This is the obligatory statement to all of my cis friends. You really are cool. I really like you. The rants about stupid cises are not about you. Please try to remember that. Being cis does not equal being cissexist or stupid.
This crap has bugged me a long time, and it has hurt me deeply. It still makes me cry involuntarily. It still makes me lose sleep. It needs to be brought out into the open. I have to do it.
Friday, 27 February 2009
Friday, 20 February 2009
The stress of not being cis
It's not stressful because of the oddities in my biochemistry. It's not because of surgery. It's not, even, because of the disturbing memories. It's because cises won't let it lie.
It's because they keep on picking the scab and the new skin that's forming underneath, because they reopen the wounds I've been trying to close all my life. It feels like cises are deliberately trying to bleed me to death and stop me from trying to stop the bleeding.
The logic goes like this. I hurt because my biochemistry and some bits of my body and some legal details are simply all wrong for a girl. I have them fixed, am happy as a clam. But cis people won't let it lie there. They want to talk about it. They want, specifically, talk about the mistake they made in misgendering me as a boy, and keep on talking about it, and probably feel cuddly'n'everything about having given me the chance to transition, but they won't admit they've made a mistake in gendering me as a boy. It doesn't matter if all the evidence points in that direction, it doesn't matter that the sex hierarchy doesn't work in many other cases, either, it's like if the facts don't agree with the sex hierarchy, so much worse for the facts.
In short, I feel like I'm treated as a deluded loonie who's given what she insists on having because she'd be way too much trouble otherwise.
The cises don't want to forget. It's all so fascinating from their point of view. And many, too many of them really do think the problem is me, and my mind, and not my body and their minds, even though it's precisely my body, and their minds, that've been fixed. Except they actively resist the fixing, 'cause they can't see anything much wrong in assuming that gendering and sexing is as simple as A, B, C. I, and many other people, are, of course, living proof of that not being the case.
I can't help being the living proof. And I don't find it acceptable that I'd have to accommodate to cis majoritys' prejudices and phobias, I don't want to play along. Playing along has too high a price. Playing along would mean I'd have to give an account of myself to any passers-by who feels like questioning. Playing along means accepting people having my personal life and intimate details of my body as coffee-table talk. It seems rather, um, unfair to me that I'd be required to give in to that whereas none of the cises has to. They have a right to privacy. I should, too.
Lack of privacy is the main stressor for me. My past feels like a huge millstone that I can put away whenever cises don't know I'm not cis. But some cises who do know seem to need to tell other cises, as sort of a warning that I'm not cis. And I can tell it, from the looks of the cises who scrutinise my looks, my voice, my mannerisms - it's like being on display for the cises. It makes me even more self-conscious than I already am. Cises run around and find the damn stone and hoist it around my neck again and again. I'm not asked, of course.
It's not like I have a solution. I don't. But somehow I'm gonna get this stress out of my system, and I won't take just accepting it as an answer - cises don't have a right to treat me like this. They don't treat other cises this way, either.
It's because they keep on picking the scab and the new skin that's forming underneath, because they reopen the wounds I've been trying to close all my life. It feels like cises are deliberately trying to bleed me to death and stop me from trying to stop the bleeding.
The logic goes like this. I hurt because my biochemistry and some bits of my body and some legal details are simply all wrong for a girl. I have them fixed, am happy as a clam. But cis people won't let it lie there. They want to talk about it. They want, specifically, talk about the mistake they made in misgendering me as a boy, and keep on talking about it, and probably feel cuddly'n'everything about having given me the chance to transition, but they won't admit they've made a mistake in gendering me as a boy. It doesn't matter if all the evidence points in that direction, it doesn't matter that the sex hierarchy doesn't work in many other cases, either, it's like if the facts don't agree with the sex hierarchy, so much worse for the facts.
In short, I feel like I'm treated as a deluded loonie who's given what she insists on having because she'd be way too much trouble otherwise.
The cises don't want to forget. It's all so fascinating from their point of view. And many, too many of them really do think the problem is me, and my mind, and not my body and their minds, even though it's precisely my body, and their minds, that've been fixed. Except they actively resist the fixing, 'cause they can't see anything much wrong in assuming that gendering and sexing is as simple as A, B, C. I, and many other people, are, of course, living proof of that not being the case.
I can't help being the living proof. And I don't find it acceptable that I'd have to accommodate to cis majoritys' prejudices and phobias, I don't want to play along. Playing along has too high a price. Playing along would mean I'd have to give an account of myself to any passers-by who feels like questioning. Playing along means accepting people having my personal life and intimate details of my body as coffee-table talk. It seems rather, um, unfair to me that I'd be required to give in to that whereas none of the cises has to. They have a right to privacy. I should, too.
