Category Archives: Gender Issues

My True Name

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the sun scurries from the rim
of the far horizon, hurries
up to its important stage above all
things beaming.
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it’s gonna have a helluva day
throwing shade at everyone
especially me, this moonchild
that sunshine passes thru.
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the sun forgets everything
but its self-important run
to heights to glare down from
imperious, impervious, and naming.
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I could look straight at it
but if I did, it would be quenched
in my knowing, darkling gaze,
my look that sees the backside
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so I look away as it names me
wrong, other, afterthought
aside, and that old flame would
just as soon burn my ass.
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but in just mere moments
when I lower my gaze, the sun
forgets I ever was, except maybe
to laugh and snicker at the moonchild
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but the moon remembers
and so do I
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the moon, soft, beautiful
receives me
knows my name

my true name
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I Am Eve

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shhh…let your words speak silence
between the worlds I travel in
while holding sacred tension
in my loins, my heart and core
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do not knock me into knowing!
I must dance, delicate and light
in order to Unknow and enter
Mysteries Highest, Deepest Delight.

I mustn’t find my way to answers,
rather, forget to remember them
and lose my questions in the
silence spoken silent
and resounding.
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I am not ignorant,
I am not naive!
I am not foolish…
my name is Eve
and I am crown
to all creation
and forging trails
unknown into what
he knew and
then discarded and
I must simply
thus Unknow.
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Standing on the diamond threshold
at the pearl crossroads
living emerald heart
and pulsing ruby blood

My body is the gateway
and my soul’s forgotten
questions and the music
playing deep within
celestial night.

I am Eve.
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And Gold All Underneath

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Behold, the darkness thick and lurking, growing
like ennui in my soul, in my heart doomed and waiting
in this long moment, seemingly forever
it will remain, this painted grey, this second…
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this minute is an hour is a decade
and I exist here…floating in the nothing, growing-shrinking…
it defines me as some-thing…no…as Some-one
whose breaking renders her unbreakable…
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The growing darkness lurking, insubstantial,
The river Ennui flowing out to nowhere, to everywhere
The shocking joy and wonder also shining, in
This painted grey, and gold all underneath.
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Just Like Medusa But Before

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My hair luxuriant
breezy-blowsey and dancing
on the insistent playful zephyr wind
and combed and tangled all at once…

My hair heavy, shiny
and pregnant with dreams
not yet birthed and dreamt
my hair free, unkempt

Like Medusa before me
(before she was betrayed, before
she was raped and blamed and
cursed by that collaborator Athena)
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my hair ravishing and alive like palm fronds,
like banners sparking and unfurled, unfettered,
undreamt and spread out into
endless ever-eager skies,

it wraps itself around dreamseeds
that float like stars, like fire-flies
and in its net they find a home,
a heart, and courage to lay down disguise

and take up residence in every
dreamer’s hopeful diamond-sleep
and blossom, unfold without care
those dream eggs held in my thick hair
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“Oh, you’re trans? But you look so good!”

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What Cis People Say To Trans People Vs. What We Hear

“Oh, you’re trans? But you look so good!”







Rory Midhani for BuzzFeed News

Meredith Talusan is an LGBT Staff Writer for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Meredith Talusan at meredith.talusan@buzzfeed.com.
Illustrator:  Contact Rory Midhani at info@rorymidhani.com.

Her and Me and Your Futility

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When you shattered my heart
delicate globe shot thru with
tunnels and annals
and columns and canals…

when you stormed at me
on me in me with your
stoney snow of bitter black
granite and jagged icy nuggets

of frozen flecks so broken
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She reached with fingers eager
to bleed upon the bloodless drained
edges of my torn and shattered soul,
fingers white and tender to the slash

and picked each cutty-edgy razor piece
up off the quick-sand floor
and put them all together, jumbly
but Her pattern knowing, more

than what I was before
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And then She made a hole thru which
the eye can see, the heart can hear
kaleidoscope music and dance
of Her and me and your futility

and so I spin now, caught in moments
stark, or velvet, or even gentle fuzzy
and simply refract light from the
million shattered pieces reassembled

in mosaic magic, kaleidoscopic and supreme.
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Agent Carter: My Fave Show

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“Your line of work requires support. People who care about your wellbeing, who will be there to stitch up your wounds […] There is not a man or woman, no matter how fit he or she may be, who is capable of carrying the entire world on their shoulders.”

Can we talk about how we’re living an age where we can get an action tv show with a female protagonist and her male sidekick and they’re not in love and he’s a nurturing figure for her and she means adventures for him????

