Cartographies

Slut

2011-08-07T16:48:00.000+03:00

There's been a Slutwalk in my home town. It bothered me quite a bit, but I couldn't lay my finger on what it was that bothered me, considering I quite agree with the people organising the thing with the issues: blaming the raped woman for the rape is just sick, and yeah, no means no and yes means yes - that's the way it should go. Period.

The presentation bothered me, especially the "slut" bit. I'm not one to shirk from four-letter words, so I kinda suspect it wasn't that - yet the choice of word in the name left me feeling that this is not for me and I'd just feel wrong participating. Not wrong in the sense of morally wrong, wrong against the organisers, but wrong in the sense that I'd wrong against myself, against who I am by marching with these people. My feeling is not universal, not even amongst Finnish (trans) women, but I know I'm not alone, either.

Finally, I found this excellent bit of thinking (read the comments, too, they're full of win also), and the bits finally clicked into place. I found this bit especially pertinent to my thinking:

"Therefore, the word slut has not been used to discipline (shame) us into chaste moral categories, as we have largely been understood to be unable to practice “normal” and “chaste” sexuality anyway."

As if "slut" was somehow a unifying experience. It's not. I've personally been told I'm a pervert. I've been called a tranny. I've been called sick, mentally ill, deluded, twisted, mad, sexually deviant. There's bunches of books naturalising all of that, too, from respectable publishers. The minority I find myself in is more often than not depicted in the media and literature as hypersexual obsessive-compulsives hell bent on plastic surgery, sexy clothing, high heels and makeup (you want examples? Go see Skip the Makeup). I've been told that I can't possibly be a woman, no matter what the evidence to the contrary. And obviously, if I dare raise my voice against this, I must be either a pathetic loonie or an evil liar. Nice options, those.

But I haven't been called a slut, and I think that's 'cos that would've implied I'm a woman, and that was something the cisarchy was hell bent on not doing, ever. And besides, "slut" doesn't quite carry the institutional power like slapping a diagnosis does, or the power that lies in the hands of the magistrate who gets to decide whether you'll be classified as a female or a male. And in a perverse way, calling me slut back then would have been an improvement over what was before. Sure it's an "improvement" in the sense that instead of taking your both legs they're just going to take your arm, but that's what it felt like and no, I'm not over it yet.

It's not just men who've called me those things, either - women, including some self-styled feminists, have done more than their fair share of it, too (for examples in English, just go look up Sheila Jeffreys, Julie Bindel, Mary Daly and Germaine Greer. Nice, (white) middle-class people who wish people like me could be mandated out of existence). I don't feel safe with a random bunch of feminists. It's just as likely that there's some cissexist people around, and I'm not at all confident on the rest of the cis feminists' ability to call out the cissexist behaviour in their midst - my experience has been one of "oh just suck it up, they're all right otherwise". Err, right. I'm quite sure your attitude towards racism is just as dismissive.

Finally, there's the issue of dressing how you like. I'd just like to point out, that I had precisely no chance in hell of dressing in gender-appropriate clothes anywhere I liked until i was in my late 20s. Sexy or not. And this was policed not just by some moral-majoritarians, but by practically everyone. And that's one right I'd be ready to march for - the right of everyone and anyone to dress how they please, without ridicule, discrimination or oppression. But this is so far from the practice of a slutwalk that no, it just doesn't feel the right place for such a statement. If words and actions are at odds with each other, actions win for me every time.

The organisers do say that you don't have to own up to the word "slut" (in Finnish, sorry), but I think that's begging the question - if you march under such a well-publicised banner, how the heck are other people to know you don't, personally, own up to it?

The practice of Slutwalk and the brand of feminism that goes with it just doesn't cut it with me. It's far too lightweight in my opinion, and doesn't do much to advance any of the pertinent issues - in fact, it just seems like a general call of young cis women to be able to dress as they like without having to fear rape or getting victimised for their dress or behaviour. It's a valid point, but to me personally it feels like arguing about the floorplan when the foundation's all rotten.

Sod visibility, too

2011-04-01T20:54:00.001+03:00

(It seems I'm growing this into a series!)

International Transgender Day of Visibility? Count me out. I need visibility as trans like I need a hole in my head. I don't want pity. I don't want condescension or some fucking understanding, which is what actually happens almost all the time if I'm outed as trans. Oh, and don't forget the perverse questions and looks you get from people when they start furtively looking at your crotch, or the condescending remarks of the "welcome to womanhood" -variety. Yeah, I'll pass.

Here's yet again what I do want. I want the same decent treatment, same privacy and same rights and duties as everyone else, trans or cis. In my utopia, the whole concepts trans and cis would not exist at all, because if needed, we could just say "oh, they effed up my legal sex, but it's corrected now" or "I had this congenital defect fixed last month and was thus unable to work". If we, the people undergoing this stuff, so chose to.

If you absolutely have to have a day, have one called "International Day of Cis People Having a Hard Look at Their Oppressive Behaviour and Perverse Curiosity".

Surviving

2011-03-22T09:48:00.000+02:00

Some time ago, Helen posted a piece on QT about reporting on trans issues (it sucks, nothing new there), and one of the comments got me thinking about the representation and the demographics of trans women (a rather western concept, by the way) as a whole.

There's obviously privilege working here: if you're super-rich (on a global scale) and have access to cultural and social resources needed to transition smoothly, you're obviously less likely to suffer massively. But the chilling thing is, you're also less likely to die. It's obvious, yeah, but consider this: what if trans women who have vaginoplasty (white, affluent, middle-class+) are the tip of the iceberg because the rest gets treated so abominably they just curl up in a corner and die? It's not that long a shot. It's not just about the money and privilege, it's also about being able to survive: to have a roof over your head, enough food to keep on going, enough social interaction so you don't shrivel up and die, enough mental resilience to be able to keep on going despite the numerous economic and social hurdles a transition entails.

I strongly suspect trans women who do actually transition are just the tip of an iceberg: the rest plod on the best they can - some seemingly successful, some perhaps institutionalised, and some just die, either by their own volition or get killed. Yup, mighty depressing.

Looking back to my youth: Carto's "do not do" -tip

2011-02-27T10:50:00.000+02:00

Navel-gazing leads me to my history, and Aiden's recent answer to a question from a young trans girl recalled a few memories. I'm not proposing this as a course of action for anyone, but this is what I did. It's dangerous, and not to be recommended.

Well, I did contemplate and plan for suicide. That carried me through my teen years and twenties, if I'm being completely honest. I planned how I'd like to die (permanently, and in such a way I'd really die and not stay on living, no matter what doctors might want to do - I also didn't want collateral damage to other people, so jumping in front of a train was completely out of the question. I was serious), got all the stuff I needed and was set to go. I got rid of the necessary implements of suicide when I had my legal sex changed to reflect the reality; that is, quite a while ago. But I still remember what it was like.

What I wanted was an exit, an exit no-one could deny me. An exit that was in my control, and no-one else's. At the time I felt (quite reasonably, in my opinion) that I had very little, if any wiggle room in my life to express what I was; I had to keep on play-acting a boy if I was to survive. An exit clause that I could invoke on a moment's notice was what I needed, and it did help me carry on as I knew I could leave whenever I wanted to.

I guess it gave an outlet to my self-hate. I didn't cut (well ok, I did eat in rather a chaotic and self-harming way), I didn't do much risk otherwise. It kept me alive.

Gazing at my navel (it's a very pretty navel, too)

2011-02-10T14:33:00.000+02:00

Or therapy, if you like. It's pretty damn enlightening, now that I'm free to explore stuff that bothers and interests me, instead of the stuff I had to "explore" in order to appease psychiatrists.

Ok, maybe I'm just a particularly suitable candidate for professionally-assisted navel-gazing, but the difference between talking with a person you kinda trust and feel good about is so totally different from what I had to experience with doctors when transitioning.

I feel like sorting out my problems already, which I haven't felt like before. I was mistaken to think they mostly revolved around growing up trans - it's a major traumatising factor all right, but it's not the substance of things that really bother me about myself. Which is both nice (thank God it's not all about trans forever and ever) and kinda bothersome - I've been wrong not only about my sex/gender but also about great many other things, too. Just how wrong can a girl be? Very, it seems.

Community?

2011-01-12T10:52:00.000+02:00

Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that I feel most trans people (self-identified, identified by others - doesn't seem to matter) have some sort of common experience of having had to slug it out with the society at large as far as their sexes and/or genders are considered. It does create some community. But in my opinion it's based on oppression and very little else.

No, in the sense that the life experiences of various trans people differ to such a great degree that it's really hard to find common points of self-interest: what would a third option on legal sex do to me? Either nothing (if you can choose for yourself - I'd obviously skip it as I ain't no third sex), or a great deal of hassle and harm (if it's chosen for you, whether you like it or not).

I think it boils down to how trans people would like to be treated by others. Some of us (see, community) would like to be treated in a separate way with regards to law, medicine, or social interaction. Some of us would rather not have anything special (Oi! That'd be me!) apart from correcting errors in documents. Those wanting new, different options tend to fall to the transgender/genderqueer side, and those of us who don't, tend to fall on the transsexuality side of things.

Now I don't propose to have a solution to this problem; it has to be sorted out politically: by discussing, arguing, fighting amongst ourselves. But I am saying that there needs to be options: we've got to sort out a way in which transgender/genderqueer people can live safely and respectfully, and it's got to be done in a way that respects trans women and men who'd really rather just drop the trans bit altogether. In other words, no non-consensual third-gendering, no branding people as trans, no forcing people into sexes or genders at all. The third item on that list being much harder to implement than the others, but it needs to stay on the list for us trans women, too - it'd have some serious potential of saving our girlhoods from being a nightmare they all too often are.

All of that has to, in my opinion, be sorted out by the people affected by it, that is, trans people of all kinds, even the people with trans pasts. And in that sense there must be a community if we're to do the right thing.

But will there ever be a trans community in the sense people see there is a gay community? No. And I don't think there's much of a gay community, either. Gays come in all colours and sizes and varieties. What I would see superficially as a gay community is fairly likely just a very visible subset of all the variety of gay people, and 'cos I'm not a part of it myself, I just tend to do the very human thing, and lump 'em all in the same heap of gay. But it's not the truth about them, it's my simplification, and I'd really better not make any political statements based on my silly generalisations.

I'd like to pontificate on the reasons for trans people falling so afar from each other: I think a large part of it is due to fear, uncertainty and other contradictory feelings. The following is highly speculative, so try to bear with me.

From my pov, transgender/genderqueer people seem a tad unrealistic at times. It's all very good to demand equal rights for all people (and especially themselves), but actually implementing those rights can be a bit of a bastard. And not only that, but it'd be neat if the said implementation wasn't an ad hoc -mess, but something that can be applied in a general sense, too. For example, consider scrapping legal sex/gender. (I'd sure like it, no harm would be done to me even if I am a woman - I'd be just as much a woman after that, too) Marriage legislation would have to be rewritten. Parenthood legislation ditto. Military conscription has to be redone. All kinds of registers have to be redone. Passports, DLs, the lot - it's not a trivial task, nor is it in any sense clear that that is actually possible to pull off in one fell swoop; it requires a lot of political will. Just yelling "our rights now" (or even worse: "my rights now") won't do it. Actually talking with politicians, or becoming one oneself are steps into that direction, but what little I see about transgender/genderqueer politics, it's all about anarchism and not getting dirty with the state and let's have a revolution. Yeah, right. Pull another one. You guys couldn't have a revolution and even of you could, you'd just end up oppressing in new ways. It's happened so many times already - what makes you think you're different? And please, pretty please, have a look at the sexism in your midst. There's a reason why there's so few trans feminine spectrum people present in those circles.

From transgender/genderqueer/queer pov, binary trans women such as myself probably raise some squicks. Our surgeries do that. Our trust in medicine, our delight in our conditions, nay, make that illness's, medicality seems to do that big time. I love what I got from the surgeries I've underwent. I think medical science and skill is just great in some respects. Micronised estradiol pills <3 <3 <3 For people who don't trust medicine the way I do, this must be a bit distressing. My dependence on modern Western medicine must be a bit depressing to someone who likes to do things by hirself, for hirself, and if a thing can't be done in an ethical way, it'd perhaps really better not be done at all. I also suspect my apparent femininity must raise some eyebrows, too - the combination of the determination needed to get medical and legal reassignment and then just flowing into this new almost ridiculously standard sex/gender must be a bit mind-bending - I'm not sure, but I feel the thinking might go along the "she went to all that trouble and fighting to get that bog-standard woman stuff, instead of this gender/sex neatness we have?"

I don't have the solutions. But I think a description of the problem is the beginning of the search for a solution. This is my offer.

The interlocking nature of sexisms plus a note

2011-01-07T15:06:00.000+02:00

Consider this: if you don't believe there are two, and only two sexes and genders (cissexism), you can't really uphold heterosexism ('cos once you go down the slippery slope of more than two, what's stopping you from seeing everyone as a different sex and gender? Nothing, that's what). And why would you, indeed, see any necessary complementarity in masculine and feminine? And if you don't believe masculinities are inherently better and more valuable than feminities, or some other -inities, what'd be the point of dissing any people not on either spectrum, or people rejecting their assigned sexes and genders?

It all holds together. Sexism comes with cissexism which comes with heterosexism - they're a nice, evil compact bundle, full of misery for everyone.

They can't be teased apart, either. You can't pick a nice dose of transphobia to go with opposing sexism, or heterosexism - if you want to oppose sexism, it's just not on to diss trans women for being feminine. If you want to oppose heterosexism, why would you exclude trans-cis homo couples? And if you're against cissexism, it's no good to be homophobic: how could you defend people's rights to ditch their assigned sexes and genders as they like, and then require them to conform to hetero-only relations? As if you could define hetero-only to exclude anyone without bringing in cissexism!

Other than that tidbit, I'm rather down and out - turns out my childhood was not quite as bad as I thought it was - it was considerably worse. Hello, therapy (no, it's not about teh trans, for a change). This time, I really actually need therapy, and seems like I can benefit from it, too.

Happy Christmas!

2010-12-25T11:10:00.000+02:00

I'd like to say a word about incarnation, being a Christian and all. This (besides resurrection), is one of the neatest bits about Christianity to me. God became a human, was born out of a woman, was a baby, grew up, died - just like I will.

The God who knows me is no stranger. Ze incarnated into this world, and by becoming human, enabled me to become a God's daughter.

This is, now, of particular importance because I'm going through my past, hopefully finally expunging some demons of old. It's painful, and difficult to do it, but somehow it comforts me to know I'm not doing it alone. My suffering is God's suffering - Ze shares in it, and likely my suffering is part of Jesus' suffering on the cross. We're taking the sins of humans (and make no mistake, forcibly sexing and gendering other people is a sin) on our flesh and suffering because of them. It doesn't make us any better people - suffering doesn't make you better, it just hurts, maims and kills.

