“Why is it so hard to articulate love yet so easy to express disappointment?”
| — | Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants |
Tag Archives: Abuse
These 10 ‘Acceptable’ Trans Narratives Are Actually Holding Us Back — Everyday Feminism
These 10 ‘Acceptable’ Trans Narratives Are Actually Holding Us Back — Everyday Feminism.
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!!
The Impossible Demands of Dating Under the Pressures of Rape Culture
Constance, I found this article over here: http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/04/rape-culture-dating/
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.
Please read and consider the implications.
Originally published on Robot Hugs
(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.
With Love,
The Editors at Everyday Feminism
Why Indeed?
Similarities between Blake Brockington and Leelah Alcorn
1. They wore both Transgender.
2, They were both rejected by their families (Blake was in fostercare because his family kicked him out).
3. Their ages. (Blake had just turned 18, and Leelah was 17 turning 18)
4. They both commited suicide.
So explain to me why this well known Transgender activist, Blake Brockington, who raised thousands for charity and became the first black transgender homecoming king is getting almost no media attention. Leelah Alcorn trended across Twitter and Tumblr—even got her own Wikipedia page and article in People magazine.
This is by no means a comparison or a contest for opression. But Blake Brockington deserves the same memorial Leelah Alcorn was given— if not more. Three thousand to three hundred and sixty four (and that is including articles about him winning @ HOCO) .
The only clear difference between them is his race. Preserve this young man’s life.
REST IN POWER KING, BLAKE BROCKINGTON.
Constance, the above is a quoted passage that I found today…I think it is worth noting the first four points as the only important thing…and then it is worth noting that race was a huge significant factor in this disparaging difference as the only factor! Both and. Not either or!
Fight off issue fatigue, and keep passionate about freedom and life.
Charissa
Going Nova On Palm Sunday
In light of this nova-burst
I want to thank you for silver
I want to thank you for gold
I want to thank you for stardust
I am truly grateful that you would
check on me, earthbound here
and shackled by this self-gravity.
I really feel so awkward all the time
Cus I look for freedom as a voracious reader
of pages, of faces, of hearts
and suns gone nova.
Going Nova…
that explains perfectly how disconnected I feel
in my heart from all that while grasping
in my mind exactly what they are saying
and why they are saying it!
And feeling so goddamned guilty for even being…
always, feeling so goddamned guilty for even being.
Never ever had a choice in that, and untold time and tears
toiling in trying to be other…
Going Nova…
I guess that’s a choice I make inside my heart
as I float between me and those shimmery stars
that woo me so…
anyway I am trying to say sorry to you for something
but I don’t even know what it is or how to say it…
sorry…nova…for what I am, who I am?
Charissa, trying to survive this human experience
in a body and brain at constant odds…is that me and what I am?
I am a girl and have always been and have no need to prove that I am
(and couldn’t anyway, even if I did) God knows
patriarchal fists slam into me trying to beat the woman outta me,
feminist talons slash my skin trying to tear the woman offa me…
while my own nails I keep razor sharp and always ready to rip that male biology
right outta such dumb DNA that’s so much less than me.
Anything I say can be construed as lack of humility because
I never had a chance at solidarity in biological sisterhood with you
and remaining silent can be the height of arrogance because
it reeks of presumption and I am neither or both or all
(silent, arrogant, presumptuous)
I am Going Nova.
I try my best to be a tender soul, to be a gentle soul and do good
and bring honor to woman and women by how I live, how I draw close
to my God Who has been, is and always will be Mama…
the Wise, the Comforter, My Helper in this time of death
hiding behind Hosannas and Hail Caesars.
Please hear my heart, but if you don’t the fault is mine
in all my dark and clumsy lack, so let your eyes
do all the happy work of ears and see me in these words…
Going Nova on Palm Sunday
Chas | I lost a friend today and I don’t even remember…
Chas | I lost a friend today and I don’t even remember….
No words…
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.
Depression in Transgender Youth Eases with Recognition, Treatment | Psych Central News
Depression in Transgender Youth Eases with Recognition, Treatment | Psych Central News.
“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
Addressed To Everyone Who Knew Me Then:
Dear Constance, Dear Reader:
I make a distinction between you Constance, who found your way here, drawn by my writings…poems, posts, pics…perhaps bloviating, who knows…but you found your way here to me, Charissa. And you have known my heart, known me for who I am, what I am…
…and then there is you, Reader. You are from my past. You knew me “then”. You knew the role I was in, the part I played, and played even to myself in the midst of the horror and sorrow dysphoria is. You watched me from afar. You assessed always, judged by what you saw on the outside.
More often than not you threw me into your scale of judgment with me on one side and yourself on the other and I was found wanting in the balance.
And then there is “Brother of Reader, Sister of Reader”…and you also are from my past. You come around like people from a small midwestern town go to the travelling freak show: you slink in under cover of darkness and read. You gossip to one another in hushed tones, and wag your head in wonder over this person you knew “who finally lost it”.
Well Reader, I did indeed finally lose it, and found me.
But here is the deal: you broke trust with me…the person. You broke faith.
I extended kindness over and over again. I extended love and sacrifice. I placed your needs above my own, and sought to serve you, give to you freely and without expectation and in hope that you would learn and be transformed by the renewing of your minds and hearts in the washings of the eternal word I sought to live.
I cannot allow you to be around. Broken trust is too deep a gulf, too broad a breach. And there are also factors that literally prohibit me from taking any chances with anyone from my past…from that specific past that involved your access to my life, and even deeper, to my heart.
So now I am gone…and the reality of my absence is sinking in…and you miss that steady striving earnest heart. You miss that gentle person you could yell at or off load on who kept cool under fire and didn’t repay evil with evil, but evil with good. You think to yourself that maybe there was a different narrative than the one you conspired with in the moment because if felt good and was safer to you than the risk of allying with someone who was going down, and going down for good…
…so you come here, reading, finding the same heart and soul, and more…realizing there were depths and chambers hidden from which treasure came, from which pearls came. You hope to find expiation. You imagine that perhaps the traces can be picked up once again and we can pick up where we left off…except that “we” didn’t leave off…
You did. Leave. Off.
Let the word be spread: I cannot risk you in my life. I will block you as I find out your presence in the various social media I utilize. Oh don’t get me wrong…I forgive you, and have forgiven from the beginning…I just cannot control what happened to the land when that nuclear bomb went off and radiation blighted that territory. Half-lives simply must pass and in the meantime nothing will grow.
So spread the word. I am not responding. I am not waving. I am not answering. I am not hating. I am not loving. I am not acknowledging. I have shaken the dust off my feet and moved on, and will never utter another word in your direction…because I am required to, I have to, I must.
I am dead to you…and alive to me, and to Constance. I am legally transitioned to me, and fully so…the me I always was and almost lost.
I am Charissa Grace…I am beloved of God, by Their Word and Their Blood…I am not yours.
Unthinking Destruction
All is not well
here in Destruction
on twisting trash-strewn roads
traversing heart topography
of hurt, humiliation and
yes, hate…
roads the arteries and veins
pumping mammon’s blood in vain
and kicking at every knee…
all is not well
here, in me.
Storm clouds gather
around hard eyes,
flat, blank beneath,
seething inside
and then the sun
shines on those eyes
and I can see
behind those eyes,
lined with poverty like mascara
while calling it silver, but…
no redemption there,
nope, not, no
silver lining
there.
Lurking,
poised to pounce
from eyes straight into mouths,
unthinking, uncaring, unfeeling
unaware and empty,
lurking light (incarnate words)
so black and blank (incarnate worlds),
darkened worlds of night,
down pitch-black alleys
reeking of menace
like a bad undertaker’s
over-liberal use of cheap cologne
to mask the smell of rot.
