“Today, be the reason someone feels loved.”
Category Archives: Quotes
For Trans-sake! A funny, but cuts to the heart of the matter
Raising a trans child is not child abuse.
Raising a trans child is not child abuse...
Dear Constance…
It is hot, and sultry in the night. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and stumbled out to the lappy and I am sitting in the velvet thick wraps of heat and cool, dissipating, swelling, gaining strength and washing away.
I am thinking of the waves of years, like waves washed up onto the shores of my soul, and how those waves have all at once sculpted my edges and eroded my interface with the world…and yet left me untouched, in the deep hinterlands of identity and meaning.
I have always been drawn to the ocean, and its hungry sad roar, its insatiable throwing of itself onto the earth it loves, the constant assault on that mass which resists its efforts to billow over it, washing it down a hungry mouth and being unable to swallow such a juicy morsel…the high cliffs and stubborn trees, given shape and scope by winds and rains and time…and how time and the ocean are one and the same.
Always there. Changing everything. Changing nothing.
As I have worked to dig deeper and deeper into the roots and genesis of my origins, I have wondered…constantly…what would have happened if I had the chance to grow up in a time and place where being transgender was understood, accepted as something analogous to cleft palate or some other differently abled condition that we so easily and quickly address with modern medical understandings…could have been welcomed into that sphere that I was excluded from then, socialized and policed so heavily that even now, having walked out of that penitentiary of thought I find that I carry the prison bars within and they have managed to grow into the roots of my heart and entangle themselves there.
I am still in a cage, a horrorshow of entangled lies and terrible truths…lies regarding who I am…and truths silently standing in towering clarity of who I am not…what I am not, and what I always will be. And I must keep walking forward. The only thing that will keep me out of the penitentiary is forgetting what lies behind and pressing on towards the upward calling…
What ifs still linger though, and one of the greatest is what if my parents had truly known? What if my classmates had truly known? What if I had never been infected with the awful mentality that tells me I am ugly, and repulsive, and never shuts up even underneath smiles and during the recitation to myself ot the catechism of mental health?
If I could have had puberty blockers followed by the very hormones I am at long last taking which have brought me immeasurable inner peace and relief?
I will never know…but I see the efforts of people like my Hero, Kat over at Dandelion Fuzz, like so many (mostly) mothers and fathers who have grasped the simple basic truth that their child is a gift from God and needs only to be fed and watered, loved and nurtured to emerge as a unique and eternal embodiment of one facet of God’s heart…and I want to cry with relief that things are changing, and my prison is becoming like Alcatraz, shut down and decommissioned as inhumane and unprofitable.
And then I see the actions of wanna-be jailers, and listen to the wild and desperate cries of “gloom and doom, gloom and doom!” They are now classifying the acceptance and active care of a trans-gender child as child abuse!
I guess to them the spankings I received were nothing more than loving efforts to keep me in line with who everyone else said I was? The teasing I got just a jovial activity to “toughen me up and make a man outta me?” The forever nights of turmoil workouts to empower me to have no emotions and feelings and end up with strong muscles to resist suicide and depression? The guilt and shame that was thrown down on me from so-called people of God was merely the loving ministrations of “God’s Servants” to purify me and make me holy (read wholly oppressed and chained)?
No.
Constance, those things were child abuse! I deal with the fallout to this day.
But I have posted this link to an article about them, about those like me, in hopes that you will know better what we have gone thru and what we face daily, and what is available to be our help…and also what we face from our accusers.
Stand in the gap? Reach a hand, not of pity, but of support…and educate those you encounter whose minds are still chained to images of boogeymen and monsters.
In solemn longing,
Charissa
The Purpose of Poetry
“The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.”
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.”
Czesław Miłosz
Solely By Existing…like God’s Love, Upside-down
Good Morning Constance…ran across this quote, and immediately saw a converse to the acceptance and love and welcoming that the Love of God has and is.
Let’s try to simply love? It is amazing how much energy you will have, if you lay down trying to force everyone else into your image, which is the ultimate idolatry.