I know the preceding might not sound very happy to many people, but please give it some thought: I'm at my happiest when I'm present in this world, and suffering and pain are present here, now. There's a forceful happiness in knowing what you are and what's happening to you, even if it's painful and makes you suffer. See, the other option, for me, is not not suffering, but numbness. Not feeling anything, not being connected to anyone - not living, in fact. I prefer life very much to living death.

That God can, and does share in my life is a very happy occasion, and Christmas is the yearly happy reminder of that. Happy Christmas!

On the instability of trans and cis

2010-12-05T22:29:00.003+02:00

Sometimes I experience myself as trans. Mostly I don't.

But the far more common experience is that other people expect me to identify, or experience myself as trans, which I might not do at that particular point of time. I have experienced myself as more or less constantly trans, but that was before transition. These days, I experience myself more or less constantly as myself, and perhaps I might say I experience myself rather often as cis.My bodily configuration matches my hormones that matches whatever it is my brain seems to want that matches what other people expect of me wrt social roles that matches whatever it is that makes me feel comfortable in my skin. You could call that experience an experience of being cis.

Well, unless you insist on bringing the ciscentric notion of sex assigned at birth. Which I don't.

My experience and other people's expectations of what I am don't always match. The weird thing is, the expectations of people who don't know about my past do, in fact, match my lived experience very very often, almost constantly. The people who know me well - perhaps I should say the single person who knows me in the Biblical sense - her experience of me matches mine pretty much always, with no exceptions I can notice.

Trans and cis are not stable. This is not to say that trans and cis aren't useful political categories, but they take us only so far, and I'd rather not lock myself up in a cage with a cis-derived label on it. "Trans" was invented by cissexual people; it's not our word in the strict sense, and while "cis" levels the playing field somewhat, the pair still doesn't derive from us and our experiences. It's still ciscentric language, meant to other us and meant to remind us of our second-class status, of the assignment slapped on us at birth.

See also Iden-bugger-tity. [ETA link]

STP puh-lease

2010-12-02T12:01:00.003+02:00

"That transsexuality would no longer be viewed as an organic illness, because the gender of a person, trans or not, is not biologically programmed (this is the organic or physical dimension of depathologization);" (STP Best Practices Guide (pdf), p. 17)

Umm, no. Darlings, dearies, do not pretend to speak for me. Transsexuality was very much an organic, physiological illness for me. My sex and gender seem to be biologically determined to be female. There was precisely fuck-all I could do about it, except conform to the fact that I'm deeply unhappy if I a) have to be on wrong hormones, b) have to have a wrong kind of bodily configuration and c) have to pretend to be a man which I am not, and I stopped being unhappy precisely when I a) had the right hormones, b) a suitably configured body and c) could (safely) stop the stupid pretense, and be the woman I was and am in the eyes of other people, too. That required physiological treatments, and those treatments fixed my very organic body. So yeah, it's an organic illness all right.

While I'm at this, I'd also like to point out that while it's wrong to push Western ideas on non-Western people, I've no personal objection to Western ideas and paradigms - I'm Western, and a European myself, and wouldn't want to appropriate some other culture's way of doing sex and gender for mine.

In short: STP folks, you're mistaken at some points. Stop pretending you're speaking for all people who are identified as trans by the cis majority. I may be trans in their (and maybe your) eyes, but I sure don't feel like trans any more much at all. Our needs are different, don't subsume mine under your agenda.

The traumatic nature of being trans (on Planet Cis, that is)

2010-11-24T10:11:00.001+02:00

The worst is not being able to trust other people much at all.

It's pretty logical, no?

Other people have managed to con you into believing you are not what you are, but something else instead. You find that out. You get mighty pissed, perhaps do a thing or two about it (like transition, maybe), and start really feeling the results. You're relatively safe from the forced assignments within your body and yourself - others may still mis- and/or ungender you, but at least you have a tendency of knowing yourself for what you are.

Here's the kick. When you realise that yes, most people have actively conned you (I'm not saying anything about consciously conning - it may well not be conscious, but the end result is still more or less the same) for, like, decades, it's not a happy moment. In fact, it may well feel like the ground opening under your feet. If other people can be so much in the wrong and so damn adamant about it and willing to spend so much time and energy defending their mistake, what else is there that they're wrong about? Suddenly, all bets are off.

This has, in my opinion, several consequences. One is that it's mighty hard to believe in yourself - in your own reasoning ability, in your own conclusions. No matter how well-founded your conclusions, you're still a human and still fallible. And since you've just had a glorious example of most of humanity failing big time, it doesn't bode well for you either, now does it?

Another is an active mistrust of others - if they managed to keep you from this central bit of information about yourself, what else are they hiding?

There's no easy answers to those. I don't know how to solve those problems - and they're my problems, too. How do you cobble together a trust broken from the very beginning? You've never had the experience of being able to trust - your very first relationships have been forced to fit into a mould that's simply wrong (I don't mean that for the cis it's completely right, but it is far less wrong as far as I can tell). There's no model of social stuff being right, only a broken model. I'm sorry this sounds so dejected, but the cissexist, cissupremacist world is a depressive place.

[Note that bodily issues don't enter into this much at all. Having a trans body is in itself relatively unproblematic - some aspects of your body might need medical attention, maybe surgery, maybe meds - and your body might not be that trans after all of those things - but that's just like having glasses, or corrective surgery, for defective vision. It's no big deal.]

It might get better, but it might not.

2010-11-15T21:31:00.000+02:00

Dear trans girl,

It's possible it gets better. That's about as positive as I can get. Sorry about it - it is very depressing, but life sometimes is. I hope you get a bit less harassment, a little less violence, a little less un- and degendering. I really do, from the bottom of my heart. But I can't promise that. No-one can. Don't believe just anything you're said - evaluate the statements yourself. That applies to this piece, too.

I sincerely hope you will find peace. Peace with myself wasn't actually that hard to get. Peace with others... shall we say that's a war in progress? And, unfortunately, it's not yet us who are winning. People do think their way of seeing and thinking and living sex and gender trumps our experience.

Stick by the people who really are loyal to you. And to hell with the others. Really. If someone gets onto your tits, don't spend too much time with them - there's so many idiots and so little time. It's just not worth it, educating the unwilling. They just sap your energy, will to live and generally suck the joy out of your life. Sod them. But the ones who do love you - love them to bits. Never, ever let them down.

Don't be too disappointed when people close to you let you down. It's not unusual. It's incredibly sad, but I've seen it happen so many times I find it hard to be surprised at anything any more. There's no bottom to the depths of stupidity, meanness and plain ol' cis privilege.

Love your own. Help other trans girls and women. Even when they're being arses. I try to do that, too.

Above all else: Love yourself. Get help. Be brave. Be smart. Be the girl you are.

Oi, journo, U R doing it wrong.

2010-11-01T09:28:00.002+02:00

Even if you mean well.

Yes, it's the eternal "people who changed their sex" -trope. The latest incarnation of which surfaced in my morning newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat (1st of Nov, 2010, page D1. Sorry, can't find a copy available online, available as dead trees, or behind a paywall only). The story is about three people at different places in the trans universe - a trans woman, a trans man and a male transvestite (well, the male bit is never said aloud, it's just assumed. I suppose the writer has never heard of female transvestites). The story's stated aim is to enlighten the readers on what sex/gender roles look like, but in fact it doesn't analyze the sex/gender roles and the accompanying gender policing much at all. It just displays these three subjects in a human interest angle.

They're not treated too shabbily on the whole, but yet again, it's the framing of the story that sucks rotten eggs. The story is presented as "people who've experienced living as both a man and a woman..." (see page A3 if you've got the dead tree edition), there's the "changed their sex" -subheading (page D1: "Two people who've changed their sex and a transvestite tell what sex/gender roles look like") - in short, it's all about the voyeuristic, sensationalist cis mentality and blatant use of cissexist power to frame things.

I'm pretty sure the journalist in question means well. It isn't quite the hate-filled piece that misgenders and ungenders the trans subject constantly, but it fails nevertheless: the whole ciscentric premise that people really are of the sex/gender they're assigned at birth is just so full of fail. The story leaks at the seams: the trans woman is allowed to say she "had manhood pounded into her head" - but still the story assumes and reinforces that she actually was a boy/man (there's the stupid "biological male" -thing, too, but as that seems to be her own description of herself, I can't really comment on that), and can, therefore, tell what it was like to be a man. Not what it was like to be mistaken for a man. If she really was a man, why was the pounding necessary? And who, exactly, did the pounding? She herself, perhaps? I think not.

People assume all kinds of things about other people's sexes, genders and bodies. They assume, for example, that if someone "looks like a man", ze must be a man, and male, and assigned male at birth, too. That is simply not true. Looking like x is not the same as being x, and woman does not equal femininity does not equal female does not equal being assigned female at birth - all those bits may be related to each other, and they often are. But that's no universal rule. So it's rather stupid to assume that - and to assume that a trans man, for example, might know what it's like to be a woman.

I'd even hazard a guess that he does not know what being a woman is like, as he may never have been a woman. He's been mistaken for one, but that's not even remotely the same. Being of a sex is not the same as (mistakenly) being perceived as of a sex. The subject is not the same. I am a woman. You probably perceive me as a woman. My being and your perception probably agree, but even if they didn't, your perception does not automagically trump my being, not even if you force your perception on me.

So, dear journalists, please. Listen, carefully, to the people you interview. Especially when you're basically venturing out of your everyday experience (yeah, I'm assuming the journalist plus possible subeditors in question are cis - I think that's a pretty safe assumption). Your assumptions on how unfamiliar stuff works are, more often than not, simply wrong.

(Not that I'm expecting these things to change anytime soon - after all, I'm just a lone trans woman with a blog, and a cis journo with a big newspaper on her back, compared to me, is a bit like a soldier driving a battle tank towards a girl with a rock in her hand).

Educating people doesn't help

2010-10-27T09:53:00.001+03:00

That's a bit of a lie, actually. Education does work, it educates. But it doesn't work in the way many (middle class) activists think it does. Education doesn't stop people from discriminating against each other. In fact, it may well make people more proficient at discriminating.

The crucial question is what you're educating people in.

If you raise people's consciousness about, say, trans women, you're doing just that, and no more. You're not fighting oppression. Your consciousness-raising may have some effects to that end, but it's in no way guaranteed, nor is it certain in any way that your consciousness-raising isn't having the exact opposite effect of making the discrimination even more acute.

This is why: giving more information on trans women (I'm using our experiences as examples because I know those the best), our bodies, our hardships and lives in general makes us even more of a target. The more we are exposed to scrutiny, the more visible we are as trans, the better chances the oppressors have of spotting us as potential targets for discrimination, and there's just so much more surface area to attack, too. The mundane things you do with your body become available for public consumption - your relationships start taking all kinds of weird colourings in the minds of the majority. Majority starts seeing things that aren't there, but that doesn't stop the majority from seeing nonexistent things as real, such as the sex you were forcibly assigned at birth, or sexualities you would never know for your own. Educating people on what is doesn't necessarily change their cognitive frameworks in the least - it might reinforce the (false) frameworks instead. It's the old "don't confuse me with the facts" -thing that leads to "but you were a man, right?" -questions, and to endless headdesking on the part of the trans woman. As if it were so simple. As if the majority got sex and gender right in the first place.

Giving people more information about oppressed minorities also doesn't call the discrimination itself into question in any serious way. The focus is on the minority's deviance from the (unquestioned) norms of the majority, not on the prejudices and asshattery of the majority. Yet it's the behaviour of the majority that is the problem - the existence of the minority and its habits, phenotypes and stuff are incidental. Exposing the oppression borne by the minority may work as an appeal to pity, but it doesn't address the actual problem much at all.

The actual problem, of course, being discrimination and other reprehensible behaviour. Raising consciousness on that might help, but stopping oppression is not about the oppressed, it's about stopping the oppressors.

Can't be arsed

2010-10-01T16:16:00.000+03:00

Just too tired and bored with the direction trans activism is taking. I'm tired of fighting on several fronts at once, tired of trans women undercutting progress 'cos it somehow isn't ideologically perfect enough, or steps on their cis beloveds' or "allies'" toes. I'm sick and tired of being treated like some fucking special snowflake. I'm not so special. I'm sick of people who want to be treated like special snowflakes. The whole specialness strand of all things trans is a huge trap IMO. I want medical and bodily privacy, decent, respectful medical care as a matter of course, and not as an exception, and freedom from violence. I don't want exceptions. I want, as a matter of course, the same every damn cis person gets as a matter of course. Maybe more on this later, right now I'm too tired and too worried out to think straight. Or queer.

Why we probably need strictly trans-women-only spaces

2010-08-31T12:17:00.001+03:00

Relationship abuse. That's why.

Helen G reported couple of days ago on the depressingly expected results (pdf) to research on domestic abuse against trans people. I also stumbled on a story at The Spectrum Café on crossdressers' problems, and I realised that those problems are definitely not limited to crossdressers alone: the power dynamic in a lesbian relationship, where one of the women is cis, and the other is trans, but not quite come to terms with her stuff yet, can be scarily similar.

Imagine: a trans/cis lesbian couple lives like their life was one of a cissexual, heterosexual, cisgender couple. One of the partners, however, knows that this is not strictly speaking true, but for a lack of words, courage, or just plain fear for her own safety keeps her mouth shut. She knows something is not quite right, the dynamic of the relationship isn't quite the cishet dynamic it's expected to be. The other, cis partner, is at least consciously unaware of this, or if not, wants to be unaware - there are no prizes given by the larger, sexist and cissexist society, to those who start messing about with its hallowed cishet structures, especially when such messing about goes against not only heterosexism, but cis- and plain sexism as well.

Anyway. The trans woman finds out a name, or several names, for the situation she's in. She finds out that she might actually be a woman, and that her coercively assigned manhood is a... lie. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the possible consequences of acting out on such information can be. Amicable divorce (if they've already gotten married) is kinda nice outcome - if they have children together, the trans woman faces a very real prospect of losing her family altogether, and a substantial chunk of her income, too. Which also tends to plummet when one transitions - that's no rocket science, either.

So, what's the trans woman to do? "I'll give the family a shot but if it goes titsup, it will, and no can do - I'll likely transition anyway, and those two are not strictly connected" was my choice, but I now realise that this is not at all a common choice. The common choice is, I think, trying to negotiate your way into transitioning with the family. Asking for permission, if you like - in order to minimise the collateral damage.

What scenarios that leads to? There's at least two I can think of, and I've seen both happen many times.

The first is the "come out, get a divorce" -scenario. Once the trans woman speaks about the need to transition, the family implodes and that's that - if she's lucky, she can see her children and isn't destitute afterwards. If things go bad, she's not only cut off from her family, but totally broke, too.