Then they speak at me
and words spark
from their lips like live coals,
like glowing tips of cigarettes
and sharp threatening glares
of drug pipes drawn deep
and harsh like sudden flares
and for split seconds
their illumined faces show to me
in that black light in that moment
I can truly see, past the blank indifference
and peer thru active hate
and around their lurking fear
and I can spot the person
that once lived shining,
feeling there.
It is late
and I am sick,
and drowsy,
I am sick,
and comfortable,
I am sick
and freaking out
in a world jarred
wide awake,
in a life,
a death,
a meal shared,
in this daily, physical reality
unchanged
But I hear
the whisper of a spider spinning
her web of promise,
and I catch
the sound of subterranean streams
and I remember
all is not quite what it seems.
See, I’m having these recurring dreams
that all was good from the beginning,
but then something went wrong,
oh so wrong and things
ain’t like they ought to be,
not for them and not for me…
and we dwell here,
drugged and deceived,
thinking that not-thinking is
the true sweaty work of unthinking!
Oh for the courage to unthink!
Unthinking the inevitability of sin,
unthinking the inevitability of violence,
unthinking the inevitability of exile,
unthinking the divisions,
unthinking the deceptions…
Oh to dwell in
Unthinking
Destruction
A Disjointed Incomplete Meditation…
houses of grey blank walls decked out in smooth rich wood
panels and pictures of picnics and parties…
banal bacchanalia, all splattered in Blood.
Beds of spikes, hidden neath down comforters,
and wool knitted afghans of colorful,
threatening sinister pattern.
Houses in neighborhoods bereft of neighbors,
each one is serving themselves and alone
in community of this alienation…and all is
destroyed by their own bloody hands…
the work of rough hands…even rougher grave throats.
Our eyes are still bloodshot from staring at visions
of genocide done that we didn’t see coming
but now we continue to watch, in foreboding
but hoping in vain that the cute lil houses
are what’s really real and not all the horror,
lurking beneath in destruction and gore.
we are really in fear and wondering…
what happens when a killer comes home,
or (gulp) even worse
if that killer had never left home?
what then?
what happens when victims
*widows orphans*
and murderers
look each other in the eyes again?
what then, and who blinks first and looks away in shame?
What are these wounds on your chest?
The wounds I received in the house of my friends.
What is greater: the pain of being violated
or the bitter agony of forgiving?
a valley of dry bones cannot be forgotten
even in the face of forgiveness so costly.
This impossible for me to try to describe
or even conceive of apart from the cross of Christ.
Because forgiveness is also
it’s own rare and exquisite
form of great suffering.
And so now we get down to it:
there is no exit, no escape from the agony,
no pitstop from pain…
all we can do is exchange suffering’s form and it’s face,
from our own for the pain of another…
and us become willing to be bashed and broken
by those very ones we so desperately want
to reach out to and reconcile and leave pain behind.
This is the agony of a tortured soul wrestling
and a wrecked body there…offered in prayer
on the altar of sorrow…for the forgiveness
of torturers’ torments in this dank dark world
of violence and victims, laboring heavy
beneath weights unspeakable and even greater,
the weight of the cross.
And Him? The Reproached?
The Betrayed, Who was Broken?
Him The Despised and King of All Criminals,
King of All Victims, King of All Shame?
Perhaps He knows of the path thru this valley
of broken dry bones full of dust, full of death.
Perhaps He can see those small signs of life
that are hidden from eyes filled with blood, hate and rage
and only seen by the eyes washed clean with tears
of repentance and wonder to look for our Spring
and the signs there so gentle
of a coming glad day of Resurrection…
Posting this as is: Language Alert
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.
Remind me again how the patriarchy does not oppress women and children?
“message to all you privileged white american girls saying “we don’t need feminism” because you don’t “feel oppressed” here’s an example of why we DO still need feminism and a friendly reminder that the rest of the f**kn world exists too”
IMPORTANT!!!
“It Would Falsify Everything You Taught Me…”
Constance…most of you who are public followers of Grace Notes are cis-gender humans. Some of you are trans (thanks for the support, family!! 🙂 ), and as transgender humans you are intimately acquainted with the entity that dysphoria is, and you know that thoughts of suicide or talk of it is often our most noble and courageous act of the day, because we are speaking about it rather than…
But I want to talk to you Constance (and you lurkers, too…yes, you are there), you cis-gender humans, so blessed to be non-itchy in your skin and of limber-lung to draw in draughts of refreshing air…you live in a homogenous world…a world that sniks together and is of a piece. And where it doesn’t, it doesn’t in the same places as other humans and so you find an identity and community in that.
You don’t understand how alienation from yourself puts you at a distance from everyone else and everything else…always.
Because dysphoria is like missing pieces in a mosaic of being.
You say to yourself that you are shattered too, and you are…but your pieces are present, and as you glue them back together they form a sort of whole once again…whereas the dysphoric person diligently and urgently works daily to reassemble the shattered image into a whole, only to discover that the crucial core is absent…and the middle is void.
We are separated from you always…as if you are on the shore of the sea and we across on the opposite shore and lacking the voices of whales to sing to you across the leagues and the deep.
So there is that.
This morning I am mindful of dysphoria and the gulf that it is around me, alas, and the challenge that it presents me in my quest to be a yielded vessel yielding blessing…I am mindful that there is also, somewhere packed in all of this, an opportunity to know and understand Their perspective and methods as Gulf-Breechers and Core-Restorers…perhaps this is my destiny, to be a restorer of the breach and a crosser of the gulf.
But in this mindful place, I have been remembering the words that a man spoke to me last summer, upon being let into my secret world of confusion and horror, that world of the transgender person caught between body and brain. He is a man who has in the past been very open in expressing admiration for me, as a child of God, as a communicator of Grace, and as a caretaker of my children. He has said toweringly complimentary things to me, things that I felt were far too idealized and simply did not adequately assess how flawed I am, what a failure I am…
…but he had said them, spoken of my impact on himself and those around me.
On that soft and lazy August Saturday, by the waters of a small man-made lake (which seems appropriate), we spoke, and I shared with him the struggle of dysphoria and how suicide is as constant companion as the sensation of choking is to the asthmatic.
He burst out in a fit of passion “Don’t you dare off yourself! It would falsify everything you taught me, and all you stand for!” And he went on to talk about how negatively it would affect him, and how he would lose heart and likely not have belief anymore that what I taught meant anything worth trusting.
That is what I am thinking about this morning…how easily and how often my situation is somehow twisted around and becomes all about the other person. It was like another situation where I had been accosted by a long standing acquaintance (whom I would have called a friend, but now realize that was me putting my view of what a friend is on someone who sees it vastly different) who demanded an explanation for “why you have been seen around town dressed as a woman!!” (quelle horreur!!)…and since he had that place in my heart of “friend”, I gave the full account, but only half-way. He cut me off because “he was overwhelmed and couldn’t take anymore of this”. And then he looked at me in sheer misery and said “What am I going to tell my children??!!”
See? All about him. His place, and his burden…as if that question needed any other answer than tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and begin to study these things together to help out a people in chains.
Well…that is a very similar response this other man by the lake had, regarding discovering my daily battle with dark thoughts. His burden placed on me was that if I were to ever choose to not be here any longer then I would be the cause of his faith being weakened and diminished and his life harmed.
Since that time, I have spoken to this man two times, once a day or two after a big crisis that was brewing, and then again at the end of October 2014.
Twice.
