from the US to the UK, from
Germany to Japan etc etc
I wish you well with your centre Trin, but I think that it’s ill advised to make such inaccurate
statements about the TRC that is well attended and well loved by many.
Your friend,
Analise
Hi Trin,
I am sorry to see you leaving the TRC and have had some good chats with you as a Member of the TRC over the past 12 months or so. But the TRC is an evolving organisation and I’d submit still a democratic one as well, with topics being put to Volunteers to cast their vote upon as they see fit to do. Decisions, often difficult ones require to be made and the TRC will continue to be there as an entity offering support to those who wish to discuss Transgender Issues, that’s its primary goal.
But I respect your decision, everyone is entitled to that. I also want to wish you every future success in your endeavours and hope things work out.
Regards.
Ja
Hi Trin,
I was saddened to see things get to the point that they had, especially when I used to consider you a dear friend. Just know that I hold no ill will and wish you all the luck with your endeavor. I actually fully support it and hope that the more fringe elements of the TG community are able to get the support they seek there. I wish the TRC could be all things to all people, but that’s like walking into a room of a 100 people and trying to keep them all happy. Eventually the juggling act comes to a stop and no one’s happy. It does however sadden me to see any part of our community segmented and splintered. I’ve always thought that there’s enough shared pain in our community that we definately don’t need to tear each other apart. But we all make our own choices and pay our own prices, and you made yours. So good luck with everything and may cooler heads prevail for the sake of everyone. You go girl.
Hugs,
Ashley
Splintering? In the TG community? No, tell me it isn’t so!
Well, I’ll put it the most simply. Where ever you get more than one person together in a group… there is going to be conflicts. As much as we’d like to believe TGs are one big huge happy family/community, the reality of things is less than Utopian.
So sometimes, we find we involve ourselves with a group that initially fulfills something we need or want, and after we grow and change, or the group expands and the dynamic changes, we find we don’t feel as welcome as we initially did.
Anyhow. SL is a HUGE world. And hopefully there won’t be a clique war between the TRC and the group that Trinity starts, cause I’ve seen that kind of thing before, IRL, here in Denver… and it’s… ugly.
So to put it simply, if you don’t like something, ignore it, let it be, unless it’s impossible. We have so many different people at the TRC that there are so many varying comfort levels.
One of my biggest gripes with the TRC is the ‘No Child Avatar’ rule… I figure I never got a chance to be a Little Girl IRL, that, I’d like to be be one in my SL… yah know? I totally approve of the No Sex Rule, I get annoyed by TG Sex groups, (of which SL has HUGE numbers of…) I’m also completely comfortable with domme people with their slaves, so long as they don’t engage in sex at the TRC, I don’t see why it should be a problem…
Oh well.. huh?
@NeonKitty - well, nobody is stopping you from creating a
child alt. I went for a long time envying the people who played
kids but did not create one for myself.
Just learn my lesson and do not bring her by the TRC. :)
@Kara- Bleh? I don’t always feel comfortable going everywhere in SL as a child. Some of the most annoying things are the people who want sex with Child Avatars. I think the No Sex rule at the TRC tries to make it a safe place, as anyone who comes in looking for sex is booted…
I want a safe place to be a little girl, and not get into some of the really moronic little kid areas I’ve seen. And I don’t want to be a little girl who’s being used to fulfill pedophile tendencies.
It’s a strange thing.
@NeonKitty well, having her as my alt and adopted daughter helps, if there is any trouble her mom can be there in no time flat. :)
There are many safe spaces to be a kid in SL. For example, she regularly goes to scouts and will be at camp all next week.
As to the TRC admin meeting in private, yes it does, so private
that they never tell the hundreds of members what is actually
discussed or decisions that are reached. I was a member of that admin team and resigned after I was the only one who found it odd that a group supporting the transgender community would propose revealing the real-life identity of members. I was the only person at that meeting to find that an appalling notion, everyone else was quite happy in that debate and earlier ones that meeting to act as jury judge and (possibly literally) executioner of the members. So far as I know the policy of revealing real-life identities was never taken any further, but the willingness to do so showed me that this was a group that had lost its grip on reality. The TRC is not a safe place because the admin team cannot be trusted. I resigned within hours of that meeting from the Admin team and I am delighted to see how successful the Transgender Lounge has become. Trinity and Kara, beloved friends, welcome to the community of ex-volunteers.
Heya Mercia.
Yes, at the meeting where I was thrown out I was told specifically that I could not tell Trin what went on at that meeting, even though they were talking about her. I wound up agreeing to their request, but stating that I would give her any words I spoke …. then made sure my answers gave as much context to the questions as possible.
Next time you are on SL stop by the lounge, I (or my daughter) am now there as much as I used to be at the TRC.