To practise this quote, and to also be one who extends Grace…it’s an artform.
But I get this now, in ways I never did before, and I have been walking in it…early and often.
It has been a wise move, and I have grown well in it.
“Don’t let someone get comfortable with disrespecting you.”
I wanted to press this because I admire the courage of this person, and I wanted to call attention (again) to the plight of transgender people. Sadly, we are limited to just a couple of options:
1. Be true to ourselves, and get harassed, bullied, and very likely even assaulted and/or killed.
2. Hide, and be subject to awful harassment, bullying and assault from ourselves from inside our own being.
Of course there is the 3rd option, the one I took:
You can always just rip yourself in two…dissociate, so you don’t “know” about yourself (and neither does anyone else), and you can simply study the prison that you have been given and called life and learn how to perform.
Perform well, and get rewarded with praise, affection, what is termed “love” (and from the perspective of the givers surely is love, but from the perspective of the dissociated person it’s never really known for sure if they’re loved), and all the privileges accorded to one who conforms to their prescribed role.
But the fallout from this…the gender role half life, if you will…is terrible. Stress, dysphoria, depression, and ultimately despair. The ripples of that rending of the soul in twain go forth from that moment…
…but they don’t diminish with time, they magnify, grow larger and have increasingly more destructive results in the lives of all who intersect with that person.
I know. This is what I did…and I’ve been informed by those who had the grave misfortune to exist in those waves and troughs that I ruined them forever in my cowardly and hypocritical choice to dissociate rather than displease (or worse) my parents.
Hey, I was 6 years old…I shoulda known better…I did know worse…eventually.
So there you have it, folks…the 3 fold option for prisoners of the gender binary back in the mid 60s. If you know a family with a gender variant member, and they are seeking to grapple with it now in a world that is slowly growing more flexible as attitudes and superstitions change…reach out and give them love.
They will certainly need it.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly
Charissa
riverheadlocal.com
Transgender youth skip school rather than face discrimination, humiliation from educators and peers
The N.Y. Civil Liberties Union is calling on the State Education Department to provide detailed guidance to public school districts on preventing transgender youths’ discrimination and harassment by students and teachers.
Many trans* youth don’t get the education they deserve due to undue harassment and discrimination from both educations and peers.
This is why EVERY school should have a fully inclusive non-discrimination AND anti-bullying policy which protects youth and educators alike on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender presentation.
Well, the neighborhood bully, she’s a woman
Her enemies say she’s on their land
They got her outnumbered about a million to one
She got no place to escape to, no place to run
She’s the neighborhood bully
The neighborhood bully just lives to survive
She’s criticized and condemned for being alive
She’s not supposed to fight back, she’s supposed to have thick skin
She’s supposed to lay down and die when her door is kicked in
She’s the neighborhood bully
The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
She’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen her family scattered, her people hounded and torn
She’s always on trial for just being born
She’s the neighborhood bully
Well, she knocked out a lynch mob, she was criticized
Old women condemned her, said she should apologize.
Then she destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for her. She was supposed to feel bad
She’s the neighborhood bully
Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That she’ll live by the rules that the world makes for her
’Cause there’s a noose at her neck and a gun at her back
And a license to kill her is given out to every maniac
She’s the neighborhood bully
She got no allies to really speak of
What she gets she must pay for, she don’t get it out of love
She buys obsolete weapons and she won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by her side
She’s the neighborhood bully
Well, she’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
She’s the neighborhood bully
Every empire that’s enslaved her is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
She’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
She’s the neighborhood bully
Now her holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract she signed was worth what it was written on
She took the crumbs of the world and she turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and she turned it into health
She’s the neighborhood bully
What’s anybody indebted to her for?
Nothin’, they say. She just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed
She’s the neighborhood bully
What has she done to wear so many scars?
Does she change the course of rivers? Does she pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully
Copyright © 1983 by Special Rider Music
Lyrical adaptations by Charissa, in honor of courageous women everywhere, especially transwomen
I wanted to press this because I admire the courage of this person, and I wanted to call attention (again) to the plight of transgender people. Sadly, we are limited to just a couple of options:
1. Be true to ourselves, and get harassed, bullied, and very likely even assaulted and/or killed.
2. Hide, and be subject to awful harassment, bullying and assault from ourselves from inside our own being.
Of course there is the 3rd option, the one I took:
You can always just rip yourself in two…dissociate, so you don’t “know” about yourself (and neither does anyone else), and you can simply study the prison that you have been given and called life and learn how to perform.
Perform well, and get rewarded with praise, affection, what is termed “love” (and from the perspective of the givers surely is love, but from the perspective of the dissociated person it’s never really known for sure if they’re loved), and all the privileges accorded to one who conforms to their prescribed role.
But the fallout from this…the gender role half life, if you will…is terrible. Stress, dysphoria, depression, and ultimately despair. The ripples of that rending of the soul in twain go forth from that moment…
…but they don’t diminish with time, they magnify, grow larger and have increasingly more destructive results in the lives of all who intersect with that person.
I know. This is what I did…and I’ve been informed by those who had the grave misfortune to exist in those waves and troughs that I ruined them forever in my cowardly and hypocritical choice to dissociate rather than displease (or worse) my parents.
Hey, I was 6 years old…I shoulda known better…I did know worse…eventually.
So there you have it, folks…the 3 fold option for prisoners of the gender binary back in the mid 60s. If you know a family with a gender variant member, and they are seeking to grapple with it now in a world that is slowly growing more flexible as attitudes and superstitions change…reach out and give them love.
They will certainly need it.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly
Charissa
riverheadlocal.com
Transgender youth skip school rather than face discrimination, humiliation from educators and peers
The N.Y. Civil Liberties Union is calling on the State Education Department to provide detailed guidance to public school districts on preventing transgender youths’ discrimination and harassment by students and teachers.
Many trans* youth don’t get the education they deserve due to undue harassment and discrimination from both educations and peers.
This is why EVERY school should have a fully inclusive non-discrimination AND anti-bullying policy which protects youth and educators alike on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender presentation.
A VERY interesting and thought provoking article and series of questions…Reader, this is posted more for you than anyone else. See if you can hold your need to “binary-ize” things into your “either-or” world view…just for a second or two.
I am less interested in answering the question of right and wrong at this point, and more interested in asking what kind of heart are you showing, advocating, and modeling by your current approaches to relationship with LGTBQ people?
I mean…33 plus years of relationship was over in the flick of a heartswitch and the drop of an envelope in a mail-slot…
Boom.
My life has gone on. No…more accurately, my life has finally begun and I have been blooming and growing spiritually and emotionally and growing more healthy physically. The loss of relationship has in my case been a very healthy pruning in that so many new people have come into my life bringing messages to me like I have rarely experienced in my past years done in the dungeons of christendom.
But I do think about you, Reader…and the life you live of inspection and constant lifting of yourself and others into scales that are not even accurate…
…and I encourage you to read these questions and ponder them…
because to answer them and be challenged by them will require you to change your lifestyle, spend your time differently, and draw your boundaries very different!
You never know…you just may find that the river you say I have crossed that you won’t be crossing is the River of Life and that what matters is the water, and not the bank you stand on…as if that matters…as if you could really make that claim, that your bank is “the bank”…as if that pleases God who left heaven and took on the form of a bondslave…
…and as if that River of Life doesn’t have twists and turns to the human eye that could end up with us actually still “on the same side” (cus that’s a thing in this divisive binary world, being on the same side is far more important than belonging to Jesus *SARCASM*) and you not even realize it.
