We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.
They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
But while I am on the topic of killing transwomen? If you slur me with your words…if you other me with your actions…if you lie to yourself about who I am…if you call me “engenderer”, “mask”, “monster”, “other” (a literal “othering”)…
…you do not get to call yourself a trans-advocate.
Words hurt, wound irrevokably…but silence slays the heart.
Constance…I am here today to admit. OMG there is sooo much I would change about my body if I could. The more salient question is what would I not change? So this really hit me…hit me hard.
What am I supposed to do, stuck in this skin of some biological male creature that so many seem to have attached to, and now hate me because that creature has been revealed as who it was all along…and that revelation happening to me at the same time?
Do you have any idea how it feels to be othered so hard that certain people now act like I am dead? And when I am blessed enough to have communication it is of the harshest, cruelest and most dehumanizing form possible, stripping me of personhood, of being, and reducing me to a verb, or a mask, or a nothing?
I can never remember a time when I did not feel this way…never. Reading about these children, wow. So I post this…for your thought. Likely there is not much we can do now about our own body image issues…but we darn sure can be kind to others now. We darn sure can touch our children with gentle words…and no matter what we can speak to other human beings cognizent always that they are stamped with Mama’s image, they are riddled with God’s Image, and are thus just a smidge lower than God and are as gods themselves.
In case you weren’t convinced that hating yourself is a learned behavior
Physical shame comes from parents, teachers, media, and peers. It’s not something you’re born with. You were born naked, wonderful, and gorgeous, and no one should make another being feel as if that wasn’t, and isn’t true.
Dear Constance…I am blessed with such a plethora of amazing, wonderful followers.
That would be you…Constant Reader…Constance.
One of them is at the link I just posted, and he is a truth teller, more rare than gold dust as an amazing person commented over there.
“But why, Charissa? Why would you share such a topic as the one you chose?”
Because it is eerily reminiscent of the treatment of transgender people at the hands of…well…virtually everyone in our society. The double binds that are illuminated, the abuse, the policing and othering, the way the system protects itself and eliminates any possible threats to itself…
Yeah…this is the life of a transgender human being every single livelong day.
The system is a giant virus, and it has gathered to itself other virulent viruses and they all are completely sold out and committed to the mandate of one thing and one thing alone: survival and self-replication. And we, all of us, are in the belly of this beast.
Some of us are the pilot fish of privilege…circling the jaws, living off the shreds of flesh that trail off those teeth sharp and cruel. Some of us are between those jaws, ever consumed for the survival of the virus, and some live in the bowels, in the rot and excrement of everything that must take place in order for the thing to keep alive.
How are we to live?
The monolithic nature of this thing prohibits mass action, but what about individual action? Will you consider changing the way you interact with every single person you meet? Just think…if we all did that, loved our neighbor as ourselves, loved God (or if you believe you do not believe then loved being kind, being forgiving, being truthful and merciful), and refused to participate in injustice…
…there might be cracks, and then rents, and then in a rush a breaking down of the walls and the death of the virus.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly. Love, Charissa
Here’s a thought: how bout each one of you who reads this go to your school board and tell them that if this sort of thing is tolerated in your school district, you will file civil suit against them as culpable for the death?
How bout you simply say to them you personally will not tolerate anything whatsoever except a no bullying stance?
Or is it to you as it is to so many: the equivalent of the Aztec hearts held up to appease the angry god of the patriarchy and preserve your own privilege?
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.
You are living as if destined to live for ever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don’t notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply — though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last. You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire… How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!
You don’t need culinary school. You don’t need expensive equipment. You don’t even need that much experience. All you need to be a better cook today is a little bit of knowledge. Or, in the case of this list, 57 little bits.
1. BUY AN INSTANT-READ DIGITAL MEAT THERMOMETER.
The quickest way to ruin a perfectly marbled $25 steak? Cutting into it to figure out if it’s medium rare. Yes, the Thermapen is $95, but four steaks later, you’ve broken even.
2. WRITE IN YOUR COOKBOOKS.
Soup could have used more tomato? Chicken needed ten more minutes in the oven? Make a note of it and you’ll never make that mistake again.
3. MASTER THE QUICK-PICKLE.
Whisk a little salt and sugar into some white vinegar. Pour over thinly sliced raw vegetables. Wait 20 minutes. Eat.
4. GET YOUR KNIVES PROFESSIONALLY SHARPENED.
You may have a steel or a sharpener at home, but once a year, get a pro to revive those knives. Your chopping will get faster, more precise—and, believe it or not, safer.
5. FOUR WORDS TO LIVE BY: CHICKEN THIGH FAMILY PACK.
Chicken breasts are expensive and can get dull after a while; thighs are juicier, cheaper, and more flavorful.
6. TOSS MOST OF YOUR SPICES—ESPECIALLY THAT GROUND CUMIN.
Ground spices die quickly. So give them a whiff—if they don’t smell like anything, they won’t taste like anything. And if they don’t taste like anything, you’re cooking with a flavorless, brown powder.
7. JOIN A CSA.
At a minimum, you’ll learn how to cook kale fifteen ways. At a maximum, you’ll broaden your culinary horizons by finding ways to use up all that fresh produce.
8. REPLACE YOUR NON-STICK SKILLET.
Do your scrambled eggs slide off the pan if you don’t use oil or butter? They should. Might be time for an upgrade.
9. TREAT YOUR HERBS LIKE FLOWERS.
There’s nothing worse than limp herbs. Next time, trim the stems and put the parsley in a glass of water, fit a plastic bag over it, and stash it in the refrigerator.
10. GET A MANDOLINE AND DON’T BE AFRAID TO USE IT.
Want gorgeous scalloped potatoes or perfectly julienned carrots? Buy a mandoline. Are you a scaredycat? Wear a cut-resistant safety glove until you feel comfortable bare-handed.
11. DOUBLE THAT BATCH OF RICE (OR QUINOA, OR BULGAR, OR…)
Having cooked grains in your fridge means that fried rice, pilafs, rice bowls and robust salads are just minutes away.
12. MAKE SURE YOUR WORK AREA IS WELL LIT.
Look, the 40-watt lightbulb in your oven hood isn’t going to cut it. Get a cheap clamp light from a hardware store so you can see what you’re doing.
A freezer full of roasted turkey necks and bony beef cuts will ensure you always have what you need to make broth.
15. KEEP YOUR PARMESAN RINDS AND FREEZE THEM FOR LATER.
Remember that thing about super-cheap cuts of meat? Think of rinds as cheese bones.
16. BUY A NEW KITCHEN SPONGE.
Existential question time. If your sponge is filthy and smells, how can you expect it get your dishes clean?
17. PUT THE LID ON THE POT TO MAKE YOUR WATER BOIL FASTER.
Seems obvious, but if you don’t know, now you know.
18. DRY YOUR SALAD GREENS USING A KITCHEN TOWEL.
Salad spinners? So bulky and annoying. Instead, pile your just-washed greens into a clean dish towel, gather it by the ends, and swing that sucker around until your salad is dry (or your arm is tired).