And since then, nothing…and I get that there are complicating reasons for that, not the least of which is my transition and he is a man. Very few men have been “man enough” to handle my transition with anything other than rejection at best, and murderous, venomous looks at worst (and those looks threaten far worse is coming).
Constance…is this not something close to suicide? Friendshipicide? Is not this towering silence some sort of death? Does it not underline and highlight the gulf between us, because really all that changed was his understanding that he was interacting with a woman?
And those words ring in my heart, part of the voices that circle me like wolves and nip and slash and bleed me out…
“…it would falsify everything you taught me…”
Well, I don’t know if it would or wouldn’t. Things are true and worthy of living regardless of the source one receives them from. But I know that this staggering abandonment does indeed make me mindful of how those words are true from my perspective. Apparently, I am no longer those “three C’s” to him…Child, Communicator, Caretaker. Now, I am simply “It which must be avoided, lest whatever ails it somehow infect me”.
As to the other man…that was the last time we spoke, in September, with a terse letter being the final salvo and manifesto of that declaration of war religion has filed on me…and sadly, I have reason to know the sense of duty fulfilled and integrity maintained, and sweet sadness at doing the “hard but right thing” which follows the writing and delivering of such a letter…
…it is such an awful feedback loop of legalism and lies and lack of life (death).
It is difficult being the friend or relative of a transgender person. You get caught up in the punishments they are meted for their gender-crimes. You get branded with the Scarlet TL to match their Scarlet T (“tranny-lover” and “tranny”)…
…and you get confronted again and again and again with that gulf uncrossable, that breech unbridgeable, and the dysphoric human’s many-sided and alienated existence when you yourself live in a world where such concepts as sides and incongruency are understood in the brain alone and denied in the bones, those non-dysphoric congruent bones.
I am watching “Romeo and Juliet” right now, the 1954 version directed by Renato Castellani (huge giggles here, ddh)…this play has long been my very favorite Shakespearean play (followed closely by Henry the 5th). It is tragically striking, how I am in one being a Montague and Capulet, and both Romeo and Juliet…it is in a sense a tableau of dysphoria and the solution is inferred in the tragic ending…only loving acceptance and dogged commitment can validate a life and overcome abandonment.
And there is a timeless line (distinct from the rest of that genius’s timeless lines):
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
I am still whatever Rose I was…and still stink of whatever stench emanated from me under the old costume I sported. I still live in the dysphoric House of Mirrors, and sides all around me with everyone else there and me here…I am still “Fortune’s Fool”.
…and as to men? “Friends”…well, there is this, from the mouth of Juliet’s Nurse:
There’s no trust,
No faith, no honesty in men. All perjured,
All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.
Ah, where’s my man?—Give me some aqua vitae.—
These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.
When an overconfident dude tells a woman to shush up … here’s what that really means.
When an overconfident dude tells a woman to shush up … here’s what that really means..
I find this press-worthy and enjoyable, as well as being very accurate!
The Sickness in our Souls…
Sadly, Constance, “Animal Cruelty” is merely human beings being what they are…directed at animals.
It is what we have become…because when Animal Cruelty is directed at me, it is gender cruelty, and when it is directed at someone of a different race it is racial cruelty…
…who are we kidding? We are sick, and we need a cure.
Tell that to the dead Transwomen of 2015…
“Nothing in the world can bother you as much as your own mind, I tell you. In fact, others seem to be bothering you, but it is not others, it is your own mind.”
| — | Sri Sri Ravi Shankar |
Sorry, male cis-gendered person…gotta call BS on this one.
The person spouting filth at me in front of kindergarten children? That was not just “in my mind”.
Constance…when you take your outrage for injustice out of your mind, your sense of compassion out of your mind and let it be incarnate in your actions in this world…THEN we will see some transformation!
Ask for Password…It’s Not All Glitter and Rainbows: 6 Harmful Myths About Coming Out — Everyday Feminism
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.
via It’s Not All Glitter and Rainbows: 6 Harmful Myths About Coming Out — Everyday Feminism.
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.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
How Misogyny Shows Up in the Queer Community — Everyday Feminism
How Misogyny Shows Up in the Queer Community — Everday Feminism.
Good fodder for thought…and applies to the cis-norm community in spades. I think we all have something to learn from this one.
The Wreck in Ruination
This instrument, bound in time and dust and ashes
attacked by pressure and moments passing
wracked by neglect and careless stroking
of keys made of flesh and bone
has lost its continuity, lost its simple melody
cannot follow harmony
but mashes sound chromatic
and dissonant, dramatic
just echoes all the static
that rattles all around it,
neath the layers of grime
the passage of time
and each gender crime
Someone Tell Me That I’ll Live: On Murder, Media, and Being a Trans Woman in 2015 – xoJane
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.
via Someone Tell Me That I’ll Live: On Murder, Media, and Being a Trans Woman in 2015 – xoJane.
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.
Why I Get Very Concerned When I Am Called Names…
The men became enraged once they discovered that Nettles was transgender, according to prosecutors and a fight broke out.
Dixon punched Nettles in the face, making her to fall to the ground and strike her head on the sidewalk, causing a serious brain injury, said Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Viorst.
Viorst alleges that Dixon brutally beat Nettles and “struck her repeatedly as she lay on the ground” while “driving the side of her head into the pavement.”
The indictment charges that Dixon used the sidewalk as a “dangerous instrument” to cause Nettles’ death.
Constance…why? Driving face into sidewalk…enraged at a gender orientation…punishment of a capital nature for the crime of…what?
Being “a dude in a dress”? Being a “he/she?”
…and I am the one who has been judged as demonized…
*tears*
Another Day of Insults, but…
…thank God for the director at the center where I volunteer! She knows what the right thing to do and say is!
So…there was this “specimen” who came to the center today. I know him, and he “knew” me…and did not even come close to recognizing who I was. I was dressed in a very nice American Eagle plaid shirt, soft pink, flannel, and a tie-die spink broomstick skirt, with a black t-shirt top and pink jewelry.
I looked nice.
But as I walked by, I felt his eyes, I felt his derision. I was in his vicinity less than 5 seconds, and yet for some reason he was compelled to refer to me to my director as “a dude in a dress”…
…as in “what’s with the dude in the dress”…
My director simply said “She wanted to wear a dress today”. When he sought to contradict that and reiterate his insult, she stopped him, and repeated herself…and then a third time!
I was soo blessed by that, what she did. She did not try to go into any explanation, she did not differentiate me in any way whatsoever. She simply cut him off, and told him that I wanted to wear that pretty dress today.
I don’t know which was stronger…the resignation and sadness over another insult by another privileged boy, or the gladness and genuine admiration for this strong and steady soul who sees something worthy in me and lays it out straight to anyone who comes around.
I think I will go with the latter…
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
3 Reasons Why Saying ‘Real Men Don’t Rape’ Reinforces Rape Culture — Everyday Feminism
3 Reasons Why Saying ‘Real Men Don’t Rape’ Reinforces Rape Culture — Everyday Feminism.
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?
North Carolina mom believes bullying led to transgender teen’s suicide – LGBTQ Nation
North Carolina mom believes bullying led to transgender teen’s suicide – LGBTQ Nation.
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
http://www.wsoctv.com/videos/news/mother-believes-bullying-led-to-transgender-teens/vDH8L9/
More Lara Croft Than Lana Turner
Speaking for us,
making a way
for those of us
shattered by abuse
and raped by men…
defending the powerless,
which is (unfortunately)
most all of us (even men)
in this paradigm
of patriarchy and privilege
It is far,
far deeper
and more complex
than anyone
lets on or is allowed
to show…
I could be wrong…
I could be vapid as vapor…
(or wapid as waper, you wascally wabbit!)
but my heart tattoos say otherwise
they are more Lara Croft than Lana Turner.