Just let go.
The list is getting sooo long, and the burden is getting sooo ponderous, all the things you must inspect and check and ascertain…how bout just letting all that go, and simply doing this: Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, and loving your neighbor as yourself with something more than a letter that slashed and burned and then preened like Little Jack Horner…
Constance: there is a lot of this sort of talk running around these days…WASP types complaining about racism. This article addresses that sort of thinking and does it very well.
If you think that anyone can be a racist, you are likely missing the point being driven at regarding a system in which racism is endemic and deeply rooted so badly as to be like a cancer riddling an entire body.
But what troubles me most in all of this is that we are so invested in proving that people of Color are “more racist” than we are or that we’re not racist, we are more upset by allegations that we might be racist than about the very real ways that racism plays out in the society around us.
I see my fellow White people so wrapped up in defending the idea that systemic racism doesn’t exist that we are unable to empathize with the real pain caused to people of Color by racism, both interpersonal and systemic.
For goodness sake, even the McKinney police admitted Eric Casebolt was out of line in assaulting a young Black girl for legally observing his actions, yet White people in my life were trying so hard to explain how the officer was in the right and how this “isn’t racial.”
All of this leaves me wondering about the roots of our defensiveness to admitting that racism is alive and well.
Why are we so resistant to acknowledging the countless examples of our racial privilege?
Deconstructing Masculinity & Manhood with Michael Kimmel @ Dartmouth College
YAAAAEEESSSSSSS
You know what I like, and feel is so important? That he doesn’t say “Men thinks those are THEIR positions”. He says “We think those are OUR positions.”
As a male feminist, he still doesn’t exclude himself from the group of men.
Originally posted on gendermom:
A couple of weeks ago, I read the following words in an article on the home page of The New York Times: “…studies suggest that most young children with gender dysphoria eventually lose any desire to change sex,…
That time when Raven actually said what most of us want to say to a teacher who picks you for the answer when you clearly don’t know it, for usually no other reason than to embarrass you and make you look stupid. One of the main things I hate and always will hate about school.
Here’s What’s Okay (And Not Okay) to Say to a Trans Person – Once and For All — Everyday Feminism. Dear Constance, this article will be good review for some, and a great beginning for those who are interested but don’t know protocol.
The one that is most crucial to me? The one that says my story is mine and not yours…and you have no right to out me to anyone…even though people have done this to me. It’s sorta weird to meet someone I knew then and hear that there is all kinds of gossip about me happening…that means that the paragons of virtue who told me I was beyond a river they refused to cross and that I was demonized?
They started the rumors and passed them along…and likely think they served Jesus in doing it. The trouble they caused me…I weep still at times over things that I could have shared in my own way and time that got shared and soo distorted… …but that’s the way it goes when you deal with the privileged…whatever they say is God’s will becomes God’s will…
because they say so (which makes them God, I guess).
Constance…you are all so kind to me, supportive and for me. And sometimes, you just put your feet right in it, and not even know it!
Because your comments are not intended to harm or other or police me, I nearly always do not give a clue as to how they have hurt me…but they do.
Like when you say “Oh wow, you’re looking so great today girl, and you’re gonna look even better when you get that 5 o’clock shadow” lasered off”
*OOooffff!* That hurts…especially because there are many cis-females that have more naturally occurring facial hair than I do!
Or this one was particularly cutting: “Why don’t you consider getting your Adam’s Apple shaved? It will make you look more feminine”…
…so I went home and cried after that one…cus lots of reasons, but one of the biggest is that there are many drag queens and transvestites who look 100% feminine and completely identify as gay males and in no way consider themselves female…while here I am, female thru and thru and yet told that I need a shave of my Adam’s Apple to look (read “be”) more feminine.
Or “you sound like a boy so you are a boy”…wow, don’t know where to go with that one because here is the fact: any human being whose vocal cords are exposed to testosterone is going to have those cords damaged by that exposure and it will be permanent, irreversible damage. The result is that person’s voice will then deepen, coarsen, and sound like what we have been socialized to believe that men sound like and not women.
I would add one that the author leaves out: we trans-folk are not your personal research assistants! “Why Charissa, whatever do you mean?” Here is what I mean: many of you have taken baby steps out into the jungle, and trans-misogynist tigers have roared loud at you, eyes glaring…and you scurry to me and say “CHARISSA!!! There’s beasties out there! Give me some bullets PDQ!!! What do I say???!!”
Umm…so here is what I want you to know: we are not born the “Golden Child of all knowledge trans!” We were born inside these skins, as tabula rasa as you…what we learned was from hard work, investment of time, research, learning Google-Fu and using it, and then more of the same! The information is out there…the same things I found and tested and tried and learned.
I cannot be an ally for you! You either are or you aren’t.
You can’t just show up when it’s convenient, and expect me to carry the ball the rest of the time, give you your lines, take all the arrows so you won’t be harmed…I am already taking arrows and dealing with that.
It’s the nature of being an ally…get some skin in the game.
It makes me heartsick when “allies” come around because they need something, but they aren’t around when I am under assault and feel like I am fighting the Battle of Bastogne all by myself.
Oh…and please, PLEASE: don’t get all hurt and go away pouty when you ask me to give you all the answers and I reply with “It’s out there…go dig!”
Allies…by now, you could be eating meat…why do you content yourself with milk?
Awwright…lecture over…go read the article if you still are here LOL!!
When we talk about biological sex being “what’s between your legs,” we’re forgetting that sex is actually much more complicated than that. Genitalia, chromosomes, hormones, and secondary sex characteristics all contribute to our assigned sex at birth, but ultimately, sex is just that: assigned.
Biological sex is a social construction, meaning it’s something we as a culture have created. That’s not to say it isn’t relevant to our health or that it doesn’t influence our personal realities, but the categories of “female” and “male” must be recognized for what they really are.
Alabama Teen Becomes Ninth Trans Woman Murdered in U.S. in 2015 | Advocate.com.
You all already saw this article, right? Cus we as a society have decided that transwomen should be protected from violent murderous sanction…oh wait, we didn’t do that?
It could so easily be me…so quickly become me.
I noticed in the referral logs of my site that Milwaukee Public Schools has been on my blog. I am guessing they have someone monitoring public opinion on their decade long murder of a transgender woman.
Her name was Karis Anne Ross.
Karis Anne Ross.
Your convenience and desire to remain untroubled by the actions of some of your employees were the weapons that were used…but the worst part of it? 10 years.
10 years is 520 weeks…36,502 days.
And in all that time, just one firm decision could have not only saved her life, but ended the torment she endured.
We transgender people are tough…you have to be to survive dysphoria at all. And we are patient, long-suffering, and simply will do just about anything to be given a chance at a normal life…and those qualities are the very things that led to her enduring unimaginable suffering and harassment.
Because maybe, just maybe…tomorrow will be different.
Well, alas for Karis…it wasn’t. Different.
It was the same as it has ever been…kill the transgender woman for the crime of choosing to live out her true identity as a woman and eschewing her biological assignment at birth. She knew she was more than her genitalia…
too bad that her district never figured that out.
So yeah…comb the web, school district. I for one will certainly do my best to keep my lil nook of the internet up to speed as to what is or is not happening.