The second, however, is ominous. The trans woman brings up that she really isn't a man, or somesuch stuff - the exact details don't matter. She asks for support. The cis woman, on her part, is shocked, or perhaps flat out disbelieves the seriousness of what's said. Once the situation develops a bit, and it becomes increasingly clear that trans woman's, well, womanhood, isn't going away, transitioning becomes a war of attrition on part of the cis woman partner. The trans spouse is kept from transitioning by controlling her, controlling her body, controlling her access to medical resources, controlling her visibility as a woman (either by threatening with forced outing or threatening with divorce if she does come out at circles not approved of by the cis spouse) and, of course controlling her access to other trans women. This can be subtle - painting other trans women as irresponsible, selfish failures who definitely are not worth associating with and then painting the trans woman partner as someone who's so much more responsible and rational - or it can be a lot more blatant, as in not letting the trans woman partner go to support group meetings, transcentric events, trans-women-only message boards, seeing a doctor to talk about her medical needs or even plain violence.

That the aforementioned is totally fucked hardly needs an explanation. What it does do, however, is introduce a cis-made split into trans women's lives - we're cut off from each other. Women early in their transitions don't get the role models of real, live trans women going on about their lives, working, living, loving and fighting on the planet cis, but get only the bits that suit their cis spouses - and somehow I think that the societally instilled sexism, transphobia and cissexism do affect the choice of such bits.

Because of all of the above, I'd like to have something. I'd like to have a trans-women-only space. Where it wouldn't matter squat where you are in your transition, wouldn't matter where exactly you want to go, but if you wouldn't mind people identifying you as a trans woman, you'd be welcome. You'd be welcome to a space not controlled by cis people. Where what you say will not be scrutinised by the cis. Where questioning cissexist notions is welcome, and common. No cis women bossing around and telling us what we can do, say or be. No need for apologies, or for policing cis-instated norms on behalf of the cis. Where said policing can be dismissed for what it is: controlling. Controlling the way we speak, act, live and love. I want to get rid of that controlling so I can speak with my sisters face to face and expose the coercion and abuse for what it is.

Yeah, I know, won't be easy, but it's worth a shot, dontcha think?

Let's all bury our heads in the sand? The fuck I will.

2010-08-30T13:02:00.004+03:00

This is a post on my brief foray into a local forum for trans feminine spectrum people and their significant others, but the issues are not limited to that forum - I've experienced similar stuff elsewhere, too. This is an outline of why I increasingly opt out of that stuff.

Here's what I like:

people across transfeminine spectrum co-operating on common and not-so-common issues.
being able to talk about difficult issues.
trans-centricity.
some common decency.

Somehow, more often than not, I've ran into problems wrt all of the above.

The relations between transvestites and trans women seem to be tense. My take on that is that there's plenty of phobia on both sides: transvestites perhaps fearing us trans women are seen as somehow contagious, that we infect transvestite men with the virus of transsexuality and then turn them into women. It's not entirely unreasonable, though - the common joke about the difference between a transvestite and a trans woman being five years is not entirely a joke. Some trans women do approach transition from that position, and it's a perfectly valid angle. I understand this might cause some concern amongst transvestites and especially their cis spouses, as hormones, surgery and legal sex change aren't exactly seen as a favourable outcome of coming out of the closet as a transvestite. Trouble is, it happens, and it won't go away just by refusing to talk about it, or beating around the bush and trying to give the impression it doesn't happen, like, ever. The motivation might be pacifying the cis spouses, but that pacification is based on a rather limited edition of the truth, and I'm pretty sure the cis spouses will find out, sooner or later, and then you'll be deep in doo-doo.

From my side of the pond, I can say being lumped with transvestites isn't always that hot, either. Transvestism is still often seen as something provisionary and elective, which I've come to understand is not the case; a transvestite probably can't choose if he wants to dress in woman's clothes no more than I can choose if I'm a woman or not. Yet that seems to be something that's trotted out by a disgruntled relative/friend/spouse when the issue of not being entirely of the sex assigned to you at birth comes up. It's the "why can't you just stop" -trope. And transvestites, seemingly, can stop, at least for some time - and stopping being a woman, for a trans woman, is about as possible as for an unsupported stone at height to not drop in standard gravity. I suspect it's the same for anyone who's somehow trans; you can't get the cause of trans out of you, you just have to live with it somehow, either eliminating the most of the underlying stuff (I'd call this transition), or finding some other ways to live with it. Trans doesn't seem go away. It's wishful thinking to think that you, or your friend/lover/child/whomever, can just repress it indefinitely.

I think there's a lot of common ground for male transvestites and trans women - it's not like the oppression is totally different: we're tarred with the same brush, and general public still isn't too keen on our differences. But the fear of the other just seems too great, and the investment in the tolerance given by the cis keeps many of us in their places, too, and makes them side with the oppressor, trying to silence people speaking out.

Talking about oppression and pejorative language seems to be a really hot button. I really don't understand why it provokes such intense feelings, but it does. Commenting that "tranny" is generally offensive can be met with loud claims that it isn't for the claimant. That may very well be the case, but it doesn't do squat about the general case. Tranny's no compliment, it's a slur, and no amount of "but it isn't for me" changes that on a universal basis - perhaps a more universal reclaiming might do that, but I'm pretty sure its time isn't quite yet. I am perplexed, however, why anyone trans would claim its unoffensiveness loudly in a discussion supposedly about the word's general, offensive usage (and why you really shouldn't use it about anyone specific, either, unless you're pretty damn sure it's accepted). Internalised cissexism? I never thought I'd run into anything that would bring up that particular concept in my mind, but I have, now. As if we weren't worthy of decent treatment. And, more importantly, as if we weren't oppressed and discriminated against, and as if that wasn't a bad thing. Puh-leeze. Stopping speaking about oppression doesn't make it go away.

I love transcentricity. I love the places that are for us, by us. There's the whole wide ciscentric world out there for the cis people - I really love the spaces where I can breathe freely, without anyone cis breathing on my neck with privilege, watching that I stay on my cis-allotted place. Or even if there are cis people around, it's still not about them. Of course some cis people will try to make it about them - I can understand that, and while they have my sympathy, it's not a demand that should be indulged in. Plenty of ciscentric spaces around, hardly any transcentric. Transcentricity is rather hard to come by, however.

And finally, common decency and not getting all riled up when it isn't about you in particular is very nice indeed. It also seems to be rather rare. I suspect this is a common phenomenon when discussing emotional subjects - it becomes mighty hard to separate the issues from the person. Yet, it's pretty hard to discuss anything worthwhile and important if you can't speak your mind on subjects that provoke emotions, so I think this is something we all just have to learn to live with. Strong emotions will be provoked, we have to learn how to behave like adults do, and not fly into a fit of rage if someone dares to disagree with us. If their case is bad, it probably isn't too hard to show why that's so, and while the disagreement probably won't go away, it's still possible to discuss the issues instead throwing a fit each time someone says something controversial.

The warning signs I should have heeded

spouses-only board on an otherwise at least nominally transcentric board. This is always, always a big warning sign. It means the cis spouses' concerns are favoured. It also means the people running the forum mean it's ok for things to be this way (see http://www.thespectrumcafe.com/?p=66 for an explanation as to why this is a bad idea).
abusive language is tolerated. I wasn't aware of this, but noticed it almost immediately.
moderation is not only ad hoc, but also invisible - completely deleted messages and threads are a prime example. Moderation needs to be open and visible. (for a simple introduction to the subject, see http://www.communityspark.com/how-to-effectively-moderate-forums/) This isn't quite as easy to notice, but once you hit it, you do notice it.

Silly me, didn't listen to myself.

[ETA warning signs]

Carto's special theory of trans

2010-08-17T20:13:00.001+03:00

This is mostly a note to myself, and written perhaps more to clarify my thoughts to myself than for anything else.

Trans consists of actually being something of some other sex, or gender, than the sex, or gender, assigned to you at birth, or later, by others.

That's about it, really!

Trans is thus a problem of other people - the core of the problem being the forced assignment of sex and gender, and the (misplaced) faith of the majority in the correctness of the communal assignment.

Trans becomes a problem for the trans person hirself only if other people make it a problem.

This can happen by ungendering, misgendering, physical violence, denial of necessary facilities, denial of medical care - this is not an exhaustive list.

The problem is not trans. It's the oppression.

(the headline is a nod to Einstein, in case you wondered).

[ETA to clarify the second sentence]

On relatives, and their tediousness wrt transition

2010-06-11T18:25:00.002+03:00

This cropped up in a discussion with a friend - you know who you are.

One of the major reasons why transitioning is such a shitty business is the people who are, in principle, close to you. The logic behind this statement goes like this: when people view themselves as close to a transitioning individual, more often than not they are not close to the individual hirself at all, but to the rôle this individual has played in order to survive without too much harassment. And there lies the rub.

Transitioning requires that that rôle, that act has to be stopped. But, because the close ones are usually heavily invested in that rôle, stopping the act is not necessarily seen as stopping a lie, but is seen as a betrayal instead. The person transitioning, of course, betrays no-one by transitioning, but stops betrayals instead, and this might be the reason why transition is so hard for the near and dear to accept. If they accept the transition for what it is, they also tacitly admit to fooling themselves and their apparently near and dear transitioner, often for decades. They also admit to having policed sex and gender, often in quite backhanded and devious ways - transition brings out all this for everyone to see. It's probably not too easy for the cis people around.

The natural reaction seems to be to blame the transitioner for being manipulative, difficult, intransigent and deceptive. In reality, the transitioner is anything but: a transition is probably the ultimate statement for stopping manipulation and deception.

Another common thread in trying to hold onto the lie is emotional blackmail, and not letting go even when it's perfectly clear that the transitioner wants to have nothing with hir relatives unless they accept the reality of transition. "We do this because we love you" might hold water if transitions were a whim, a passing madness, but as far as I can tell, transitioning is neither - we don't do this stuff just to piss you guys off, y'know.

Eliot put it nicely: "human kind Cannot bear very much reality." (Four Quartets, Burnt Norton, 42-43)

Unfortunately I, and my fellow trans people have to live with this.

[ETA] This trouble with reality seems to undergird a common journalistic trope of trotting out person's trans past, no matter if it's relevant to the discussion or not. It's just so damn impossible for the cis to get that they do make mistakes when gendering other people, it seems.

Shiny hobbies go on

2010-05-19T19:57:00.001+03:00

Oh well, I end up writing about my new hobby anyway. Now I managed to scare myself almost shitless a couple of days ago, while at the same time I got one of the biggest mental rushes of my life, too. So yeah, it was interesting - and I'm gonna repeat it, too. I like doing difficult, scary things even more than I thought I would. This is very interesting.

The most interesting bit was I didn't get scared of the physical danger (there was some, but honestly, not a lot) - I got scared of myself! I have realised I'm a bit on the braver side of things, but I hadn't realised just how much: it seems I'll push myself gladly as far as I can go. I was pretty happy to find that out, but what I was, and am, the happiest about is that I had the sense to call it off, too, at the moment I realised I wasn't going to go any further, but was stalled, and wasn't going to learn anything new any more.

So yeah, I like being me a lot. Hope you like being yourself a lot, too!

On the difficulty of trusting other people

2010-05-04T09:15:00.000+03:00

During all of my years, it's became abundantly clear to me that I have a problem with trusting other people not to do me in at the earliest opportunity. It's pretty clear to me why: when you've been taught by the whole society, by everyone you know and love, that you are something, and you then, on your own, find out and realise that they all were wrong, it's pretty hard to trust anyone much afterwards.

It goes deeper than that. I had this trust problem already as a child. I don't think it's completely outlandish to think that this was due to a persistent cognitive dissonance between what other people expected me to be, and what I actually was. I couldn't fulfill the expectations made of me, and it wasn't a question of being somewhat imperfect. I just failed at sex and gender. I recall clearly wondering what was wrong with me, why couldn't I figure out the way boys are supposed to behave (it wasn't for the lack of models, or for a missing father, or any that creepy ex-gay -shit - I've had an unbroken home from the day I was born, with both mom and dad and all that stuff), and infinitely sad because I couldn't fit in, no matter what I did. I knew I was different, I just couldn't put my finger on the exact reasons why.

But when I did figure it out: after the first rush of relief came almost uncontrollable anger, and fear. These guys had conned me all my life! And not only that, but some of them were crazy enough to police my behaviour with violence (cheers and beers, my classmates from comprehensive - hope we'll never meet) - as if not conforming to the sex assigned to you at birth was such a huge crime against them.

I also started wondering at a few things. I was pretty damn visibly non-conforming during my teen years. Why wasn't I referred to anyone? Was it because I was otherwise a well-behaved girl, who did not cause much trouble? Or was it because they knew there was nothing they could do - or because they didn't dare to, or because they thought I was beyond their "help" anyway - help in this last case meaning forcing sex and gender conformance (it was rather obvious I wasn't going to conform that way).

What it boiled down to was that no-one helped. I was left to my own devices, and that's the way I've been going on ever since. Going back to trusting people comes very very slowly, and so far I've managed to trust just a dozen or so people (you know who you are and I love you to bits). And it's the hardest thing for me to do, it's harder than transitioning and all that.

Sod identity politics

2010-03-10T09:13:00.000+02:00

It just sucks hard. It seems to lead into these endless discussions on definitions. It seems to lead into endless attempts at policing of borders. Where it doesn't seem to lead is practical problems being solved.

I'd really like to have an explanation of how the hell identity politics is supposed to solve anything at all: we supposedly enlightened people can all respect each others identities (or lack thereof) as much as we please, but how the heck is that going to change the ways of the big bad cissexist world? I mean, does anyone really think we can get respectful (or at least semi-decent) treatment just by claiming identities for ourselves? I'm not at all sure how an identity leads to better treatment by the majority.

Here's what I want. It's mostly just issues from the top of my head, in no particular order.

Decent access to hormones and surgery. It need not be completely at-will, 'cos I realise there's the taxpayer interest. It does have to be on public money, though - the poorest are already so hard up there's absolutely no need to have them pay their way.

Legal sex needs to be changeable at will to anything. Redoing those papers is not expensive, it's not hard and not allowing people to choose their legal sex doesn't serve any valid purpose I can understand. I realise this might be a far way off. You want to be a "yes" legally? Be my guest. I might want to, too.

We seriously need a gender-neutral marriage that's not limited to two spouses alone. I realise some poly people won't want this, but the option should be there, 'cos I just don't get why the civil institution of marriage should be limited for hetero couples alone. Who cares if five people of same, or different sexes marry each other? I sure don't. But I sure want them to be able to get all the benefits that hetero couples do at the moment. I want them to be able to be each others' next of kin, to be able to be legal parents to their children. This could, of course, be arranged in numerous other ways, too, but in that case I'd go for a dissolution of all marriages - I don't want a two-tier system of 1) heteros and 2) the riff-raff.

Respectful and clueful medical care. Access isn't the only problem, the big other problem is that doctors know precisely fuck-all about trans bodies - it's guinea-pig style -medicine all the way as far as my experiences go. They don't know since no-one's doing research on how we actually manage our bodies, hormones and stuff (of course I won't volunteer all of this information to doctors, 'cos more often than not it's used just to oppress us: a "well"-meaning doctor comes in a white jacket and tells me I'm doing it wrong- and promptly tries to make me do stuff their way by holding scripts, despite me having had this body for decades and having managed its trans aspects quite successfully for many, many years).