“Framing trans people and trans discourse as though it falls along the lines of “transgenderism”, frames the issue as though it is ideological.
“Trans people are not an ideology. There is no monolithic ideology that trans people share. There are radical trans people, liberal trans people, conservative trans people (though that is sort of rare), apolitical trans people, just as there are femme trans men, butch trans women etc.
“Trans people exist and are an eminently marginalized class of people.
“Trans people are, as well as being an oppressed class, individual human beings with their own idiosyncratic experiences, lives and stories to tell.
“Trans people, for challenging the institution of gender solely by existing, are treated with vitriolic contempt from all corners of society in a material basis.
“Trans people, most especially transgender women of color, are disproportionately affected by hate crime, poverty, police brutality, sexual violence, the prison industrial complex, are economically coerced into survival sex work, often have a lack of access to appropriate medical care, experience sensationalistic media depictions, constant hyper-objectification and so on.
“Trans people, especially trans women, are consistently dehumanized by wider society, all because of society’s preposterous obsession with gender and their anxiety, and downright terror of people who fail to conform.
“Trans people are not an ideology.
Trans people are f***ing human beings.”
To “You know who you are”:
Love, your Charissa
Society’s Dismissal and Dehumanization of Trans Women
While I am still invested in concealing myself in certain societal stratas, I do share with Janet a growing awareness of the many facets of being. And a growing awareness of the ways in which I have been othered and policed…both as trans and as a woman.
“My assignment at birth is only one facet of my identity, one that I am no longer invested in concealing. Acknowledging this fact and how it has shaped my understanding of self has given me the power the challenge the ways in which we judge, discriminate, and stigmatize women based on bodily differences. The media’s insatiable appetite for transsexual women’s bodies contributes to the systematic othering of trans women as modern-day freak shows, portrayals that validate and feed society’s dismissal and dehumanization of trans women.”
-Janet Mock, Redefining Realness
On the Stigmatization of Gender-Variant People
“As long as trans women are seen as less desirable, illegitimate, devalued women, then men will continue to frame their attraction to us as secret, shameful, and stigmatized, limiting their sexual interactions with trans women to pornography and prostitution.
And if a trans woman believes that the only way she can share intimate space with a man is through secret hookups or transactions, she will be led to engage in risky sexual behaviors that make her more vulnerable to criminalization, disease, and violence; she will be led to coddle a man who takes out his frustrations about his sexuality on her with his fists; she will be led to question whether she’s worthy enough to protect herself with a condom when a man tells her he loves her; she will be led to believe that she is not worthy of being seen and must remain hidden.”
-Janet Mock, Redefining Realness
Kitty Quote of the Day
“He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.”
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
I am learning this is okay to do!
“Surround yourself with people who touch your Heart, and Nourish your Soul.”
~ Andrea A Elisabeth
Male Privilege = Gender Privilege = Wrongful Oppression, Period
“Of course, there are some segments of the feminist community that are vehemently anti-trans. But even aside from that, a lot of feminist activism and rhetoric is geared specifically toward non-trans women’s experiences.
“Much of it centers on women being able to do anything men can, and on empowering women’s bodies and biology, which is important and necessary, but it doesn’t resonate as readily with trans women because our socializations and bodies differ from that norm.
“And the whole unilateral feminist notion that men are the oppressors and women are the oppressed just seems so overly simplistic coming from a trans perspective. Male privilege is very real, but it is not the only gender privilege that exists.
“I think what trans women can offer feminism is a fuller, more holistic perspective on sexism than what currently exists.
“Part of this comes from our having lived in the world as both women and men at different points in our lives. Also, I think trans women can challenge the notion that femininity is entirely artificial or merely a trap to hold women down.
“I can understand why it might seem that way for many women who were coerced as children into a femininity that did not feel right for them. But trans women often have the reciprocal experience of naturally gravitating toward feminine expression despite being socialized to be masculine.
“Because of this experience, we recognize how certain aspects of femininity can be empowering for those who gravitate toward it on their own accord. We recognize the importance of critiquing anti-feminine sentiment both in the culture at large as well as within feminism.”