And btw…don’t bother trying to enable my bullies…
I don’t work for you.
I know my value.
This…everyday. This is the life we walk.
As the recent Human Rights Commission’s ‘Resilient Individuals: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Intersex Rights’ report shows, transgender people are at a highly elevated risk of being physically and verbally harassed, made unemployed, homeless, denied healthcare or access to other services, than most other demographics within Australia. Having experienced every one of the aforementioned situations at one time or another during my transition, I wish being transgender was unremarkable enough that I didn’t have to ‘pass’ and that I could safely participate in activities like sport and work without my identity being constantly under scrutiny.
Constance…please read thru the sections I am sharing below. Read it slow and let it sink in.
This is my life. I am living these sentences (word chosen to echo and double back on itself, those with eyes let them see).
Consider the way that my sentences being served also impact you…and the way that yours can set me free, if you will but begin to speak them.
Just read up on the Bell Hooks-Laverne Cox talk, thought it was really uncool (and unfemininist) of Hooks to chide Cox for her presentation.
I mean yeah, I get that for (feminist) cis women, femininity can start to feel constricting after a while, but trans women have a very different relationship with it. Patriarchy wants AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) people to be feminine, it does not want AMAB (Assigned Male At Birth) people to be feminine.
For a person that was assigned male at birth, it absolutely can be revolutionary to embrace femininity. It is anathema to patriarchy for AMAB people to embrace femininity, why else do you think trans women get any and all femininity beaten out of them for the first part of their lives?
Besides, cis women had all their lives to try it out and grow tired of it. How many cis women haven’t smeared their mum’s lipstick all over their face as a little girl? At least have a heart and give us some time to experiment with femininity, you were given that time while you were growing up and I don’t see you high-n-mighty feminists going after teenage cis girls for it.
I would like to expand on this, and say that the patriarchy derides and punishes femininity in general. That’s why men who like female-coded activities are mocked. that’s why “girly-girls” are derided as shallow or high-maintenance.
But with trans women, expressing femininity is particularly revolutionary because it isn’t just about social conditioning–it’s a complete rejection of masculinity as the “valuable option.”
Many women–trans and cis–find value in femininity, but when cis women embrace it, everyone assumes it’s because it is expected and because that’s how they were trained. It isn’t considered unusual, because society insists that’s the punishment you get for being a woman, and if you’re very good you’ll reject that and try to act more like your “betters.”
But trans women are offered masculinity on a platter–it’s assumed to be our birthright–and we reject it. More accurately, like most people we reject parts of it. We’re proof that masculinity isn’t inherently valuable or precious–it’s just another thing.
And of course, patriarchal ideals double down on us for that. Our punishment for embracing the feminine and not being “rightly” ashamed of it is to be chained by it, and punished for any infraction. Male-coded interests are “proof” that we’re faking it.
Not appearing feminine enough is grounds for firing or banning us from homes (or from the lives of our own relatives). Expressing anger or standing up for ourselves is interpreted–even by self-proclaimed feminists–as our being aggressive and “really” men.
And revealing anything about our genitals is literally grounds for execution.
People hunt down the tiniest nuances–our shoulders, our voices, or hobbies, or age–and use the smallest infraction against gender norms to completely invalidate our statement that masculinity isn’t precious at all. This despite the fact that trans women, like everyone, aren’t inherantly “pure women” or “pure men” any more than any cis person–we’re mixes of social messages and biological impulses, some accepted some rejected, that go into forming a complex human being.
Trans women highlight that there’s no superior gender or gendered form of expression, and that pisses people off.
Constance, here is the deadly reality I live with. This pit-bull is in my room, all the time, straining at its flimsy leash…wanting to snap it and chew me to death.
I am pretty delivered from suicidal ideation, and have been so blessed to be surfing on top of waves of dysphoria rather than swamped by them…
…but bullying, harassment, and other forms of othering and policing…well, they just really destroy your soul in small pieces.
The “best ones” are the ones christians do to you cus “they love you so much”… those are the worst, because the spirit they operate in is the spirit of the dementor, and not of Jesus.
I want you each one to read this…and let it sink in…if you had to go thru this, just for breathing.
And then? If you ever see this going on? Make sure that you raise a ruckus right straight into the bullies’ faces. They are cowards at heart. That is why they attack those without power and privilege and seek to steal even the minute agency we have.
I had a recent experience when someone stood up for me…and I will never EVER forget how I felt when she just stood there fiercely and told someone that what they said was NOT OKAY, and that it was HIGHLY INAPPROPRIATE!
I felt very special, and something else, I felt as if I mattered.
I bet you a million dollars that there are people in her circle who didn’t like what was happening to her, but just never said anything…
…and I bet that they feel like their hands will never not have her blood on them now.
Because this was more than a suicide…this was murder by bully.
“It bugs me when people are unnecessarily mean. Like, you didn’t have to make that comment.
You could have just kept your mouth shut and left that person not feeling bad about themselves.
What do you gain from making someone else feel like shit? Nothing of substance.
Maybe a fleeting moment of power but that’s gone as soon as it comes so why?There’s enough unhappiness in the world without you adding to it.”
Constance…
How I wish that you could know…know…the Love of God…the Presence of Them in your core essence.
God has been so polluted and trashed by the low things that oppose Them. God has been so misrepresented by complete morons who spin out of their corrupted souls a god made in their own image, and it is ugly, it is gross, it is cruel and it is crude…and most of all it is blind, dumb, and deaf, just like them.
God is Humble. They pounce thru every single crack in human perception that shows the least openness to Them, and They shine…oh how They shine.
They have loved me.
And that is a wonder that breaks me open again and again and again and again and…
Holy Spirit of God…Holy Spirit is Their Presence here in this creation. Jesus has ascended and is in heaven in this time and making all things ready. So Their presence is Holy Spirit…and oh the honor of Her drawing me near Her, opening the Word to me to see Her…
She is like one of my poems…layers, hints, indirection, inference, and sometimes subtle in its baldfaced straightforwardness…this is Her.
And She is altogether good, and I love Her.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Reader: I will never not love Her.
Never.
Your statements and judgments of Her are dust and lower than irrelevance.
Why do you fulminate and foam at the mouth because I love Her? If indeed She was just a myth, why would you even care? I love Her, and it is to Her that I have surrendered, and willingly laid down control.
I rolled into work early, comme toujours, and bustled down to the kitchbah to get things prepared for the day. There were ranges to light, ovens to turn on, dishwashers to prep, and food to coax.
*You realize that…don’t you? You must coax food to “join the party”…usually with letting it warm a bit, and then liberal application of olive oil if it is something that must come together.*
What do you know, when I got there, and spied on the counter an 8 1/2 x 11 sized package, wrapped in light yellow tissue paper and green yarn holding it together. On top of it was a folded piece of paper…
“Only for Mrs. Charissa
🙂
Your Best Friend”
The paper had been drawn on to make it appear as if it were an envelope…it was soo touching and adorable, and from the handwriting, I was certain it was from one of the children that I help care for.
Have you ever had the experience of finding out unexpectedly that someone considers them self “your best friend”? I have not…until that day. (No…DDH, when I discovered that you considered yourself my bestie, it was delightful beyond belief but not unexpected! lol)
Inside the folded paper (special stationary type paper) it was laid out like an email with a “to” section and a “from” section.