Can you stop killing us for just one week?
Constance…did you realize this?
I invite you to consider this request.
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.
He/She…
…I was called this today. It wasn’t malicious in intent…but it was vicious in result. Apparently this person had referred to me that way behind my back and felt guilty about it. So they confessed to me today…
The reason given? Apparently they say that they “see Jesus in me so much that I am a “he” to the person.
Hmmmmm. I wonder if she calls Beth Moore a he/she? Or any other woman leader in church? There are a ton of cis-women far more full of Jesus than I.
But even more, I wonder: why even say that? Like it is so deadening, so numbing. And I feel empty inside already.
Thanks, person. You really must be lightened in your conscience, confession made straight to my face and words used 3 times in explaining why it’s okay.
But hey why should I care? I am dead so big deal.
Honestly, sometimes I wish I were. So many lives would have so much less to deal with.
Any Reason Good Enough
he said he lost control.
of himself, that is…
and I wonder why he did
what he did and left other things
undone?
of himself, that is…
and I wonder why he did
what he did and left other things
undone?
a word like glass
across my neck,
a splash of blood from
blasted nose, a shove severe
and skidding down
on skint and bruised knees…why stop there?
If it was mere control
he lost?
across my neck,
a splash of blood from
blasted nose, a shove severe
and skidding down
on skint and bruised knees…why stop there?
If it was mere control
he lost?
because
it might make him look
like…what?
like the man with loaded gun
and empty heart
and heartless soul
who blasted her
out of her shoes
and into her grave?
like the man who
bashed her face
to bloody mush
and flicked his bic
and burned the pile
of gender trash
transgressive?
the lost control excuse
the panic and murder alibi
these abusive rampages
verbal, physical, psychic
feel justified to them,
morally acceptable, defensible,
any reason good enough.
Any reason good enough
lost control…
they conflate the two
and we continue
to die like flies.
Fifty Shades of Grey review by Rosie Waterland
Fifty Shades of Grey review by Rosie Waterland.
Constance, this is an important review. It pulls the funhouse mirror mask off of one of the most deceptive, disturbing, despicable pieces of pop culture phenomena that has washed up on the shores of our collective zeitgeist in quite some time.
I want to warn those with more sensitive reactions to harsh language that there is a liberal sprinkling of swearing and scatalogical vocabulary, but I think it is appropriate to the force of the emotion this writer is expressing.
It also helped me know why I had that huge shudder and check in my heart over this whole thing, and as I have said earlier I did know about this way back when it was a serialized fan fiction story placed in forums.
The issue is not the sexuality.
The issue is not whether anyone is “openminded” or “a prude” if they approve or disapprove of the production. As I have laid out in 2 posts, I look at sexuality markedly different than seems to be the majority view, but then again I look at most things a bit different anyway.
No…the issue is that this piece of unbridled domestic violence is able to take its place in the hearts of so many millions of people as something to aspire to, something that a truly whole and balanced woman should be able to deal with…
…and it is that lie that I have always been revolted by, felt my spirit buck and shy away from.
It is tragic that Domestic Violence has even the smokescreen of legitimacy that it can hide behind, tuck in and draft off of…until it is back inside the 4 walls of some isolated domicile where the mask comes off and the monster comes out to feed.
Give this review a read, Constance…and then have the courage to know that somethings are just not necessary to accept just because they exist.
Domestic violence is never okay, even if it is wrapped in the promise of pleasure. It is still a box of pain and sorrow.
BU researchers find biological basis for transgender identity — The Daily Free Press
BU researchers find biological basis for transgender identity — The Daily Free Press.
Constance, we are slowly discovering the biology that underlays gender orientation. This is a process inevitable, and limited only by the edge of technological advancement.
Most importantly, it is the same curve of advancement that has existed for other things that were once considered evil, the results of demons, etc. and are now seen as the reality they have always been.
In a generation or two, we will look back on those who thing that gender variance is a moral evil, failure or choice as the beknighted ignoramuses that they in fact truly are. They will be in the same drawer of history that contains those who opposed the civil rights movement, those who owned slaves and used the Bible to justify it, those who thought that epileptics were possessed by demons rather than simply the denizens inside a chemically unbalanced brain.
I have tried and tried and tried, over and over, to show you in everyway possible and all the ways you judge yourself and your own righteousness that my gender orientation does not impute to me any greater or lesser moral evil! Because it is not a matter of inherent morality! Anymore than your own gender adds any sort of moral texture to your own spirituality!
Isaiah 58 comes to mind as a pretty good list of things that would actually be far more pleasing to God than writing letters to people that boast about rivers that you will not cross or that conflate your own sexual proclivities and addictions with my gender orientation!
Directly speaking, I strongly exhort you to have the faith of your convictions and humble yourself and simply love. Cross rivers. Swim oceans.
But have a care not to make your converts twice as fit for hell as you are yourself.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
My Only Comment on this…
…50 Shades of Grey…
yeah, I could rant about what is objectionable there for days on end. From the topic to the takeaway, and even deeper.
I don’t like it on so many levels…and yes, I was aware of what this was a few years back when it was just an online forum fan fiction piece that started making waves.
If you have bothered to read here much, you know my feelings about sexuality and sexual expression, and why. I want to emphasize that my objections to this thing transcend any particular picadillo or preference or pain or pleasure.
That is like objecting that rain is wet.
It goes so much deeper and thus gets easily overlooked in the assessment of cowardice that just freaking drives me crazy: “Well, whatever it takes to make you happy, I support that”.
NO!! I hear that all the time, and what makes us happy is rarely ever understood even by us or even effective at that so called happiness-production!
But I digress, and begin to rant about this…50 Shades of Prey (I mean Grey)
Dear Susan: Am I Not Loving Gays When I Tell Them the “Truth” About Their Sin?
Dear Susan: Am I Not Loving Gays When I Tell Them the “Truth” About Their Sin?.
Constance, I hope this morning finds you well. I also hope you will read Susan’s article in response to a letter she received on her blog.
I am posting it here because of the relevance of the attitudes of the correctors…not necessarily as a comment on the issue itself.
You see, I too have been victimized by people who say things like those referred to in this article: I have had it hurled into my face by those who tell me with a straight face that it is their obligation to out me to others and comment on my transition to them (before I even have the chance myself to say a word to people who are unaware of my choice and the journey to that choice)…and then comes the coup de gras: “If I don’t take this stand then your blood is on my head!”
Did you catch that? I am deprived of my own chance to speak for myself in the name of being “loved”, and then told that the one “loving” me with such betrayal is doing so to avoid having my “guilt” attributed to them!!
So love is involved…but it is not love of me…it is also not love of the person they are gossipping about me to (yes, it is gossip)…the “love” that is in operation here is the love of self, which is idolatry.
Christians who violate other people in the name of love are simply practicing the sin of idolatry.
Susan comments very well on this subject…take a look.
And then consider a novel thought: allowing God to be God and the One and Only True Knower of the Hearts of Human kind, and taking your place on level ground the moral equal of ones that you have judged and judge wrongly.
Do justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Barry Williams Makes Insensitive Comments About Bruce Jenner And ‘Going Transgender’
Barry Williams Makes Insensitive Comments About Bruce Jenner And ‘Going Transgender’.
Constance…
You will notice that I have not as of yet commented on Bruce Jenner and the news that he is grappling with gender identity issues. There are a lot of reasons why, beginning with the unfortunate context of his life in the “celebrity limelight” and running the gamut all the way down to the fact that Bruce has not made a comment yet on the record regarding the whole complex topic.