19. SAVE THE SCHMALTZ.
Chicken fat is amazing stuff, whether you’re frying onions in it, sautéing greens in it or spreading it on toast. So after eating your roast chicken dinner, drain the now-cooled liquid fat into a plastic container and store it in your freezer. (Pro tip: This also holds true forbacon fat.)
20. USE A GARBAGE BOWL.
Hat tip to Rachael Ray. Buy a large bowl and keep it at the ready to fill up with egg shells and other trash generated while cooking.
21. BUY A NEW Y PEELER.
Like anecdotes about high school football games, peelers get dull, especially after a couple years. We recommend the Kuhn Rikon Swiss Peeler, which is just seven bucks.
22. FIND THE BIGGEST MIXING BOWL YOU CAN AND BUY IT.
You cannot toss a salad or mix cookies or make meatballs in a tiny cereal bowl. All you can do is make a bigger mess.
23. AVOID EVIL GLASS CUTTING BOARDS.
And they’re all evil. Glass cutting boards send shivers down your spine when you use them. They dull your knives. They’re slippery. And they’re hard to use. Use wood, bamboo or plastic instead.
24. BUY TWO LOAVES OF THAT AWESOME BREAD AND FREEZE ONE.
Bread keeps really well in the freezer. And there are always plenty of uses for it. Just remember: Air is the enemy! Wrap that loaf in foil (sliced or unsliced) and put it in a freezer bag before stashing.
25. STOP CROWDING YOUR PANS.
Food that’s crowded into a cast-iron skillet or sheet tray gets steamed—and soggy—instead of crisp.
26. TOAST YOUR SPICES…
A quick stint in a dry skillet over medium heat wakes dry spices up and releases their oils, which means your paprika will taste a lot more paprika-y. Use whole spices, watch the pan like a hawk, and stir constantly until the spices are fragrant, then transfer to a plate to cool before using.
31. PUT A DAMP PAPER OR KITCHEN TOWEL UNDER YOUR CUTTING BOARD.
That way, your board won’t slip around as you chop.
32. WHEN A RECIPE CALLS FOR CHOCOLATE CHIPS, BREAK OUT A BAR OF CHOCOLATE INSTEAD.
Chopping your own chips creates pockets of melty chocolate throughout your cookies—some small, some large, all delicious.
33. SALT YOUR SALADS.
It adds texture. It makes the dressing pop. It’s proof that there’s nothing—nothing—you shouldn’t be salting.
34. COOL YOUR FOOD BEFORE PUTTING IT IN THE FRIDGE OR FREEZER.
If you don’t, the temperature in the refrigerator will rise. And the only thing that benefits is mold.
35. DON’T TOAST YOUR TOAST. FRY IT.
Warm some butter or olive oil over medium-high heat. Lay in bread and fry until golden on both sides. Sell your toaster.
36. BUY YOUR AVOCADOS AT A MEXICAN GROCERY STORE.
Those are the stores that sell them ripe.
37. ALWAYS KEEP LEMONS IN THE FRIDGE.
They’ll keep longer that way, so you’ll always be able to add fresh lemon juice to everything from dressings to cocktails. Plus, you can use the squeezed rinds to clean and deodorize your wooden cutting boards.
38. CARAMELIZE MORE ONIONS THAN YOU NEED TO.
A lot more—you’ll use the extras in omelets and sandwiches; on chicken, steak and pork; in pastas and stews.
39. GET A MICROPLANE.
Sick of shredding your knuckles instead of cheese? Buy a Microplane, which will provide years of shredding power for about $15.
40. SWITCH TO METAL MEASURING CUPS AND SPOONS.
Plastic warps over time, making them less precise.
41. STORE SALAD GREENS IN A RESEALABLE PLASTIC BAG WITH A PAPER TOWEL.
The towel is there to absorb moisture, which keeps your greens crisper, longer.
Serving it cold and hard on toast—on anything, really—is the one way to make butter bad. (Need it soft in a hurry? Here are four ways.)
44. …AND MIX SOMETHING INTO IT.
A little shallot, some chopped herbs, maybe some lemon zest—boom. You just made compound butter.
45. MICROFIBER DISH-DRYING MATS ARE BETTER THAN DISH RACKS.
So is a decent dish towel. Who has space for a dish rack?
46. BUY BROWN SUGAR AS YOU NEED IT, IN AS SMALL A QUANTITY AS POSSIBLE.
The stuff just doesn’t keep very long.
47. BUT IF YOUR BROWN SUGAR IS ROCK-HARD, DON’T THROW IT OUT.
Revive it with a minute or so in the microwave.
48. ESTABLISH A SALT BOWL.
Having a stash of salt always within arm’s reach when you’re at the stove is the first step to better seasoner (see tip 57).
49. BAKE PIES IN GLASS PIE PANS.
It heats more evenly than tin, and when your pie is perfectly golden-brown everywhere, you’ll know it.
50. OIL, SALT, ROAST—IN THAT ORDER.
When roasting vegetables, toss them in oil, then season them with salt and pepper and toss again. This way, the seasoning actually sticks to your food.
51. KEEP YOUR VEGETABLE SCRAPS.
Toss fennel fronds, carrot ends and other vegetable scraps into a resealable plastic bag you keep in the freezer. When you reach critical mass, make vegetable stock.
52. MAKE YOUR OWN CROUTONS.
Toss cubed bread on a rimmed baking sheet with oil, salt, pepper and whatever other tasty thing you fancy. Bake at 350, tossing once or twice, until golden brown. Now see if any actually make it to your salad.
53. AIR-DRY YOUR CHICKENS.
After you’ve unwrapped and rinsed your bird, pat it dry, salt it generously, and let it stand in the refrigerator, uncovered, for a few hours before roasting. The bone-dry skin will cook up to a crackly, crunchy, golden brown.
54. PEEL GINGER AND KEEP IT IN THE FREEZER.
Not only will it last longer, it will grate it more easily.
55. MARINATE YOUR CHEESE.
Mozzarella, feta, and fresh goat cheese? Delicious. Mozz, feta and goat cheese marinated in olive oil, chile flakes, and fresh herbs? More delicious.
56. BUY A BETTER ICE CUBE TRAY.
The ice cubes that come out of the dispenser in your fridge? They’re watering down your cocktails. Cubes made in silicone ice trays are denser and keep your Bourbon cold for hours (or, you know, however long it lasts).
57. TASTE—AND SEASON—AT EVERY STAGE OF COOKING.
Because if you wait until the end, it’s probably too late.
Constance…I am sobbing deeply right now. Another transgender person dead, dysphoria eats another one of us, and what’s worse but not at all unusual is the way that the cis-world egged her on.
I cannot imagine the cruel hearts of the people who said such horrible things to her.
But I will be blunt: everyday, you need to remember that most transgender people are treated with staggering othering and policing.