Snapshot into my world…
“When you’re a trans woman, you are made to walk this very fine line, where if you act feminine you are accused of being a parody, but if you act masculine, it is seen as a sign of your true male identity. And if you act sweet and demure, you’re accused of reinforcing patriarchal ideals of female passivity, but if you stand up for your own rights and make your voice heard, then you are dismissed as wielding male privilege and entitlement.”
― Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive
I Feel This Way About My Sisters
“The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses”
~ e.e.cummings ~
Free Will: The Very Image of God
“We have these brief lives, and our only real choice is how we will fill them. Your attention is precious. Don’t squander it. Don’t throw it away. Don’t let companies and products steal it from you. Don’t let advertisers trick you into lusting after things you don’t need. Don’t let the media convince you to covet the lives of celebrities. Own your attention — it’s all you really have.”
— Jonathan Harris
Decisions…
“And a mistake repeated more than once is a decision.”
Paulo Coelho
Amen!!
“Maturing is realizing how many things don’t require your comment.”
— Rachel Wolchin
Ummm…just, Wow!??
“I have no control over what people think of me
but I have 100% control of what I think of myself.”
but I have 100% control of what I think of myself.”
Beth Ditto
Re-Post: Why it’s so hard for men to recognize misogyny.
#YesAllWomen in the wake of Elliot Rodger: Why it’s so hard for men to recognize misogyny..
Constance…this is a must read to understand the current climate of spiritual being inhabited by the human race.
Each of us is living in this prison!
Women, who suffer as inmates…
…and men, who are born little boys, and socialized into jailers, and thus inmates as well…
…and the rest of us, on that continuum and without territory, the cleaner of latrines and the off-scourings of both or either.
If you read here for the poetry, consider this post to be talking of that entity that strikes at Poetry’s Heart, that malice, spite, hatred, rage, “anti-life black hole” gawping hungry and ravening, raving in rage against the light. You need to find your way to your compass, and follow it to that way of being that is in the land Beyond and whole…
If you read here for the spiritual orientation, consider this post in light of Paul’s great rejection of privilege and station in Galatians: “For in Christ, there is neither slave nor free, greek nor jew, male nor female…” Paul was not teaching that there is no gender or nationality or station in life, but rather, he was pointing out that Jesus has united us all in a land of freedom where there are no more jails, no more jailers, no more inmates. All have equal worth, value, and significance, whose limit is defined by the price paid to purchase all things…and you simply have no other option than to find the courage of your convictions, leave the safety of the “bus-stop of evangelism and the 4 spiritual laws”, and strike out boldly into the territories waiting for your courage, your faith and resolve, and most of all, your love oozing and dripping from your heart instead of the very blood of the monster that enslaves this world and us by proxy to the degree that we do not speak out, live out our words and embody in our beings the very law of liberty!
If you read here for the perspective of a transgender person in a binary world view, for my own outrage and bucking against an entire construct of ancient evil birthed in rebellion and ego, then take stock of your own station and participation in this concentration camp culture and way of being…
…start bucking. Kicking. In that way which is right for you to do, for some have hooves, some wings, some words and some deeds…
Above all, find that radical action which transcends revolutionary overthrow and effects true change of being, essence and substance, and does not simply burn out in tiredness and cynicism or become co-opted in its strength and potency by consumerism which simply re-packages genuine action into the latest consumer product and trend.
Blessings of uneasiness and no peace until you confront yourself in this gaol…
Charissa Grace, circumspect and sober of spirit.
(small quote from the entire article to whet your appetite:
“These are forms of male aggression that only women see. But even when men are afforded a front seat to harassment, they don’t always have the correct vantage point for recognizing the subtlety of its operation. Four years before the murders, I was sitting in a bar in Washington, D.C. with a male friend. Another young woman was alone at the bar when an older man scooted next to her. He was aggressive, wasted, and sitting too close, but she smiled curtly at his ramblings and laughed softly at his jokes as she patiently downed her drink. “Why is she humoring him?” my friend asked me. “You would never do that.” I was too embarrassed to say: “Because he looks scary” and ‘I do it all the time.’ “)
Perhaps I Qualify on Both Counts
“Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.”
