Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark.
| — | Jorge Luis Borges |
Category Archives: Quotes
“Tout va te paraître dérisoire,
mais n’abandonne rien.
Ne cède rien au désespoir!
Utilise tes rêves.
Et même s’ils sont
cassés, recolle-les!”
mais n’abandonne rien.
Ne cède rien au désespoir!
Utilise tes rêves.
Et même s’ils sont
cassés, recolle-les!”
| — | Mathias Malzieu |
I Think I Agree With This, But…
“The secret is not to “think” about thoughts,
but to allow them to flow through the mind,
while keeping your mind free of afterthoughts.”
but to allow them to flow through the mind,
while keeping your mind free of afterthoughts.”
| — | Sogyal Rinpoche,
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying |
…I recommend a time later where you attend to nothing else but the afterthoughts.
Hey. Prayer is a conversation. How can you have a relationship with They To Whom you pray if you do not stop to listen to Their answers?
The Baby Box
Lee Jong-rak is the South Korean pastor who created the “Baby Box”. The idea is that mothers who do not want their babies, can leave them inside the box which includes a thick towel and lights and heating to keep the baby warm. When a baby is placed inside the box, a bell rings in Lee Jon-rak’s home which the box is attached to, and he or a member of his staff will go and collect the unwanted baby and bring them inside to his orphanage.
Hundreds of babies are left abandoned at the side of the road in South Korea yearly and Jong-rak knew the perfect way to save the lives of these innocent babies. There is a sign above the drop box which reads: “Place to leave babies.” He confessed that he didn’t expect the box to be as popular as it has been.
On one occasion a mother dropping her baby off explained to him that she had poison to kill herself and her baby but because of this box, she had an alternative. On another occasion, a baby was left with this heart wrenching note:
“My baby!
Mom is so sorry.
I am so sorry
to make this decision.
My son!
I hope you to
meet great parents,
and I am very, very sorry .
I don’t deserve to say a word.
Sorry, sorry, and I love you my son.
Mom loves you more
than anything else.
I leave you here
because I don’t know
who your father is.
I used to
think about
something bad,
but I guess
this box is safer
for you.
That’s why
I decided
to leave you here.
My son,
Please forgive me.”
Sometimes I say the same things to my own children, but there is no answer, nothing but the wind whispering in the trees and memories that stain my heart red.
What It’s Like To Transition
How about you, Constance? What transitions are you facing in life?
They are worth the suffering.
If You Insist On Living In My Past? Stay There
If you hear people from my past speak of me.
Keep in mind they are speaking of a person
they don’t even know any more.
Teach us to realize how short our lives are. Then our hearts will become wise.
— Psalm 90:12 NIRV
Gives Me A Lump In My Throat
Every single time…
Here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life, which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apartI carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)
— E.E. Cummings
The Religious Hypocrite’s Corollary
“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”
| — | Aristotle |
The Religious Hypocrite has understood this corollary:
“To appear perfect, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”
The Religious Hypocrite thinks holiness is a matter of doing…do these certain things…avoid doing these other things, and you will be holy.
But holiness is not something you do. It is something you are, something imputed to you as a gift that you become…and once you have become that, you are that regardless of doing…just like your child is always your child whether they do certain things or don’t do certain things.
If you find yourself assessing your standing with God on the basis of what you have done, or refrained from doing?
Then you are living out the Religious Hypocrite’s corollary. 
Wearing Scars
Believed
“If a poet has a dream
it is not of becoming famous
but of being believed”
it is not of becoming famous
but of being believed”
| — | Jean Cocteau |
So Beautiful It Hurts
“A song from another time
survived with me.
It follows me wherever I go.”
survived with me.
It follows me wherever I go.”
| — | Dunya Mikhail, from “Song from Another Time,” The Iraqi Nights (New Directions, 2014) |
Describing Our Reality
“Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted,” for centuries
by the refutation of our experience and our instincts
in a culture which validates only male experience.
by the refutation of our experience and our instincts
in a culture which validates only male experience.