Do I need an identity to get those things? Nah, I think not. They're not issues of identity, and solving them doesn't require any identity-talk at all. They can be solved head on.

New, shiny hobbies bring out the past anew

2010-02-24T21:44:00.000+02:00

Namely, sports. I'm not going to go into specifics here, 'cos I'm not sure it'd be safe for me to. I enjoy my new hobby hugely, it's very physical, very intense, very technical and demanding, it's what I wanted as a kid and it definitely is what I want now.

I'm reclaiming my past. I'm doing the stuff I wanted to do when I was a kid. It feels very, very good. It's also painful as hell.

Pursuing your dreams late is very complicated. On one hand, you get this immense kick from doing stuff you dreamed of doing. On the other, the kick makes you realise just how much stuff you've missed out on. It's at times so painful you find it hard to breathe, yet you know this is the way forward. It brings out the little girl you were, the things that were denied to her, what you could have been had you not been forcibly masculinised. What I could have been.

On some imaginative level it's like watering a live plant that's been dry for decades. It's all very well and good, but imagine how it's for the plant - it gets new water for its cells, they expand and start growing, but the stress on the supporting cell structures is probably rather hard. Yet should the plant stop drinking?

Hell no. I'll rather take the pain and the growth than die a slow death by drought. If my joy comes with pain, I'll take the pain unflinchingly with a laugh. It's not like us Christians aren't used to laughing at death and horror (1 Cor 15:54-55).

Disclosure

2010-02-12T10:08:00.001+02:00

I disclose my cis/trans -status when applicable. I decide when it is applicable. Not anyone else.

That's about it, really.

That's why I will be right pissed at you if you decide for me. I feel inclined to explain myself a bit. Here goes:

If I'm doing something trans-unrelated (that is, +90% of my time), it's not only irrelevant, but it also tends to be a major distraction to whatever I'm enjoying at the moment. Well, it's not such a distraction to me, but since good many other (mostly cis) people stop dead in their tracks when trans is mentioned, there's good sense for me in not saying anything about my cis/trans -status. Unless, of course, I want to discuss it endlessly and run in infinite loops around their prospective prejudices, instead of the enjoyable activity of my choice. It's really, really hard to get why I prefer not to disclose, isn't it? ;-)
If I'm doing something trans-related, it might be relevant. But unless everyone else puts their cis/trans status on the table, oh, just forget about it. Sure we can discuss my sex and gender, but you go first. There is one exception, however:
Which is, when I decide that I want to discuss my experiences of growing up as a trans girl, living the trans woman's life - trans being relevant and something I want to discuss and feel comfortable discussing. This does not happen that often, except maybe in this blog. I've been known to discuss this sometimes.

Just like Cedar wrote, I don't feel educating people is the way to stop cissexist oppression. The way to stop oppression is for oppressors to stop their oppressive actions, and perhaps apologise, too, and make amends. Doesn't have that much to do with education. Doesn't, indeed, have too much to do with me. Oppression isn't that difficult to spot. In fact, whenever you feel a sudden urge to police other people's actions without being able to pinpoint concrete examples (as in not hypothetical, but something that has actually happened) of bad consequences of said actions, there's a fair chance you're about to oppress someone. One doesn't need education to stop this, just chilling out a bit, taking a deep breath and seeing that nothing awful will happen even if you don't engage in said oppression is probably enough.

Ever have a doctor misgender you?

2010-02-01T14:24:00.002+02:00

Ok, I might as well admit up front that the question is somewhat rhetorical for trans women, at least. I've been misgendered so many times in epicrises it's not funny any more - it's just stupid. I have been able to have it corrected a number of times, and I think misgendering no longer occurs in my medical papers, but I've to admit I haven't checked for a while.

Think about it for a while, though.

Some trans women get referred to as "genetic men" in their medical records. Not only is it false (the whole term is so full of fail you just need to take my word for it if you can't think yourself through it), but it is also intensely demeaning - it's like the dear doctor's trying to drag you down to gender hell again.

In general, we're supposed to trust our doctors. Trans women, on the whole, don't. It's pretty damn clear why, innit? No respect or trust for us, no respect or trust comes back.

It isn't rocket science. Trans women are referred to as women. Trans women are given trans woman -specific medications (i.e. none of that stupid menopause-level HRT - most of us are definitely not in our menopausal age). Trans women are listened to. Our needs and wishes are to be respected. No stupid patronising. And if our doctor visits are not about our trans-related medical needs, leave the trans bit alone. It's just not relevant.

Carto goes gender (and grows iden-titties), #3

2010-01-19T08:27:00.009+02:00

This is partially a response to a discussion on active and passive identities, but this is where I was headed anyway: why I prefer, and rather strongly at that, no identity actively whatsoever.

Firstly, on a philosophical level, I don't think identities are very real, or anything you should attach yourself to. I consider my identity to be rather ephemeral and passing, and I can't pin it down anywhere. To me, the question "what do you identify as?" is a bit meaningless: what would it change even if I did identify, say, as a woman? It might be a means to an end for me, sure, if I felt like I wasn't a woman already - a means to map out possible ways of being. But I can do that in other ways, too. If I feel like putting on culturally coded stuff, be that behaviour, looks, anything, I already can, resources permitting. If I want to behave in a genderqueer way, there's nothing stopping me. The question of what am I, what do I identify as is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant to me, and if forced, I'll just say I identify as myself.

This approach has its caveats. Firstly, there's the question of resources, and safety. I can very well say I can do whatever I want, but the fact is that if I haven't the resources needed - say, social networks for going out and partying the night away - I, in fact, can't. So the freedom isn't quite as expansive as it could be, if given infinite resources. Secondly, there's the question of me doing stuff that provokes reactions from other people: I, for example, cannot fuck around with gender in just any way if I want to live unharassed. The two are not mutually compatible in practice.

Secondly, what people in linked posts call passive identities tend to trump any active identity any time you're dealing with potentially stressful situations with people not entirely respectful of you. What you're being passed as tends to overrun whatever identity you claim whenever it'd be really important for you to be recognised as, passed as what you are (or identify as, in identity-speak). Whenever there's a disagreement, the majority vote seems to hold the sway. Now I don't think this is right, or an agreeable situation, but I think this is the way it is, here and now. For examples, have a look at stories on trans women in your local newspapers. Are they misgendered? Sensationalised? In my corner of the world, those two things are almost a rule. When the local newspaper (Helsingin Sanomat, 24th of Jan, page C1 in case you're interested) did a whole page piece on Jin Xing (she's coming to dance in Finland), what did they write about? That's right - it was her transition that got the attention - dancing was mentioned in passing ("the best dancer in the world"), and the writer didn't connect the two in any meaningful way I could decipher. Why bring her trans status up at all, then?*

Thirdly, I'm not that hopeful on humanity. I really don't think we can stop other people clinging to their silly ideas about how everything in the world is easy to chop into discrete sets of stuff: men, women, girls, boys, sick, healthy. It might be possible to change it if there was the good will plus willingness to understand and the humility to accept we're colossally wrong every now and then, but I don't think that exists. We're not always good, we're certainly not humble every one of us and the willingness to understand people different from you is seriously lacking. So I don't think the respect for other people's self-declared identities is going to be the be-all, end-all solution to the problems of segregation, violence, oppression and discrimination.

I guess I'm less interested in frameworks, and more interested in solving practical problems, mine included. Like getting journalists (Wikipedia's another repeat offender) to stop shitting on trans women because we've transitioned every time one of us manages to do something wonderful and amazing and noteworthy - anything at all. Not everything we do can be derived from our transitions.

Writing the last sentence felt like talking down to someone particularly thick - I really think cissexuals should be able to get that bit on their own.

*yes, a trick question. Of course it's important to put the uppity trans woman in her place as a circus freak. God forbid they'd just write about her dancing when there's this unspeakable act of daring to raise against the gender forcibly assigned to her at birth. It's the modern-day equivalent of blasphemy.

Carto takes on gender, #2: It's Not About You, It's About Everyone Else!

2009-12-23T10:10:00.003+02:00

It is.

Maybe there's gender inside your head, maybe there's not. I don't know. There's probably some gender inside my head, but it matters precious little in my everyday life. What matters, hugely, is gender other people ascribe to me, you and aunt Tillie. Most people don't seem to care about identities at all - they just slop a gender on you, and if you're lucky, it sorta kinda fits, and if you're unlucky, it's a match made in hell - not only does it not fit, but other people are hell-bent on making you fit the gender.

A big part of gender lives in the perceptions of other people.

I think that's often missed in queer studies: the preferred position seems to be looking in, not out. Prominent questions being gender identities (how do you feel, on the inside?), gender presentation (how do you like to present yourself? - instead of asking myself why do I see you the way I do?), gender transgression (how/why do you transgress? - instead of why do I see the way you are as transgressing?).

The point of view is from an unknown, "neutral" observer to a queer "subject" - but the questions asked, and the answers given to them betray something else entirely: it's the observing subject that gets to ask the questions, and it's not the observing subject that questions hirself, or sees hirself as a subject, even - that bit of subjectivity is, more often than not, entirely hidden from view. It's replaced with a "subjectivity" (within very strict limits - questioning of the questioner is definitely not allowed) for the queer transgressor and a mock objectivity for the "neutral" observer. For samples, go read almost any of the big names: Butler, Foucault, Sedgwick, Halberstam - the list goes on and on. These people tell almost nothing of themselves yet proceed to dissect queer lives from a supposedly neutral standpoint of academia.

Well, I beg to differ. It seems to me gender is made by the observers. It's not entirely independent of the observations, but there's a lot of room for interpretation of observations, and this room is used by the observers to build, model and create gender - and this is the but that interests me greatly. It's also a bit that, AFAIK, hasn't been studied much. I'd call it the hermeneutics of gender (well, being the Gadamer-loving humanist I am, this is hardly a surprise). Why do we see the things the way we do is, in my opinion, the crucial question.

This point of view has also the helpful effect of removing the onus of being observed from us trans/queer/whatever people. It's not us. It's the people questioning us that really need to be questioned.

Carto takes on gender, #1

2009-12-08T18:21:00.005+02:00

I guess I'll be writing more than one of these.

Let me start with two common words that describe parenthood. Namely, mother and father. Both are gendered. Sure, they can be queered, but I wonder how many other people get that, without, at the same time, ungendering the subject that utters the word.

I prefer mother. I don't think this is surprising at all to anyone who knows the least bit about me - I really intensely truly dislike anything masculine pushed upon me, and given the choice I tend to opt for the feminine end of the spectrum. Not always, but very very often. I am cisgender - I don't feel uneasiness with being a feminine woman: it suits me.

However, I also intensely dislike pushing things upon others. I don't think it's a good idea to attribute motives, or prescriptive roles to other people. Calling someone a "mother" (or a "woman") can be precisely that kind of attribution. I find there are at least two ways of using words; you can use them to prescribe, to say what ought, in your opinion, to be, or you can use them descriptively, to say what, in your opinion, is. But the wording is mostly similar, and the usages are very often concurrent and inseparable.

Trouble is, I approve of descriptions. I think they're useful. I think descriptions help us people connect with each other. And I do try to avoid prescribing, but end up nevertheless, because if I want words to have intersubjective meanings, they have to be limited in those meanings. A word can't mean just anything whatsoever if it's to retain meaning - if a word can mean anything it will mean nothing.

So. WRT common, gendered words, I try to limit my usage to more or less common usages. I use words like woman, and man, and I try to use them descriptively - if someone looks, acts and gives an impression of being a woman I describe her as a woman. It's a phenomenological approach. I supplement this phenomenological approach with an additional caveat - if a subject declares herself as a woman, I take her word for it as a starting point. This does mean I describe self-identified women as women even if they don't look like women are conventionally thought to look like, and it means the word "woman" is open to reinterpretation - but it also means I make judgments on what the word "woman" can mean, what it can meaningfully point to. I can, of course, be criticised for my judgments, and indeed I welcome such criticism because, obviously, I can be in the wrong. And, mutatis mutandis, I try to follow this approach for all other words, too.

This means I also prescribe some meanings: I accept that responsibility. I don't think that can be avoided, so my choice is to accept it and try to be a mensch and not fuck up too badly.

So much for words pertaining to sex and gender.

Anniversaries of things past

2009-12-02T11:21:00.004+02:00

Sometimes I wish there was a working selective amnesia pill. I'd use it to forget the past pain. Specifically, the occasions where I had to be complicit in my own oppression - I'd say it happened partly due to my ignorance of the alternatives, but mostly due to the impossibility of me doing anything to better my situation. My case in point being my wedding, some ten-plus years ago.

So I played the groom. It feels horrible to remember it. It was so wrong. I was powerless to stop it - I did want to get married (or whatever) with that woman - in fact, I'm still civvied with her - she's perfectly lovely. But I can't feel joy or gladness about that day. Remembering it fills me with dread and horror. It's kinda the pinnacle of forced masculinisation - a woman is forced to marry as a man if she wants to marry at all. She's also supposed to feel happy about this.

Well I bloody well tried. But I can't keep it up any longer, and I suppose it is a lifelong sequence of days like this that make us trans women want to kill ourselves. I'd really like to remember my wedding day (typing this makes me cry) as a happy day, but I just can't. It was a black day, a day of forced masculinisation.

Trans Studies Reader #4: Serano

2009-11-24T08:57:00.000+02:00

Yup, there's nothing from Serano in the book. Serano's Whipping Girl was published in 2007.

But it's effect on my reading is rather thorough-going and pervasive.

Firstly, there's the terms. Cissexism, transmisogyny, misgendering - all very pertinent, all very much unavailable when Trans Studies Reader was published.

Then there's the change of attitude. And boy, is there a change! I can tell that this change of attitude has made me realise I can reclaim my past from the cissexist, misgendered, misogynist narrative as it's been told to me, and have it for my own. My life, as the female I was born, forcibly masculinised, boy- male- and man-ified by the society hell-bent on erasing my experience. Oh, the power of words!

"Trans" is an adjective. "Transsexual" is not something I have to identify with - other people can and do use words in some ways I find totally unacceptable, but before Serano I didn't have other options. I did know my experiences couldn't be described in the language I had, so I had to make do with what I had, but that's no longer the case. I can describe myself as cisgender, trans-bodied woman - it just sounds right and correct. It doesn't have the idiotic insistence on me being male - which I, most empathically, am not. It describes me and my relation to other people rather well, and it's not too difficult even for cisgender cisbodied people to understand, once they can wrap their heads around the idea that yes, we humans do misgender people, and that there's no way of knowing that until the affected people say so - and we should stop the hurtful (and stupid) misgendering from that point on, pronto.

Subversivism is another fine addition: whenever I'm seen as subversive because of I've "changed sex" I'm like, "say what?" I haven't changed my sex. I was born female, into a female body - our dear cissexist society just couldn't grok it and promptly assigned me male, and fought me tooth and nail when I wanted the mistake corrected. There's nothing inherently subversive in getting your records and body straight. There's nothing particularly antisubversive about it, either: it's neutral as far as I can see.