It was from “Cassandra” (name changed to protect my angel lil friend’s privacy)…this young lady is one of the most amazing people I have ever had the good fortune to encounter in my entire life…and she has 2 sisters who are equally amazing, accepting, friendly and loving. Her youngest sister was the bold child on my first day at the center when I was doing my “try-out” classroom test…she walked straight up to me, her dark eyes like limitless pools, and so solemnly asked me if I was a boy or a girl…I told her I was like an oreo cookie: one thing on the outside, something different on the inside, and all together I was me, and sweet. She thought about it, smiled, and nodded. I then simply explained to her what happened to me as I was created, and the insight and look of knowing that happened in those eyes was an eternal gift.
Since then she has been one of my biggest fans.
But Cassandra…well, she also was kind, caught on right away, but she hung around a bit, listening, watching, feeling the experiences I have everyday in living. She paid attention to my true heart, and not the things I spin outta my kitchbah to feed the kids. She is the one who was walking beside me, talking, on the way into the center from the bus parking lot…and these people who live across the street decided to verbally and loudly tell me what I was, in the lowest and most crude slang imaginable.
I ignored it, like always…sigh…and just kept talking with Cassandra, but her face went white, and still. Her eyes widened in shock, horror, and then…something else: she realized that this was my life. Every day. Just because I am…and she began to cry. She was horrified at what was said, and I think even mildly traumatized, so we of course talked a bit about it.
It was a true teachable moment on the meaning of forgiveness and a lifestyle of Grace.
So anyway, Cassandra had written this:
I now you will
like this. I Made
some Pritty Good
ones for you
I was Thinking of You at
school
Can you say *Instant melty heart exiting eyes PDQ*???
Okay, first of all…she knew. She knew I would like it, a priori. Let that sink in.
Secondly, she judged her own work, and decided it was pretty good (it is, btw), and that it was for me.
And then…the killer love words: I was thinking of you at school.
When it was time to create, her thoughts turned to me…
Rapture. Pure. Rapture.
The next several poems are hers…I am placing them here on Grace Notes as my own weak ineffectual attempt to show I am thankful and grateful for her love and affection…and her friendship.
| — | Haruki Murakami |
Okay, so I need you to know this…you who love and support me but do not really know the deets of my story (yet…there are a few that I am very much warming up to the idea of spending a few hrs with and investing some of my heart in you via the history of the miles of pain I chewed to get to the shores of the seas of grace)
…but you who are casual, connected but mostly interested in arms’ length friendly connection (which is cool and valuable)…
PLEASE don’t ask me about Caitlyn Jenner…
While she is likely the source of most of what you know about trans things right now? She has NOTHING to do with me in any way other than we know the same dark night of the soul.
Her money, fame, position, power and privilege put her in a completely different UNIVERSE than I am in, really.
She is not my hero, my idol…she is not the can opener that I would use to connect with anyone about transgender existence and acceptance…she may become a great influence and dispenser of many good things for the transgender community, an activist of Mother Teresa stature…but likely not, for the gravity of celebrity is nearly always fatal and bright is the flame of those stars who fall into the atmosphere of the dust to which we return and auger into the final lonely resting place of the grave which we must pass into and thru.
The challenges, obstacles and burdens of being transgender are but molehills for her in so many ways…she literally was able to walk down the street, check into the finest hospital, hire the best surgeons, and get her confirmation surgeries…
Just as a rich person can take their infant born with a cleft palate or congenital heart defect and get it repaired, like that…she could get her body repaired and aligned.
The vast VAST majority of us? We not only cannot do that, we are denied even ACCESS to the means to do that via healthcare! We are told that the surgeries are decorative, vanity indulgences…we are classified with aging starlets who have their faces lifted and their tummies tucked so they can make more cheesy movies when the fact is these surgeries help the blood of our souls circulate thru the heart and core of our lives for the good of many!
I am not impressed with you when you sidle up and show me how much an ally you are by telling me so smugly that you watched the Jenner interview…and I am not going to pat you on the back and fawn at your feet like a dog grateful for a doggy treat!! I would much MUCH rather hear that you were moved by the Jenner interview to go to the Portland LGTBQ center and volunteer your time and give of your resources to help transgender people who have less than nothing…
I would much rather hear that you are resolved to read Julia Serrano’s book, or Joy Ladin’s book, or Jennifer Finlay Boyle’s book, or Janet Mock’s book.
You are sort of like that person in the 60s civil rights movement who would boast of having a “black friend”…while living in racist ways that you simply think are the way life is…
LISTEN TO ME: Come to the Pride walk June 13th, if you are truly moved, rather than watch an interview or buy a magazine.
I am pleading with you…I am challenging you…I dare you…if you are the ally you claim to be.
LOOK AT US!! SEE US!! We no more look like Caitlyn Jenner than you look like Jennifer Aniston! We do not expect you to look like a Playboy bunny (ugh!), and yet you constantly say things like “Oh you are looking so girly today” or “I only see a woman when I see you” or “Gee you will be so feminine when you get your adam’s apple shaved (mine is NOT even prominent!!!), or “You know there is a surgery you can have to deal with your hairline”…
…and I won’t even go into the so-called jokes that are just flat out cis-normative sexually harrassing…
See, this is a moment in history…one of THOSE MOMENTS…when a pivotal person has galvanized the day and time is pregnant and elastic and can be IMPRESSED BY COMMITTED ACTION BY THOSE WITH POWER…
…and that is you, my cis-gender, cis-normative friends..yeah. It’s you. You are the ones who have voices, standing, visibility…you are the ones who can speak and demand for me the same access you have…
Don’t waste your energy with patting yourself on the back and handing out good doggie treats to me for being your token transgrl friend.
I am Charissa Grace…I am a yielded vessel yielding blessing…I am a daughter of the most High King and beloved of Holy Spirit my Great Mama…
I am a woman…hear my joy roar in the darkness!!
But I am not validated, just because Caitlyn Jenner is exalted in this moment by the media. God has brought her high, for Their plan, and it is between her and Them how she manages the moment.
I am validated because I am a Promise of God…come walk with me.
Together we can throw mountains into oceans!!
Constance, in this ego-centric, ego-driven culture of ours we are constantly exhorted and affirmed for avoiding any people who are costly to us, disturbing to our comfort, or in any way disrupt our “perfect life” which will be immediately great as soon as we get rid of anyone who does not contribute value to us.
Omg.
And who would befriend you, should this be applied rigorously?
So…the truth is that yes, we do need to be shrewd who we allow full heart access, and yet somehow we must remain accessible! So there is a greater danger than merely having a toxic person in proximity to you…
…and that is the danger of NOT being the broken bread and poured wine into the hearts and souls of those suffering and for whom you were appointed as meat and drink.
Queen Ester of Old was told: For such a time as this were you born.
Be mindful of others, and your responsibility to them, even as you practice the saying below. After all, it is because your space is sacred that you must
Be careful whom you exclude
you speak like snakes
slithering faster than slinkies
which at least have to
go downhill
and stop .
how can I love you
and dodge all at once
when you strike tooth and nail
with your sexual puns
and demeaning poisonous
passive-aggressive
nuclear blitzes?
you always move,
always, you shed your skin
quicker than snakes
that slide sideways
over the dirty sands
under the prickly sage
out of sight, gone before
I can quick turn the page.
It’s not okay
to speak jokes that conceal
a knife slicing with malice
and using my flesh to build
your kingdom’s palace!