“The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us.
“We therefore have a primary obligation to each other:
not to undermine each others’ sense of reality
for the sake of expediency;
not to gaslight each other.
“Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience.
Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake,
beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”
| — | Adrienne Rich |
I read this quote this morning, and instantly gravitated to it…because it is shocking to me just how fast my insides shatter and my heart just crumples, with just a word. It scares me when this happens…because then the ripples start, and I begin to question the prior words, deeds, experiences…were they real? Or were they careful camouflage and thus by their very existence invalidation of who I am because they were needed to provide cover?
The mind says they were real…but my unprotected heart recoiling in the shock and pain so unexpected begins to fly so frantic at the bars of its cage. And like a small captive bird it beats itself bloody against those bars that suddenly are there…just like that…because now I know there is that “step of translation” between who people see me to be and who they then speak to me as…truthfully that shreds me inside when it happens, because I have been free in myself and flowing…until with a thunk
this flying bird hits that static glass wall, invisible, unexpected, but no less devastating and seeming inevitable…and I do feel insane when I cleave to the truth of my own experience after I have hit that wall of misgendering.
Adrienne Rich speaks of the undermining of each other’s sense of reality…
…mine is suffering right now.
Oh…not who I know myself to be…but rather who others know me to be. That feeling of insanity that she references above. Because when people are around me for a length of time, they do indeed experience me as female in my brain, my heart, my emotions and expressions, my love and affection, my orientation towards co-operation and collaboration…
…but then that male pronoun just flies out seemingly unbidden, and for the life of my I cannot understand how it can be…except that it must be that the gravity of my body and physical self is too powerful for the evidence of my heart and soul and spirit to overcome and I am chained to that outer shell diminishing…and thus diminished and reduced to mere outward appearance…and doomed to the dirt…yeah, it hurts.
I don’t know what to do about it, because it is beyond my control.
I guess just surrender to this reality but in the Name of Jesus…and let Mama work it to my good and bring me peace.
Inspiration
…to keep my own counsel and bide my time:
“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
| — | Alan Watts |
What I Am Trying To Say
“Between Voice and Thought,
between Thought and Voice,
between Presence and Absence,
oscillates the poetic pendulum.”
between Thought and Voice,
between Presence and Absence,
oscillates the poetic pendulum.”
| — | Paul Valéry, from “Poetry and Abstract Thought,” The Art of Poetry(Princeton University Press, 1958) |
Give Light Not Darkness
“Give light and darkness will disappear of itself” – Desiderius Erasmus
You Can Only Go Forward…
“I am so sorry to all the people I hurt while I was hurting.”
I saw this quote online this morning. It captures my feelings about that long, long past, much of which I am only dimly aware of having lived, but more like an observer than a participant.
Certain parameters have been laid out…and sadly those preclude forgiveness. Apparently, there really is more than one “unforgivable sin” (and really, each human being sorta gets to decide what sin is forgivable and what sin is not, no?).
But the truly fine thing about being a human being? The power of understanding embodied in choice and become action.
And I am…so sorrowful that the hurt that I was in…that I was in my “not-being” resulted in hurt to others. And yet there is nothing to be done about the then, and the to come has not yet arrived.
There is just the now…finally and at last the now…and I am in it.
Glad, Grateful and Free…
Charissa Grace
Every Moment Speaks
“Every word has consequences.
Every silence, too.”
Every silence, too.”
| — | Jean-Paul Sartre |
Confronting Your Own Privilege
“Is ‘heterosexual’ a slur? No. It describes an identity and experience. Because straight folks don’t typically experience their heterosexuality as an identity, many don’t identify as heterosexual — they don’t need to, because culture has already done that for them. Similarly, cisgender people don’t generally identify as cisgender because societal expectations already presume that they are. […]It’s an incredible and invisible power to not need to name yourself because the norms have already done that for you. You don’t need to come out as heterosexual or cisgender because it is already expected. Since it isn’t a derogatory term, those who take exception to it may be uncomfortable with trans issues, or perhaps they are unwilling to confront their own privilege.”
| — | K.J. Rawson, interview via the Advocate |
One of the greatest acts of advocacy you can partake of…confronting your own privilege.