Anyway, back to the Transgender Studies Reader - it feels quaint, even, because of this. The language sounds a bit ancient, faintly insulting: ungendering trans women and men is such a common theme that runs through the book, as is giving precendence to birth-assigned sexes and genders - the implied headspace is pretty thoroughly cissexist, apart from certain exceptions (Jacob Hale and Donna Haraway, for example).

I feel a sea change coming. Into something rich and strange, perhaps?

Ideals and realities, BDSM, feminism and "safe"

2009-11-12T11:05:00.006+02:00

Well, ideals and realities never live up to each other, do they?

I've been discussing BDSM plus feminism a bit at another place (in Finnish, sorry), and I thought it might be worthwhile to write a bit about ideals, and especially about our (that is, all humans) permanent failure to actually live up to them. Fact is, we can't. Most of the time, we won't, either, and the fail that is us doesn't stop even there - we, in fact, make excuses for our failures, too.

So, not only do we fail at ideals, but we often don't even want to, and when we fail, we try to cover up our tracks, too.

I think this has a number of consequences. It means, firstly, that anything and everything we do, especially stuff that we pronounce to be strongly good, or bad, is probably somewhat suspect. We may well be right in our proclamations, but there's a distinct possibility we're just acting on our own interests, and not in a good way.

Secondly, I think it means we shouldn't be too surprised to find out that humans are fallible. That we make mistakes, sometimes honest, sometimes not - that other people eff up and then proceed to make it look like a tiny, understandable mistake when it in fact is not - is a basic fact about the way life is.

And thirdly - this fallibility is firstly and foremostly about you and me. Look in the mirror first.

I seriously think this applies to everything we do. Feminism, BDSM, Christianity, you name it, we can fuck it up.

I also think there's hope. Many ideals have the seeds of self-criticism built into them - feminism being one fine example. If you start by believing it's important to have a proper look at how gendering and sexing works, and how it benefits some and others not so much, you already have the necessary tools for having a look at your own privilege. You probably have to own up to some privilege yourself, too - and that's precisely what makes you safer to be with, from my point of view.

I feel safer with people who have had, and are having, a hard look at themselves. Sure they're bastards like everyone else, but they know they're bastards, so perhaps they are able to do something about it instead of watching themselves just do stupid, evil things and then excuse themselves with whatever (the old saw was "the Devil made me do it", but substitute Devil with an excuse of your choice). Bastards like me.

This is why I find BDSM not entirely incompatible with feminism. As long as practitioners can own up to their fuckups, take responsibility for them, make amends, recognise their own fallibility in all matters on this earth, and don't blame others for their own abuses of privilege, they're mostly safe people. Just like feminists. Or Christians. Or anyone.

Things I should've been writing about but haven't

2009-10-29T10:57:00.003+02:00

I'm reading more of Haraway and liking it quite a bit. Do yourself a favor and read her, if you can.

I should write something about Serano. Whipping Girl is turning out to be a watershed for many trans women, myself included. It's not so much about the content - many bits of the terminology were out there before Julia took it and put it together in such an appealing way - but it's precisely the totality of it that opened my (and by the look of it, many others', too) eyes to the depth cissexist thought permeates the world around us. Some good bits about how plain ol' sexism works, too - even in progressive circles.

I should write something about spirituality. All this politics dovetails my beliefs and they influence each other. I'm probably a Marxist, too, it seems. :D

I probably should write a bit about my new hobby, but I'm not too sure if I want to because of the problems disclosure might cause me. I should write about the difficulties a trans woman faces with health care professionals and other, supposedly helpful, people.

I'm physically too tired to do most of this. I'm not ill, just exhausted, but in a good way. I'm doing sports. Which is another thing I probably should reflect on. Oh well.

Cyborgs'r'us - Haraway's Manifesto: Transgender Studies Reader, #3

2009-09-20T13:28:00.004+03:00

This is one good bit of work: Haraway's concept of cyborg is very apt, and fitting of the trans condition in many ways, and it's hardly limited to that (I think it can be applied to cis womanhood easily, too), but as I'm not cis, I'll limit my comments to the bits that interest, fascinate and engage me, 'cos I'm so me me me, me.

Anyway: what I really liked about her piece, and what really spoke to me was her central concept of cyborg. That none of us cultural creatures are "natural" or can be clearly and cleanly differentiated from machines, or animals. That we don't exist as natural bodies, 'cos "natural" (as in opposition to unnatural, bit like "unfallen" vs. "fallen") does not exist for us, anyway. However we view it, the world is not separable from the concepts we use to map it, communicate it, think about it.

The other thing that I find real useful is the notion that there are no overarching systems of thought - no system can explain everything, and indeed, should not even attempt to do so - and that every system will distort whatever it views in some way. That systems of thought should be developed with this in mind, that there is no privileged narrative, no (absolute) ground on which to stand on, is so bang on in my mind I'm tempted to join some Haraway fan club and send her cookies.

This is the text that shows more than a modicum of understanding how science (as in physics, computer science, biology) works: that's excellent in my opinion, too - this text also isn't frightened of technology and the possibilities it offers, but seeks to subvert the aims for its own use, and embraces technology as a useful extension of our embodiments: this was written in 1984, and here we go, extending our embodiments in the cyberspace like this blog post, for example. If you think this text you're reading does not embody me, think again - who has written this? Who controls what happens with this text, here? Whose thoughts, whose formulation of them are you reading? How is this not embodiment? Where do I stop and you begin?

Then there's the "sod organic families" -bit that makes me cheer: "The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project." (105) The organic communities some of us are trying to find are simply stated completely unrealisable - give up: they're not to be found on some organic ground of being: we have to make them ourselves if we are to have them at all. There's no "natural" womanhood - there's only the womanhood we make, ourselves, and we should build it knowingly, accepting our real differences, building an alliance of women instead of an total, organic community, which would be an extension of the patriarchal origin anyway, a return to the primordial paradise which never existed.

I found some spiritual Christian value in Haraway's manifesto, too (113): I realised that in my theology, God/man binary does not exist - I don't do that dualism. For me, God is about incarnated God, God made flesh, God becoming human - there's no clearly defined limit, or a border, between God and human, which, incidentally, is reflected in the 5th century CE Chalcedonian Christological formula: "We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation. The distinction between natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person and one hypostasis." It's a contradictory formula, and precisely that is why it's so perfect: there can be no clear border, nor no no-border between God, and human, the tension remains. A rather cyborgian view of God and human, I'd say.

I can only agree with Haraway's call for "pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction": precisely that. Confused boundaries, esp. with regards to binaries, and responsibility in their construction are exactly what I'd prescribe to this society, and they're what I'm working towards, too: for my own small part I'm re-educating the doctors I meet on the need to draw the border between "men" and "women", between "female" and "male" in a responsible way that does not erase people and their experiences, nor endangers their access to health care. That such borders will inevitably be confusing and confused is, I think, a cause for celebration - a binary system can never hold the riot that is human sex and gender, nor should it try to: such subsuming would (and is), in my opinion, be of an extremely totalising and patriarchal in nature.

I wonder if there'll be anything better in the book? If there is, it has to be something totally gobsmacking.

with a h/t to Paula Sankelo.

Why so many people do accept one of the two socially sanctioned genders (myself included)?

2009-09-16T08:32:00.005+03:00

I realised I hadn't given this much thought, and I'd perhaps better. After all, I went through all that bother of transitioning - why settle for something relatively simple and normative, even, when I have had all the possibilities and dislike giving in to the norms, too?

Much as it shocked me, transitioning felt right when I did it. It wasn't just another of those things you do because it's convenient, because it saves a lot of hassle (although it did do all those things, too): I hugely enjoyed, and still enjoy, the results. I know it sounds trite, but this is how I was meant to live. This is the body I really needed to have. It felt physically good. I know, words don't seem convey what I'm trying to say, but it's like getting a proper meal after being hungry for a long time, and not knowing what food is like, even. Something you never knew even existed clicks into place and you realise what a huge, previously unknown hole there had been before.

And I don't know why. I really don't. All I have is speculation and conjectures.

Silly as it sounds, after vaginoplasty I felt whole. Part of it was no doubt psychological - no-one can take me back - but I suspect that wasn't all. How does one describe a body that feels right?

And, to continue the silliness, being a woman in this society feels right. It fits. While there still are very real problems in my life, there isn't the feeling of not fitting in, of not belonging. I still keep wondering if this how cises feel all the time. If they do, let me tell you they don't know how lucky they are.

This feeling highlights, of course, the horror that was living with untreated transsexuality. More on that elsewhere on this blog, and numerous other places - no need to go there now.

[ETA]

The reason why I accept one of the socially sanctioned genders is 'cos it fits. For the lack of better words, it just fits. I guess developing a proper answer to the question in the headline requires a theory I'm not sure even exists - a theory of fitting in, of normalcy. No-one seems to examine that. I wonder why?

On the limits of theories, both social and biological

2009-09-15T08:07:00.003+03:00

I quoted Nan Boyd in my last post about desperate attempts to save the foundations of sexual nationalisms. What I mean, more specifically, is that I find the attempts to save a clear-cut binary sex, or gender division rather funny: no clear binary exists, not in a biological sense (there's the pesky intersex, plus we don't exactly know how bodily sexing goes, and in order to have a clear binary, you really do have to know), and certainly not in a social sense - just go see your local genderqueers for a proof.

Moreover, there are some other fundamental problems, too: when we speak of biological sex, we are applying human-invented categories to phenomena we observe in nature, and it's pretty clear to me that the categories themselves are socially constructed, too - they're sure rooted in biology, but they're just as deeply rooted in human needs to categorise and dominate the world. There's no disentangling the social from the biological, or vice versa.

Which brings me to my point: sex and gender are interrelated in multiple ways, and we don't have a complete picture of how this happens - and it may well be we shall never have the complete picture. You see, when we're observing something outside ourselves, we have to classify it to be able to express the observations to anyone else in language - and when we do this, we're already bringing in the socially influenced apparatus of language, and, in effect, shall never have such a thing as pure, unbiased results. We can certainly try, and I'm not so pessimistic as to think we'll always be badly wrong, but I am confident we shall never get it totally right. We'll always be somewhat wrong. Strangely enough I find the thought comforting.

My second point is, social construction is on its own insufficient to explain sex or gender. If all gender really is socially, and socially only constructed, why does it fail so badly? Why does the construction make such a botched job of building two, and two only, genders and sexes? Why do people rebel against it? And on the other hand, why so many people do accept one of the two socially sanctioned genders (myself included)?

What I see, in my culture (big city, middle class, educated - I'm basically your privileged white girl except for the trans plus queerly sexual bits) is people who mostly toe the line when it comes to gender. They seem to be mostly happy with their sexed bodies, too. This is not to say they're happy with the very real inequalities between sexes and genders, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a substantial amount of women, or men, who are intensely unhappy about there being sex/gender combinations such as "women" and "men". The unhappiness lies - or is made to lie - rather solidly in the margins: those who do not want to, or cannot live the binary in the way they want, or need to.

Thus, the (political) problem of sex and gender is manifold: part of it is just plain ol' oppression - patriarchal, cisarchal, classist, the lot. Part of it is that binary sex and gender really seem to fit a large majority of people, and thus it's rather hard to see a future development where sexes and genders would be significantly more complex, and would thus open up the possibilities more easily for those who need or want them. Thus, a wholesale queering of everyone and everything is, in my opinion, an utopia: all very nice, but it's not going to happen because there's insufficient demand, and the benefits are not tangible enough for the majority to get really excited about. Heck, there's very little tangible benefit from seriously queered gender and sex to me now, as it is.

Going back to theories, a large part of the reason why current theories on sex and gender are so insufficient in my opinion is that there's so little research into how gender and sex works for the majority. So far, almost all research into sex and gender has focused on the "non-normative", on the "abnormal" bits, and as far as I can see, majority sex and gender has largely been ignored - it has been taken for granted, as if it was a simple question: "duh, everyone knows what a woman is". As if! I'd really like to see, say, a majority feminist organisation, or our national health system, really dig into its own practices of sexing and gendering - how does it do those, who are included in practice, who are excluded, why, what are their solutions to the practical problems of sexing and gendering that happens on the margins - as far as I can tell this isn't even documented, let alone analysed. The results should be interesting (probably shocking, too, in many ways).

Transgender Studies Reader, #2: Patrick Califia gosh darn

2009-09-14T19:10:00.004+03:00

What he writes about hormones is, like, that's what it's been like for me, too. Hormones change you in so many ways, and what they do to your thinking and to your sexuality is interesting (not to mention a huge relief, a lot of fun, and deeply satisfying to boot). For me, the direction was, obviously, different - I went from T to E. I cannot but feel a deep sympathy for Califia as he writes: "Perhaps transition will be an ironic experience for me, and I will discover that I remain the same person, having changed only my physical appearance. Now, that's a depressing thought!" (436) I thought like that, and I was right - and deeply wrong, too, as Califia himself suggests in the following passage about the effects testosterone (T) has had on him. Where he went, I have been - and I'm entirely of the opinion that if you're a man, that's the place for you, and in retrospect, I'm glad men really enjoy it - I couldn't, but no sour grapes over that: I'm not a man.

Nan Boyd's piece on the claiming of historical figures for lesbian, or transsexual visibility is good, too: a solid account of the facts, and it does seem I'm not the only one thinking "...despite anti-essentialist gestures to the contrary, contemporary sex/gender politics often document the absolutely desperate reiteration of bipolar gender as a foundation for sexual nationalism (431)." Bang on!

This is not quite the book I thought it'd be - I'll say right now I've been wrong on academic trans studies. There's a lot more to it than these literary theorists I've known about so far.

Cissupremacism

2009-09-14T08:44:00.002+03:00

I've been searching for a word to describe the attitude of the likes of Greer, Jeffreys, Raymond, Hausman and their ilk - the word is cissupremacism.

It's the belief that the sexes and genders embodied by cis bodies are better, more valuable, more real than the sexes and genders embodied by trans bodies. I really don't understand how this is compatible with feminism, but then again, I don't need to: I'm not trying to say it is.

Transgender Studies Reader, #1

2009-09-13T18:00:00.004+03:00

I'm reading the book by dipping in at points that interest me, and blogging about those bits - I'm not meaning to go through all of it, but might, should I feel like it.

Here goes:

Jay Prosser's essay was the first thing I read properly. Mostly rather impressive, the critique of Butler is spot on: she does seem to have this queer - straight -dichotomy, which is pretty silly considering she otherwise would seem to like to shun clear-cut divisions (265). Jay's take on the issue of queer inclusion is also spot on - I don't want to be included in genderqueer, 'cos I'm not genderqueer, as much as genderqueers might like to appropriate me. And damn straight I will raise hell if people try to subsume me under some great queer umbrella - my issues are mine, and while there certainly is room, and a need for, alliances, there's hardly any point in trying to build coalitions across such diverging needs. I don't, personally, need much more in the way of self-expression than I have now - I can live with the binary most of the time. It doesn't, of course, mean that I'd like to participate in oppression of genderqueer people: it's not right and it's got to stop. But I'm not genderqueer myself, and it's silly to try and queer me.