Therefore: we do not yet know what is transpiring and thus should just wait. Why wouldn’t we? Why is it so important for everyone to know?
Ahh…that brings me to the real reason I haven’t commented: I am hoping that by now you who regularly read here would be spotting the tropes, cliches and inaccuracies in the story. Such as these:
One doesn’t ever change “gender”…we are born to the gender we identify as, and pretty much nothing can change that. Based on the bell shaped curve that nearly every phenomenon of this world falls on, most people’s gender orientation and biological sex match up…but there are literally millions of people alive today, and sprinkled throughout the ages and epochs of history whose gender orientation and biological sex do not match.
Thus, to say that Bruce is “becoming a woman” is a deadly ignorant inaccuracy. If Bruce is for real, and not simply exploiting a “hot topic” in service of the celebrity status that plagues that family, then Bruce has always been a woman, and is just now becoming congruent with the fact that Bruce’s biological body and gender orientation have been at odds in a lifelong conflict…and at long last is taking the steps necessary to invoke that congruency.
Other repulsive things are being said and done, but one of the most repulsive is when people accuse Bruce of “going transgender”…such a story is behind the link that I put at the top of this post. An aging ex-celebrity made this comment in the form of a bad joke and showed several things in it:
First of all, he showed the permanence and insistence of gender orientation! Yes, the fact that he was outraged by it enough to joke about it shows the thing that I have written of many times before: the outrage of so many cis-gender people when contemplating a “gender change”. Since gender orientation doesn’t really change, the concept of body and orientation being juxtaposed is simply not acceptable as a state of being…welcome to our world!
If this idiot really did seek to transition his body, he would be buying a ticket on the train into gender dysphoria-ville, not out of it!
I say to this person: go ahead. Do it! I dare you…start dressing female, start grappling with the rejection, the ridicule, the open stares of disgust, and the troglodyte attempts at humor that testosterone-fueled people make repeatedly…and thrive.
Wait, what? You would hate that? You would find the price not worth it because instead of gaining anything you lose everything? Well, goodness gracious…isn’t that a shocker!! You just discovered that you aren’t really transgender, and you proved the permanence of gender orientation! Because truly dysphoric people do indeed walk the transition road I described above, endure the horrors I enumerated, and end up more whole as people, more at peace, and more fruitful as human beings inspite of all those bad things!
The peace and “fit” of gender orientation inside an incongruent body is such a deep and important factor in a healthy human organism that almost all of the terrible things we go thru seem as nothing compared to what we gain…if we are of stern enough mental mettle to endure the fiery trials that the cis-gender world rains down on us…driven as they are by their own horror at imagining living as the other gender with their own unchanging and unchangeable gender orientation!
But this first point, the location and persistence of gender orientation, is as nothing compared to the deeper and far more subtle inference that is on display: that being a woman is a horrible thing and a human being should be ridiculed for openly embracing one’s being if they are doing so from within a biologically male body.
I mean, think about it: since when did women have such a road in life that all they have to do is announce to a magazine that they are a woman and they immediately get a career, fame, fortune, attention, and ego gratification?
Since when did being a woman not mean making around .75 for every $1.00 a man makes in the same job? Since when did being a woman not mean that merely walking down the street alone puts her at risk of sexual assault and possibly being murdered? Since when did being a woman not mean dealing with being treated as an object of no value save what sexual pleasure she could provide and what reproductive opportunities she could grant? Since when did being a woman in our world mean any kind of advantage at all???
Clearly, the man is an insensitive and unaware buffoon, and I wouldn’t even give him the time of day normally…but he provided such a good mirror opportunity for those who are thoughtfully educating themselves about gender orientation, those who are taking their courage in hand to realize that there is no inherent morality in how we are oriented, but rather in how we live that orientation out.
What other things do you see hidden in this man’s stupidity?
Now…back to Bruce. I encourage you to read of this journey, from the most reputable sources you can find, and really listen. Listen. Listen to what Bruce says, if anything at all. Listen to the way things are reported. Listen to the spin that reporters put on things.
Pay attention to the patriarchal paradigm assumption that are foisted on this. Notice them, and draw inferences from that. Watch for the things that happen at the level of what is assumed, such as one’s status and worth as a female and one’s status and worth as a male.
Be aware of the gossip and talk surrounding you in your daily life when this topic comes up and the flaming ignorance that will abound and be celebrated…watch how that will be mostly male humans who act that way.
And then…I have no right to ask this of you, I realize, as I am transgender and thus of an inferior human caste, so I am humbly beseeching you, Cis-gender Constance…then consider maybe speaking up in the midst of this ridicule and flaming ignorance, and bringing some correction and truth and light into the situation.
I seem to remember some admonition that true religion involves defending the powerless and the alien, the widow and the orphan and the stranger…here is the perfect chance!
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly,
Charissa Grace
Oh Brazil! You Never Knew Me!
Landscape of Disruption and thick Decadence
washing ever over me in those thin emerald waves
teal and deep blue, muddy yellow and tan.
Your streets of light and music,
aimless, drifting bacchanalia bright and colorful
snaking through the throngs teaming
and strong smell of no limits but your streets
of cluttered trash and timorous times and eyes looking
pleading pits of hopeless wincing and no pity present,
just despair metastasizing monstrous and insidious
You never knew me. You looked at my surface
you thought me shallow and giddy.
You missed that shredding heart tested. Yes! I said it!
Tested in your dismissive glance.
Well, my glance is not shallow or naive,
my heart is shrewd and assessing and my eyes are clear and courageous
in the maelstrom of fear and fascination as I walk your streets…
and they walk me as well
streets of flowers and perfume, streets of plenty piled perfect,
exquisite in their rich opulent promises
and other streets too, decorated
with tarp-roofed hovels masquerading as houses
and sex-crazed humans masquerading as homes
and lost souls writhing in streets with no roof at all.
And you distrusted me!
You called me threatening and treacherous,
and your gimlet eye wide and white
glinting with ignorance and fear
but really just too damn lazy to make the effort
to climb inside this sleek white skin God borned me in,
this suburban Illinois pelt from streets
with singular but uniformly similar looking
roofed houses, with more than enough food, clothing,
and resources to meet needs and wants…
no. You never looked deeper.
You never gave me a second glance.
Oh Brazil, I never had a freaking chance!
You are too comfortable in your schizophrenic status quo
to see me, different on the inside than I am on the outside,
too confident you are one and known…
to yourself and others…
keep telling yourself that comforting untruth.
but you are just like me
and you don’t even know it!
You never knew it.
Will you ever?
Know it?
You with your rivers merry and feeding your heartland
and used for all things at once?
bathing…defecating…washing…drinking…
(and I am the polluted one?)
You with your monkeys quick and mischievous
and your giant wads of sloth hung lazy in the lush trees
verdant and slow…unaware, unaffected, unbothered…
You…pet monkeys and parrots in the midst of poverty and pleasures
and the never ending search for food or other treasure
in dirt and filth, in gold and glitter.
Oh Brazil! You never knew me!
You never tasted the blood I gave you
in laughter and singing and abounding smiles,
in unspeakable desolation and despair,
shriven of hope for a moment and too close to the cold…
I bled while you merely blinked blankly.
Well, I survived, no thanks to you.
I moved on before you could fall from trees
or sneak in windows or bite my soft arms
with hard beaks and bright feathers.
Oh, you left your forever marks
but I am still myself within my pulsing heart,
I am still and always will be red…
red red RED against the backdrop of your
splashy showy palette…and you so puzzled in my singularity.