BLESS

Every Avenue

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Your words were thicker than
The Black Forest
and thicker than blood

(by a long chalk)

you treated blood like water,
no, like stone, like brick
made without straw

(your house took all that)

and there, around that house
so flimsy a hufflepuffer could
poofty it away with ballooned cheeks

(and a sharp swift exhalation, just one)

you built with words a fortress
with walls thick and battlements
that do not gleam in sunsets

(like moonlight dancing with the sun on many-waters)

but brood and loom grey and flat
absorbing light and cutting off
every avenue.
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Born of Bud And Blossom

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Amongst the thorns so sharp and bristley-bitter
and nestled in the crackley canes and stems so brittle
I sprang from buds clenched tight with fright and gripping
their green possessive cloaks around their high strung hearts
so pink, so red, so soft and velvet fragrant
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The sun pried without mercy, without quarter
and his hot fiery fingers plucked and pulled
and deep inside those shrouding shawls veridian
the pulsing surging petals pushed back hard
and cracked the sticky emerald shells of shame
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To blossom in the air renewed by wand’ring winds
and sway and dance, be wooed by every chance, to bend
low to the ground and then high straining for the heavens
releasing me, the fragrance strong, unquenchable
of grace and beauty, peace and love and joy.
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Yes.  I was born of bud and robust blossom
that fell away and left me hanging here
a kiss upon the cheek of summer memory
a promise in the winter of the spring
a herald of the Love of Heaven’s King.
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A Performance Lecture on the Theology of Gender

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I have seen this wonderful man in person and very much enjoyed his presentation.

I am posting this for anyone curious about a theological perspective about matters of gender, presented in dramatic performance and gentle words.

 

Sex And Gender Are Actually The Same Thing (but bear with me…)

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The reality is that the concept of “biological sex” — along with gender, money, and traffic laws — is entirely socially constructed. […]

Source: Sex And Gender Are Actually The Same Thing (but bear with me…)

Okay…follow along with the logic:  The writer is basically attributing physical expression in the world to an “origin point”…namely, being.

The author argues that if one knows oneself to “Be” a particular gender, then by definition and without application of the social constructs of definitions, one’s physical being “IS” that same identification.

It is a lot to think through, and certainly was for me…but the logic is sound, and the results of failing to apply this logic do certainly end up in the destructive ends the author enumerates.

Worth the time and thought to read thru…tumblr_mmkvjlRAvt1rnlb7lo1_r1_1280

Feast Upon The Village Green

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I am the nest from which the great blue heron springs.
I am the stones upon which stinging ice-churned runnels ring.
And there, those fires hot from which the Phoenix rare takes wing.
I’m scintillating embers, coals ablaze and life giving.

They named me foul pale heretic and laid me down to rest,
outside the white-washed churchyard walls, outside their ruddy fold.
And there my hot blood flowed rich-red to feed their bloodless grass,
I deep red died upon that emerald sward of murder bold.
And I do let my bones peek from the curtain of my skin
and thus do I me nourish every living thing herein
with my authentic self and my unconquerable song,
my passion unquenchable and my me a sacred throng

of birth from death and life lept up in winds, in rain and dew
I am nest, stone and embers singing always clear for you.
and thus it is unholy ground is cleaned, hallowed once more,
and every living thing’s communion, ever opened door
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When Your Violin is Supposed to Be a Cello | Let’s Queer Things Up!

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“In a single scale, I broke my own heart.”

Ohhh SAM!!!  This.

THIS!!

This article captures it so very well.  In a single article, he made me weep!

Source: When Your Violin is Supposed to Be a Cello | Let’s Queer Things Up!

Yes, clothes matter. | the girl inside

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Source: Yes, clothes matter. | the girl inside

This is a well written article and I recommend it

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“Clea” by Matrix 9

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So…I used to be a jazz player waaay back in high school…trombone.

One year, we brought in this odd group as a fund raiser so we could go to the Reno Jazz Festival.

They played a bunch of songs, but the only one I remember and will never EVER forget is this one, “Clea”.

There is a sung line or two in the song…but the only part I remember is this:

“One with myself, one with myself, finally I am one”.

When I first heard that I burst into tears and wanted to explode in the instant…and it haunted me ever since…years and years and years that line haunted me and I knew not why.

I do now, though…know why.  Thank God I am closer…day by day.

 

I Am A broken girl And I Am

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I am a broken girl and I am

not so easy to love like
carefree normal confident girls
next door in cotton and flannel and lace.