I myself am shunned, and my history is distorted and fabricated. My narrative is hijacked in service of a myth that allows people to feel good about the indifferent uncaring way they choose to live.
It weighs on a person, it does.
Constance, everywhere around you someone is suffering, someone is laboring. How about just be kind?
Please?
Someday you will wish you had been, if you’re lucky.
A young trans woman has killed herself after being attacked online.
Rachel Bryk, 23, jumped off the George Washington Bridge, the bridge between New York and New Jersey, on Thursday night (23 April)
An eyewitness is believed to have seen the young woman leave her purse on the bridge and jump off into the Hudson River.
Bryk’s body has still not been recovered. A funeral will be planned when her body is found.
Her shocked mother Lisa Bryk, from New Jersey, found out on Friday morning.
‘She was super smart, really good with computers,’ she told Gay Star News. ‘We’ll miss her.’
Bryk was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at a young age and lived with chronic pain. This meant she was unable to get a job or keep to a regular schedule.
She found her life in anime, nerd culture and computing. She helped develop an emulator that allows you to play Gamecube and Wii games on your PC.
But because Bryk was talented, and hard-working, and open about being trans, it meant she left herself open to online attacks.
When she said on 4chan that she was considering killing herself, she did not receive support.
‘DO IT, if you’re such a weak willed thin skinned dipshit then fucking do it,’ one anonymous commenter told her.
Even in her death, some on 4chan have described it as a ‘victory’. On news of her death, some commented that she was the ‘whiniest fucking faggot’ and ‘any tranny death is good riddance’.
Such comments clearly left Bryk severely depressed, who would often call herself ‘worthless trash’ on her Ask.fm page. Her Twitter bio page read: ‘[Trigger Warning]: suicide on everything i say.’
At Friday midnight, this was posted on her Twitter.
The people Bryk worked with mourned her.
‘She will be missed greatly by everyone. We are stronger, better people thanks to knowing her,’ one said.
And another: ‘Rachel was more than just a great programmer. She was a great programmer who always managed to put a smile on my face. I don’t think that there ever will be anyone else quite like her. Rest in peace.’
When we asked Bryk’s mom how the family dealt with her daughter’s transition, she said: ‘It caused a lot of worry, because the world is not a kind place for people who are different.’
If you are considering suicide, please call the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 1-800-273-8255. The LGBT National Helpline is on 888-843-4564, with the Youth line on 800-246-7743.
Constance, I likely will not post an awful lot about the Jenner Transition Announcement until she gets further underway.
I totally, utterly get where she is at right now. She is thinking things about how she is not that worried about pronouns, and how she is willing to overlook the othering and policing that is going on right now, yadda yadda yadda…she feels a responsibility to other transgender people to effect a graceful transition with dignity.
But deep down inside…all those things are hurting her, affecting her, wounding her. She doesn’t need me adding to the cacophony of noise surrounding her (and all of that exacerbated because of the family dynamics she married into). Eventually, she will begin to find her bearings and her voice, or if she already has, she will begin to express it in her own unique ways.
But I will be commenting on things that orbit her transition, things that are revealed and illuminated as a result of her decision, and here is one of them:
On my Facebook page, a friend linked to an article about her transition. That article is here:
What was telling was in the comments on the Facebook post, all generally very supportive, but one stood out to me. It simply said “Who are we to judge…”
“Who are we to judge…”
Constance, do you see why that comment jumped out at me? Yes? Jot down your thoughts about it…or No? No you do not see anything odd about that comment in relation to gender identity?
Well, Cis-Constance, imagine yourself being introduced to someone, and them very kindly and sagely assessing you and then saying to you and everyone “Who are we to judge…” and then shrugging as if to say “to each their own”…
as if your gender identity is something that is up for judgement in the first place!
as if your gender identity is an article of clothing that you simply decided to wear that day.
as if your gender identity was a moral choice you made or make.
Gender orientation is put into the same classification as sexual orientation and then judged as a moral choice, and this is simply incorrect and unfair.
There is orientation that is a given…and then there are behaviors that descend from choices that we make as creatures who are moral creatures and subject to moral constraints as determined by God and current cultural climate (and those are rarely congruent, btw)…the behaviors themselves are what I choose to do…but the orientation is who I was born to be.
Orientation is not moral behavior. It is simply the given baseline.
You as a cis-gender person are never subjected to the statement “Oh…you say you are a (fill in your biological chromosomal state). I see. Well, who am I to judge?”
And that, Constance, is the very epitome of cis-gender privilege!
Don’t get me wrong…I love the compassion that is at root behind the commenter’s post…but gender orientation is not a matter subject to judgement any more than race is, or that there is a brain in a skull, or that there are arms and legs on a human.
The deep underlying ignorance that is being exposed in the light of gender-education right now is the notion that gender-variance is a moral issue! The deep presupposition fostered in our binary is that any person who is cross-gendered is by definition subject to moral assessment should they decide to authentically live out who they are in spite of the external casing they are housed in!!
Do you see this?
The commenter is correct: we are not the judge of one another and should not judge one another. But the issue that she applied this moral principle speaks volumes of how far we have to go yet as a culture, and why we transgender people are subject to such tremendous othering.
Even the way we are supported is often times OTHERING!
I have the same internal response when people say to me “Hey, whatever makes you happy makes me happy”…and they are sincerely “for” me in terms of their willingness to accept me.
But they have no idea just how deeply they sentenced me to more time in the gender penitentiary.
“Mr. & Mrs. Cis-Gender Constance: Tear down this wall!!“
“Chill has now slithered into our romantic lives & forced those among us who would like to exchange feelings & accountability to compete in the Blasé Olympics with whomever we are dating. Oh, I’m sorry, I mean whomever we’re ‘hanging out with.’ Whomever we’re ‘talking to.’
“Chill asks us to remove the language of courtship and desire lest we appear invested somehow in other human beings. To even acknowledge that there might be an emotional dimension to talking or dating or hanging out or coming over or fucking or whatever the kids are calling it all these days feels forbidden.
“It is a game of chicken where the first person to confess their frustration or confusion loses.”
Constance, I post about men, their sense of privilege and entitlement, the mutilation of their soul they are forced to ritually endure as payment for that privilege, and the twisted and scary ways that sense of entitlement and the actual rape of their souls replicates itself in their actions…
…and I often get messages back that are variations on the “not all men” theme…cus these individuals have not taken the actual physical actions that I post about…even though they disregard their own violent and presumptuous writing style that is arrogant, presumptive, and ultimately such a perfect manifestation of the very thing I write about…
Well I am posting this below as illustration of a general thing by virtue of highlighting a specific.
