Shiny hobbies go on

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

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

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

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.

Ever have a doctor misgender you?

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

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.