I live inside a fortress and I hide

inside shields and my soul
lives centuries in seconds
I am a survivor of wars
that break the strongest
men so flimsy.
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Can you love me so strong that mountains
collapse into the dust of quiet surrender?
Can you melt my doubts and burn my soul
hotter than cold death and abandonment?

Can you endure my very worst days and stand

me not knowing that I am beautiful,
can you erase the thousand tormenting words
the sibilant whispers from hell’s pits of isolation and horror? tumblr_nycmluCX5a1qat5pio1_500
Can you stand that I am thinking even now “Why would you?”

Why would anyone?

I run from you,
but do you see that I run
far slower than I could?
Do you even know
what that means?

Why won’t you chase me?
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Could you provide me anything
that I can rely on, any routine
that will be as sunrise and sunset
again and again?

Could you give me a pet name?
Could you kiss me, touch me?
Then do it again, and again.
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I am a broken girl and I am
thirst itself so strong that Sahara is oasis.

I am a broken promise but I love
with loyalty that is the stars’
commitment to shine in the night.

I am a broken girl and I am
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Heartbreaking Every Time

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When I read that article…the gas-lighting kind, that retells my past in the worst of ways in order to paint the writer as the most burdened most fragile but simultaneously most strong survivor ever…we readers are all supposed to get all hushed and quiet and be in awe that somehow the writer survived such horrors…such horrors…

and me, my Baby, with thousands upon thousands of memories utterly different, totally opposite…

The only thing that gets me thru is what my therapist has taught me, that these things are not actually designed to try to tell the truth about history…

…rather, they are spoken in the desperate attempt to explain the writer’s own experience of the present, and much of that experience produced by brain trauma from the past…not the fabricated events.tumblr_nxkbeuPHhR1tpcnfko1_500
I get it…as a person who experienced epic brain trauma from conception…

But it hurts, and is its own form of erasure, of the theft of my agency.

It cracks me up in a way, because 10 years ago the stories painted us as lovey dovey neo hippy refugees from the 70s.  That fit the need of that moment.

It is especially heartbreaking that the hour of my becoming is the hour of unbecoming for the writer…and I am powerless to change that, and held by grudges and judgments in those chains in that place, but only inside the writer’s soul.  For I have slipped my leash at last, and now run free.  And yes…there is a holographic overview of how dysphoria affected those around me, no doubt about it.  They just cannot (or won’t) see the battle I fought to keep greater horrors away.

Yes, there are greater horrors.

I pray that someday the Truth can be partaken of together, and the Truth will set us free.
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To My Children, Thanksgiving 2015

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I won’t take clothes that are hand me downs,
I won’t smile cus I wear a frown
Once I get going, you can’t hold me down
Cus once I get started I go to town.

I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.

Cus I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
And I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
Cus I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.

Darling, you know that I love you true,
Confess all my sins if you want me to,
But there’s one thing I wanna say to you,
If you want to love me my whole life thru

I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else.
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else

I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.

Like everybody else,
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else,
Like everybody else.

Darling, you know that I love you true,
Confess all my sins if you want me to,
But there’s one thing I wanna say to you,
If you want to love me my whole life thru

I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.
I’m not like everybody else,
No I’m not like everybody else

I SAY IT!!!!!
I don’t want to walk like everybody else,
I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
I don’t wanna sit and cry like everybody else
I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.

Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else),
Like everybody else (like everybody else).
Like everybody else (like everybody else),

LIKE EVERYBODY ELSEEEEEEEEEEE

I Am Burning

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I’m on fire,
burning in words
burning in images
burning in thoughts
and torched again
by the why why why
why? Why do they say,
do, laugh, eye roll?

I honestly do not know

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In Lonely Woods

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I walk alone in lonely woods
fading from fall to winter snows
moving from the warmth of home
to wander lost and barren
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I wonder as I move from tree
to tree and touch the scratchy bark
concealing living wood within
and warm there in the cold
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if I can find a home inside
this tree or that one, twisting in
the gloamy air I wander thru
and thus root down to earthMAC_AUG08_ 033But no, this tree is walking still
moving and not going there
stuck here but there and not here
I walk alone in lonely woods.
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Hear Me Screaming (Transgender Remembrance Day 2015)

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I am a ghost wandering in the dark
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.

Wandering lost and in sorrowful shades
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.

I am a wailing voice keening in grief
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.

Wrapped in a funeral shroud black and white
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.

You walk into the nook, seeing me here
but you don’t even know,
you don’t even see

you don’t even hear me screaming.