And remember, men: I grew up in your midst! I was there, me Charissa Grace…watching, listening, horrified and traumatized when I was naive and new…and then tired and tearful when I was older and on verse 3, 214 of the same tired-ass old song that you each and everyone think is one you wrote…YOU wrote, and thus your every word is so important, so heavy with weight…and if only people listened to YOUR way of explaining it they would finally understand…
um no. What is listed below? It is the unvarnished, unsophisticated version of what the vast vast VAST majority of you do over and over and over again…such as the nice guy I read yesterday who was mansplaining all about how women would not be effective leaders when they were on their periods because their hormones would make them irrational, or less rational…
which omfg ignores sooo many things, assumes sooo many things…and one major thing is that rationality is any better compass for providing leadership than other things like say intuition, or heart, or feeling, or compassion, or…or…or…or…and then assumes that women ARE more irrational than men…what the actual F**K?
Rational? Like the poor person below…
um, no.
PS: all comments below are from the original post, not me
genuinely the scariest person i’ve ever come across!!!! the first message was one from where he messaged me yesterday
the last message exchange was from another girl who posted her interaction with him, and after her message back to him after he VIDEO CALLED HER MULTIPLE TIMES IN A ROW he proceeded to tell her to “shut the fuck up, whore” when she explained how weird it was
i’m now blocked from his fb and i’m just sharing this in case any girl ever gets a friend request from him!! i have no idea what state he’s from and i can’t access his page anymore so please be careful ily!!!
OH MY GOD
Okay somebody please report that shit to the police he genuinely sounds like the kind of guy whod shoot women in a university. Like srsly people living in the us do something about it
EVERYONE, CONTACT HIS PARENTS, CONTACT THE POLICE, CONTACT FACEBOOK SUPPORT!!! Don’t let this asshole get away with it!!!
Giggles…omfg! So Constance, I am pressing this link on the off chance that the author of a recent diatribe of vitriolic fantasy reads here…perhaps the deluded individual could see this article and read it, in relation to their disparaging remarks about the bible as any trustworthy repository of guidance.
Constance, I often run across the statement “This has to stop” in connection with accounts of the bullying and suicide epidemics that transgender people face. And that is good, that people are beginning to get it, the monstrous othering and policing that we face every single G Dam day of our lives simply because we were “guilty” of being born into this life with the knowledge that our gender orientation and our assigned birth biology are at odds.
But I am restive with the ease with which in this internet age we can flourish our fingers over a keyboard and then move on from post with the feeling that we have actually “done something”, when all we have actually done is in effect restate the problem without attempting resolution. It is sorta like having a math test and re-writing the problem 6 + 11 = x as x = 11 + 6 (and we be sure to draw attention to our use of different colored font and italics).
Compassion is a bicameral quality. It has two lobes. It has the feeling, heart lobe…that throbbing, dripping, bleeding tender outpouring of sympathetic alignment if we have not experienced something for ourselves (and just so you know: if you are not transgender, it is impossible for you to empathize with a dysphoric person, just as if you are white you cannot empathize with a person of color…you can sympathize, but don’t deceive yourself into thinking you empathize)…
…but for it to be true compassion, it must have the action side as well. What will you do with your sympathy?
Lori Duron has again posted a truly moving recounting of a tragic tale of bullying and othering and policing that ended in another transgender life lost…and I will recite yet again the litany of 2015: a lost transgender life approximately every 30 hours since 2015 began!
As if it is not enough of a burden to face: the nearly overwhelming unendurable constant achy angst of dysphoria. Oh no…to that is added the onslaught of ignorance, fear, and hatred as expressed in the evil of bullying which drives so many to self-destructive action in addition to having to bear gender dysphoria!
But Lori goes one better: She posts people you can email, places you can step up and actually take action that extends beyond the hypothetical feel good phrase “This has to stop” and manifests in real, measurable action…and takes baby steps as a compassionate act.
And then I myself will go you one better: there are marches coming up in major cities…in June. They have various names, monikers…but at heart they are the same, in that they are opportunities for you to express–directly–your support with your body side by side with other bodies, facing gawkers and haters, the curious and disinterested, and others who have walked in solitary confinement in their skins…
Transgender Pride Marches.
Yes, there will be people there who look different than you…who walk or talk different than you…and who want/feel/think/need/deserve exactly the same things you do as human beings! Your presence there as an ally will mean more to them than any of them can say…in addition to the emails you write or the lawmakers you contact, or the PTA meetings you attend to make your cis-gender privileged voice heard that it is not going to be tolerated, this epidemic of transgender suicide and murder…and your other actions that you are thinking of and planning to take.
You are thinking of them? Actions to take? Plans to do something? Someone you can maybe even smile at? Befriend?
In the Portland Area, I believe Transgender Pride March Day is June 13th. I hope to be there and intend to be, God willing. I intend to walk, with a sense of presence and dignity (a word I use very reluctantly right now as it has been wielded against me like a sharp phallic sword to rape my heart and spirit, but I use it none the less to mean a sense of presence that contains worth and significance simply because I am a human being)…I intend to hold my head high and not angled down, and my eyes moving from face to face and eye to eye rather than always staring at the space in between…
I hope to see you there, beside me…cis, trans. But if I don’t? It would mean the world to see you standing at the curb, a smile on your face and a nod in your eyes.
This has to stop…this expression of emotion that lacks the manifestation of action.
If you don’t support in word and deed, then you don’t support.
Constance, I am pressing this, not because I am augering for any one of these things, but because it is helpful to cultivate an overall sense of not being compelled to police other people!!
I am posting it because I have to make the same calculations as a transwoman that a cis-gender woman makes, and then make them again because trans, which shrinks down the safe zone even further. Fortunately for me, I am not dealing with dating, but there is still such risk.
(Trigger Warning: Sexual assault and rape culture)
When you’re dating, you may get lots of advice on keeping yourself safe. At the same time, you can get pressure to be carefree. And if something bad happens, you’re blamed for not properly calculating the risks! So what gives?
You shouldn’t have to carry the demand to be both available and super capable of preventing your own assault. This comic says it all.
Constance, this is a really good article for perusal, for it brings a somewhat esoteric but extremely important fact to the forefront: namely that gender dysphoria is not a mental illness or mental issue. It is a real physical phenomenon. It cannot be thought away, counseled away, or believed away.
It makes this point in that it compares gender dysphoria with something else that sounds similar…something called body dysmorphia, a phenomenon that is an anxiety disorder that causes its sufferers to spend a lot of time worrying about their appearance and ultimately have a distorted view of how they look.
It is not a sin to suffer from either of these conditions…but it is important to understand the difference because that difference determines what sort of treatment will be effective in addressing each condition.
Each of these conditions is challenging, and I found this article to be a good touchstone on understanding this topic a bit better. I hope you will take a look.
How do you feel about Redmayne playing a trans woman?
1) I don’t know that we really need any more opinions, but since you asked..
2) Straight men hurt trans women because they’re afraid other men will think they’re gay for liking them. They think they’ll look gay because society, largely thanks to media, portrays trans women as men, and gay as less masculine and valuable. Having cis men play trans women contributes to this and puts trans women at risk. Plain and simple.
