Not all of you

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

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)

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?

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

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

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

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.