To My Judges…

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…you who wrote vociferously to deny me becoming, deny me growth…
…you who wrote to deprive me of my innate destiny to have a perspective, walk thru life and the years, and then have a new perspective from a new place…
…you who wrote to deny forgiveness by telling me that I was unforgiveable…
…you who wrote in denial of a Grandfather’s wisdom that a wise person changes their mind and a fool never…

…this post is for you.

I am free of your judgments.  Take them back to the grave you choose to live in, I want nothing to do with them.

Give me a chance to be responsible and to give and take and live and learn and forgive and be forgiven…give me a chance to be the person I allus was and not this fabricated golem you have created to tell yourself what you think you need to be…give me that chance and I will take it.

But to gas-light me, castigate me and condemn me all the while denying me any means or opportunity to walk forward?

No…Charissa will not play that.

Take it all away and best of luck to you…as for me, I will live in forgiveness, give forgiveness, receive forgiveness, love, laugh, and know that I am perfectly imperfect.

I mourn that you deny me the opportunity to walk a life with you…but from the looks of things you are far more the loser.

The Truth About Transgender Suicide | Brynn Tannehill

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“Suicidal behaviors in LGBT populations appear to be related to “minority stress”, which stems from the cultural and social prejudice attached to minority sexual orientation and gender identity.

“This stress includes individual experiences of prejudice or discrimination, such as family rejection, harassment, bullying, violence, and victimization. Increasingly recognized as an aspect of minority stress is “institutional discrimination” resulting from laws and public policies that create inequities or omit LGBT people from benefits and protections afforded others.

“Individual and institutional discrimination have been found to be associated with social isolation, low self-esteem, negative sexual/gender identity, and depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders.

“These negative outcomes, rather than minority sexual orientation or gender identity per se, appear to be the key risk factors for LGBT suicidal ideation and behavior.”

Source: The Truth About Transgender Suicide | Brynn Tannehill

This.

I am sharing this truly scintillating essay, and the pull quote above is the core for me.

I just wanna say that I was raised white…but I was…raised white. Fortunately for me, I was never inculcated with racist bull shit, to the point that in college in the 80s I had a dear friend literally shock me when he told me I was the least racist person he had ever met…and yes, I did hear and note his use of the word “least”…which said volumes to me but in a language that I could not decipher or understand.

Well…since coming to terms with myself and understanding my gender journey, my life has changed in shattering ways, stunning and transcendent ways…but most importantly of all I was delivered from the ocean at last…

and became aware of so much that I never knew, could never see, even as a fish in the sea has no clue that it is in the sea.

I understand the comment of my friend now…”least racist”.

I wish I had the words and ways to let my friends, acquaintances and loved ones who are subject to that which they are subject to for the absolute worst and most insignificant of reasons KNOW that I get it now…

Oh, I will NEVER get it for the reason that they are made subject, anymore than any cis-gender person will ever “get it” in any way other than developing a deep and sincere sympathy and resolute commitment to love and live that love…

But I do get it now, the persecution, the othering, the abuse, the hatred and the fucking demonic unreasoning irrational stupidity of those besotted and drunk on the luck of the draw and the fate of biology.

My friends, and you know who you are…this post is for you…may I always find the joy I have found in solidarity with you and the love of your deep suns of being that shine undefeated and undefeatable! May I always have the heart, the eyes to see and to be inspired time and again with your indomitable spirit, will, but most of all your LOVE which just fucking never quits, CAN never quit.

You have no idea, the moments you have dragged me thru…you bearing the hate directed at you due to skin and me bearing the hate directed at me due to a variation on skin but essentially a common thing we walk in…times I was on the way out, and I would read sumfin, hear sumfin, think of sumfin…and be inspired and lifted up in your heart of hearts.

Now? I can at least have the means to find the remaining privilege I have and divest myself of it intentionally…it doesn’t always go, it is stuck to my skin color…but at last it is not stuck to me.

I regret only that it took as long as it did for my understanding and seeing eyes to catch up to what my heart must have known for my friend to tell me what he told me. We intersect…and for the rest of my days on earth I am expanding that intersection with every ounce of love, faith, hope, grace and mercy that is mine.