Miracles of Modern Medicine
This used to be me…it isn’t anymore.
HRT works. My brain is soo much happier.
Constance, it is something so simple, and yet so profound.
I am glad I made it, and I am thankful to those who valued and recognized the essential me regardless of container/package.
And those of you who didn’t…wow. I don’t know whether I should pity you more, or those in your life who are similarly falsely assessed. That must really suck.
I am free…and oh God the flying!
The Wine of Joy
“I have drunken deep of joy
and I will taste no other wine tonight.”
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
Don’t Worry…
…in truth people are far too preoccupied with themselves to ever truly be interested to really know others.
“Don’t let people know too much about you.” (found online).
It is the rare human being who is free enough from self to even want to know the empathic experience of another’s life.
Just think: so many ills that plague us would simply fall by the wayside…
Oh wait. I guess there was a very wise and kind person who walked the planet a couple of eras ago who said that all the teachings and commandments of all the religions and all the prophets and laws were summed up thus:
“The greatest commandment is to love God, with all your heart and soul, strength and mind…and the second commandment is just like the first one. Love your neighbor as yourself, and do to others only those things that you want others to do to you”.
Like I said…you don’t need to worry about letting people know too much about you…they are not really interested compared to how much they are focused and obsessed with themselves.
Intention
“People show their true colors,
unintentionally. Pay attention”
*Quote found online*
in what they do?
in what they don’t do?
in what they speak?
in the spaces between those words?
in what they do not say?
what are colors, true?
what are these intentions?
I think people mostly don’t,
intention
gosh it’s lonely sometimes
For Jack…whom I love
…sometimes we experience life and it brings us to a place. A place…not the summation of “things that happened” but to the place of “being happen“…it’s more about our experience of being in the happening, and the way that these happenings pass thru us and are colored by us.
Sometimes that ends up as a “result” where we can hear one thing…and think another thing that is entirely other than the speaker thought, meant, or was even aware.
And time passes…and then we gain a new perspective, like seeing a mountain from a valley, and then seeing the same mountain from a neighboring peak, or looking down from a cliffside into a canyon and then experiencing the canyon from the canyon floor.
Perspective is everything, midst the actual reality of experience.
In the meantime, this quote is a reliable compass as we experience a one direction life in a multi-direction being.
It’s An Artform
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.”
That Becoming Dance
“This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall, this is how magic is done…
…by hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering that it’s a feather bed.. there’s no other way to do it.”
— Terence McKenna
Work In Progress
Found this morning:
“You are in a time of transition, of growth –
of becoming more than you’ve allowed yourself to be.
It’s bittersweet. It’s painful. It’s beautiful and it is so very necessary.
Don’t stop trying. Don’t hesitate to dream big. Don’t give up on yourself.
Don’t give into your doubts. You are a wonderful work in progress.
Day by day you are planting seeds and soon the harvest will come
and you will reap glorious things.”
—
With love,Dele
Change Your Attitude
“Stay honest. Stay vulnerable. Stay present. Stay hopeful.
Through the hard days, broken moments, frustrating experiences,
sad nights, tearful breakdowns, and hopeless feelings stay awake.
Through the hard days, broken moments, frustrating experiences,
sad nights, tearful breakdowns, and hopeless feelings stay awake.
“Stay faithful. Stay alive.
This moment you are in right now is a turning point.
A time of change. A season where who you were
and what you felt doesn’t have to be forever.
“You can change your life.
Change your path.
Change your attitude.
Change your story.”
Change your path.
Change your attitude.
Change your story.”
| — | Dele Olanubi |
Then Read It Again
Do not allow your loneliness to lower your standards.