3) This is happening and nothing is going to stop it from happening, so my hope is that the producers will recognize the issue and do everything they can to mitigate the damage they’ll inevitably cause. I have friends that know Redmayne and assure me that he’s taking all these issues seriously. Obviously it would have been best if he had refused the part, but he’s no Jared Leto either.
Tangentially related, and perhaps selfishly, I’m less concerned with cis actors playing trans roles as I am with the near total lack of trans writers. I believe we’ll have a far greater impact when we are telling our own stories.
One of the most compelling arguments that gender orientation resides somewhere other than genitalia is in intersexed people. Because with both sets of genitalia present, there is still a gender orientation self-perceived! Which proves that gender orientation resides somewhere other than that genitalia.
Just like it does for transgender people…
…just like it does for cis-gender people.
There is no reason to hate, no reason to reject…except for one’s own predilection for fear and ignorance.
It’s hard to describe what it feels like inside when I, who have never felt more present, more alive, more legitimate, hear that other people say that I have died, or that they consider me dead.
It’s a worse feeling than despair. It’s repudiation mixed with invalidation and poured over indifference and then shoved into my throat.
It’s at that point that the thoughts of making that statement true begin to assail and assault…like there is this feeling of well okay if that’s what they think then let’s just finally let it happen and in that congruence let them have a real comparison.
People say that suicide is the ultimate selfish act…maybe. Certainly this is something I have thought about a lot. But is it the ultimate selfish act?
What about the act of policing someone with the withdrawal of relationship and then acting like they are dead and they “betrayed”? Is that act selfish? Ultimate?
It sure feels like it is at least petulant and petty.
But hey, those are the feelings of a dead girl…and since I am considered dead what do they matter…and since I am considered dead why would anyone even notice when I am gone…right?
Yes…I am using absurdity to illustrate the absurd. But please: don’t tell me I should stick around and then punch me in the face of my tender hurting heart.
I am pretty sure I have pressed other things similar to this article…in my opinion it should be pressed by every wordpress blogger until it stops.
Constance, how is it that others cannot see that these things can be avoided with accessible health care, physical and mental, and the cessation of being called things like demonized and freak, pervert and monster, and then the slurs…
It made me cry so hard, because I often feel like I don’t want to continue beneath the crushing weight of dysphoria and then the added weight of every ignorant creep who thinks they are playing “pile on the transgender person”…and then the thought that I would cause such pain to others when all I want to do is have my own be over and the guilt is huge, for even wanting to, for even thinking about it.
Sometimes I talk about my feelings, and it’s not okay that I feel them about myself, they get corrected or rejected as not true and thus not legitimate that I carry them.
But calling them “not true” doesn’t make them any less real, and it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
I can tell you this: the more I am received as just a regular person the better I feel…and the more I am rejected, the worse I feel, especially when that rejection has the Name of God attached to it. I am fortunate that I know that God loves me and that I am Acceptable in the Beloved…but many people don’t know this and that extra little oomph just might grease the skids and push them over the edge.
“But Charissa…isn’t this all in your mind??? Cus demons and stuff??”
A young man has recently befriended me. He accompanied me out one day, all day…he later reported that he had never been so uncomfortable as he was when he was watching the way that other people stared at me, looked at me…the reactions of disgust, fear, slack-jawed amazement, or derision. He was flabbergasted that they would be that way…because he knows me. We have spent hours talking, and he has had the “benefit” of my counsel regarding his relationships with women. So he knows me to be an astute observer of human nature, a tender hearted intuitive listener, a gentle teller of truth that is at times somewhat hard to swallow, and above all a valuer of his life which is of priceless significance.
So when he saw them looking at me…like that…he knew for real that it was not “all in your mind, Charissa”.
The link is a good read. Please head over and acquaint yourself with the dynamics of how (surprise!) getting help to someone helps them.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
To put it another way, I don’t think we’re called to imitate Jesus, but I do think we’re called to follow Jesus. There’s a subtle difference. Following Jesus implies an ongoing relationship, not merely imitating a really good guy who lived and died 2,000 years ago. Following Jesus implies that we might end up somewhere new doing things that are new—things that aren’t reflected in scripture because we inhabit a very different world than Jesus did. Even if we believe that Jesus was fully God, that doesn’t mean that Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection tell us all there is to know about God. God is still working, God exists beyond the limits of history (even Jesus’s history as a man), and God promises to do a new thing within us.
Following Jesus implies forward movement, striving for a destination, which we might call “the kingdom,” as Jesus did. And as you know if you’ve ever taken a leisurely Sunday road trip or cross-country adventure or European rail journey, there is far more than one way to travel to get to the same destination.
Constance, I am a big fan of the lil show “Agent Carter”. One of my news aggregator sites posted an excerpt from this truly insightful analysis of the show from a post-modern feminist point of view that is really spot on.
I am posting here in its entirety because the article originally appeared on Playboy.com, and I have personal issues with driving any traffic that way…no, I am not a prude…yes, I am against the pornographicization of reality, what with the airbrushes and photoshopping and the damage this has done to untold numbers of human beings…and hidden in that last statement is a deep philosophical point of view regarding what pornography is and isn’t.
At any rate…if you want to click thru to the original location, simply use google-fu and you will find it. In the meantime, read on below, enjoy, and let your awareness of what a woman is, who we are, be expanded.
***** ***** *****
MARVEL’S AGENT CARTER: LOOKING BACK ON THE BALLSY, BRASSY, REVOLUTIONARY FIRST SEASON
The final episode of Marvel’s Captain America spinoff Agent Carter airs tonight, and statistically, you’re probably not going to be watching it. Not a lot of people have been: despite a significant Marvel PR push, Agent Carter kind of flew in under the radar. I’ve been talking to my hardcore Marvel nerds I know, the history buffs who can tell you where and when and how the Howling Commandos made their debut, the die-hards who gritted their teeth and held on until Agents of SHIELD got good; and half of them never even bothered with the pilot.
And that is a goddamn shame, because Agent Carter is superlative television. It’s the type of period spy piece genre fans live for: clever gadgets and brutal fights, double-crosses and the kind of costumes and dialogue that tell you everyone involved really did their research. It’s accessible even if you’ve never cracked a comic in your life and skipped all the Marvel movies and Agents of SHIELD (though it’s full of easter eggs for the rest of us). Agent Carter is smart and funny and tense and heartbreaking, expertly directed and beautifully shot, and the casting is pitch-perfect, and I love it all: the knock-out spy lipstick, and the mad science, and the grappling on top of cars, and the occasional and unexpected moments of slapstick. I love Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and Edwin Jarvis (James D’Arcy) and Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) and Angie the waitress (Lyndsy Fonseca), and the shy small-town girl who turns out to be something else entirely. Hell, I even love the crunchy vets at the Strategic Scientific Reserve — SHIELD’s precursor agency — who call Peggy “sweetheart” and relegate her to taking lunch orders and filing reports.
If all of that were all Agent Carter brought to the table, it would still be more than enough. But it’s so much more. Agent Carter is a quiet revolution, and throughout all of those fights and heists and car chases, it is quietly and continually subverting what it means for a woman to be an action hero.