It’s not okay to rape
my heart on your platter
letting my blood spatter
on your face for your cosmetics
and war paint bravado.
Heart-on or hard-on
and then you say
I’m up and down??
No…
you speak like snakes
you speak like snakes
you speak like snakes
hissing and deadly.
The Transgender Brain | Transas City.
Constance, another article that helps explain the reality of transgender brain formation and how this determines gender orientation.
This will be preaching to the choir, but likely might be helpful to those still uneducated that this is something quite different than “living my truth” or any other characterization that seeks to make my gender orientation some version of a choice.
Perhaps you all could pass it on in your own attempts to be allies.
Reader, it’s up to you…you are proud of judging non-christians for ignoring the evidence for Christ…pot meet kettle, if you continue to characterize gender variance as anything other than what it is: a reality that is as legitimate as your own “owned internal sense of gender”.
It’s a bit like being proud you are not a cleft palate born person, and then trying to deny treatment to anyone who was born that way.
This morning I am somewhat morose over an experience that I had this week.
I am struggling to deal with the ways that people tend to gravitate to ideas and appealing causes, tend to be drawn to words that are spoken with passion and purpose…
…but when the Incarnation time comes, they turtle…back into the shell of comfort, or familiarity, or least resistance, or something that they falsely call peace when it is actually the mere absence of conflict.
You did realise that, didn’t you? Your destiny? To become an Incarnate word? To take that core passion, meaning, burning intention, determination, whatever it is, and actually become a living, breathing, triumphing, failing, enduring persevering example of it!
But oh the cost…and pain…confusion and sorrow (But One has gone before and blazed the trail).
There is a paradigm in our culture (that stems from a greater problem, but that is another post another time) and it holds us ALL captive…except some of us are captive in barbwire bonds, and some are just captive by walls inescapable…and can move about, partake of comforts that make it more bearable being a prisoner.
That latter quality is called privilege. When you have it, words that wound and destroy are seen as not such a bad thing and meant only as jokes or slang.
When you don’t have it and protest words that wound and destroy, you become the object of the privileged speaker’s ire and irritation at being called out…and finding yourself alone in this sort of battle is sobering and difficult.
When you have privilege a raid on your personhood is like going to the beach and taking a bucketful of sand…when you don’t have it, a raid on your personhood is like a flood that washes away precious topsoil and leaves a devastating wasteland in its place.
This week I encountered a man on social media who used diminishing and objectifying vocabulary to describe how he became aroused as a teen-ager regardless of what the women were wearing. He purported to be a supporter of women, an opponent of Rape Culture and an advocate for women as subjects and not just objects of the lusts of men. He seemed to value being somewhat flip and “hep”, because he used this term to describe lusting after a woman: “Bone Out”.
Bone Out.
Constance, if you are reading this as a human being who has spent time in male spaces where they believe themselves to be alone with themselves and no female people present, you will recognize this term as slang for masturbation accompanied by fantasizing over whatever poor unfortunate woman has the burden of being his fantasy object, and in this fantasy she will do, be, say, or act out whatever it is he wants (or thinks he does). You will also know that after you are finished “boning out”, you will have unconsciously internalized (in varying degrees) some of this fantasy as “how women really are” and “what women really want”.
Constance, if you are female…how do you feel inside when someone who purports to be an advocate advocates for you while talking about “Boning Out” and blatantly says that it doesn’t matter what you wear, it is going to happen?
Well, I called him out on it…first with a somewhat rhetorical “Wait, whaaaa? What did I just read?” (or words to that effect, I cannot quote them because I blocked this person after our next exchanges).
Aaaannnnddd, what do you think this advocate did? Check himself, and say “Oh wow, sorry ladies, I apologize for my slang, and I really do see how in trying to make a point that dress codes are irrelevant I inadvertently revealed that I was gonna lust after you whenever I wanted to”…hmm? Seems a gracious response, yes? Or do you think he got huffy, aggrieved and touchy, blame shifting any objection to what he said over to the objector?
DING DING DING!!! And you got it! The latter!
Now keep in mind that this thread was vitally active with intelligent women who were making informed and insightful thoughtful comments and expressing their hearts over how these dress codes are designed to oppress and other women and keep them in places of exclusion in the paradigm.
So I commented further and sought to point out that his vocabulary was coarse at best and lowered the level of discourse and destructive at worst because of the way it objectified and sexualized women. I tried to point out that he had obviated his support of abolishing dress codes by flat out stating that he would lust after a woman regardless of what she is wearing!
Let that sink in.
He then went on to defend his position that school attire should be like work attire: “business appropriate”…and that is not a bad idea, by the way (the fact that many people do not want to go into business not withstanding)…and yet still couldn’t see that the problem was not the dress code!
The problem is in the attitude of males who believe it their right OR their inescapable biological destiny to lust after women for the sake of their own satiation sexually. So we know that this person would “bone out” over a woman in business attire, or snowsuits, or bikinis, or the latest chic shade of grey.
Scattered throughout his man-splainin’ were jabs at me, turning it back on me and basically claiming to be intention-wise such a champion of women…and he doubled down on his slang with scatological vocabulary and a tone of anger in his words that I took as his clear intention to intimidate me into silence…
and he also doubled down on his blindness and tone-deafness, by making comments about his propensity to get aroused over whatever women were around. He did not own this as his own issue! He said that women give him a chubby!
So Constance, you women out there…be it known that you now have a new role: to be a Giver! YAAAYYY…um no yay, because you are now a giver of chubbies.
Oh, and “chubbie” is a cute word which is used to cutify the male erection…I suppose calling it a chubbie was supposed to make me coo like it was his mischievous unruly puppy that makes messes here and there but will be oh so loveable if I just pet it and feed it.
I know these things. I lived amongst them.
No matter what you are doing, whether you realize it or not, you are a giver of chubbies to men. And what are these poor fellows to do, being such a downtrodden oppressed group, except to take this gift and…yeah.
Well, I appealed to my sisters who had been speaking so lively and true…was I wrong? Was I out of line? Was everyone just so impressed with his wit, his scatological riffs more reminiscent of Richard Pryor than Dice Clay? Would they let me know? Or, if I was right, would they come to my side and help me try to educate this man?
I also decided to draw the interaction to a conclusion so far as my end was concerned because in social media an artificial connection exists that does not lend itself well to “Iron sharpening Iron”…you have all been there I am sure…emotions rise up and swamp intellect and good will is washed away and insult and invective become the implements of war in Sarcasm’s hand, until blood and entrails are the media for the pictograms that death carves into the scene. And all that carnage between two Image Bearers who have never met, never knew each other even existed 10 minutes before, and have no idea who and what the other person is…
…the wrong that is inside us just gushes out like a geyser…
…why does it almost never happen otherwise when there is a sharp difference of opinion or misunderstanding? No, better to just end it, after all the beginning of a quarrel is soo much like starting to relieve one’s self: once it is going, it is nearly impossible to stop until you have voided your bladder, and then it’s too late, you have defiled everything in the stream of your waste.
And also, I blocked this person, because I have stepped in it before with men just like this guy who then become relentless in hunting me down and virtually assaulting me online, and rest assured they make sure that I know that I am transgender and what they think of it…as if I had not ever known or heard. And when you are told that you will be ambushed and killed by people that others think is a great guy, well it messes with your heart.
And no, this guy did not say that to me…at least not that I know. Because I blocked him preemptively.