To the rest of my friends: please take it in faith that your privilege is there, is stuck to you, and is a legacy that you can use if you will but set your heart in a frame of humility and ask that your eyes be opened…hopefully you will gain insight without experiencing it being ripped away…but if that is what it takes, it is better that this occur rather than go thru your life blind while thinking you see.tumblr_lh6nzks1YS1qgnixvo1_1280

Grace In The Gulf

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It is in that gulf
that vast distance
between

that meadow hanging
on the wondrous mountainside
beautiful for situation

and cupping the wind
in its song-chamber bowl
and sounding like angels

and that desert looming
that desperate dryness
and filled with the winds

and the wails of the desolate
and the bleach-ed dry bones
that confound Ezekiel

That gulf is witness
and proof of the Heart
that freely pours Grace

until it is full,
that emptiness stark
repulsive in being

Charissa the Graceful
Full, overflowing
and liberal of gesture

Charissa Bereft
and so empty and jagged
and a curse on the lips

Both of us Mama’s Girl
One speaks of Grace Given
One speaks of Grace Needed

Lord
In Your Mercy
Hear my prayertumblr_nxpoelGzkM1thfeewo1_500

Kyrie Eleison

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Just ran across the most beautiful and sad song that catches the essence of my heart right now
 
“”In a long forgotten book I read,
something that Augustine said,
in his deepest wound he found God’s Glory,
 
but I’m afraid that I’m too sick,
to conjure up that magic trick,
can I write myself into that story,
 
kyrie eleison…
kyrie eleison…
once had faith
but now it’s gone
kyrie eleison…
kyrie eleison…
 
I cut myself with stones and cry,
pretend, I’m not alone when I
fear that all along it’s only me,
 
kyrie, do you care?
eleison…”
 
Now…of course I have not “lost” faith…how could I? They found me and will never lose me…but it is poignant and haunting, this song, and I often lose hope that I will ever not feel outside and apart rather than a part.
 
Transgender Remembrance day draws close…it is so ironic to me that this day is so close to Veteran’s Day…one honors all…and one simply remembers those who died, and yet how impossible to remember anyone you never really knew, and then back to business as usual and the murder/violence rate continues to grow.
 
Sometimes the worst is that there are so many days thruout the year that I feel so utterly distant and forlorn that it feels like being erased from a day by others…a metaphorical murder…

…and other days I in essence commit spiritual suicide, the way that the dysphoria and my own failure conspire together.

Then there is the irony of the term…”Remembrance Day”…

Not a day goes by that I have forgotten or even could forget.6fc85792c7aa0ac7bcd8e961963b8650

That Eternal Aftermath

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It’s burst,
that Red Balloon floating
over the spindly-legged delicate
black lace Eiffel.

It splattered balloony-guts
in violent gouts
so grotesque
it’s nearly absurd,
and their
rubbery red-joke streaks
on the side
of that squatty arc
are anything but
Triomphe.

That’s how it works, terrorism…
that shock,
that
out-of-the-blue-blow-up
and your life
is doomed to never
the same
and yet never
recover
rinse-repeat cycle…

That’s how it is…
in my own private Paris,
misogynistic othering
phobic policing
sacks of pure hatred
shitting swaths
of bullets from
gender-uzis
and bursting Balloons here
and over the rainbowtumblr_ml9q09f3Za1rlrdqeo1_1280

It’s So Easy

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It’s so easy for you, isn’t it
just pull the rip cord and disappear
anytime conflict draws near

or anything that threatens
your lil cis-gender heaven
where everyone is just like you.

It makes me laugh how you stand
at a distance and make ooey-gooey
nicey-nice noises and cooes

that are supposed to tell me
how great you are and how
much you love me

but when there is even
so much as a fart in a light breeze
(god forbid the shit ever hit the fan)

you march right to the trenches
along with those who attack me
because you all are gender pure

and they are your gender relatives
and like must stand with like after all
and you might get struck or cut beside me.

Yeah…delete me when you don’t like
what I say (or what I am) or when
you don’t want to do the work to really understand

what I am saying, what I am doing
who I am…or just ignore me
just don’t look here and go away

Look…there are monsters in this world
and they want to hurt me, but they will
settle for you if you are in the way

I think you are beginning to see
that I am not your token tranny…
being my friend?

it’s not so easy.tumblr_nxmc5rLgC31ty8kogo1_1280

 