Prosser's essay has some interesting verbal slips going on. Jay uses the word "transsexual" as if it was a noun: "The transsexual doesn't necessarily..." (271). I find it really telling: calling people "transsexuals" instead of, say, "transsexual women" or "trans men" or "transsexual people", even, makes for an othering: there's the men, there's the women and there's the transsexuals.[1] This usage occurs in the context of speaking about transsexed bodies, and it's precisely this that's my biggest bone of contention with academic trans studies.

For all their talk about the social construction of gender, they still seem to fall back onto biological sexes as a ground of sexed being (I can live with that) - but they don't seem to read much biology to notice there's plenty about the process of sexing a body that we know precisely nothing about. There is no such thing as a clear, biological sex. There are no "naturally" sexed bodies. What there is, is an assigned sex, and assigned gender. The biological sex of the body need not (and in fact sometimes is not) congruent with the assigned sex, no matter how fine you slice it, because we do not know everything there is to know about the biological process of sexing.

Please take bodies seriously. Please take people's own descriptions of their bodily existences seriously, and do not try to force-fit them into your theories, no matter how well-meaning, nice, or nasty those theories are. Theories should follow from observations, not the other way round, even if you're in the humanities.

Prosser's analysis of the Butler's less-than-nice entanglement with Livingston, the director of the film "Paris is Burning", and the revelation of Butler's and Livingston's vested interests in portraying Venus Xtragavanza in the way they do is pretty bloody excellent - and it also makes my blood boil (275-277). How the fuck do they dare? That's such a clear-cut case of a) appropriating Latina trans woman's experience and b) an attempt at colonisation of our lives as "performative". I don't bloody perform myself. I am myself.

Prosser's relative ease with which ze (I've absolutely no idea how ze likes hirself to be referred to - thus, gender-neutral pronouns) talks about "the difference between sex and gender identity" (279) is also pretty cis- and perhaps queercentric: not all of us do identity at all.

Jacob Hale's piece was pretty damn good. It gave me a new respect for the work of Monique Wittig - her very pertinent question of if lesbians are women opens up multiple new ways of questioning sex and gender, and Hale's analysis of how the "natural attitude" toward gender works is simply excellent (286-290). If you're cis and read only one passage from this book, I'm pretty confident this is the bit you should read. It deconstructs the common currency of gendering thoroughly and analytically. It refers to Kessler and McKenna (in the same book) - and it's based on actual research, instead of just pontifications in a university study. Hale's attitude towards gender mirrors mine (it has to be consensual), so this is perhaps not too much of a surprise.

With Dean Spade I take some issues - especially his attitude towards people like me, who do vies transsexuality an unfortunate disease with a good treatment (hormones, surgery, lifestyle changes - all of it or any bits you like): his final statement on page 329, that I somehow undermine the threat to a dichotomous gender system which trans experience can pose is a bit rich. That I've transitioned, that I've had my body modified in ways suitable to me, that I live the life I want to live, and have rejected almost everything gendered/sexed that this society has tried to force on me - if this is not rebellion, I sure don't know what is. I just don't insist I'm something third, something different from other women - I insist I'm a woman just like all other women, and that this society simply fucks up when it forcibly assigns all people a gender, and a sex, without asking them, and without giving them an option of opting out of it altogether or changing those assigned characteristics at will. I know my experience, my lived life, has rocked the bedrock of many people, and frankly I think it rocks it all the more because I'm cisgender. Trans, sure, but cisgender. I can't be written off as a weirdo quite as easily as the majority can write off anyone visibly very variant. My relative assimilation is precisely the threat. I'm one of those cases where the forced sexing really bungled it up.

This is a common problem with theories - theoreticians would like to subsume all experience under their theory, and when something unpalatable appears, it's shoved under the rug as "wrong consciousness" or "bad politics" or some such gobbledygook. Academic theories my experiences trump not.

That's that for now - have a nice week!

[ETA notes]
[1] "transsexual" is an adjective. This is why I write "trans woman", not "transwoman". It's similar to black, white, long-haired and so on.

How ciscentric writing on trans issues makes me feel

2009-09-11T21:57:00.005+03:00

In a word: awful.

In more words: it's like peering into the mind of an almost alien species. The way ciscentric people privilege their own view on sexes and genders is just breathtaking. They try really hard to believe they can get the sexing-at-birth -bit right, when it's bloody obvious to me they can't.

They also don't seem to recognise this. Acronyms FTM and MTF are a nice case in point: why the hell would the initial mistake be relevant in categorising people? It's like calling a divorcee a wife-to-divorcee - as if the first bit was somehow relevant to what she is today.

Cises don't want to admit they're cis - they'd much prefer "normal", for which there's the very handy counterpart "abnormal" which is reserved for riff-raff like me. Using words like "woman" to mean "cis woman" is a nice case of this.

Then there's the bit how the cis don't seem to get it's a different thing to be a girl than to like girls: the conflation of sexuality with sex/gender is pretty common, too. They're related, sure, but if you like to peer into that more closely, I think it's easy to notice it means there's a lot more genders and sexes than two - if sex/gender and sexuality are linked, it kinda means lesbians are a different sex from het women...

...and it means that the words homosexuality and heterosexuality lose their meanings, too. For how can one be homosexual if there's no opposite, or same with regards to sex/gender? We're all heterosexuals, but that means the word "heterosexual" doesn't denote anything on top of "sexual" any more. Words like "androphile" and "gynophile" and "sapphophile" would be more meaningful, perhaps. Once you mess around with the binary, you do lose a lot of words, and there are very few, if any, alternatives. I find it very telling that both "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" are used without questioning so widely even in gender studies, where otherwise gender is seen as something more complex than either woman or man.

Oh yeah, it makes me angry as a hornet, too.

Why academic writing on trans is pretty shite, short version

2009-09-07T21:31:00.002+03:00

Has it ever occurred to anyone academic that we just might simply be mistaken about sexes and genders every now and then when we do the initial, forced sexing? Anyone?

(have been browsing Transgender Studies Reader. It's pretty awful reading, to be honest. I'm not sure if I can manage to read it all - the mistakes and the hate reeks so badly. If I was a Roman Catholic I'd perform an exorcism on the book)

I'll write something better when I'm up to it. But yeah, it makes for pretty godawful reading.

Go see a picture of a normal woman

2009-09-02T17:54:00.003+03:00

Yeah, that's right. There it is: Vitamin G Health & Fitness: glamour.com

I read about it in the Guardian, and what really stopped me in my tracks was her measurements. Which are the same as mine. I've never, not once in my life have imagined myself to be the same size as someone who models, let alone looks like that. Of course I don't look exactly like her, but oh shit it is a revelation to realise I'm roughly speaking the same size as that thin, pretty woman in that picture. I never thought I'd write anything like this, but thanks, Glamour, you made my day!

Why STP2012 doesn't feel right

2009-08-30T17:33:00.003+03:00

Yay depathologisation? Err, no.

The fine folks at STP2012 are asking for "the despathologization of the trans identities (transexual and transgender) and their retirement from the manuals of disorders (teh DSm from the American Psychiatric Association, which’s newly revised version is due in 2012, and the CIE from the World Health Organization, due in 2014)"

Umm, count me out from the ICD (CIE) bit.

I don't identify as trans-something. Other people label me as trans (fuck I hate this identity shit. See iden-bugger-tity for a further explanation).

I do think it's not necessarily pathological to be trans, but yeah, for me having a dissonant body was pathological. And damn I'm happy my body no longer feels like it has all kinds of features not requested - I'm happy, too, that my endocrine works with me instead of against me. What I was before medical treatment was pathological. I was sick.

It just wasn't a mental pathology. It was a bodily pathology. But it was a pathology, and I cannot support a flat-out depathologisation of something that very well felt totally pathological to me. Removal from the lists of mental diagnoses? Oh yes.

Removal from the list of all diagnoses? Well, no, not in my opinion, no.

I suspect this might have something to do with the different meanings of "trans": for some it's an identity, for others it's a label - and it has these several, overlapping meanings. Say, trans as pathology is something I'd define as existing until the said person with a trans pathology has that pathology cured, whatever the method. HRT, surgery, change of lifestyle - anything. Trans as an identity I don't really get, and I'm yet to come across an explanation. Trans as a descriptor, a label for people who are not cis I do get, and in that respect I'm definitely trans. I think trans has all those meanings, and while there's nothing pathological about identifying as trans or about being trans wrt cis, I'm of the opinion that there is something pathological about some trans bodies - pathological enough that the bodies need to be fixed. I hope this could be taken into account when going for political changes. Otherwise I see public funding for treatments diminishing from the very little there is now, and even less than the practically nonexistent research into trans bodies, which I think there's a desperate need of. Public funding helps the poorest, most vulnerable, and medical research into trans bodies helps the medical treatments become safer, saner and more effective, thus helping more.

Oh well

2009-08-28T09:59:00.000+03:00

Need I say more?

Self-censorship

2009-08-27T20:38:00.005+03:00

or, why it is so difficult to be an outspoken trans woman even within the feminist blogosphere

It's pretty obvious it is difficult to be thus, isn't it? It's not like there's hordes and hordes of us to start with, and even less who are willing to engage with the feminists (or anyone, for that matter) after our transitions are done and dealt with.

Firstly, there's the age-old issue of out/closeted, which is not the same wrt cis/trans axis as it is for people along homosexual/heterosexual -axis (which I consider to be a bit of a ruse, but I digress). Speaking from the position of a trans woman is fraught with difficulties: there's always the old transphobic tropes (for a list, see QT, under Trans 101), the endless derailing and decentring of trans concerns, but, and I think this is even more important, there's a real risk of humiliation, ostracism and violence, not only in the academia/blogosphere, but in the meatspace we live in. Woman's trans status can, and is often used to beat her into submission. "Outing" someone as trans puts the woman thus outed at risk. If you don't believe me, just dig a bit at your local newspaper archives and see for yourself how trans women are depicted. There are a number of common features: there's the degendering by the use of her old name; printing pictures of her forcibly masculinised* is pretty common, too. All that is simply crap one doesn't want to deal with, and while silence is quite a price to pay for avoiding that crap, it's pretty understandable.

Secondly, because of our rather unprivileged pasts with regards to feminism, women's studies, gender studies, queer studies and what have you (no, in case you were wondering, those fields did (and maybe do) not welcome trans girls into the fold of feminism and queer: trans girls are more often than not gendered as boys, or men, and are hardly given the same space to explore their sexes and gender the way female-assigned-at-birth -people are. Cissexism does not stop at the door to academia.

So, when I look at the queer studies I do recognise the stuff there is pretty vital to my thinking, but I also feel I'm not welcome. I feel the thinking I do is rather far from the atmosphere they're breathing, and while I do think there's value in my perspective, I find my perspective hard to communicate and possibly triggering hostile responses. I'm not always up to that hostility.

I'll write another piece on my perspectives - at least I can give them a home here.

In short, I don't believe the binary system at all. There is gender, but there's a lot more of them than two. I think lesbian woman is a different gender (and maybe sex, too) from heterosexual woman. I think femme is a different gender from butch, or from heterosexual woman. When I use words like "woman", "man", or "heterosexual", my mind has to make these somersaults to translate what I'm thinking into cis-ese. I think of sexualities in terms of attractions: what do you like? If you like snogging bearded men, you're "snogs-bearded-men-sexual" for all I know. If you're a bearded man yourself, more power to you, but it doesn't mean squat as far as your attractions are considered.

The violent game which cises play with genders makes me sick. I don't want to play, but fucking up the system totally has such a high price I cannot pay it on my own, and not playing is not an option. I play, but not willingly. I play 'cos cis men might smash my face in for not playing, for telling it like it is - that cis boys and men brutalise trans girls and women and force them (and yours truly in the past) to pretend to be boys and men. I play 'cos cis women might simply dump me for not playing. I play 'cos it seems to be the price of admission into the society of humans, and I cannot survive on my own.

But in my heart, I want to smash the cisarchy.

[ETA 21:36 EEST: * forcibly masculinised: this what the cises might call "when she was a man" Trans girls and women do not choose to be assigned and raised as boys and men - it is forced. It's not voluntary, and very often, violence is used to enforce compliance.]

I may come to regret this

2009-08-25T18:51:00.002+03:00

I started commenting on Finnish blogs. While I do like to natter in my mother tongue, it's also a fact that there's just a tad over 5 million of us here in this land. And it is a very, very small number. It means everyone knows everyone else. It means, feh, that there's a bit of a mob mentality to us Finns. A small bunch of us can ruin stuff here easy: it doesn't need a huge number of slightly dodgy politicians plus businessmen to concoct the latest disgraceful episode in our interior politics: a few people giving largish sums of money to a couple of dozen politicians is enough to rot politics - there not being a larger body of politicians who wouldn't be involved: everyone is, it seems.

Anyhoo, I hope I won't regret a couple of comments here and there. I just don't trust people who are, technically at least, my people.

Pap smears, doctors, medicine - sometimes things just run smoothly

2009-07-30T16:32:00.002+03:00

Had a pap smear today: yeah, I know, it's not absolutely necessary, but since the municipality suggested I have one on them, I thought, what the hell, might as well.

I was, of course, nervous as hell before. It's not exactly unusual for trans women to be a little wary of health care professionals, as they have rather unpalatable tendencies to misgender and otherwise belittle and denigrate us - I was prepared to be treated weirdly, but still hoped for the best. That's likely due to my dear spouse, who reminded me that it might go well, too.

Well, it did. And I explained that sorry, I haven't got a cervix, nor do I have an uterus, but yes, I do have a vagina, and it's got a skin graft at the bottom of it, so unless you mind that, go ahead and take the smear. Which the friendly nurse proceeded to do, very professionally. It nipped a bit, but nothing else. Five minutes in all.

I'm feeling hopeful.

Out and closeted

2009-06-27T12:13:00.006+03:00

This was the second thing cis lgb individuals had a hard time understanding. Being out as trans is different to being out as a lesbian, say. Both can be dangerous, true, but they're not even remotely the same if you happen to be binarily gendered, like I am.

It's 'cos I don't feel particularly trans, and I'm not probably even remotely genderqueer in any way. My sexuality's queer, thank you very much, but my gender is woman, and my sex is female. There isn't anything special there. And being out about the history of my body is, frankly, a completely ridiculous thought. The only people who really need to know are the people I have sex with, if the said sex would involve something a trans body is not capable of, and a cis body is capable of, or if my personal history is really relevant to the things I'd be doing with my lover. It might, but it's my call - after all, I'm responsible for my life, health and all such, not anyone else.

And as to being queerly sexual? Well, it's not much good being out about that, either, 'cos I'm monogamous, and partnered with a woman, which means I'm effectively read as a lesbian, and it's not too wrong - I really do love women and all that lesbian stuff, and again - why should my queer sexuality concern other people so much 'cos I'm not gonna be doing it with them anyway? And if I am - let me tell you, I can open my mouth and say what I like.

