The way the world is isn't the way the world has to be

This is partially in response to Little Light's post Taking Steps: fair, or maybe her post was a trigger, in many senses of the word, to write this.

I of course agree completely with her. My girlhood was basically a horror. The world is a cissexist cesspool. Masculinity is more or less beaten into children who are considered to be boys.

Being loved or seeing oneself as lovable isn't too easy after all that. I embrace the idea intellectually, although even that was rather a struggle. But my emotions betray me every now and then. There's inside me this black hole, punched by the schoolyard bullies and teachers and pornographers and cissexist lesbians and cissexist trans-fetishists and tabloid journalists and, well, practically every cissexist there is, that whispers its evil message that I'm not supposed to exist as a human being at all. That I'm supposed to be a living sex doll for the fetishists. That I'm supposed to help patriarchy stand tall. That I'm supposed to be an object of sensationalist publicity, all well-meaning, of course. That I'm supposed to be a perverted man.

Anything but admitting the fact of cissexist forced masculinisation. Anything but admitting that cissexist society guards masculinity with violence. Anything but admitting that cissexist society doesn't want to consider all of its members as fully human.

My words cannot carry my rage. There aren't words powerful enough to hit back with sufficient force. There's a reason why so many trans women joke about bringing about a complete annihilation of all life. It's not completely a joke. The rage behind it is very real. There's a reason, too, why so many trans women see sex work as the only alternative*. How the hell are you expected to make ends meet if no-one will see you as anything else but a hypersexualised doll or a sick pervert?

Christianity taught me an important lesson. It taught me that I'm loved by God no matter what shit the world may pile on me. That I'm lovable. That God loves me and I don't have to give a flying fuck about what other people think of me. My rage, and my feeling lovable go hand in hand. If I'm worth loving (and I bloody well am, and so are you), I'm worthy, and I should be treated like the human being I am, like the woman I am, and that past shit should be named for what it is - forced masculinisation.


*I did, too. Didn't actually do it but yeah, considered it seriously. FWIW, sex work is ok in my books - forced sex work definitely is not

The local church: procrastinators'r'us

Our local branch of the church militant has been in titters about homosexuality. This is no big news, it's common knowledge Christianity's track record as regards homosexuality is patchy at best, and downright horrible at worst. I'm not writing this because my church has problems with homosexuality.

However, what I find interesting is that the church which I'm a member of cannot decide what to do about it. The background is that we've had civil partnerships, a.k.a. gay marriage for seven years now. It isn't going anywhere. Some gay couples occasionally ask for church's blessing. Some priests bless. No big deal. However, our dear bishops do make it a big deal. They instated this big honking working group to decide what to do about blessing them homos. It's been working for all those years. Their work ends now. And the result is... wait for it... no result!!! None whatsoever! More working groups. More talk is needed. We cannot decide.

I'm sorry folks, but if you can't decide relatively simple stuff like this in, what, seven friggin' years, you've basically proved yourselves to be hopeless losers at leadership & decision-making. This is not such a complicated mess they make this to be. Some priests bless. Some don't. Some of the gainsayers are pretty vehement about it. The Bible doesn't say squat (sorry folks, the "classical proof-texts" on gay stuff just aren't very relevant by the same process that texts proscribing pork (OT), or greed (NT), aren't, and they don't apply to our society anyway. So there you go, nyah nyah), the tradition is rabidly homophobic but we, the body of Christ, aren't quite as boneheaded - so could you guys please make a decision? Any decision? Yeah, thought not. You'd rather pander to the prejudiced folks by not condoning anything and you really wouldn't like to be seen as bigots. Yet bishops, in practice, do allow priests to bless same-sex couples, but refuse to admit it as an admittance of same-sex blessings.

Hello, you can't have it both ways! You look like the ridiculous, indecisive wussies you are!