Well I like it, red…I like me! And I walk on
my head held high and face into the wind
and I am unencumbered by your war and free
but alas for you, Brazil, alas!
Though I know you, you never knew me.
Pastor Looks Up In Tears. “I Had No Idea.”
Pastor Looks Up In Tears. “I Had No Idea.”.
Constance…let these words sink deeply into your heart…an imagined conversation between a pastor and Jesus on the day they meet. Powerful, poignant, and painful.
Reader…go to this link. Read. And then I beg you to stop throwing around your theology like a boomerang, one that always returns to you with blood on it. When you catch that boomerang well the blood is on your hands. Simplify your complex need to judge and categorize and rend your heart and not your garment. Repent of your passive aggressive ways, and stop speaking death in the name of speaking the truth in love.
Just love. In truth. And leave the speaking to Mama.
Do justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
Van Nuys transgender woman stabbed to death then set on fire | Planet Transgender
Van Nuys transgender woman stabbed to death then set on fire | Planet Transgender.
Constance…nice to see that the perp got the obligatory “setting the corpse on fire” piece correct…right??
Sigh…always the post mortem mayhem and mutilation.
What does say about the strength of gender orientation?
(And no, Hater…the answer is NOT “the bitch had it coming”)
Well, at least we can all console ourselves with the knowledge that our Transgender Remembrance Day is gonna be soo great for all of us who live, and we will have plenty to preen about and feel ever so sad over as we break our arms patting ourselves on the back for how progressive we are because we cry and remember the dead ones.
Oh, but we must be oh so careful to never actually do anything about this ongoing murder spree lest we make the need for Transgender Remembrance Day disappear…can’t have that, now, can we!!? I mean, actually do something?? *Shudder*
Yes, Constance, you did a remarkable job in detecting my extreme sarcasm…get the point, and then get to work. This will not change until cis-gender people with privilege speak up and use their power on our behalf.
Grim Charissa
…”and a little child shall lead them…”
Constance, I ran across this account from a blog aggregate site. I am going to post it here without much comment, other than to say yes, I am aware of the scatalogical vocabulary, and urge you to overlook it in order to access the deeper truth.
It is towering to me that there is more of the gospel expressed in the lives of hearts that are simply oriented to love, regardless of dogma, orthodoxy or persuasion.
I wonder what would happen if we all practiced this sort of love, and left the judging and convicting and convincing to the One Person in the Entire Universe Whose job it is to do those things (Mama)?
Hmmmm…
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Fuck i’m crying now
So my mother was up to her usual shit; calling me useless and entitled. Saying that I’m no longer allowed in the bathroom with a shower and I need to clean the other one by noon tomorrow morning or else keep in mind it hasn’t worked in 3 years.
I was hiding in my bedroom while my parents argued over who’s fault I was when my sister came in. She walked up to me and opened up her fist revealing a rainbow popsicle ‘best friends’ necklace. She thrust it into my hand and whispered that she wanted me to have it.
“because it’s a popsicle?” I asked
“no silly because it’s a rainbow. I know- I mean- I thought you’d like it.”
She then winked and told me that I no longer needed to worry about cleaning the bathroom because she had spent the past hour doing it for me.
This seems so petty and small until you realize that for the past two years my parents have been doing their darnest to get rid of me. My sister will admit that I’ve always been the scapegoat but since I came out it seems their attacks are more pointed.
My sister is 11. She has grown up in a homophobic home and listened to my parents bitch about “those damn gays” her entire life. A couple months ago I came out to her and told her the reason our parents have been threatening to kick me out or send me away. I explained that sometimes gay girls and gay boys are even beaten up by people, just because of who they love.
I cannot express how much her support means to me; perhaps I am not the one who’s wrong. If an 11 year old who has been taught nothing but hate, perhaps there is hope for the future.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’
“Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’
Transgender kids show consistent gender identity across measures
Transgender kids show consistent gender identity across measures.
Good Morning Constance!
I am posting this link for a couple of reasons:
First, because it is educational and will help you in your continuing learning curve regarding gender orientation…it may even inform you some about your own gender orientation, and why you hold it so strongly!
I have long theorized that the intense resistance to gender variant people is at root the projection of the power-holder’s own deeply held gender orientation! Because gender is so hardwired and awareness of it so deeply entrenched, it is impossible to imagine anyone who appears one way on the exterior who is so vastly different on the inside.
In an odd sort of way, the very intensity of the resistance is the affirmation of the phenomenon! All humans are intensely and deeply oriented gender-wise! But what is becoming more and more known is that not all humans have a body whose biological assignment matches that interior orientation.
It’s actually pretty simple.
There is one other thing, though, that this article infers: just because I never said anything to you about my gender dysphoria doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist. Just because I hid it…out of fear of rejection, ostracization, accusation, and ultimately alienation as “the other”…doesn’t mean that it wasn’t there.
By the way…those fears were well founded! All of those things happened to me…sometimes it was by people who didn’t know any better. Sometimes it was by people who do. Regardless…it still happened.
Reader…no one “owes” you a justification for their orientation. You are not on the Judgement Seat, you are not the one who passes muster on this topic about anyone…or, really, on any other topic. It is not your place to make those calls.
It is your place to love God, and love your neighbor with pure religion which is caring for widows and orphans and outcasts. Oh, and if you really want to know someone? Get close enough to sample their life…taste the fruit that is there. This is the one action that Jesus sanctioned as okay per His own words.
Oh wait: I heard the objection to that one, when I was told that it was possible for me to manifest good fruit in my life (such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness faithfulness, and self control, all things against which there is no law) and still be possessed by a demon!
Seriously, that was communicated to me. The fruits of the Holy Spirit were present in my life by the power of the “transgender demon” that had possessed me! That is sort of like saying that an oak tree was bearing the fruits of an apple tree or a pear tree!
Yes…it was indeed astonishing in its twisting of logic and reason, and yes it was indeed painful that the person who said this went on to say that unless I “got delivered” from this spirit and stopped the dangerous foolishness that is in actuality my transition, the person who said this would no longer associate with me or have anything to do with me or be my friend.
After over 3 decades.
A person who was born and raised in the church and steeped in scripture, who knows full-well Jesus’ words, is showing me the ugly face of modern christendom as expressed to LGTBQ people.
Well…I recall the old old chorus “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” which contains the verses that say “though none go with me, still I will follow” and “the cross before me, the world behind me”. I am more deeply committed to these words than any other time in my life…and I am finding joy inexpressible and peace like a river in God.
Constance, those of you who read here and are not christian are most likely shaking your heads and muttering that this is why you are not a christian! Sadly, I cannot disagree with you. This is not what it is to be a christian, abandoning people, shunning people…that is what it means to be a religious nut who loves themself more than God.
But please: do not judge God by the insanity of some of Their followers…they know not what they are doing. God is not like they are. Not one bit.
And now we are at full circle, and the true rootedness of gender orientation is on display.
Christian Constance…non-christian Constance…all valued and received and loved by me Charissa…I exhort you to do what you know in your heart is the inarguable truth in relating to human beings in your life: treat them the way you in your heart want to be treated by others, and do so as the proactive person in that transaction!
Don’t sit back and wait until someone does this for you!
Do it now…first! Do it extravagantly, passionately! Do it with undeniable vigor and gusto! Do it, dripping with passion and love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and gentleness and faithfulness and goodness and self control!
And if you fall short? M’eh! Who doesn’t fall short? Since when did the failing to achieve something obviate the goal? Willie Mayes struck out a lot. Michael Jordan missed a lot of game winning shots. John Elway led his team to a couple of bitter Super Bowl defeats. And all three athletes went on to lead their teams to glory and go down in the annals of sports history as among the greats of all-time.