This all happened on someone else’s domain, and I did not feel the freedom to deconstruct his arguments and address them one by one…and I truly believe that he was so angry and defensive it would have made it worse. I also did not think to copy them all before I blocked him so that I had a record, and I do not want to unblock him in order to do that…
…so these are my recollections…but really…these are the things I felt and experienced…
and they left me feeling bruised and insulted…
…and isolated.
No one else said anything…what was so obvi to me was either not true, wasn’t visible, or was so scary that no one else would step forward and stand with me. And that is what was the most deeply discouraging, because then I wonder if I had been a cis female would someone have spoken up for me? Was everyone silent because I am transgender, and openly so? Is my courage like trying to put out a volcano by carrying teacups of water to the violence one by one?
If I am silent, it continues. If I speak, it attacks, and continues.
Well, I am speaking. Here…on Grace Notes…and I am saying it is not okay for men to hide behind the notion that their arousal from being around women is something they cannot control…I know about this first hand, and it is indeed possible to not do this! I am saying it is not okay to talk both sides against the middle.
And that way? At least I can live with myself.
Do JUSTICE
Love MERCY
Walk HUMBLY
In sorrow and tears,
Charissa
Constance…
You have read here of my evolution and growth, and the reduction as well over the last year and a half since I began writing Grace Notes.
Odds are you have also seen articles and notes that I have posted that are designed to educate you regarding how mindsets influence action…but actions affect heart-sets…and heart-sets inform mindsets.
As you think in your heart, this is how you are…maybe not manifested right away, but it is just a matter of time before that comes out.
Transitioning gender is such a difficult passage. I am crossing over gulfs that are deemed uncrossable by the patriarchal paradigm of our day, breaking the binary rules that rule minds…and thus offending hearts that have as their central focus and idol what feeds them, sustains them.
Some people simply are repulsed by my transition and write me off in some form or fashion…crazed, demon possessed, or some other judgment of similar ilk, and some people are intrigued enough to draw near with open hearts and minds, and end up at the very least knowing me in a fuller and richer way (and some would say that is a bad thing, those who have judged me as the worst human being on the planet and hold me accountable for every wrong thing in their lives).
But some people would be destroyed by the knowledge of my gender struggles and subsequent journey. They would hold themselves responsible for my being the way I am, or simply close their minds so completely as to just be caught up in a whirl of panic, fear, and conviction that I am hellbound. For the rest of their days, there would be a blight cast and a shadow of failure on them (in their minds not mine).
This is the matrix that I consider when I choose who and how I am going to be out. Now please don’t misunderstand: I am publicly out, but not ostentatiously so. I have not yet chosen to come out to my 2 closest immediate family members, or my one closest in-law. In the case of my in-law, the odds are very heavy that there are only a few more years left here at most, and this person has lived a happy, productive and kind life and is proud of who I am/was in their history and experience. In the case of my own family members I see each of them so rarely that the news of my transition seems to me to be an unnecessary burden upon them.
I could be wrong…in each case there might be a pleasant surprise of acceptance…but I am not sure about it, and the potential for damage is far greater than the potential for blessing…
…and so silent I remain.
Well…it has become clear that someone intends to out me to these individuals, and all in the name of their own supposed pain and violation, all in the name of “helping others” who grapple with the transition of a loved one.
And it is impossible for me to describe the internal state that this prospect puts me in.
First of all, one of the quickest ways to induce suicide in a transgender person is to rob them of agency regarding who and what they are by outing them. This is a historical fact and I have posted a lot about that. Think of the woman who killed herself after Grantland Magazine outed her, just as one very public example.
But second of all, it feels at the core like such a vindictive thing, and full of spite…and worse yet, if I were to protest, well then I would be accused of doing the very thing that this outing will do to me. I will be accused of being a hypocrite, wearing a mask, living a lie, curtailing the rights and freedom of someone to share their story…etc. etc.
Your right to tell your story ends at the beginning of violating someone else.
Well…Constance, if you go to the beginning post, and make your way thru Grace Notes, you can decide whether or not I am living a lie…
…what I am living is a tragedy.
What I am determined is to be an agent of Redemption, Grace, and Mercy.
Carefully consider how you live…and in all things, be kind.
In sorrow, in hope,
Charissa
| — | Nikita Gill, How to Deal with a Painful Experience |
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.
They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
OMG Constance!! Did you hear about the massive protests and riots going on in Philadelphia because of the death of a woman of color???
Yeah…neither did I.
After all…she was only a woman.
A woman of color.
Oh…and she was trans.
Just another piece of trash collected for the patriarchy. http://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/transgender-woman-stabbed-to-death-in-philadelphia?utm_term=.yfzwq8GpK#.pnOnBKk8L 
But while I am on the topic of killing transwomen? If you slur me with your words…if you other me with your actions…if you lie to yourself about who I am…if you call me “engenderer”, “mask”, “monster”, “other” (a literal “othering”)…
…you do not get to call yourself a trans-advocate.
Words hurt, wound irrevokably…but silence slays the heart.
What am I supposed to do, stuck in this skin of some biological male creature that so many seem to have attached to, and now hate me because that creature has been revealed as who it was all along…and that revelation happening to me at the same time?
Do you have any idea how it feels to be othered so hard that certain people now act like I am dead? And when I am blessed enough to have communication it is of the harshest, cruelest and most dehumanizing form possible, stripping me of personhood, of being, and reducing me to a verb, or a mask, or a nothing?
I can never remember a time when I did not feel this way…never. Reading about these children, wow.
So I post this…for your thought. Likely there is not much we can do now about our own body image issues…but we darn sure can be kind to others now. We darn sure can touch our children with gentle words…and no matter what we can speak to other human beings cognizent always that they are stamped with Mama’s image, they are riddled with God’s Image, and are thus just a smidge lower than God and are as gods themselves.
In case you weren’t convinced that hating yourself is a learned behavior
Physical shame comes from parents, teachers, media, and peers. It’s not something you’re born with. You were born naked, wonderful, and gorgeous, and no one should make another being feel as if that wasn’t, and isn’t true.
Letters From Those Abused and Afraid | Disrupted Physician.
Dear Constance…I am blessed with such a plethora of amazing, wonderful followers.
That would be you…Constant Reader…Constance.
One of them is at the link I just posted, and he is a truth teller, more rare than gold dust as an amazing person commented over there.
“But why, Charissa? Why would you share such a topic as the one you chose?”
Because it is eerily reminiscent of the treatment of transgender people at the hands of…well…virtually everyone in our society. The double binds that are illuminated, the abuse, the policing and othering, the way the system protects itself and eliminates any possible threats to itself…
Yeah…this is the life of a transgender human being every single livelong day.
The system is a giant virus, and it has gathered to itself other virulent viruses and they all are completely sold out and committed to the mandate of one thing and one thing alone: survival and self-replication. And we, all of us, are in the belly of this beast.
Some of us are the pilot fish of privilege…circling the jaws, living off the shreds of flesh that trail off those teeth sharp and cruel. Some of us are between those jaws, ever consumed for the survival of the virus, and some live in the bowels, in the rot and excrement of everything that must take place in order for the thing to keep alive.
How are we to live?
The monolithic nature of this thing prohibits mass action, but what about individual action? Will you consider changing the way you interact with every single person you meet? Just think…if we all did that, loved our neighbor as ourselves, loved God (or if you believe you do not believe then loved being kind, being forgiving, being truthful and merciful), and refused to participate in injustice…
…there might be cracks, and then rents, and then in a rush a breaking down of the walls and the death of the virus.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Bullied Girl Commits Suicide After School Officials Tell Her “Toughen Up”.