But being out as a lesbian? I think I do that as a matter of course. The sex/gender of my partner's no secret, and the fact that we have a, erm, carnal relationship can't really be missed by anyone who's seen us together for more than a few hours. It's no big deal being out with that, 'cos it's something anyone can see - I don't have to go out of my way to explain it to anyone (ok, there are those odd people who just don't get it that two women kissing each other on the mouth is, like, homosexual, but they're beyond my help anyway) - they can just see all of it in action and that's that.

Whereas my trans past/trans body needs a whole encyclopedia of explaining that almost no-one really needs to know, and can't figure out on their own because it doesn't change things for them in any practical way unless they're having the transphobic cooties.

So. I think when well-meaning (or not) cis homosexual people want someone trans to be out about their cis/trans status, they're really wanting that trans person to be a miner's canary for transphobia. Of which the cis people themselves don't have to suffer any consequences. So it's kinda unfair, and I'm not playing along.

It's also about establishing and maintaining practical power differentials: it's about keeping us uppity trans women in our place: Lord forbid what'd happen if we were just taken to be regular people with control of our lives. If cis people aren't constantly reminded of my past they tend to slip into the realisation that I actually am a woman, which is kind of a tacit acknowledgement that all that sexing-at-birth went titsup anyway, and doesn't really work. Which destabilises cis sexes and genders quite a bit, because if sexing went wrong with me, what's stopping it from going wrong for everyone? It also puts the cis on equal footing with the trans, which might be a bit unsettling for the cis, too - no "other" to define yourself against.

Oh yeah, and if you're cis and don't like being called cis - tough titties. I didn't choose to be labelled as trans, either.

And, gasp, it's the C of E that delivers, plus some thoughts on why I'm so angry

2009-05-22T23:06:00.003+03:00

Really. I'm a bit envious, TBH - the Church of England folks actually invite trans people in their steering groups (or some such thing). I'd never had believed it but yeah, it really seems to be true.

The less-perplexed-by-teh-trans people at the conference have asked me a few really good questions, too - they're not that hard to answer, but asking them does bring home, to me, a few points.

Firstly, we're a wee bit doomy and gloomy, us trans women. And angry as hornets. Why is that, they wonder? It's kind of obvious to me, but for the record, here it goes: I'm angry as hell 'cos I've been forcibly masculinised throughout my childhood. I've a very hard time trusting anyone, let alone trusting their good intentions. Every time I've trusted in the past, I've been let down - because I've trusted other people understand I'm a girl even though I did look a bit like a boy on the outside. I admit that my trust was misplaced, but the problem is that when those things happened, I was a minor. There was no way on this earth I could've understood my problem, or rather, the problem other people were having with me. I couldn't grasp the idea that a) I was not a boy, but a girl, contrary to everything everyone said to me, and b) I'd really better communicate this to other people ASAP and get them round to treating me like the girl I was.

The upshot was this: I was forced to be a boy, on pain of physical violence. I sucked at it big time, but as I was unable to see an alternative, try I did. It left scars. I couldn't trust anyone. I couldn't trust anyone do right by me for decades. Please think about that for a minute. I'm all new (well, less than a quarter of my life) to this trusting business, and with a huge emotional baggage to boot. Is it such a wonder if I'm a bit leery of trusting other people; if I'm a bit apprehensive of others? Or that I'm a bit angry at what's been done to me?

European Forum of LGBT Christians

2009-05-20T20:09:00.003+03:00

Yah, I'm attending. I'm not too optimistic, to be honest - I'm kind of expecting a fair bit of cluelessness on issues trans, yet I am hoping for something better. I really really want to know what's going on in churches all around the Europe wrt trans - I feel the news aren't going to be too good. From what I've heard elsewhere, Eastern Europe is not quite a paradise for anyone on the trans spectrum. In fact, it's probably deadly to be trans and out.

Oh how I hope there'll be some glimmers of hope, similar to the latest developments in DSM-V rewrite: the suggestions by Kelly Winters and Randall Ehrbar are almost too good to be true. On my first reading there is precious little what I'd change in that suggestion - I hope APA gets the hint. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Give girl a tin of pencils

2009-05-15T22:04:00.003+03:00

Bought some colour pencils. Am happy.

Fighting back

2009-05-04T09:15:00.004+03:00

We really need to. I can't be happy and content in a world where cis boys brutalise trans girls.

I can't stand the exotification of me and my peers, I'm not a new, empty continent for cis academics to colonise. I already have a civilisation. I already have a culture. It's mine. It has words and contexts and concepts for my life, my things - and y'know what? It's not a cis playground. Not even if cis intentions are good. It's my space, and I decide who enters, and on what conditions, and I decide, too, if they have to leave, or are invited further in.

I will not tolerate a medical establishment that's intent on exotification and othering of non-cissexual people. We're people who need medical help - we're not guinea pigs for testing the latest theories on transsexuality. We don't, actually, need much research on transsexuality - I couldn't care less why I am, or was, this way. I care a lot about my health, my hormonal balance, my overall health. Do they research that? Nah. Of course not. Are our endocrine systems routinely checked for any possible oddities? If you're lucky and know what to demand. Are our HRTs monitored carefully? Well, yes, if you're lucky and know what to demand. Does your ob/gyn know what to look for? Yes, if you're lucky and know... I think you can see the pattern here.

How do we go about changing it? To be honest, I haven't a clue. Educating only takes you so far, and it's incredibly slow, and doesn't seem to have the power to bring about the kind of sea change I want. It's too slow, and too tedious, and too damn classist if every transitioner has to explain everything to every single doctor they meet - the poorest haven't got the resources to get the same doctor time and again, nor can they choose as easily as, say, I can.

I have educated my doctors. Both my GP and my ob/gyn are well aware of my bodily differences, and my HRT is monitored and managed well. But it's not enough! It's not good enough that one middle-class, educated, white trans woman can get what she needs - it should be routine for everyone, not just me.

How the hell does one take on the whole medical establishment?

Iden-bugger-tity

2009-04-23T18:50:00.004+03:00

I identify as myself. I don't, on the whole, identify as something, be that a nationality, gender, sex, religion or something else.

I am a woman. I am Finnish. I am female. I am Christian. I don't prefer to be identified as any of those - it's not about my preferences, it's about who I am, almost to the point of whether I like it or not. Identifying carries the meaning of someone - that would be me - doing the identifying. But I don't do it. I just am, there's no doing in my being. They're different for me.

I cycle to work occasionally - I don't identify as a cyclist. Cycling to work doesn't define me, not for myself anyway. It may, of course, prompt other people (or even me) to see me as a cyclist, or it may not, but it's not me doing the identifying for the most part.

In fact, identifying oneself as something has this faint air of deception in my ears - the logic being that if you have to identify as something, it seems almost as if it needs extra work, and that identification doesn't really flow from you like apples from an apple tree. Identifying as something has also a bit of an effort to it - and that kind of an effort is something I leave undone with extra pleasure: can't be arsed, kthxbai.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, some people like to think I identify as something - they like to think I am doing my being. I know, it won't change me, and I don't, on the whole, mind it much - I've lost hope on most people understanding things anyway, but I do like to point out that it's kinda silly to impute motives on other people (that is, yours truly) - it's much better if you ask, and don't get defensive if you don't get the answer you were expecting. And please, pretty please don't try to shoehorn the answer you may get into some standard formula of yours - please give it a fair consideration, and don't be too quick to judge what does, and what does not, exist.

I promised myself

2009-04-20T08:36:00.002+03:00

It's an old Nick Kamen song from the 80s, but it's very relevant today. I just turned 40.

I promised myself when I was thirty that I'd sort out my gender issues before forty, and I did. Looking back, I realised yesterday that I've fulfilled my dreams. I wanted to get rid of my persistent, gender-related pain, I wanted a home where I'd have a space to read books and do a bit of art, I wanted a relationship, I wanted to learn how to use and move my body - I wanted to become a learned, well-read woman. I am that just now.

I wonder where I should go on from here: the world is open to me - it's not like I don't have my limitations: as a mother of two I can't just go on a lark, but I'm not doing the mothering alone so I'm not absolutely bound to my children, either.

I'll likely do a bit of activism: the dealing with health issues was pretty exhausting and now that it's been over for some years I feel some strength coming back to me: I've already managed to be booked for a couple of talks on gender issues and transitioning, and, lucky me, it isn't about me me me and whatitsgotbetweenitslegs but about cissexism and all that other, actually important stuff. Like, discrimination and fighting back and reading your context so you can fight back most effectively. Exciting, really!

Happy for now

2009-04-14T22:15:00.003+03:00

Easter was good, I actually feel I'm doing religion once more. A bit of introspection resulted in some actions and I'm hopeful I'll find something interesting and lovable about myself sometime in the nearish future. Gosh, I'm happy to be alive for a change. Oh, and the fishing season's started, too. No fish, just standing on the riverbank waving a carbon stick and watching the spring flood, which hadn't quite subsided enough for the river to be fishable. Planning summer already, too.

The well of darkness

2009-04-09T21:50:00.002+03:00

The depth of darkness inside my soul opened again this evening. I'm glad. The depth I hadn't quite forgotten sprang into life, and there I was - in the dark night of the soul, waiting for my Lord. Words fail when trying to describe it.

In the deepest darkness stars shine brightest.

Persuasion

2009-04-06T21:00:00.001+03:00

Come to the dark side, we have cookies...

Chattering red bushes and birch thickets

2009-04-06T18:52:00.005+03:00

Reddish bushes, a bit closer now.

A thicket of birches. These birches were but wee saplings when I lived near them, and I was but a chit of a girl. I've grown into a woman, and these trees have grown, too. I wonder how long they're let grow there - how long before someone cuts them down. I hope they can put up a fight. I know I will, if someone tries to cut me down to size. For several decades, I didn't. I know better now.

Trees

2009-04-05T18:52:00.008+03:00

Three trees in a row. They remember the house that was next to them. Forgot to take pics of the paved stones forgotten on the ground when the house was demolished. The trees likely protect the small, reddish bushes next to them...

I really like trees. Especially trees next to each other. Trees with roundish tops are a fav, too - like in that picture.

Those trees grow near the place where I came of age. Now they remind of a past, of a has-been, although the trees themselves have grown, too. They're not the same they were twenty years ago, but they're not wholly different, either. I like the way the trees seem to protect the small, reddish bushes next to them, and the tree trunks' rhythm provides a base for the perhaps quiet chattering of the bushes. Of which I've photos, too.

Food and me

2009-04-04T20:46:00.003+03:00

I think it's safe to say I've a problematic relationship with food. I've used it to numb emotions. The risk is still there, and it seems to realise itself occasionally (I'm typing this with a bowl of jelly beans, so there).

Well, bugger me if I know why things went this way for me. It may be something that happened during my childhood, it may be something else. It's not really material to the discussion, as knowing why something has happened doesn't necessarily help you to fix it.

Anyhoo. I'd really like to give up comfort eating, at least in the sense I do it, 'cos it's not too comforting. I don't want to shove sickening amounts of candy into yours truly just because I happen to feel off. I'd really like to find a better way to defuse the feelings I have hard time coping with.

On the other hand, a disordered relationship with food is just the thing for a hip, with it, girl to have. I mean don't we all? And what's the choice? How would one resolve anger, fear and dissociation? Talking cures are slow, and they cost an arm, a leg and then some. Plus they might be just a waste of money should the care provider freak out. Which they do, unfortunately.

Self-care is something I really suck at - other people may not notice 'cos I compensate by dressing nicely, having my hair just so and all that jazz: and the compensation's very nice in itself, too. Dressing nicely is, properly speaking, part of self-care. But I have a nagging feeling there's more to self-care than just hitting the gym and dance classes regularly. It's probably bodily self-care I've taken my first shots at, but it does seem it has to be extended to my feelings and probably some other things, too. 'cos stuffing my face with sugar is oh-so-very familiar way of numbing out difficult stuff, and I'm sick and tired of numbing out - I want to be free of that crap, or at the very least be able to recognise my triggers so I'll know what to look out for.

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

2009-03-19T11:41:00.003+02:00

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

2009-03-16T09:04:00.002+02:00

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

2009-03-09T09:27:00.006+02:00

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

2009-03-05T10:00:00.008+02:00

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).

Not all of you

2009-02-27T21:34:00.003+02:00

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.

The stress of not being cis

2009-02-20T11:16:00.007+02:00

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.

Why I don't feel safe around white cis women (queer or not)

2009-02-09T11:18:00.006+02:00

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.

Makeup or face paint?

2009-01-10T21:42:00.006+02:00

I bought a blush yesterday - it was a fancy Clarins thingy that likely cost a tad too much to be a totally sensible purchase, but I can live with Clarins, and I do like pretty stuff. Which then prompted me to think a bit about my face paint. Or makeup.

You see, I do art, too. Regular, watercolour painting. It's just a hobby, but I like it, have done it for years. Nothing spectacular about it. If I mention that I paint for a hobby, people want to see piccies and usually respond admiringly enough, thank you very much.

I also make up my face. Practically every day. I think it started as a desperate exercise to look at least a tiny bit the way I wanted to look like, but I like the way I look in the mirror today in any case, makeup or no. Yet I still like to make up my face. It's my everyday art. I brush most of the stuff into place, just like I do with other paints and mediums. Enjoyable, nothing much to it.

The culture I live in, however, treats makeup and other paints differently. Art stores do not sell face paints, even though they sell watercolour pans, tubes, oils, acrylics, pastel sticks, you name it, they've got it. Makeup is sold in cosmetics shops, department stores - it's definitely not just face paint. And, living in this culture, it can't really be just face paint when I use it, either. No matter how neutral its use is for me - it isn't that much about me, but about others.

On the other hand, one could argue that face art doesn't differ from other art that much as it does play with meanings, just like any art. It's just that the meanings given to face painting in my Western, white culture are somehow culturally separated from other forms of painting.

First of all, face painting is a decidedly feminine pursuit. The only masculine applications of it that I know of are military camouflage sticks, used probably to hide amongst trees and foliage with guns: a relatively rare pursuit. Makeup on feminine people, on the other hand, is not rare: it's common.

Why, then, all this explaining when I just bought a blush? Well, I did feel a tad guilty about it, even though I hardly feel guilty about buying a couple of full pans of watercolour paint - which, incidentally, costs just as much as that blush did. So why, then, would I feel weird about buying face paint? There's no rational reason to feel like that. Unless I buy into the silly notion that feminine stuff is frivolous and not really worthy of serious attention and care. Which I don't, in principle, but in practice it seems I do. Silly me. My face paint is just as important (or unimportant, depends on the day I guess) as my other paints.

(I should write more on this, but can't be arsed right now - I'll get back to it later)

Bindel

2008-12-18T21:59:00.004+02:00

Y'know, the off-white stuff that sticks to the tip of your dilator - greasy, slightly acidic smelling paste composed of dead skin cells, lubricant and probably some bacteria, too.