Anne Sexton
**************************
Good Lord!! Could it be?
Am I indeed a poet, a saint?
God knows I have been called “exuberant” many times
and damned with the faint praise of being labeled “enthusiastic” as well…
these words were not used kindly, nor with tender touch.
But then I looked up
“enthusiastic”
and decided
“I’ll take that!”
Hmmph! I am still Charissa Grace…
bark peeling back in the hot sun,
open face, love and grace
shining thru.
Her
(found online…so appropriate, considering who my dearest darling has been, is, and God willing will be for many long years to come and transitioning effortlessly into eternity…I love you darling…Charissa)
“Her.
I love everything about her. I love the way that her eyes sparkle when she looks at me. I love the way that she’s not afraid to stare back into my eyes. Honestly, I love the way that she makes me feel like I’m the only person in a crowded room. I love how she always stays focused on us and our goals, no matter what hell we have to go through. I love the fact I’m the only thing that makes her truly smile. She may not know, but her smile lights up a room and instantly brightens my darkest days. I love the way she giggles and laughs when she is being a total smartass. I love how she jokes around and tickles me randomly, or when she just gives wet kisses all over my face just to hear me laugh. I love the way that she literally knows exactly what to do to make me feel amazing. I love the way that a simple stroke of her thumb across the top of my hand calms me instantly. I love the way her and I cuddle in totally random pretzel like positions. I love her legs, they’re like my personal heaters for my always cold feet. Most of all, I just love everything about her, and she makes me a better person every single day. I will never know why she chose me, but I am sure glad she did. I am head over heels, hopelessly in love with my best friend. I cannot wait to spend the rest of my long life with her beautiful soul.”
Love in your dish
G’morning Constance…I love to cook. I love to get in the kitchen and start letting ingredients come together and meld, mingle, and metamorphose into something completely different.
My cooking is sooo much better these days…now that I know myself. I have wondered why. And perhaps this quote, from Chef Jacques Pépin sheds some light on the subject…and it makes me wonder: if every day is a dish to be prepared, are you including the crucial ingredient?
And as a poet, I think the metaphor holds very well…check out the quote, and make a gourmet day out of today!
Love, Charissa
“I have asked friends many times, “What are the best fundamental dishes of your life?” Invariably, their response goes back to food prepared by a mother, a grandmother, a father, an aunt, or some other relative or friend. A main ingredient of those preparations is the love with which they are prepared. Those early tastes remain with you for the rest of your life.
“The Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang said that patriotism is nothing more than the love of dishes you had as a child. Certainly, in times of stress you go back to the essential dishes of your youth. As those young soldiers in Afghanistan would certainly agree, Mom’s apple pie, Boston baked beans, or a lobster roll are among the dishes they crave or dream about.
“In Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, the book’s main protagonist, Dr. Urbino, doesn’t know anything about cooking, but when he eats and entertains in his home, he equates the goodness of the food with how much love was put into the dish. He would reject a dish, saying, “this food was cooked without love.” It is a criticism that is closer to the truth than most people realize.
“Julia Child used to say that you have to be happy when you cook for the food to be good, and you also have to be happy in the eating and sharing of the food with family and friends. Otherwise the gastric juices will not do their job and you won’t digest the food properly. I agree with her assessment. It is impossible to enjoy food when you’re angry and tense.”
Kitty Quote of the Day (in the Phileo sense of the word Love, in Greek)
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride…” Neruda
Love ya, friend!!
Charissa
Kitty Quote of the day (in gratitude, lovely Kitty! MIAAAOOOWWWW!)
“Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .””
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
I identify with Jennifer Knapp’s words
Good morning Constance…I ran across an old interview with Jennifer Knapp, a singer-songwriter who has come out regarding being a lesbian who loves God intensely and has no intentions of turning away simply because the Church has turned away from her.