Here’s a thought: how bout each one of you who reads this go to your school board and tell them that if this sort of thing is tolerated in your school district, you will file civil suit against them as culpable for the death?
How bout you simply say to them you personally will not tolerate anything whatsoever except a no bullying stance?
Or is it to you as it is to so many: the equivalent of the Aztec hearts held up to appease the angry god of the patriarchy and preserve your own privilege?
It’ll be
the last thing
you call me
cus I will
just blink
and you will
just disappear
Me and my Cat-Hair go where we want!
Well, my Cat-hair does, anyway.
I just trail frantically, pulled right along
as it wanders and pries and looks into burrows
and lays in the sun and just licks its soft paws
with no care in the world but those mice!
Sometimes it looks really cool, and just perfect!
Purring there, cooing and wanting the touch
of a hand that will smooth its sleek soft furry pelt
and some fingers so friendly with their gentle skritch
skritch skritch and then a flat palm to do obeisance.
But then there are times when my Cat-hair just hisses!
Its eyes glowing green and just brimming with daggers
and it jumps akimbo and arches its back
and it dares me, just dares me to try to address it
with anything less than a rake and a hoe
and better get ready to wrestle a she-devil
scratches for skritches and clawings for pettings!!
My Cat-hair and me are sometimes called names
and sometimes called other and sometimes called mask
and sometimes called liar and sometimes called nothing
and that’s when my Cat-hair sits silent, tail lashing
and eyes focused into the void that is lurking
inside the accusers who say they hate cats
when what they really mean is that they just hate me…
well, Cat-hair is there, and I cannot do anything
to make it dog-hair or human or cow-hair
or sheep-hair or anything else that would walk
off the Ark on that day when the floodwaters drained
and the animals rambled in freedom again.
so I guess I will just go with Cat-hair, just sitting there
being itself, just my Cat-hair and me.
Over 50% of transgender children try to commit suicide by their mid to late teenage years. A large number of them succeed. And the main reason that these children state that they try to harm themselves is the lack of love and support of their family and friends. My wife and I decided that we would much rather have a happy, healthy daughter than a dead son.
| — | Unknown |
I haven’t said much about Baltimore…others do it far better than I.
Clearly, something is very very wrong…and all the things I have been speaking about related to privilege and patriarchy pretty much determine whether you see this or not.
And let me (once again) be clear: my own eye-opening is a matter of about the last 5 years, and it has been accompanied by plenty of mourning and sorrow for the many lost years…just had to say that since there are those who think I merely ape the views of others and have a free pass from consequences…consequences I have been paying longer than these accusers have lived on this planet…but I digress.
Baltimore: what is there that the likes of I can say? So instead, I will post pics of the thing that makes the most sense as a response to what is taking place…and vicariously post this as my own cleansing ritual over my own soul and heart in order to be divested of the pollution and defilement of the past month.
Here is a novel idea…it would actually resolve Baltimore…and other matters as well:
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
A woman burns sage on the streets of Baltimore –
Shameeka Dream walks along a line of Maryland State Troopers stationed on North Avenue while burning sage in the wake of protests for the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland on April 28, 2015.19
Constance, this quote below…just this.
All you have is your experience in this world. The good…the bad…the whole and broken…add to that the sorts of experiences that the quote speaks of.
I would add one thing: dysphoria is a real condition that exists, of utter dislocation that transcends understanding, acceptance, and action. It can be managed and worked around, even built into certain things? But it can never be thought away, prayed away, or believed away.
The brain and body of a person with gender dysphoria will never flow together
They are oil and vinegar.
As such, they can be a fabulous and tasty dressing…but they will not find the congruence that is present with a cis-gendered person.
So all the crap and stuff that all humans endure? Differently abled people endure all that with additional conditions placed on their lives…dysphoria is one of them.
That doesn’t give me or any dysphoric person a pass…because each human has conditions on them that are invisible to everyone else.
So be tender hearted…understanding…full of forgiveness…and above all be kind.
Lives depend on it.
Of all the things I keep trying to tell cis people, “don’t presume your child’s gender” is the one that they consistently, deliberately refuse to understand and it is so deeply telling.
You cannot truly understand the transgender experience, and cannot count yourself an ally, until you accept that the trauma of being transgender is not inherent, it is a product of being coerced into thinking that you had absolutely no choice but to be the gender you were assigned.
Not “born with”, not “biologically”, the gender you were assigned.
The problem is assignment. The problem is doctors and parents believing it is their place to dictate their child’s gender, starting before they can even conceptualize what a gender is, let alone have the mental development necessary to object to what they’re given. This defines a child’s entire life, cuts short countless possibilities. It etches itself into the fabric of our developing minds and it is a ticking psychological time bomb for those children who are given a gender assignment that they cannot or do not wish to live with. This culture of dictated identity must end if transgender people are ever to be regarding as whole and equal members of society.
Constance…I am sobbing deeply right now. Another transgender person dead, dysphoria eats another one of us, and what’s worse but not at all unusual is the way that the cis-world egged her on.
I cannot imagine the cruel hearts of the people who said such horrible things to her.
But I will be blunt: everyday, you need to remember that most transgender people are treated with staggering othering and policing.
I myself am shunned, and my history is distorted and fabricated. My narrative is hijacked in service of a myth that allows people to feel good about the indifferent uncaring way they choose to live.
It weighs on a person, it does.
Constance, everywhere around you someone is suffering, someone is laboring. How about just be kind?
Please?
Someday you will wish you had been, if you’re lucky.
Trans woman, 23, kills herself after being attacked online | Gay Star News.
A young trans woman has killed herself after being attacked online.
Rachel Bryk, 23, jumped off the George Washington Bridge, the bridge between New York and New Jersey, on Thursday night (23 April)
An eyewitness is believed to have seen the young woman leave her purse on the bridge and jump off into the Hudson River.
Bryk’s body has still not been recovered. A funeral will be planned when her body is found.
Her shocked mother Lisa Bryk, from New Jersey, found out on Friday morning.
‘She was super smart, really good with computers,’ she told Gay Star News. ‘We’ll miss her.’
Bryk was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at a young age and lived with chronic pain. This meant she was unable to get a job or keep to a regular schedule.
She found her life in anime, nerd culture and computing. She helped develop an emulator that allows you to play Gamecube and Wii games on your PC.
But because Bryk was talented, and hard-working, and open about being trans, it meant she left herself open to online attacks.
When she said on 4chan that she was considering killing herself, she did not receive support.
‘DO IT, if you’re such a weak willed thin skinned dipshit then fucking do it,’ one anonymous commenter told her.
Even in her death, some on 4chan have described it as a ‘victory’. On news of her death, some commented that she was the ‘whiniest fucking faggot’ and ‘any tranny death is good riddance’.
Such comments clearly left Bryk severely depressed, who would often call herself ‘worthless trash’ on her Ask.fm page. Her Twitter bio page read: ‘[Trigger Warning]: suicide on everything i say.’
At Friday midnight, this was posted on her Twitter.
The people Bryk worked with mourned her.
‘She will be missed greatly by everyone. We are stronger, better people thanks to knowing her,’ one said.