The first scene of the first episode of Agent Carter — once they’ve gone through the obligatory Captain America death footage, in case you’d forgotten — is actually two montages, intercut. One is in the past, and that one you’ll recognize, because it’s mostly more footage from Captain America: The First Avenger: Peggy firing guns, taking down an opponent twice her size, stealing a plane with Howard Stark and Steve Rogers. The other is in the show’s present, quiet and domestic: Peggy in her cramped apartment, checking on a whistling kettle, ironing a blouse, rolling up stockings. Their intersections are uncomfortable, removed: a newspaper headline about Stark; Peggy pausing at the mirror in a silk robe to examine the now-old bullet scars in her shoulder. (Of course, the whole thing is set to “That Man,” by Caro Emerald; which seems too pointed not to be a wink and a nod.)
The dichotomy executive producers Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas are setting up seems obvious, right? On one side, she gets to save the world. There’s excitement, camaraderie, action. On the other, ironing and silk stockings. Peggy Carter is an Action Chick, that opening tells us. She’s clearly better than this bullshit, this purgatory of the feminine and the domestic.
See, that’s the thing about Action Chicks. Even when they get headline status, they’re occupying a genre assumed to be By The Guys, For The Guys and that means that as a rule, Action Chicks — especially high-budget Action Chicks — prove their value by internalizing misogyny. I’m used to Action Chicks who make a point — overt or coded — of rejecting the feminine sphere and everything it represents, by being the only girl; or the girl who’s not like the other girls and will do anything to prove it, while still staying sexy enough for the male gaze. The femininity they cling to — the vanities, the romances — almost always end up liabilities.
So: I’m watching Agent Carter, and I assume I’m in for more of the same, which isn’t surprising, really. I figure, I’ll turn off the critic filter and enjoy the fights and the fashion, and maybe I’ll watch episode two, but probably not.
But the thing is, Agent Carter has my number, because the first thing that happens after that montage is that Peggy’s roommate walks in the door. And even though they don’t know each other very well, despite the inconvenience of an opposite-shift roommate and the secrets she’s keeping, Peggy clearly likes Colleen. There’s genuine affection and camaraderie — and again, when she greets the woman at the fake switchboard that serves as a front for the Strategic Scientific Reserve, and the waitress at the automat.
And all of a sudden, I’m paying attention. Because I know the Action Chick rules, and Action Chicks aren’t allowed to like other women. Other women can be rivals, or foils, symbols of what they’ve given up or failures for the Action Chick to transcend; but neverfriends.
Don’t get me wrong: She kicks ass. In the first episode, I watch her fell a towering thug with a teakettle and stove burner; and another with knock-out lipstick; and a third with a stapler. I watched her get classified information from a meeting over her clearance level by bringing coffee to her male colleagues. I watched her defuse a bomb with chemicals scavenged from her kitchen and vanity and mixed in a perfume atomizer. Do you know what all those things have in common?
They’re coded heavily as feminine. Even the stapler: remember Peggy spends most of her time in S.S.R. relegated to secretarial work.
Now, there is a subset of Action Chicks who use feminine accessories as weapons. They’re femmes fatale, grifters; morally grey and usually doomed as hell; and those feminine weapons are coded as sinister and deceitful. There is a femme fatale in Agent Carter, and she is subversive and wonderful and terrifying and very, very sad: not because she is relegated to the feminine, but because of how violently she has been stripped of her agency and identity.
But Peggy knows who she is. She’s not a femme fatale or a grifter. She’s a secret agent, and she’s more than a little bit prim, and she makes her own calls and messes up — sometimes catastrophically — on her own terms. Peggy Carter’s femininity isn’t a trick or a trap, nor is a mask she wears for the benefit of the men around her: when we finally see her stripped of those cultural expectations, fighting and drinking alongside comrades who know her value, she has shockingly little pretense to shake off.
Peggy knows who she is, and that knowledge allows her to use and embrace the tools she has on hand. She’s not a badass because she rejects the feminine. She’s a badass because she’s capable of recognizing its value.
And that changes everything.
In writing about Agent Carter, it’s natural to compare the show to the character: overlooked because it’s so wholly unexpected, because it refuses to fall neatly into the categories and expectations we’ve spent our lives lining up. Because, brilliant and brave and groundbreaking in its own right, it never quite got out from under the long and broad shadow of those Captain America films — which are of course terrific, vindication of both comic-book cinema and, in The First Avenger’s Joe Johnston, one of the best overlooked directors in the business.
But you’ve seen movies like Captain America. There are no shows like Agent Carter —The Bletchley Circle comes close, but Agent Carter is still something new and revolutionary, something that not only subverts gender and genre; but, like its hero, changes the world left in its wake. Captain America sets a strong foundation. But Agent Carter…
Agent Carter soars.
Rachel Edidin is a writer, editor, and podcaster. She hangs her Internet hat atracheledidin.com; X-plains X-Men at rachelandmiles.com; is vaguely Internet Famous as@WorstMuse; and lives in Portland, Oregon, with a nice system administrator and a terrible cat.
Constance, this is being posted as is…it was a question posed on a forum I read…well, actually, it was a statement disguised as a question. Don’t you just love when people do that? Instead of asking what you think, they tell you what they think but since they don’t have the courage to say that to you, they “rouge it up” all sweet and kind in the form of a question.
While the answer is spoken in harshed language than I would utilize, I completely agree with the answer.
Q: Possible confusion Do you think that it’s possible that everyone involved with gender identity furthers the confusion by focusing on labels? There are valid instances of people being less than admirable about pronouns and names but generalising about something like this could spite someone with sympathy for the cause. (I’m not saying you do these things because I don’t know you and thus wouldn’t have a position of authority to say something like that, I just want a different perspective on things)
A: I think labels are only not necessary to people who haven’t had to fight for their labels before. When you get assigned to be the average label and you agree with it, there are tons of examples of your label everywhere. You get examples of how others act so when you grow you can emulate behavior, you can ask questions about your labels without fear of prejudice or hate, you get to practice and live out the examples of your labels without fear of being hurt.
I had to fight, tooth and god damn nail, to get my label. Being trans is something I’ve been beaten over, lost jobs over, lost friends over, and lost huge parts of my family.
And for the record, if you see everything going on to trans people, if you see the undeserved hatred and the murder rates and the homelessness rates and the suicide rates and the abuse and the genuine fucking torture trans kids go through, and you STILL need to be convinced to be sympathetic, you are a horrible human being and we don’t need your sympathy.
I am sharing this beautiful article here, for your own edification.
I am also proposing that this concept could be a very powerful and effective tool in assisting your friends and/or family who suffer from dysphoria…as you substitute that existential state in for the transition from life in this body into that which comes next, you can see how it could be very effective in helping create a space for them to discover how to be after an entire life of non-being and all of the emotional bad habits or destructive behaviors learned along the way simply just to survive.
I hope it is as meaningful to you as it was to me.