That is shameful…the shunning that goes on in the name of “Righteousness” sickens me and makes me feel so dehumanized and denigrated…more for the shunners than for myself!
What an awful surprise they will have when Jesus keeps His promise, to measure out to them in with the same measure that they measured out to their brothers and sisters.
Anyway, Jennifer said it well, so here is a small snippet for your edification and exhortation:
“… But if you remove the social problem that homosexuality brings to the church—and the debate as to whether or not it should be called a “struggle,” because there are proponents on both sides—you remove the notion that I am living my life with a great deal of joy. It never occurred to me that I was in something that should be labeled as a “struggle.” The struggle I’ve had has been with the church, acknowledging me as a human being, trying to live the spiritual life that I’ve been called to, in whatever ramshackled, broken, frustrated way that I’ve always approached my faith. I still consider my hope to be a whole human being, to be a person of love and grace. So it’s difficult for me to say that I’ve struggled within myself, because I haven’t. I’ve struggled with other people. I’ve struggled with what that means in my own faith. I have struggled with how that perception of me will affect the way I feel about myself.”
Transmisogyny a special flavor of hate from hell
This was written on a blog that I read that is about the specialized form of misogyny that transgender women face…transmisogyny. I post it here to hopefully give you pause for thought. While I am not in the dating market (thank God!), I still face the same kind of reaction from random people if I am not extremely careful. This will continue until all of us women, cis and trans, stand together and say enough! It is not acceptable that the baseline is we feel lucky if we aren’t assaulted and/or killed.
“When I mentioned that there were ways in which transmisogyny causes trans women to be more oppressed than cis women in certain areas, a lot of people got defensive. I’m against defining any kind of universal experience of womanhood, whether specific to trans or cis experiences. It will not be universally true, but transmisogyny can cause a higher degree of discrimination, hostility, and violence to come upon a trans woman.
Of course, many of the people who had defensive comments probably came from TERF sites or are otherwise hecklers, but I thought I’d make one point, regardless:
If you don’t think being perceived as a “fake sex object” (read: fake woman from a patriarchal lens) could be worse than being perceived as a “genuine sex object,” I would propose a little experiment. I do not recommend actually trying this experiment, but rather keeping it as a thought experiment due to the potential for physical danger:
If you don’t think you can come into a higher level of physical danger or otherwise be more oppressed by being perceived as a trans woman, cis women can try going to a bar (one that caters to a hetero crowd, at least) and wait for a man to approach them showing interest. Don’t tell them right away so as to scare them off, but after a few minutes of talking to a man who’s interested in you, just try telling them you’re trans. You never know when they’ll scream at you and call you an ugly freak (in spite of being really attracted to you ten seconds ago), or maybe they’ll follow you to your car and attack you. Maybe they’ll start to value your agency even less and assume you must be “easier” because you would have a “male sexuality.” Or just assume you’re a “freak” so you must “like to get freaky.”
You don’t know how they’ll react, do you? Neither do we. But one thing that can be considered a reliable conclusion is that they will not treat you with as much respect after disclosing trans status. And because there’s literally no universal difference between trans women and cis women, a cis woman could tell a man she’s trans and be treated the same way.
AGAIN: I DO NOT RECOMMEND TRYING THIS AT HOME – This is a thought experiment for cis women. If you try this, you WILL be in serious danger! However, that serious danger is what we’re EXPECTED to subject ourselves to every single time we interact with someone we’re interested in.
This is one reason why I wrote the statement, “Wait until you’re seen as…” because the way transmisogyny manifests in society is through perception, just like misogyny. Cis women CAN experience the same kinds of transmisogyny, all people need to think is that you were born trans, and that doesn’t require you to look, act, feel, think, etc…. any differently. You as a person won’t change in any way, but you will be seen a LOT differently, and that is definitively sexist.”