Missing the mark is the best qualifier for your return to the range for more practice!
So practice the golden rule…love one another…and look for ways to affirm everyone you meet in every way you can!
Including gender orientation.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
Watch These Guys Unknowingly Catcall Their Own Moms And Get An Embarrassing Lesson On Harassment
Watch These Guys Unknowingly Catcall Their Own Moms And Get An Embarrassing Lesson On Harassment.
Constance…it is about a 5 minute investment to watch this extremely well-made video…
Please do, and then send it on to anyone who engages in similar depravity and oppression.
My Inner Teen-ager just LOVES this!!
So my baby just told me “Baby, there are times when you are so a teen-age girl!” Wait, whaaa??? Giggles…she is right, of course.
I saw this thing I am posting below, and sooo relate to it, from a gender perspective. The act of solidarity and love is profound and lasting…the phase will likely pass as an aspect of growing.
Constance…be sure your actions strengthen what remains rather than what is transitory.
“THIS IS THE BEST COMMERCIAL EVER
I’ve reblogged this so many times because I truly think every parent should involve themselves with what their child enjoys.
Not to mention this is an act of solidarity. He’s saying “even if the entire world is against you, I’m on your side.” Which I think is important for a kid to know. He’s refusing to be a bully to his child, even if he doesn’t understand.
I work at Hot Topic and we had a white suburban dad in who was buying matching heavy metal/screamo band shirts for him and his teenage daughter and said “To be honest, I think this stuff sounds like garbage, but she likes it so we listen to it together and we’re going to the concert for Christmas.” And it was just really heartwarming to see him so involved in his child’s life and validating her interests.”
When you call a transgender person by their birth-name:
Trans people shouldn’t have to “get over” being called by their birth name.
Mistakes are human, but keep in mind that they hurt, especially when it comes to identities.
Police search for clues in murder of transgender woman in Texas – LGBTQ Nation
Police search for clues in murder of transgender woman in Texas – LGBTQ Nation.
Constance, I am sure you already know about this crime, and so my posting it here is redunda…oh wait…of course you haven’t heard about it yet!
It is just a “so-called transgender woman”…poor thing just got what she deserved.
Nope…nothing wrong here. Move along, move along.
Obviously, I was writing sarcastically to expose the reality of the underlying assumptions that empower the continued lack of it being any sort of an agenda item to protect the rights and well-being of transgender people.
And the count rolls on…good thing we have a transgender remembrance day so her death will not be in vain, right? She can now serve as a lil tidbit for the cis-gender world to consume as an assuagement of conscience! A lil “transgender tums” to relieve the indigestion caused by the wanton devouring of transgender people.
Do JUSTICE
Love MERCY
Walk HUMBLY
Charissa Meditations on Rape, Gender and the Patriarchy
Idaho Chief of Police Mic Drops On Transgender ‘Bathroom’ Bill Section.
Good Morning Constance…
I am pressing this article here on Grace Notes for a couple of reasons: the low hanging fruit here, of course, is the putting on blatant naked display the kind of ignorance and misogyny that transgender people face…but specifically transgender women face to a far larger degree than transgender men do. As I read the kinds of assumptions that are made and asserted, I am astounded at the towering lack of knowledge and the even deeper unwillingness to be educated about the issue.
But let’s dig a bit deeper here…note that the primary canard that is hysterically hurled over and over again is that “men” want to rape women, and so they will go to any length to engage in this violation, including “dressing up as a woman”, entering a bathroom, and then feasting like a wolf on defenseless denizens within. Thus we cannot risk allowing transgender women to use the women’s restrooms, but will force them into men’s restrooms…
…Constance, did you catch that assumption that slides right by and gets a nod of tacit agreement? And did you see the inherent contradiction that is actually supported by documented epidemic-like numbers?
The assumption is that men are creatures with one primal driving force in their lives…having sex. Even if it means taking sex from unwilling females who are just in the general vicinity. The assumption is that we need to build our society around this reality and do our best to just “limit the damage” caused by this basic fact about men.
Rape is institutionalized as an accepted feature of our society!
Rather than deal with that underlying horror and the cultural constructs that have given rise to the unspoken reality that men not only take what they want sexually but are entitled to this taking, we instead get ourselves all twisted up over the bathroom. Rather than teach our little boys how to be real human beings and what being male means, and what it does not mean, we just sort of wring our hands and hide our eyes when the moon is full and hope the werewolf stays away from our door.
We are fully capable of this teaching…if: if anyone really knew anymore what it means to be a man! What does that mean, men? To you…what does it mean to be a man? And, as part of your journey of discovery, have you ever inquired of women what being a man means? Have you ever even thought to seek some of your self-definition in the understanding and grappling with what it means to be a woman?
See how this would preclude rape as an even slightly acceptable option for men?
But no…this is not what we do with that subject of rape: we continue to keep it disconnected from the poison and demonic roots from which it sprang, and those are the roots of patriarchy and male privilege. Women already know this, men, but for your own education…ask any woman you know what kinds of situations does she feel safe from the possibility of being raped. Ask yourselves how you have socialized your own daughters regarding dress, safety in public places, when to be outdoors and when to be home “safe”. Ask any woman if they think they are made safe from the possibility of being raped just because transgender women are kept from the right restrooms…
And that leads us to a deeper reality: the reality, backed up by the blood and tears and horror and even murder of transgender women…who have been forced into men’s restrooms and there been harassed, assaulted, raped, and left for dead (if they are lucky) or murdered outright! This is an actual fact that happens hundreds of times a year. The dynamic I wrote of in the preceding section of my essay here is given free reign! As a society we are demanding that some women be placed into serious jeopardy to their very beings and existence…because we refuse to deal with the horror of rape as a feature of the patriarchal paradigm we are all enslaved by.
It is another example of how rape is sanctioned as part of the price that must be paid by women in order for all men to retain their granted privilege…and the really awful thing about this particular expression of this blood-spattered reality is the sad result on display of how some women become collaborators with the paradigm: they would rather consign their transgender sisters to this fate than stand against the oppression and iron-fist of the patriarchy! This is a phenomenon not unlike how certain Jews collaborated with the Nazis in the hopes that they would then be left alone and unharmed.
It is a Mephistophelian bargain…the soul is lost in the gaining of a few untroubled hours. Sadly, it puts the pervasive infestation of the patriarchy’s insidious distortions of masculinity and femininity on furious display! And the fruits…rotten, poison, despairing.
But now I want to get to the deepest reality for transgender people and specifically transgender women: the deepest reality for me.
When people rant and rave in public hearings such as happened at the one the article speaks of, they communicate to me that I am utterly worthless of knowing, inquiring of, or understanding.
They blatantly display their own ignorance, assumption, and unwillingness to have those things enlightened and transformed!
I can tell you that when I read about what they think I want to do in the restroom, I am staggered with the mainifestations of their own evil imaginations of things that have literally never entered my heart at any time…and then I am defeated by the weights of ignorance and unwillingness that press down, inexorable and unrelenting.
All of the ignorance about transgender is displayed as if it is a float at the Rose Parade, and then it is lauded and institutionalized…and the marginalization of an oppressed segment of people is further cemented.
There is a logical question that comes to mind, as we work our way thru the house of mirrors that is the current paradigm, and that is this: Why not make a place for transgender people to testify at these hearings…to say why they want to use the bathroom of their choice? After all, that is what happens at other hearings of any kind: testimony is sought from all parties interested and affected, so why not here?