And another: ‘Rachel was more than just a great programmer. She was a great programmer who always managed to put a smile on my face. I don’t think that there ever will be anyone else quite like her. Rest in peace.’
When we asked Bryk’s mom how the family dealt with her daughter’s transition, she said: ‘It caused a lot of worry, because the world is not a kind place for people who are different.’
If you are considering suicide, please call the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 1-800-273-8255. The LGBT National Helpline is on 888-843-4564, with the Youth line on 800-246-7743.
– See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/trans-woman-23-kills-herself-after-being-attacked-online270415#sthash.jcThC57T.kXWTRJ3X.dpuf
Constance, I likely will not post an awful lot about the Jenner Transition Announcement until she gets further underway.
I totally, utterly get where she is at right now. She is thinking things about how she is not that worried about pronouns, and how she is willing to overlook the othering and policing that is going on right now, yadda yadda yadda…she feels a responsibility to other transgender people to effect a graceful transition with dignity.
But deep down inside…all those things are hurting her, affecting her, wounding her. She doesn’t need me adding to the cacophony of noise surrounding her (and all of that exacerbated because of the family dynamics she married into). Eventually, she will begin to find her bearings and her voice, or if she already has, she will begin to express it in her own unique ways.
But I will be commenting on things that orbit her transition, things that are revealed and illuminated as a result of her decision, and here is one of them:
On my Facebook page, a friend linked to an article about her transition. That article is here:
What was telling was in the comments on the Facebook post, all generally very supportive, but one stood out to me. It simply said “Who are we to judge…”
“Who are we to judge…”
Constance, do you see why that comment jumped out at me? Yes? Jot down your thoughts about it…or No? No you do not see anything odd about that comment in relation to gender identity?
Well, Cis-Constance, imagine yourself being introduced to someone, and them very kindly and sagely assessing you and then saying to you and everyone “Who are we to judge…” and then shrugging as if to say “to each their own”…
as if your gender identity is something that is up for judgement in the first place!
as if your gender identity is an article of clothing that you simply decided to wear that day.
as if your gender identity was a moral choice you made or make.
Gender orientation is put into the same classification as sexual orientation and then judged as a moral choice, and this is simply incorrect and unfair.
There is orientation that is a given…and then there are behaviors that descend from choices that we make as creatures who are moral creatures and subject to moral constraints as determined by God and current cultural climate (and those are rarely congruent, btw)…the behaviors themselves are what I choose to do…but the orientation is who I was born to be.
Orientation is not moral behavior. It is simply the given baseline.
You as a cis-gender person are never subjected to the statement “Oh…you say you are a (fill in your biological chromosomal state). I see. Well, who am I to judge?”
And that, Constance, is the very epitome of cis-gender privilege!
Don’t get me wrong…I love the compassion that is at root behind the commenter’s post…but gender orientation is not a matter subject to judgement any more than race is, or that there is a brain in a skull, or that there are arms and legs on a human.
The deep underlying ignorance that is being exposed in the light of gender-education right now is the notion that gender-variance is a moral issue! The deep presupposition fostered in our binary is that any person who is cross-gendered is by definition subject to moral assessment should they decide to authentically live out who they are in spite of the external casing they are housed in!!
Do you see this?
The commenter is correct: we are not the judge of one another and should not judge one another. But the issue that she applied this moral principle speaks volumes of how far we have to go yet as a culture, and why we transgender people are subject to such tremendous othering.
Even the way we are supported is often times OTHERING!
I have the same internal response when people say to me “Hey, whatever makes you happy makes me happy”…and they are sincerely “for” me in terms of their willingness to accept me.
But they have no idea just how deeply they sentenced me to more time in the gender penitentiary.
“Mr. & Mrs. Cis-Gender Constance: Tear down this wall!!“
| — | Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Keep this one in your back pocket for the next time someone acts like an ass and then tells you they’ve been through a lot of stuff. Respectful and yet still firmly keeping respect for yourself. |
Respect for myself…this is new to me, for I have not really ever been aware of a “self” to respect! The self I knew was more a naught than a presence. What I was not plus who I was not added up to me equalling naught, and thus I never respected myself.
I do now…and taking responsibility for shortcomings does not make me responsible for the distortions and poor choices of others in reaction to them. I can joyfully embrace my opportunity to express my true remorse in not being the perfect person I desired to be and not being “the best (fill in the blank)” I could be…
…but then letting someone add cruelty to this? Allowing them to dehumanize me, devalue me? Diminish me?
Nah, I don’t think so…not going there anymore. Respect for myself means that I own my behavior and let everything else go, and oddly, I think this sets other people free by placing them in accountability for their own choices in how to respond to my shortcomings and places a responsibility to respect themselves by acknowledging their own failures.
Hey, if Victor Frankl can overcome what he did, choose a proactive life in spite of those grave horrors? So can I…and so can you.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
Constance, this lil essay below illustrates a similar experience that I have virtually everyday, except from the other end of the spectrum and working back.
I liked it, for it did a great job of revealing the underlying obligations that the paradigm encumbers all of us with.
Please chew on it awhile…and then think about how you can take people for who they are as the inside soul reveals, rather than how the outside accoutrements imply…one involves assumption, and one involves relationship…
“swanjolras:
okay, i have been trying to say this in a way that makes sense for ages, so here goes:
a lot of hatred of dresses, pink, stereotypically “feminine” stuff is based on internalized misogyny. and that’s definitely something we all need to look at within ourselves and address and work on.
but: a lot of hatred of dresses, pink, stereotypically “feminine” stuff is based on the fact that femininity is compulsory for people who are assigned female at birth.
like, this is a fact. this isn’t something i’m making up. femininity is compulsory. i have to wear dresses and makeup to be taken seriously when i go to job interviews, when i go to social occasions, when i present myself in any formal setting. when i don’t do that, people notice. they’re rude to me.
when i shop in the men’s section, store employees and customers glare at me! my relatives press feminine clothes on me during the holiday season because they think i should dress in a more feminine way! when i go to get my hair cut and ask for it to be cut in a certain style, the woman cutting my hair literally ignores that explicit instruction because it’s “too butch”. femininity is compulsory! i am not allowed to present my gender the way i would like to present my gender!
it’s not the fault of femininity that it’s being forced on me. and the patriarchy does devalue femininity. and the current rhetoric of “you can wear pink and skirts and still be a feminist and still be queer and it’s other people’s fault for not taking you seriously, not yours for dressing that way” is great.
but i’ve heard people say to me, “you can wear lipstick and dresses and still be a feminist” about a thousand times, and i have never, ever,ever heard someone say to me, “you can refuse to wear lipstick and dresses and you are no less of a woman than someone who does wear them.” i had to figure that out all on my own.
i’m allowed to be angry at the cis women who force me to present myself in a way that i don’t want to present myself. i am allowed to do that.
I will scream the bolded from the rooftops for you if you want. <3″
“I don’t chase people anymore. I learned that I’m here, and I’m important. I’m not going to run after people to prove that I matter.”
That’s me…Grace. Charissa Grace, and I did my best and better than most. If you twist that, you would twist anything and thus I am free of your ravings. I am sad that they are your crooning seducers. I am sad they deny us the honor of growing thru difficulty because they distort normal brokenness and a lot of really great things into melodramatic horrors that never happened.
But I am not grovelling any more. Slur me as you will. I am still me, the same one who was faithful to the utmost to stay alive in the face of gut wrenching horror.
I matter.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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