40 questions for Christians who oppose marriage equality (GUEST COMMENTARY) – Corner of Church and State
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…
Wishing, But Not Hearing
This long quote. It’s a thank you to someone for their endurance under depression. It captures the place well.
I suffered in dysphoria for 50 years, and one of its horrible side effects was depression. Staying alive was a pretty big achievement. And yet there are people in my life who communicate something to me very different than this quote…or just don’t speak at all.
The words spoken are awful to read (at least I am spared them being given face to face)…but the silence is the worst. Looming, frozen, hot hell…where there used to be the core and comfort of my heart.
If you know someone in your life who wrestles with despair, and gets up alive everyday? Say something like the below to them…it will mean the world.
“I am so unbelievably proud of you. Every day you get out of bed even though all you want to do is stay under the covers. Every day you take a shower, you get dressed, you put food in your body, and you leave the safety of your home for the chaos of this world.To me that’s an act of profound bravery. You are choosing to live and try despite your tiredness, hopelessness, and brokenness. You cling to the light instead of the dark. You leave your comfort zone every day for the unknown.
I’m proud of you. I hope you are proud of you. I hope you know how those seemingly little acts of courage are really the greatest moments of bravery. I hope that you will continue to rise each day and live your life.
Thank you for living. Thank you for staying. Thank you for fighting. Thank you for trying. Thank you for being in this world with me. Thank you for holding on when you want to let go. Thank you for trusting in tomorrow.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.I am so proud of you. These words cannot explain the depths of gratefulness I feel for your life. I pray that you would always rise just as the sun does every morning in the blue sky.
— With a whole lot of love, Dele”
My Alone
“My alone
feels so good,
I’ll only have you
if you’re sweeter
than my solitude.”
— Warsan Shireஇڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—…இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—இڿ
Affirmation
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.
Bad Logic
Constance, check out the quote below:
“Claiming there is no other life in the universe is like scooping up some water, looking at the cup and claiming there are no whales in the ocean.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, reply to “Aliens don’t exist because we have not found them yet
Of course, this is very cute, and one of those zingers that makes a certain sense…but one could also say
“Claiming there is other life in the universe is like scooping up some water, looking at the cup and claiming that I just haven’t found a whale in a pond because I haven’t checked every single pond yet.”
My point is more about logic and how it’s used (or ignored) rather than so-called alien life-forms.
That topic is somewhat moot, as the potential presence of aliens still does not address that thing that’s off inside of humanity. The topic of logic and thought, however, is pretty relevant at all times for humanity.
To Be Standing Under
“We’re all so desperate to be understood,
we forget to be understanding.”
we forget to be understanding.”
| — | Beau Taplin // U n d e r s t a n d i n g |
The Birds of Desire
“She was like a forest,
like the dark interlacing
of the oakwood,
humming inaudibly
with myriad unfolding buds.
Meanwhile
the birds of desire
were asleep
in the vast interlaced
intricacy of her body.”
— D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Save Your Magic
I saw these pictures laid out just now…and oh how I laughed!
Constance, how often have you found yourself
in a situation in life that is basically just uncooked fries?
They are raw, frozen, and must endure some heat
to be transformed into something
edible and delicious.
And yet, you fear the flame, you dread the pain
and thus you look to magic for escape
the magic place inside that we all have.
Magic isn’t free, no! It involves
a different kind of pain, more permanent,
more costly and more precious in its gift.
Hey, open up your heart and let a smile
consume your face like sun consumes the night!
And get you in the oven…get you in your fight!!
and let your fries be cooked so you can eat
and with such joy your days you’ll rise to greet!!
