Met a couple of fellow old-timers today (if you're reading this, hi!), and it does seem I've moved on, and, more importantly: I've moved on to expressing my anger. Which is good!
Anger is a normal reaction to having been (metaphorically) tossed around like a rag doll in a dryer. Anger is a perfectly normal response to people trying to treat your body as public property.
Sunday, 29 June 2014
Sunday, 6 April 2014
Quick notes on non-cis life
Owning up to your past is almost impossible. Whatever you say will very likely be twisted into something unrecognizable that'll fit into cissexist conception of what you are.
Relating to cis people is highly complicated, as most cis people build their lives as mostly coherent, decades-long wholes; you've had two lives, one in closet, one in the open, and it's pretty hard to bring stuff from one to the other. Well, unless you're ok with being a freak and having yourself identified as one forever.
You don't really learn how to relate to the cis: in the beginning you have to lie both to other people and to yourself as convincingly as possible, in order to survive. How does one learn to relate to other people while doing that? One doesn't. You can stop the lie, but the years are permanently, forever gone. You don't get your childhood back. You don't get many of your formative years back - you just have to make do with what the lies and deceit gave you.
Yet stopping the lie is one of the most important things you can do.
Hanging out with the other, similarly marginalized people won't help much. Sure, they understand a lot, but what you've got in common with them is the trauma, the bile, the hate, the hurt. Who wants to center her life around that? Not me.
You might end up alone. It's still better than lying and deceit, and it's also better than wallowing in your trauma.
Relating to cis people is highly complicated, as most cis people build their lives as mostly coherent, decades-long wholes; you've had two lives, one in closet, one in the open, and it's pretty hard to bring stuff from one to the other. Well, unless you're ok with being a freak and having yourself identified as one forever.
You don't really learn how to relate to the cis: in the beginning you have to lie both to other people and to yourself as convincingly as possible, in order to survive. How does one learn to relate to other people while doing that? One doesn't. You can stop the lie, but the years are permanently, forever gone. You don't get your childhood back. You don't get many of your formative years back - you just have to make do with what the lies and deceit gave you.
Yet stopping the lie is one of the most important things you can do.
Hanging out with the other, similarly marginalized people won't help much. Sure, they understand a lot, but what you've got in common with them is the trauma, the bile, the hate, the hurt. Who wants to center her life around that? Not me.
You might end up alone. It's still better than lying and deceit, and it's also better than wallowing in your trauma.
Sunday, 2 February 2014
Yael Bartana's upcoming movie, True Finn
I won't be writing about this at length, as I don't have the time, but a single quote should suffice.
A Finnish-Québécois man states, in an interview (in Finnish, sorry): "Finland is prejudiced. I stumble constantly into expectations of what I should look like and how I should behave. I get to hear often that I can't be a Finn because I don't look like one. Then they try to find a suitable box to fit me into. A box that can be called anything but Finn.
Search-and-replace "Finnish" with woman, and "Québécois" with "trans".
The movie screens in Bio Rex, in Helsinki, on 31st of March. It sounds like it'll be brilliant.
A Finnish-Québécois man states, in an interview (in Finnish, sorry): "Finland is prejudiced. I stumble constantly into expectations of what I should look like and how I should behave. I get to hear often that I can't be a Finn because I don't look like one. Then they try to find a suitable box to fit me into. A box that can be called anything but Finn.
Search-and-replace "Finnish" with woman, and "Québécois" with "trans".
The movie screens in Bio Rex, in Helsinki, on 31st of March. It sounds like it'll be brilliant.
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