Look…as a cyclist for many many years, I am here to tell you that the whole notion of what is doping and what is “cheating” needs to be rethought.
Cycling is caught in the same technological birthing pangs as the science of gender is: as technology advances so does the ability to bring the body to higher places of performance and congruence…and it is only cheating if the rules are defined to exclude it!
Think Formula One racing, how every single year technology brings out more and more amazing innovative race cars. Cycling is like that now…new understandings of healing, of training, of recovery.
Bring the rules into the 21st century…let go of old superstitions and bound up views…mandate the in depth use of all the latest techniques under the closest supervision. Ban those cyclists who don’t seek out these things.
After all, the danger was the clandestine use of these things without reputable supervision…just like the early days of do it yourself HRT
I wanna see the person who will tell her now that they are enforcing the binary on her that they have sought to enforce on me…and tell her she is not really a woman.
Here is a crude and sad fact: in a large group of minds genitalia and gender are identical.
But we shouldn’t be pressuring people to come out. Instead, we should be challenging the expectation that others are entitled to our identities.
No one should be demanding that people take on the risks of coming out. No one except you can make that decision. Your identity is yours, and no one else owns it.
You don’t owe anyone anything – especially not people who are ignoring your personal autonomy and safety by demanding that you come out.
Constance…I face a lot of challenges in life that are in addition to the ones faced by all people simply as a condition of being in this world. If you have read here for awhile, you are acquainted with the gamut of these, and if you are new, well have a gander at the other posts ;-)…giggle.
My point is that it is the additional ones that kill. They are like the difference between running a marathon, and running one chased by dogs, and running one when you aren’t fast enough to keep from getting nipped numerous times on the run. And it is the nips that bleed, get infected, and drain…of vitality, of energy, and eventually of hope.
Right now the hardest of these challenges for me is that of making myself known to other people that are of utmost importance to me. They are mourning what they perceive as the loss of the person they knew, rather than perceiving it as the loss of the explanatory narrative that stitched together our common history.
For a whole host of reasons, some of them spiritual, some of them developmental, and most of them cultural/paradigm related, the onus and burden falls squarely on me in this process…to be the bigger person…to walk the second mile, or the third or the fourth, or however many miles must be walked…to turn the other cheek again and again and again…
My own identity is in need of justification, of proving, of validating, and the ways I respond either contribute to or detract from my right to be.
Judgement is passed on the narrative that I have, as it compares to the narrative that was.
Again…I get it. Fairness is not the operative determinant. But I want it to be understood: this is a costly gift, and gift I do think it is. It is not something that I owe…to anyone except myself whom I owe the debt of authenticity inner and outward. I think that my perspective on things is equally valid, is equally valuable and to be treasured. The “things I have lost” or the sense that “what I thought I had never existed” is just as real, as vibrant and legitimate for me as it is for anyone else who feels like they are being robbed.
Let me state it baldly: anything they are “robbed of” wasn’t real in the first place.
How about this: instead of the point of view that “a father I thought I had is now dead and replaced by you”, how about this: “I have a father who just happens to be a woman, and the idea I held that my father was also a male was an incorrect one. I am fortunate to be able to have this inaccurate understanding corrected while there is still time and life remaining to know this person that I valued and treasured as a father!”
Because this is my story…my history. I fathered four people…as a woman who inhabits a body that is biologically male. And as far as I am aware, my children always felt that I was a good dad to them, valuable in the love, acceptance and counsel that I offered them. And I am still here! The same person with the same ideas and same truths (and some newly understood ones too).
Perhaps instead of me saying over and over again I am sorry I am sorry…I am sorry for being…I am sorry for wanting to be, needing to be…maybe it could be thought about that a different sorry could be said…I am sorry that I held onto my own belief and insistence that a father has to be spiritually and biologically male and only that…I am sorry that I invalidated the lives and efforts of the millions of women who “fathered” young boys into men because there was no one else there.
I am posting this link, because it gets to a lot of the reasons why there is so much gravity behind the other narrative, the one that requires me to justify my right to exist, my right to pursue congruency, my right to be free from suicidal ideation, my right to feel okay about the truth that I did the best I could and while not a perfect parent did a pretty adequate job even compared to a cis-male…and as a transgender woman serving in the role of father and not knowing, well maybe I did an admirable job.
and maybe I suck. but I suck based on what I did and didn’t do, not based on whether I identfy as male or female…others who are insisting with actions that the actual measure of my being is in that identification are the ones who must grapple with the suckitude they frolic in!
Read the article…acquaint yourself with the myths…and then divest yourself of them for some clearer, more objective standards that we will all, together, be held accountable to…how we love one another, how we forgive one another, whether we divorce and separate ourselves or remain connected…those are things that will endure long after gender identification falls away as not needed.
Gender orientation…once again. In another brain, in another place, in another genetic pool, unrelated to me, unrelated to “demonic possession”, unrelated to “unsubmission and rebellion”, unrelated to “mental illness”…
…related to the gender spectrum and continuum of creation as human, male at one pole and female at the other…related to hormone washes over body and brain and the differences in how they align…related to a world that sometimes spawns cleft palates, holes in hearts, heart murmurs, diabetes, etc. etc. …related to a world where the miracles of modern medicine exist to alleviate suffering and give life fulfilled and joyful…
…pushing against your taboos…pressing against your prejudices…pounding down your judgments…piercing the veils of your ignorance…presenting to you new understandings…
I am starting to think that trans women and trans femmes — all of us linked by the cardinal sin of being named boys at birth, yet breaking the rules of boyhood and manhood — are trapped inside a traumatized story. From an early age, we are inundated with the story of our deaths, we relive it over and over many times before we actually die.
This same story is taken up, commoditized, and mass produced by communities outside of ourselves — media outlets looking for sensational stories, academics looking to produce research, and as Morgan Collado points out, even “LGBT” human rights organizations eager to use the statistics of transphobic violence to garner funds used to pursue the interests of cis, white gays and lesbians.
Even well-meaning liberal cis people, eager to earn “ally” points, consume and exploit the narrative of the doomed trans woman in their way.
Constance, you know my thoughts about this topic. This article states them far more eloquently than I do. There is a part of the article speaking about how people who “knew us then” feel as if we have died already…
…in light of the murder of trans-women being an almost ritualized offering of human lives to the bloodthirsty god of patriarchy, it feels so eerie, as if my own loved ones consign me to those fires with forked fingers and muttered incantations invoking protection against the evil (trans) eye…
My deepest sorrow is that my life seems a curse. If I exist as I was, then I am doomed and serving life in a prison invisible and undeclared and I am forever derided because I am depressed or despairing or I am resented because I hated myself…
…and if I exist as I am, then I am resented because I am the cause of death of a man who never was and never could be, except in the thoughts and minds of everyone around me. And all they offer me is the promise that they will give me their illusions and fears to prop me up and costume me and call it liberty, or they will call me Patrick Henry and give me death.
It is my choice they say.