He Said…She Said
“…I have remained a poet, in the most radical sense of the word.”
| — | Friedrich Nietzsche, from a letter to Peter Gast |
I am laughing as I read this quote
this poor man sounding like Bill Grogan’s Goat
who swallowed the farmer’s red long underwear
and now has indigestion everywhere!
remain…poet…radical…sense…the word
that sentence is red long underwear
giving me indigestion, and as I bleat
I cough it up down at the rail road tracks
and flag the passing train that hurtles by
rolling towards the trestle out, destroyed!
how can I remain a poetess? I am still “main”
and thus have no access to “re”…just main
and Poetry? She scoffs at notions, high pretensions
such as “most” and “sense” when grafted
to the context of the Word.
NAY! This heart poetic, precious is defined,
is described, is found and measured
in the shadow cast and context of the Word
*in the beginning was/is/shallbe*
and in the Word “sense” is mere nonsense,
and radical is a sub-atomic particle straining free
and remain is so redundant, oh so boring
and goats munch red underwear and choke
I am a poetess, because the Word
and Poetry my mistress and my Queen
and nonsense is outside sense as dark is light
and I “main” my flow, my creative Delight
I am Charissa Grace and I am free
so sorry for Nietzsche, too fearful to be
Teachers: Take Note!
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.
Curiously Creative
“I have noticed that when all the lights are on,
people tend to talk about what they are doing –
their outer lives.
“Sitting round in candlelight or firelight,
people start to talk about how they are feeling –
their inner lives.
They speak subjectively,
they argue less,
there are longer pauses.
“To sit alone without any electric light is curiously creative.
I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall,
but not if I switch on the lights –
then I start thinking about projects,
deadlines, demands,
“and the shadows and shapes
of the house become objects,
not suggestions, things that need to done,
not a background to thought.”
— Jeanette Winterson, “Why I Adore the Night”
The Teacher
“Problems, weaknesses, setbacks, regrets and mistakes
teach you if you’re willing to learn,
or they punish you if you’re not.”
— Ralph Marston
Thoughts of Connection
I love thought that runs in this fashion…not on “eros” as a topic…but the way in which it is discussed.
This is Signifier and Signified Thinking and a good example of it.
“Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ the absent presence of desire comes alive.“But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me.“And it is only, suddenly, at the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can.”
— Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet
Be Soft
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard.
Do not let pain make you hate.
Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness…”
—
Kurt Vonnegut
STUNNING Quote!
“There are sights too beautiful to swallow. They stay on the rim of the eye; it cannot contain them.”
— Olivia Laing, To the River
Thoughts of a Father Who Failed
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
| — | George Bernard Shaw |
I know some who are
I Can See Clearly, Now…the Rain Is Gone
Just Lies
I find something reprehensible, and cheesy…cheap. Tawdry.
It is the scrabbling fingertips on the true heart of friendship but the turned face to its commitment lived out.
I am gaining confidence to say that I am worth more than lip service.
So I say it…I am worth more than lip service.
A Plea To You
Constance…
A while back I posted a page called “Help Charissa Transition”. I have not pushed it whatsoever, but wanted to have it there. I have been blessed by a couple of contributions, and they mean so much to me that someone believes in me that much.
But I wanted to bring it up…as I have recently passed 500 followers, and the issue of being a trans-ally is a hot one right now, what with Qs about what can be done that demonstrates being an ally.
Well…here is sumfin to think about: if each of you contributed $100.00 (which is about 10 hours of work at minimum wage), the fund would swell to $50,000.00…and just like that all the othering and obstacle of gate-keeping insurance companies is overcome and I would be able to get my Gender Confirmation surgery.
If each of you contributed 10.00…well, I could begin some of the FFS surgeries that I would greatly benefit from.
And if you gave more, the balance that I did not need for my own surgeries would be donated to a few trans-women that I am connected to.
I think things like this will be the future, ways to do and to be what is needed in spite of the way that the system seeks to other us.
Just think about it…perhaps it is foregoing Starbies for a month…or skipping dinner out 2x, or…fill in the blank.
And thanks for even thinking about it, btw…it is exciting to contemplate and dream about.
Much Love,
Charissa
Extremely Powerful Thinking: On Femininity and the Patriarchy
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.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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