Actually, I was slightly worried when bindel appeared for the first time - I thought it was due to some sort of vaginitis, but since it doesn't really smell foul, I figured it isn't dangerous. A visit to the ob/gyn confirmed this, as did a call to the surgeon. Just a byproduct of my slightly variant biology. ;)

Bugger all cis people

2008-11-26T10:30:00.004+02:00

The heading says it all, really. I'm just sick and tired of cissexual storytelling. Sick and tired of sensationalistic press, telly, radio, the lot. Even if the terms have become slightly less insulting, the basic, underlying attitude hasn't. We're still the exotic, weird, freaky. We're still not quite human.

Oh, and the endless, wonderful, cissexual fascination with our genitalia, as if we were animals in a zoo. Which we are, it seems. Animals in a cissexual zoo, monsters that have to be locked up in a cage built from cissexual privilege and oppositional sexism. Some of us are let out occasionally, if we promise to behave ourselves and not upset anyone and promise to tell anyone who wants to know everything about our bodies, lives and especially genitalia, and promise to keep it to ourselves unless asked, too.

Because, really, what would happen if cissexuals couldn't be absolutely certain the border between cis and trans is impermeable? They might have to accept that cis privilege is built on our backs. They might have to accept some uncertainty about themselves. The whole damn sexist project might just collapse if it were generally known that the cissexual emperor really doesn't have any clothes on. The whole patriarchy would be shaken if it were admitted that yes, femininity is despised and hypersexualised, and it is wrong. That femininity is perfectly ok, and not in any way of lesser value than masculinity. Hey, heterosexual men might start wearing dresses!

Taking an exception to separating sexes and genders and whatnot

2008-11-18T08:43:00.003+02:00

I've become less and less satisfied with the way trans sexes and genders are talked about even in "progressive" circles: my main point of objection being the separation of a person's sex and gender into several unconnected, or very loosely connected, entities. Biological this. Chromosomal that. Psychological whatever. And it doesn't happen to non-trans people: it's trans people who are singled out for this treatment.

For the record, I have one sex and one gender and they are one and the same: I'm a woman. There's no meaningful way to "multigender", or "multisex" me: the concept of me having more than one sex or gender doesn't make any sense to me.

Nor have I ever messed about with my gender, or my sex. They are what they are. I've messed about with my body, but my sex? No way, no how.

My perception has changed, however, and so has other people's: what has changed is the way people, myself included, think about my sex. Somewhat. My thinking has changed a great deal, other people's, much less: and this is where the divvying up of sexes and genders comes into play.

There's of course the "classical" sex-change speak: it's so silly it doesn't need further comment.

The one that needs some commenting is the newer form of "i-want-to-cling-to-my-cissexual-privilege" that talks about biological sexes and chosen genders and all that. Now I'm not against the concept of being able to choose your gender. But I also think that the reality of most, if not all, transsexual people is that we cannot choose our gender, or sex. We are what we are, and it's not our sexes or genders that have to change, but the thinking of other people, and we might want to do a thing or two to our bodies, too. Precisely because we cannot change our sexes. We really need to make ourselves intelligible to other people. We really need to make our bodies match our sexes and genders. To coin a phrase, it's not a man in a dress, it really is a woman with a penis.

Why is this multi-sex talk needed? Why are the acronyms MTF and FTM so very much in use even today?

It's about cissexual privilege, I'm afraid. It's about clinging to the concept of birth-assigned genders trumping anything else, even reality. It's about desperately calling a woman a man against all evidence to the contrary - it's about holding up the cissexual power structure where people who dare raise their voices against cissexual oppression are branded as untermensch.

Forced masculinisation

2008-11-09T10:11:00.006+02:00

Or, what happens to many, if not all, trans girls.

Basically, it's the experience of being treated as a boy instead of the girl you are. Repeatedly. Over and over. From birth. You're given the wrong clothes, the wrong haircut, a wrong name. And when you can't be a boy, when you behave in non-boyish ways, you're punished for it. You're ostracised (if you're lucky, it ends here), bullied, beaten. You get bruises for not behaving like a boy. No-one wants to be your friend because you're considered too weird, too odd, too fucked-up.

You can't be the girl you are, either. Crossing over is not allowed, and if you're brave (or foolish, take your pick) enough to try, you will be told in plain terms that you're a weirdo, a freak, and not able to anyway so just go back to trying to be a boy, m'kay?

That's the reality of forced masculinisation. That's the reality of good many trans girlhoods, including mine.

Coming to terms with pain

2008-11-07T21:03:00.005+02:00

I guess I'm slowly, slowly inching towards my pain. Towards the things that have been done to me. Towards the pain those things caused me. Towards a realisation that many of the oppressing structures are still intact, still capable of causing pain. Towards an unflinching gaze at the horrible reality that is humans.

But it is, too, a reality through which some people really love me. It's also a reality in which I have found happiness and ecstasy: it is the reality in which I cry for joy. Because of the wild joy that is being me. Because of the rich pleasure of having someone love me. Because of my children.

I cannot dismiss the pain. I cannot dismiss the joy. Somehow I'm trying to come to terms with both.

This is probably why I'm reading trans feminist writings - I'm trying to make sense of my experiences, I'm looking for a frame of reference that would give my experiences a space in which they're intelligible: and of course I'm forming that space myself, too.

Serano's Whipping Girl was, obviously, one big influence on this road to intelligibility, as was Wilchins' Read My Lips, and I'm very glad to say Troost's Beyond Inclusion makes good sense, too.

When examining my pain, there's this huge grief enmeshed with it: a grief born of not having had the normal girlhood which would have no doubt been a lot less debilitating than what I got.

It's such a two-edged project: on one hand, it's very empowering to realise what has happened to me, and on the other, it's very painful to realise the simple amount of crap I've had to wade through. There's just so much of it. There's the bullying. There's the forced masculinisation. There's the homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, trans misogyny, plain misogyny and simple hate directed at anyone who's visibly, palpably different. There's the silence of medicine: the withheld information, the power imbalance which I dare see now that I'm past it. There's the feeling of utter powerlessness against the cissexist, plain sexist, homophobic world. Hell, at least I know (I hope, anyway) the crap I've been through. I hope it defuses the effects of a bad things in my past a bit. I hope I'm no longer driven by the shit done to me.

What am I looking for and can I ever hope to find it?

2008-11-07T19:40:00.003+02:00

This pertains to one search I seem to be on, namely, a search for a road to feminism that chucked me by the wayside. The feminism that wouldn't recognise me for a woman. The feminism that simply beat me with a stick called cissexual privilege, and wouldn't let me in.

The feminism I need.

It is very unsettling to realise one really is dependent on the world that has really trampled you down. Dependent on a world that doesn't admit I exist. Dependent on a world that's bent on erasing my experiences.

And by God, I need that world. I am human, I need the companionship of other humans. I desperately need to renegotiate the conditions of that contact... and that's what I am doing.

Can I ever hope to get there? Can I ever get to the promised land? I'm not sure. I don't know. Perhaps I'll only live to see it from afar, but I know thence must I go, or perish going. I must push towards a better world. I think I owe it to myself, too. I'm worth it.

Exercise, endorphines and love

2008-11-06T21:15:00.002+02:00

For some or other funny reason, opiates, both laboratory- and body-produced, make me absolutely love my spouse and my kids. Or rather, perhaps endorphines (the opiates I encounter outside a hospital) just sorta strip away some pretense, and leave me "bare" as it were. Anyway, to make a long story short, every time I exercise with any intensity, I feel the love I have for my family ever more intensely. Yet another reason to exercise. God, I feel so blessed.

Friday, end of week, exercise

2008-10-31T20:45:00.002+02:00

My body's slowly recovering from persistent flu and I had my first chance of a decent workout today - boy did it feel good!
I found out just a little after recovering from my body probs that I really really like, nay, make that love, exercise. It feels good, it makes my step bounce, it makes my heart sing and my brain fire up in all kinds of wonderful ways.
Which brings up an old point - if you're ill and your body's borked, get it fixed if you can. Pronto. It really is worth it.

Council elections and storm

2008-10-26T11:03:00.002+02:00

Election day today - council elections. I'm hoping, as ever, for a more progressive, more leftist council, but I'm also worried (as ever) that people just will not vote. They'll stay at home instead. What this means, of course, is that righties will gain as they sure seem to hold onto their privileges. Results later today - here's hoping it'll turn out ok. I did vote.

Cissexism and erasure and am I trans or what?

2008-10-23T11:09:00.004+03:00

Goodness what the world's going to - I hope all this clamoring around Bindel et al is a new beginning for the end of cissexist privilege: I have a hard time fitting my trans past with my cis-passing present. I don't feel like either. I sure am not cisgender, but I dunno if I'm trans in any meaningful way, either. My body and my brain and my mind and my soul match. Now. But I sure don't have the cis privilege of having had it always so, nor do I have the privilege of taking my sex/gender for granted. Or rather, I do: I can do it and actually do it every single day, but to my mind it sends all the wrong messages: it reinscribes the cissexist assumption that one's sex/gender is a solid, immutable whole which cis people assing on each other, no exceptions offered except for poor trannies and intersexed, who are then either normalised forcibly or put to the stocks for trying to live as themselves. Unless, of course, they "pass" (oh fuck what a word) and are nice and don't start yelling any nasty things about cissexism.

Am I trans? As in now? No, not really. Sure, my body's pretty weird biochemically speaking, but there's no mismatch anywhere, and my body is mine, and I'm pretty damn happy with it. There aren't any places in my life that I know of where I would have to pretend I'm someone I'm not. But I'm not cis. I know, for an experienced fact, that sex/gender does NOT in fact work the way it's told to. It's not that difficult to be in the wrong about someone's sex/gender, including youself's. And it's entirely possible to correct those mistakes, and admit they were mistakes, too. But no-one seems to want to admit it. Majority of people want to take sex/gender very seriously, and even if they can see they've made a mistake, they don't want to admit just how deep the mistakes go - thus the provisional nature of trans sexes/genders: the bad old "but she's really a man", of someone who was assigned male.

Where does this leave me? I know other people are wrong in assuming sex/gender is easy to assign more-or-less permanently. When I live my daily life, the way they assume my sex/gender produces correct results - but the method of producing the meanings is all wrong. It's like a broken clock: it's right on time twice a day, and my sex/gender happens to be one of those times. Yet that it happens to be right is not dependent on the mechanism of understanding sex/gender , but a mechanism of me being "normal" in the eyes of the [cis] majority. This feels highly weird.

Protecting heterosexism

2008-10-22T15:06:00.002+03:00

Egads - found the time to talk with the teacher, and with my daughter, too - turns out the situation is a lot less worrying (good, that), but also a good deal more complicated (ehh..).

Basically, the heterosexism bit still stands. The teacher was trying to warn my daughter against stupidly getting herself into trouble, which is, I suppose, a good intention. But I'm still uneasy as I really really don't like the implications of a) that my daughter shouldn't provoke the frilly brigade by being herself, and b) that can't we all just get along, but queerish people please give way and be the smarter types. It's all very practical and that, I can see the point, but I'm afraid I'm getting more and more irritated at being accommodating to other people's prejudices.

It's really a double bind: if you accommodate, you're erasing yourself, and if you don't, you're provoking trouble and are labeled with a pejorative label of their choice. Bugger that.

Heterosexism and school

2008-10-21T13:07:00.003+03:00

Oh joy. My younger daughter got a chewing at school because her class has supposedly been name-calling some other pupils. Now, I don't like calling people names, except their own, of course. But I resent that the teacher took apart my kid and tried to pressure her into dishing out dirt on the other kids. She didn't, but the whole concept of trying to make kids rat out on each other is just nasty and vindictive - adolescents are highly dependent on each other, and trying to pry them apart is not a wise move - they'll just close ranks even tighter. I'm obviously very happy that my daughter confided in me about this, and will try and help her find her way through this mess.
What I'm not at all happy about is the issue that the supposed name-calling was about. I'm given to understand my daughter's class got into trouble for expressing their unhappiness about the adolescent miniskirt-and-lippy-ooh-i'm-so-sexy -culture. They're 12-year olds. If they're being critical of hyperfeminity being force-fed to them, frankly, more power to them. If, as I'm wont to guess, they're dishing it out to the kids taunting them for being not feminine enough, I'm all for the kids doing the resistance. Adolescents should have the peace to grow into themselves without too much pressure from the outside to grow up as soon as possible, as vapid as possible. Even if it's peer-pressure (and by God if it's the teachers pressurising the kids...). If this is the case, and the school indeed is allowing gender expression -based harassment, the school's gonna get some serious grief. If my daughter has been stupid enough to participate in said harassment, I'll chew her out all right. But I wanna know first, and I'm not gonna make her squeal on her friends. Nor am I gonna start in an incriminatory spiral of blame and counterblame. But heterosexism must not be the only game in town, or school.

I'm at it again

2008-10-20T09:20:00.002+03:00

Writing e-mails on lists, that is. Julie Bindel -affair sorta woke me up from slumber and made me realise bigotry is alive and kicking, and not just someplace like Hicksville, but in the liberal circles I frequent. Sometimes I even wonder if it's more common in liberal, educated circles as that kind of people are far more skilled in hiding the nasty repercussions of their attitudes. Hope I'll find out a way to go and bugger the people supporting that kind of crap.

My aggressions, parte secunda

2008-04-28T20:25:00.003+03:00

I'm not quite as certain as I was about my aggressions - I've come to feel my aggression is almost like an animal inside me, a beast rather untamed. I'm not sure what to do about it, should I try to tame it or perhaps use it for other things - who knows?
My inner beast, so to speak, feels restless: the feelings I buried, oh, I guess several decades ago, seem to be awakening. I'd much rather not have them awaken. I'd much rather just let the sleeping dogs, or beasts as may be, lie. It seems I don't have much choice.

Aggressions

2008-03-17T19:06:00.002+02:00

My own, specifically. How come aggressions are so hard for me to handle? How come I fly off the handle so easily? It's not like I go mental or do anything stupid - I don't, but I still feel uneasy about my aggressions. Meh. Maybe I shouldn't: after all, it's not like I'm the only woman in the world who gets occasionally angry.

2008-01-23T21:22:00.000+02:00

I'm wondering about dignity. Why is it so hard to keep a level head around people who keep on demanding this or that from you? Why do we so often give in to people's demands and start letting them live our lives?
I don't know.
Or maybe I do know.
Maybe it's about self-love. Maybe it's about self-respect. If I think I'm worthy of respectful treatment and love, despite my very real faults and problems, maybe I can keep my head level.
Actually, that's the way it seems to work. Whenever I believe I'm worthy of good treatment, I don't feel obliged to give in to just any silly demand: I can stay my ground.

2008-01-16T19:38:00.000+02:00

Quite what it is I'm trying to achieve is not clear: all I know is that I have a need to document my thoughts - inane, deep, whatever - somewhere. Thus this blog.