Fabulous Quote:
“Sexism occurs when we assume that some people are less valid or natural than others because of their sex, gender, or sexuality; it occurs when we project our own expectations and assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality onto other people, and police their behaviors accordingly; it occurs when we reduce another person to their sex, gender, or sexuality rather than seeing them as a whole, legitimate person. That is sexism.
“And a person is a legitimate feminist when they have made a commitment to challenging sexist double standards wherever and whenever they arise. An individual’s personal style, mannerisms, identity, consensual sexual partners, and life choices simply shouldn’t factor into it.”
― Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive
One Prayer Forever…
And I pray one prayer –
I repeat it till my tongue stiffens…
Be with me always
– take any form –
drive me mad!
Wuthering Heights, 1847
Emily Bronte
Kitty Quote of the Day:
Apple carts just move stuff around, Friend. 🙂 ❤
“And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart:
Your seeds shall live in my body,
And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart,
And your fragrance shall be my breath,
And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.”
Khalil Gibran
But in the final throw…blessing!
“Wadded with stupidity?”
“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”
George Eliot, Middlemarch, (London: Penguin, 1994),
Do you find this quote describing you at all? Once in a while? Frequently? All the time? Never?
I know that Mary Anne Evans, writing under a male pen name (a different post altogether!!!), describes a dilemma for us, and I think everyone knows, knows it deep down inside…feels it.
Here is the dilemma: if you allow yourself to really see…if you are living so as to strengthen and establish eyes of the heart and soul that truly see, then all the wonder and glory and brokenness and tragedy and beauty swells in sound and presence so as to be a magnificent and overwhelming symphonic tide! Standing on the beach of perception, and staring out at that vast and glorious sea, every living thing a player in the cosmic orchestra. But, this life is costly, often lonely, and can be overwhelming, especially without companionship…and companionship worthy of the challenge, and not “crabs in the bucket” who will pull you back down into the miasma with them.
The alternative: choose to not be overwhelmed by simply stuffing “cultural cotton” in your ears! Music, video-oriented media, fashion, objects, hobbies, the list goes on…even friends and family can serve to “dull the roar”.
Sadly, you do indeed become spiritually blind, spiritually deaf, and thus inevitably spiritually dumb, …and then you walk, the living dead thru a wonder world, having eyes and not seeing, and ears and not hearing, and a tongue stilled from the soul’s truest longing to sing in gratitude and wonder at the living and vital home we have been given.
I think that Ms Evans was a bit cynical, and who could blame her given the sorts of barriers and prison walls she was thrust into as a woman in that time…I’m not so sure that we “wad ourselves with stupidity”…but I do think that she accurately describes the results, when we choose not to engage our world with living hearts and souls: we become stupid in the older sense of the word, and stumble zombie-like thru our days, miserable and hungry and desperate to consume anything that looks living, only to infect that with our death, instead of being infused with its life.
No wonder zombie themes are so huge in our culture right now!
Here is an exhortation: take a chance, and make a change…if you need to. Set your heart on higher things, and actively seek to see, to hear, and then finally to speak! Ask someone to work within you…She has many names, and will never turn away a true request made with humble heart. And then practice some form of expression as your outlet.
Hey…why do you think I love poetry so much? This whole thing is one Amazing and Wonderful Poem!
Blessings to you this day, and oodles of love, peace and joy as always shmeared with mounds of Grace!
Charissa
On the Shore
Brrr…I am a lil skert, starting this blog. It is the very first baby step towards being out as who I really am, the me that I was born to…I am frightened, and yet so excited all at once. I love this picture, because it shows how I have always been…gazing out, yearning, standing off to the side, there but not there…and I like that there are 3 women down in the shelter. They represent my core support…bless you ladies who love me with your hearts!
And I love that we are all surfers in this pic…waves are toys and funland rides to surfers, skimming along on stormy waters and dancing.
I have no idea where I will be in 3 months, in a year. I have no idea who will be in my life besides the ones who are with me, and who will be out of my life.
May God give me grace to welcome all in, and never shut any out, and then I can have peace, knowing that I have lived in integrity and shalom, and that I am literally not responsible for the choices of others.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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