My Face Against Your Glass

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The monolith of your decided thoughts
looms large in dreadfall shades and shadows stark
of lost judgments formed in historic fogs
and lacking light and love, short on comfort.tumblr_nvg1grSQMU1shqs68o1_1280

and I am shrieking-dwarfed in their shot gaze
unblinking, baleful red and white and black
for all those choices made back in lost days
in reactive guilt and in hidden shame
give recoil now to even the mere name
of who and what I am, what I am not.Image 001

and still I throw myself against those stones
those bastions large and looming, standing there
in granite ground into your heart and bones
that glass unbreakable that you have set
to look thru, thinking seeing is the same
as being, but it’s not, not even close.tumblr_nvznykpXfz1sii7h0o1_1280because you cannot touch me…no…not quite
…you will not touch me, that’s it, you will not
then I am naught…and my face…ohhh my face

my face against your glass red, blue and white

red and blue and white and I can’t get a breath

my face against your glass, your glass my death

Evangelicalism, You Have Traumatized Me. – The Gay Post-Evangical

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Source: Evangelicalism, You Have Traumatized Me. – The Gay Post-Evangical

I am pressing this post…it is by way of confession for me.  I have done these things to people back in the old days…mostly in the early 90s, and my thinking well on the path of evolving and transforming by the late 90s…but I did them.

Said them.

Thanks be to our God of Love and Grace that They opened the eyes of my heart.

Someone I love deeply recently told me that they will never forgive me for those things said then…no matter that they ignore so much else.  They told me that I was not allowed to change my mind or views and that they would despise me forever if I tried to “claim” a road to Damascus experience and now “get off scot-free”.  They were cruel, intentionally so, and consigned me to their dungeon of never having status as a free person ever again.

Well…that was tough to read, and the choices that they make do not dictate my future nor deny me the grace of growing and changing and evolving.

But even if I spent my whole life in their dungeon, it would not make “right” the things I said and lived in those times…I truly thought I was saying and doing the right thing.

I was wrong.

In the spirit of forgetting what lies behind and pressing onward to the glory of God in Christ, I am rejoicing that I still have some years to help the ones in my life now who I have the chance to show grace to.

May any who read this who have been wounded and othered by the likes of such as I once was find healing in my confession…and may the ones who say they will never forgive quickly find opportunity to change their own views…it will broaden their forgiveness qualifications most helpfully, and empower them to forgive themselves.

 

On Seas So Grey

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What’s it like, on the grey seas
in the silver wind, with sails
so green and full and billowing?

Skimming swift and dangerous, light
on the waters while the crew scrambles
‘neath that Captain loud and bellowing?

Stinging spray by facefuls founting
up from waves slosh-frothing, faithful
and fateful leading cross the edge

to horizons promising much more
of the same and something different,
something different, too.

Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It) — Bad Words — Medium

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But the issue of abuse is more subtle — more invisible — and more than all the above.

Abuse does not arise in a vacuum. A healthy mind does not (need to) abuse. Abuse is created of trauma, and it is the traumatized mind which abuses. Whether to externalize, bury, escape its anger and frustration — the abused mind must purge it’s hurt in some manner, or risk being broken, split apart by it entirely.

But the troubling fact is this.

We have created an abusive society. We have normalized, regularized, and routinized abuse. We are abused at work, by the very rules, norms, and expectations of our jobs, at which we are merely “human resources”, to be utilized, allocated, depleted. We are abused at play, by industries that seek to prey on our innocence and literally “target” our human weaknesses.

And now we are abused at arm’s length, through the lightwaves, by people we will never meet, for things we have barely even said. We live in a society where school shootings are the rule, not the exception, where more people will have taken antidepressants than not…and now one where nearly everyone will have been abused on the web…for a random, off-hand, throwaway comment, an idle thought, something trivial, unremarkable, meaningless.

Source: Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It) — Bad Words — Medium

I wanted to press that quote, pulled from a longer article that is fantastic in describing what happens on social media…

…and online in general.

The web is one gigantic megaphone, and one person with a point of view and a platform can do incredible damage to any number of other people with what they write and how they write it.

I myself have experienced this…where an article was written about me, about the most private and personal and painful things in my life and placed on display in the service of a personal point of view.

I didn’t recognize the person that appeared in the article, even while I remembered the things alluded to…and remembered the rich tapestry that surrounded them all…a tapestry comprised of the things that happened and the things I remember and the interpretation that is placed on them by so many players in the tableau…

I was horrified as I read the comments on the article by complete and utter strangers who had now decided that I was a certain way or a certain thing, simply based on these words made public, and while those words are utterly authentic as a representation of the thoughts and judgements of the writer they were abysmally inadequate in giving any genuine insight into the gestalt of the history that had been lived.

I was despairing…thinking of how the place of publication did Zero due diligence in fact checking or vetting or even giving me the common courtesy of a warning that they were going to take a small facet, one side of a terribly complicated issue and wave it in the air like a besotted banner of click-bait and titillation.

