Quick notes on non-cis life

Owning up to your past is almost impossible. Whatever you say will very likely be twisted into something unrecognizable that'll fit into cissexist conception of what you are.

Relating to cis people is highly complicated, as most cis people build their lives as mostly coherent, decades-long wholes; you've had two lives, one in closet, one in the open, and it's pretty hard to bring stuff from one to the other. Well, unless you're ok with being a freak and having yourself identified as one forever.

You don't really learn how to relate to the cis: in the beginning you have to lie both to other people and to yourself as convincingly as possible, in order to survive. How does one learn to relate to other people while doing that? One doesn't. You can stop the lie, but the years are permanently, forever gone. You don't get your childhood back. You don't get many of your formative years back - you just have to make do with what the lies and deceit gave you.

Yet stopping the lie is one of the most important things you can do.

Hanging out with the other, similarly marginalized people won't help much. Sure, they understand a lot, but what you've got in common with them is the trauma, the bile, the hate, the hurt. Who wants to center her life around that? Not me.

You might end up alone. It's still better than lying and deceit, and it's also better than wallowing in your trauma.

I'd like to leave this trans crap well alone, but it won't leave me

Here's what, you Good People:

• I'm not your, or anyone else's, badge of tolerance
• neither I'm a collectible item to add to your collection of "different" friends that you can then parade in front of people you want to impress with your, I dunno, breadth of humans you know. Should you do this to me, let me assure you you're no friend. Friends don't objectify their friends.
• I'm not different, unique, or anything else special. I'm a normal human being who's had incredibly strange things happen to her.
• Aaaand finally bugger all this trans shit. Shove it where the sun doesn't shine and leave it there.

Surviving

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Can't be arsed

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

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?

On relatives, and their tediousness wrt transition

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.

New, shiny hobbies bring out the past anew

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

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:

1. 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? ;-)
2. 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:
3. 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.

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

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?

Why academic writing on trans is pretty shite, short version

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.

Self-censorship

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

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.

Out and closeted

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

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?

Iden-bugger-tity

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

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

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.