Lack of privacy is the main stressor for me. My past feels like a huge millstone that I can put away whenever cises don't know I'm not cis. But some cises who do know seem to need to tell other cises, as sort of a warning that I'm not cis. And I can tell it, from the looks of the cises who scrutinise my looks, my voice, my mannerisms - it's like being on display for the cises. It makes me even more self-conscious than I already am. Cises run around and find the damn stone and hoist it around my neck again and again. I'm not asked, of course.
It's not like I have a solution. I don't. But somehow I'm gonna get this stress out of my system, and I won't take just accepting it as an answer - cises don't have a right to treat me like this. They don't treat other cises this way, either.
Monday, 9 February 2009
Why I don't feel safe around white cis women (queer or not)
It came to me again - a wonderful, nice, utterly charming incident involving myself, and a cis woman who's apparently using me as a badge of her, oh I don't know, tolerance, love or something. And of course she just had to let me know she's doing that. Guess I should've felt touched or something. I don't. I find it highly offensive. In fact, I'm livid with rage.
What the fuck is it with you cises? I am not your toy. I am not something to be paraded to other people. I have had a weird, very unforgiving disease, and you cunts (that's right, cunts) are trying to drag me back to it just so you can feel warm and fuzzy and superior to your peers (and I'm certainly not a peer in those circles, oh noes) and bask in the glow of your self-admiration (tolerance and love, you call it).
I hate you. I hate you from the bottom of my heart. If you rilly rilly must do that self-important grandstanding, please stay out of my sight. I don't want to see. I don't want to know. I've had my share of that cissexist shit several times already. Better yet, stop it.
Oh, the white part. I'm white, too. Yet I just happen to feel safer with people of colour. Why is that, I wonder? Maybe it is because people of colour are oppressed in this country. They likely don't have fair chances. And I can symphatise with that - I don't know what it's like, but I can symphatise, because it's not like I'm given a fair chance, either.
On to the women part: men, for all their faults, still seem to give me a fairer deal, mostly. Somehow all the men I've dealt with in my life have recognised my need for privacy. They actually seem to get that no, I don't want to discuss my bodily history with just anyone. Perhaps they're just inhibited, but I like the results of those inhibitions. Some women just don't get it. I don't know why, but so far it's been women who've done the I-just-need-to-blab -routine. Perhaps they don't realise just how traumatising it is to be misgendered for like a couple of decades at least, and to have that brought up every now and then. If you had been raped, would you like it to be brought up again and again, just because someone else feels like talking about it?
I can't forget. I'm simply not able to do so. I wish I could. I wish I could just forget all the violence, all the taunts, all the ostracism. Every reminder of my past is a reminder of the violence I was made to suffer at the hands of cissexual boys & girls. No, I'm not glad cos' I can't forget. I'll never be, and you know what? I don't fucking have to. It makes me angry, and I think for a very good reason. Who wouldn't be angry?
I don't mind talking about my past when it's me calling the shots. But it really has to be me.
What the fuck is it with you cises? I am not your toy. I am not something to be paraded to other people. I have had a weird, very unforgiving disease, and you cunts (that's right, cunts) are trying to drag me back to it just so you can feel warm and fuzzy and superior to your peers (and I'm certainly not a peer in those circles, oh noes) and bask in the glow of your self-admiration (tolerance and love, you call it).
I hate you. I hate you from the bottom of my heart. If you rilly rilly must do that self-important grandstanding, please stay out of my sight. I don't want to see. I don't want to know. I've had my share of that cissexist shit several times already. Better yet, stop it.
Oh, the white part. I'm white, too. Yet I just happen to feel safer with people of colour. Why is that, I wonder? Maybe it is because people of colour are oppressed in this country. They likely don't have fair chances. And I can symphatise with that - I don't know what it's like, but I can symphatise, because it's not like I'm given a fair chance, either.
On to the women part: men, for all their faults, still seem to give me a fairer deal, mostly. Somehow all the men I've dealt with in my life have recognised my need for privacy. They actually seem to get that no, I don't want to discuss my bodily history with just anyone. Perhaps they're just inhibited, but I like the results of those inhibitions. Some women just don't get it. I don't know why, but so far it's been women who've done the I-just-need-to-blab -routine. Perhaps they don't realise just how traumatising it is to be misgendered for like a couple of decades at least, and to have that brought up every now and then. If you had been raped, would you like it to be brought up again and again, just because someone else feels like talking about it?
I can't forget. I'm simply not able to do so. I wish I could. I wish I could just forget all the violence, all the taunts, all the ostracism. Every reminder of my past is a reminder of the violence I was made to suffer at the hands of cissexual boys & girls. No, I'm not glad cos' I can't forget. I'll never be, and you know what? I don't fucking have to. It makes me angry, and I think for a very good reason. Who wouldn't be angry?
I don't mind talking about my past when it's me calling the shots. But it really has to be me.
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