I couldn’t help but imagine the consequences should this have happened to any other number of people I know in my situation, and the yawn and blind eye turned to just another transgender suicide…

And more than anything else?  I knew that deep down inside I would have done nothing to stop the writing from happening because of the writer’s need to tell the story and tell it the way those eyes, that heart and brain lived it.

The issue is not the telling of the story…the issue is the megaphone and how it is choking itself on its own abusive streams. 

Contemplate the things this author points out, and consider your own interactions with social media…and know that there is a better way.

Do Justice.  Love Mercy.  Walk Humbly.
Charissatumblr_nsonrvhzRA1qesboko1_1280

Between Me And The Fire

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there is always something
some thing that stands
between me and the fire
and casts a shadow that lies
on my face, a caul, a veiltumblr_mdicq83JjD1qfllfmo1_500it’s been called mask
and I bat at it, swat at it
the ninja master of
when you walk face-first
into spiderwebs
you never saw

but flail to no avail
to claw away this veil
(the caul)

me and my desire
(the fire)
and the thing
(whatever fits)
between me and the fire
tumblr_nuoplsUK3F1tijmqfo1_500

me and body
me and love
me and longing

i cannot get to it
(the fire)
so i can dive into it
(and burn and burn and)

so instead i move sideways
around the thing and to the water
that waits for me placid, peaceful
yielding inviting thirsty
for metumblr_nvi0baXuRN1trdezwo1_400it will drink of me
it will be one with me
it will give me itself for my body
it will marry me
(not just the idea of me)

and the flowers will sing
(they float)
and my dress shall dissolve
and my veil shall away

so that my breath
and my body
and the water
at last
become
one

tumblr_nov8utHEU81r4dhceo1_1280

I Don’t Miss Him

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Ima go ahead now,
pick up glowy embers
radiant and stinky
with the fires of days
long past…pick them up

with new hands and tender
soft flesh that has never
known shackles and chains,
calluses, rough edges.

Don’t gasp, they can’t hurt me!
I’m alive now, and wreathed
in grace and I’m shrouded
in mysteries of mercy
falling on the hungry

hard flames of agony.
See?  There they are…
the remnants of him,
gone at last, and frankly
I don’t miss him at all,

in the slightest, and really
all I had in common
with him was this body,
“Guffaw of the Universe”,
but not him, nothing

in common with him…well
except air, we both breathe
air…well, I breathe air, but
he doesn’t anymore…breathe.
And I don’t miss him.tumblr_nvg937KivG1qdxn3oo1_r1_1280

Because A Man Slapped My Butt…

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“I know that if women wish to escape the stigma of husband-seeking, they must act and look like marble or clay – cold, expressionless, bloodless; for every appearance of feeling, of joy, sorrow, friendliness, antipathy, admiration, disgust, are alike construed by the world into the attempt to hook a husband.
“Never mind! well-meaning women have their own consciences to comfort them after all.
“Do not, therefore, be too much afraid of showing yourself as you are, affectionate and good-heartened; do not too harshly repress sentiments and feelings excellent in themselves, because you fear that some puppy may fancy that you are letting them come out to fascinate him; do not condemn yourself to live only by halves, because if you showed too much animation some pragmatical thing in breeches might take it into his pate to imagine that you designed to dedicate your life to his inanity.
— Charlotte Brontë writing to a friend who had been kind to a man she thought was married, only to have him fall in love with her because he thought she was flirting (letter dated April 2, 1845)

“…some pragmatical thing in breeches might take it into his pate to imagine that you designed to dedicate your life to his inanity.” –19th century sassiness is delicious

tumblr_nv63rejoTk1qllucco1_500

No

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that moment when I am walking
no, floating, no…that moment
when I am flowing down
no, up, no…along the river
no, stream, no…torrent of
life and you decide

that you can just touch me
without permission or permission
no, consent, no…yes permission
and I stiffen in horror, in fear
no, terror, no…in anger because
you make me into nothing with your touch

but i mask it with my smile
no, grin, no…with my grimace
that you miss, you absolute oaf
because you think I am an otter
sleek and preening when I am
actually a hedgehog all quilly

no, thistly, no…all covered with razors
and shattered glass and broken promises
and splintered insults and shredded judgements

no, no—no—no, no
tumblr_nv0y4oL2iQ1qllucco3_1280

That Someday Purge

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it’s been
quite a while
since i jammed
my fingers
down my throat,
nails scraping soft
tender tissues,
ripping them
into ragged
ribbons of

agony and sweet relief.

i really
don’t know
why i did that
all those years.
i cannot even
find the impulse,
the compulsion
to expiate myself
and purge me
of that void.

but now
i think
we live
in times
of cultural
bulimia

and we
binge on self
purge in guilt
bathe in shame
call it freedom.

someday
we’ll live
a life of
being not doing
or consuming

and our throats
will heal
and our song
will be sung

pure
and
unashamed.tumblr_nusy5bRHld1smnww2o1_500

The astonishing village where little girls turn into boys aged 12

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Source: The astonishing village where little girls turn into boys aged 12

I have never heard of this before!