It's not all doom and gloom

Yup - I'm happy, opening up to others as regards my inner life, more in touch with my anxieties (it's not a bad thing)'n'everything. Sex keeps getting better and better, too, probably due to me being more in touch with myself.

I'm not exactly the girl I thought I was.

Or I am. It depends. It depends on which period of my life one takes as a reference. If one takes my early-to-mid twenties as a reference point, I'm not really the girl I thought I was. For starters, I didn't want to think of myself as a girl. The thought was way too scary. Yeah, it intruded every now and then, but I pushed it back.

If, however, one takes me as a child as the reference point, yeah, I think I can see the similarities. I'm the introspective, shy, sensitive girl I was back then. I cry easily. I like to play, probably in all senses of the word. I'm lighthearted at times - although one might prefer scatterbrained, too: while I'm very much together in one sense, I'm not quite the polished, untouchable package I tended to think I was - or at the very least, the package I projected myself to be for others.

I still project quite a lot: I probably seem a lot larger and a lot louder than I actually am - it's rather scary to allow myself to be the size I actually am, to allow my borders and limits much closer to my skin. On the other hand, me distancing myself from other people led to too limited a life, other people being too far even for my comfort. This doesn't mean, of course, that I'll be allowing every comer up close and personal, but this hopefully means I can let my nearest real close, and my spouse to my skin.

Because that's what I want. I want another person up close and personal. I want skin on skin. Come to think of it, I probably haven't had skin on skin -like intimacy ever, not knowingly, at least. The times I've approached it, I've had to distance myself from it for fear of disintegrating - disintegrating the projection, that is. I think I am ready now, and if I'm not, perhaps my fear won't make me run away any more. Perhaps I'm brave enough to face myself for real.

Just say it: Not in my name

Us trans women tend to disturb cis people when we start to speak out our experiences of forced masculinisation, and especially the anger and rage it produced. People don't like angry women.

Tell you what. I utterly don't care if you cis guys don't like it. It still happened. It's still real. I'm still angry at the injustices done to me and my sisters. I'm not gonna take it lying down.

It doesn't mean I'm gonna start a war, so to speak, with planet cis - while revenge would probably be sweet for a short while, I don't think acting out my anger would indeed help me, or make me happy in the long term. Which is what I want: I like being happy.

I cannot be happy if I have to carry injustices hidden inside me. I've got to bring them out into the open, and while I recognise that this is not fun for the planet cis, it can't be helped. It still has to come out into the open. That female anger and rage is shunned is a regrettable situation, but it doesn't change the necessity of speaking out against forced masculinisation of trans girls, and telling about the rage and anger it begets.

My case being myself, of course: I was forcibly masculinised throughout my childhood. It happened mostly through my peers. My parents were sort of indifferent to my apparent gender variance: I just wasn't the kind of girl to play with trucks or to admire excavators. My "peers" weren't indifferent, though. The boys I was to be socialised with were rather hard on me being different (i.e. being rather a girly girl): I was shunned at first, then ridiculed, then beaten. My feelings today towards those people are of quite an unpublishable sort - on a bad day, given omnipotence, I'd make them suffer eternally. It wouldn't do good to me in the long run, but, boy, is the urge potent.

So, dear cises (not that there are many of you reading this blog, but whatever: I'm still writing this mostly just to myself): tormenting your peers as kids makes the tormented angry kinda permanently. Do not do it. Every time you do, you make permanent enemies.

And if you're of the sort who didn't do it but just looked away: don't look away. I know it's difficult to step in and stop it, but if you don't even say anything, you really are complicit in the torment. A simple "not in my name" is a start. Silence in the face of an injustice kills. It corrupts your heart.

You might want to notice that the above doesn't have any references to trans women's bodies. That's because they're not the problem. Injustice and violence perpetrated by cis people on trans girls and women is.

(yeah, this is about me me me and not about all the other problems regarding cis, trans and violence: it may be applicable to an extent, but I can't pretend to speak for others, and I'm not a good enough theoretician. Not yet, anyway).