Yes…it is…my choice. And I choose Tikkun.
I choose to live, and let go of all other things I cannot control. And if I die before you wake, then I pray the Lord your soul will take…to the fountains of truth and revelation…and then I pray that He will take you across that river you so proudly declared you would never cross…I pray that He will ferry you across Himself, and show you the blood-soaked ground that constitutes the banks of the river called Rejection.
Constance, I think I have posted about this previously, but I think this layout here is succinct, accessible, and easy to digest. Ya know, I have been thinking about the backflips that some people do, the contortions they knot themselves in so that they can preserve a way of thinking about a topic and not have to deal with changing a point of view…
…sadly, they place that point of view over a person far too often, and end up contributing to a tragedy.
It really is the ultimate in idolatry…a human life slain on the altar of the idol of their point of view.
Thank God there are parents like these, who understand the appropriate reaction to the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance.
Ryland’s story is real for people all over the globe. Please listen to your children. Be understanding and accepting. If only Leelah Alcorn could have known such understanding parents. Stop trans discrimination.
Ohhh CONSTANCE! I get so thrilled as we are able to “scientifically” demystify gender and thus debunk the superstitious taboos and unfounded prejudices against gender variant human beings!
When I first began my own research a few years back, the existence of intersex individuals immediately exposed the crux of the matter to me: if someone was created with both sets of plumbing, how did we sanction what gender they were? Even more basic, if they had both sets of plumbing and yet still strongly identified as one gender or the other, did that not prove that the determination of gender superseded a person’s plumbing? Did it not implicitly cede that the core of gender identity was wrapped up in the warp and weft of what it is that makes someone who they are…that persistent and consistent expression we call personality or soul, that self that exists regardless of what happens in or to the body until life itself ceases in the person as an organism?
Yes! Of course it did!
And now…the evidence is simply mounting to add visible evidence to what our hearts have always known…that we are more than our bodies!
It is such a shame that there are people who have made such misguided and ignorant judgements of a person’s moral standing or spiritual standing, on something as irrelevant as a body…
It’s an even deeper shame that those same people are missing out on the rich interaction they could be participating in here on the planet…
And it is riches irony when they will run into me inside those pearly gates, and find all their arguments and judgements rendered moot and null and void…and see me as I am and always was…a child of God who loves Them, confesses Them and seeks to live as a small imperfect picture of Their heart.
Reader…if you are one of these people, why not just give up now? I will still be friends, if you will play nice and keep cruel words in the only place they belong: the pits of hell.
How about you? Will you dip into the wells of living water instead of the swamps of putrid judgments?
This is must reading. It gets to a very dangerous assumption: that only monsters or freaks commit rape.
Sadly, rape is committed by loving fathers, normal husbands, common brothers…in short, by ordinary non-monster men who think it is their right to take what they want sexually from these other-gendered objects created merely for a man’s use and pleasure.
This message underlies major sections of some theological beliefs and it is based on a complete misunderstanding of the true nature and essence of who woman is…
…this attitude is inculcated at every turn in our culture today, and sadly women internalize much of this within themselves and end up being vulnerable in ways they would not otherwise wish to be.
I like how the author lays out the issue…head over and check it out, yeah?
Constance…ears are deaf to our pleas…another one has gone over the precipice of despair.
This area is the same one where some of my own dementors hail from, those truly baffling souls so full of hate that they are compelled to speak spite and make sure that they attempt to infuse my heart with that poison…oh yeah, cus they love me so much.
I am deeply saddened but not one bit surprised that this poor dear despaired in such a caustic and hateful atmosphere as this.
Ima keep on posting these things…you cannot pretend it doesn’t happen. You cannot pretend that reading here is the same as supporting a transgender person. If you read here but do nothing, you are like the rich person who walks the streets in -20 degrees below zero and tells the ones who freeze in their nakedness “be warm, be warm.”
Listen: it is not going to stop until you get you up out of your ease and privilege and stand with me! With us! In your community…and yeah, you will lose face and reputation and may be called a name or two…quel horreur!
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
Constance…make a distinction with me? Let’s look at the point below as a mirror. Miley Cyrus is absolutely right in what she says…at least in terms of the double standard that is applied to males and females. Soo many of our issues culturally in our society stem from this disconnect. But catch my thoughts down below, after:
“No one ever talked about Robin Thicke after the VMAs of 2013. It was all my fault and I was the one who was acting like a ‘slut’. And that isn’t the only example of a woman being put in a box. I’m just speaking out for women to be yourself and I think I’m doing something to break the double standard that has been created over the years.”
whether you like her as a person/an artist or not, one just HAS TO admit that she’s absolutely right about this.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Okay Constance…now that I have agreed with her, I want to ask:
Why?
What happened to us, these Glorious Ruins Divine, who used to glow with the God-Light so fierce that clothing was not something any mind considered, for we were clothed in Eternity Resplendent…and now we compete to see who has more “freedom” and right to rip the mystery away and put it all on display?
It is as if it wasn’t enough for the God-Light to go out…now that it has we, all of us, want to wallow in our Unclothed-ness.
Please resist the temptation to write me off as a sexual prude, or sexually repressed, or any of those things. My arguments are similar in outward appearance only to the moralists and repressive people who seek to bind up and punish and rob humanity of the incredible wonder and power and gift that our sexuality is.
If you are unfamiliar with my point of view, just use the search field, and search sexuality and you will find just a few posts about sexuality, the most comprehensive being this one: Love in a Sexual World.
I am all about restoring the Image…I am all about the huge and significant metamorphosis humanity is in the throes of…from death to life, from empty to Full…from piles of sensient animated clay to the very incarnation of Divine.
I think this is why Mama made me transgender, so I would experience this in such a personal tangible way so as to be bent and marked forever, dedicated to this transition of all the lost “trans” humans with eternity encased in bodies bound by time and decay.
Yes, Miley…you are indeed right. I pray that someday you will take the next step and understand the secret mystery of sacred sexuality.
Being called he/she, and having it justified by a spiritual comment, well it smacks a bit of feeling like getting groomed for other, deeper transgressions.
It is a true reality that I could get murdered, just for walking transgender.
As long as you cis people read and feel all bad and stuff, and then see what’s on tv, we will keep being killed. No one will stop killing us until they are forced to stop…a bit like the police force and their wanton slaughter of young black men.
Please…we really are not doing anything to you. Just let us live.
For you science geeks…the biology of the brain is real, and its existence far more relevant to gender than plumbing.
It’s a bit dry to me…but the first time thru these things for me?? WOW! Eye opening.
But best of all, it rebuts the notions of those who think that I have a mental problem, a spiritual oppression, or a newly emerged proclivity.
Sigh…few things are more discouraging than the so called supporter who (ignorantly) says to me “Hey, if that is what it takes for you to be happy, then I don’t care what you do, be happy!”
Nice sentiment, but it is not a matter of happiness…it is a matter of identity. Not sure why that is so hard to get, but it is.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
You must be logged in to post a comment.