But!!!

Do not miss the salient point here!!  It is NOT what is between the legs that determines gender, but what’s between the ears.

What’s the Science? | Trans-Parenting

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Source: What’s the Science? | Trans-Parenting

This is a good resource page for anyone to be able to find good sources to help explain what our current technological state reveals about the physical side of gender-orientation and the reasons for this particular point on the continuum of the intersection of gender and biology.

Take a look…it will settle you if you are uncertain, and affirm you if you are already an ally.

02, 9/11/12, 2:49 PM, 8C, 5360x5432 (392+1312), 100%, Custom, 1/15 s, R49.0, G34.0, B57.0

The Crucible of Grace

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If you seek to extend grace and love to cover over a multitude of sins, the worst thing you can do is undercut that extension by talking about it and pointing it out.  Right?

This weekend has been excruciating, because the long-awaited and much dreaded article outing me to the entire world was published.  And I am letting it stand uncommented on, because the person who wrote it apparently needs this as they deal, process, and move forward in becoming.tumblr_nj9hjr55am1sodq0ro1_1280But it is awful having my voice stolen from me…it is awful being portrayed as a cruel caricature of who I am and who I was…it is tragic to see the consequences of what I chose and lived twisted so tragically as life spins on by and the gravity of the Fall pulls everything to that fierce collision with nothingness…and it is heartbreaking to see the person that I literally would instantly die for, right now this moment, if it would restore them to wholeness, flail around trying to recover their bearings and watch as they grapple with emotions and choices and basically just suffer a sort of death process.

The place this article was published did not contact me (though if they had, I would have said to go ahead…my loved one needs to speak unfettered)…the things that were written, well let’s just say that one person’s account sounds right until another person in a situation gives their lived experience, and then things are usually a lot more complicated and delicate in determining “what happened”.tumblr_n892glA3he1rmz4wdo1_1280Mostly what happened?  The binary.  The binary punished me from the beginning of my life, it trapped my parents into seeing me as someone I wasn’t…it tore my soul in half and left the only option forward for me a dissociation from self and adopting performance as my currency and agency in the world…it left a bloody gaping void within me that never ever could heal, and in which the Love of God was sufficient, but only just…it led to the birth of children who deserved more and got less in spite of me trying to give them everything…

What happened was a flawed imperfect person full of hope and love and wanting only to have kids and love them and raise them up into life did her best in the skin and role of a man…and is now vilified and excoriated for this…what happened is that I was born in a time and place and culture, and practiced the things that I thought were right and true and proper, and those so at odds with what I know now, what I matured into, grew into, and yet how does that undo things that happened 30 years ago?tumblr_nrqhpzN6nu1s5u2cno1_500And what happened was so much pain in my decision to transition that an entire narrative had to shift to account for the horror and the loss of a father…and I read of things, and am painted in ways that just do not match up with what I lived, what I remember, what emails and letters say to me, what other people who knew us and were around us a lot recall…

What happened was my dysphoria and depression and despair did indeed affect my heart and soul, and that affected everyone around me, and likely was the metaphorical equivalent to belts and abuse so does it really even matter if I never did the actual things I am accused of doing?  Actually no…it doesn’t matter that I never did them, because it is clear to me that I was them…poisonous, toxic, radioactive, damned for being absent and cursed for being present and above all accountable for every last ill in those lives so precious to me.

I never really understood before why God’s answer to the horror of the Fall was to come as Jesus to this world, and suffer and die…I do now though.  Because there are no words that I can say that would explain it, justify it, make it right, make it better, disappear it…all I could do would be to simply die in their place…tumblr_nu4nj5Mkg51rdq2opo1_1280…and if I could do that, I would want it to happen hidden, without anyone knowing, and the provision of that death simply being wholeness and happiness for my hearts…

I love you, hearts…I will grieve until the day grief itself is satisfied and all things are made new.  Say on.  Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you must.

I only ask Mama, please hold me close and sustain me in Your Love.