Ahh…you follow me, don’t you? Because our perspective is considered invalid at best and insidious at worst. We do not have any valid standing in this present paradigm. We are human chattel, and need to be either “fixed”, “healed”, “delivered”, or forced to “repent of the sin of being created transgender”.
And what is worse? Even if there was a forum offered us to testify, very few of us would come forward…because that would be to make ourselves visible, and incur the wrath of family, so-called friends, and virtual strangers. From that moment on we would hear the snickers when we walked by, the shouted insults and slurs, the out and out hatred blazing from the eyes of people who have never even talked to us but somehow know we are “bad” because they know we are transgender.
So, sadly…we hang back. We stay silent…and suffer.
Listen: if you know of a transgender person, take some time to get to know them. Talk to them, and not with an agenda. Treat them the way you yourself would like to be treated. Use their name. I can tell you this: when people use my name it is the most gentle and tender healing in my soul.
Hey…we just want to breathe, like anyone else…and use the bathroom when we need to potty.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
“When Side B is the New Ex-Gay”
“When Side B is the New Ex-Gay”.
Oh Constance…what a poignant and well written post awaits you behind the above link! Please head over and read it, and while you do, keep in mind something:
As John Pavlovitz says, it is no longer possible for you to bury your head in the sand of platitudes and assumptions about what it means to be gay or lesbian or transgender and be in love with God all at once.
Let me be clear with you all: my gender journey is not like the one that gay and lesbian christians are on, in that my journey is not about who I feel sexual attraction to, but rather it is an adventure that involves living out my female being in this body that is biologically male…okay? It is important you know that.
I also want to again reiterate and confess something: much to my great sorrow, before I was personally confronted by Mama about my gender identity, in inescapable ways, before that incredible and sacred day? Well, I really didn’t do a whole lot more than mouth platitudes myself. I didn’t really think about it much. Oh, I have talked with many gay men who have sought me out to confide in me…but while I was kind and loving to them? I really had nothing to offer other than the same old junk that I had been taught myself.
I was not capable of walking in their shoes! I had no true empathy with their plight and path. And thus I had no true motivation to really discover what their life is!
We made friends with a lesbian couple who have become very dear friends…in fact, they were the first people I came out to…but even in that friendship, I still didn’t know.
Well, I do now.
I do…cus I get it now, I get the same discrimination. I get the same hatred. I get the same rejection. I get judged the same way with virtually the same judgments. I pay some of the same prices, and I pay additional different ones.
But besides that? What I got was a huge dose of Humble Pie from Them…because it was so absolutely clear to me that I had not been truly like Jesus when I thought I was being like Him. I was so blinded by my own arrogant preening righteousness. I was so certain that the people that I talked to were just trying “to justify their sin”…as if every single other f***king christian in history hasn’t done the same g*dd*m thing!!
Every. Single. One.
Friend…you who “prays for me, that I will be delivered from this deception”, you should rend your own hearts and pray for yourself, that God would send you to Damascus and perhaps knock you off your ass and the scales from your eyes.
You just don’t know. You think you do…but you don’t.
People deal with all matters of interaction with God in all manner of ways…and you aren’t qualified to pass muster on them. But you are qualified to lay down your weapons, lay down your platitudes and easy caricature-arguments, and simply love…lift…and laugh.
Point to Jesus, not at sin. Point to the Cross and not to anything else. And then actually spend some time with people. Go to the Gay Christian Network Conference…Go to a Reconciling in Christ Meeting…Go to a welcoming of LGTBQ church…talk to the clergy…talk to the congregants…listen…listen.
And when done listening…well, listen some more.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
How to Respect a Transgender Person: 9 Steps (with Pictures)
How to Respect a Transgender Person: 9 Steps (with Pictures).
Good Morning Constance! 🙂 I hope all is well in your life today. If you are facing obstacles, may our wonderful God provide you with the Grace needed to transform obstacle into opportunity, resulting in the joy of having overcome.
I am linking to this article today, because I think there are many people who read here who are allies, but still learning how to demonstrate that alliance in fruitful and effective ways. It is simple and direct without being buffoonish and reductionist.
Please take these things seriously…they matter to us. I will never forget how small I felt when I was told by someone who claimed to love me that they refused to compromise their faith and they were compelled by their conviction towards God to tell everyone they interacted with about me and that they considered me disobedient to God and in sin and deception because I had decided to transition.
To this day, I can feel that sharp sting, followed by that numbing zing like powerless electricity thru my bones…not good for anything but hurting…
I think the thing that really strikes me is how many things are done in God’s Name that are really a mere reflection of an individual’s own attempts to prove to themselves or to others that they are really and truly a Christian. In my case, it was as if this person was worried that someone would think ill of them if they did not make sure and let everyone know first of all that I was transitioning and second of all that they “knew” that I was “sinning”, but most importantly that they themself had sought to warn me and were thus the heroic rescuer who had valiantly attempted to save me…and their efforts were “unsuccessful” but only because of my deceived, rebellious and unsubmitted state.
That interaction left its marks. It showed me, sadly, that love is too often only word deep, and is forced into the template of self and put under the pressure of self-serving agendas, and what is extruded from that certainly is not love. And it is interesting that I have not heard from that person since…I think primarily because they were “shaking the dust off of their shoes” after warning me of what was going to happen to me: I was going to be outed at their own discretion, and then each person that I was outed to was going to be fed a version of me that came from another person…not from me.
But God is faithful…God is good. They have added people into my lives of such amazing quality and genuine heart! I have acquaintances now who I see a lot, present in my life and feeding in encouragement, truth, goodness, and love.
So it is not really so much about me, whatever “ruination” is come my way reputation-wise…but rather, it is about the words said about someone to someone else and then repeated again and repeated again take on a “telephone game” quality. Eventually they will come to someone who has gender issues themself or knows someone who does…and the full implication will communicate to them that they are not okay and loved, valued in and of themselves for who they are…and bam.
Another Leelah Alcorn.
Another statistic.
Another life tragically lost…
…and in the name of “love”.
So: head on over, read…get educated…and resolve in your heart that God is God and you are not, and that loving someone with kindness in word and deed is never going to sully Them or yourself. This would be the “walk humbly part.”
Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly.
Charissa
7 Reasons the Church Should Be Afraid NOT to Affirm LGBTQ
7 Reasons the Church Should Be Afraid NOT to Affirm LGBTQ.
Okay, so this post is startling in its implications. The author relates a Q she was asked by a friend, who was fearful for her. Her friend asked the author “What if you’re wrong affirming LGTBQ people as loved of God and worthy of being received as part of Christ’s Body”…
She turns that Q on its head in her post, and asks “What if you are wrong in fearing and rejecting LGTBQ human beings?” And then she goes on to list 7 potential consequences of that wrongness.
Her plea? Just love. Since you really aren’t the Holy Spirit, you are off the hook in correcting anyone and you are free to just love and trust that God is big enough to get the message across.
I mean…hey, They got it across to you, didn’t They? If They are powerful enough to get it across to you, well then They can get it across to anyone! Right?
Right!
To a Church That Dehumanizes Gays
To a Church That Dehumanizes Gays.
This letter.
Read.
Constance…pure and simple, the church simply must search its heart and come up with a better response than it currently has towards LGTBQ people.
I fear that it may never but for the same reason that so many cis-gender people may never grapple with the discrimination and hatred that is exuded towards transgender people: if it doesn’t affect you, you generally fail to really let it impinge upon your comfort.
When you are impacted by either of these issues, or really any issue, then it changes your heart and opens your eyes.
Blessed are those who would humble themselves and ask for a heart like Jesus and eyes like Mama.
Loving LGBT People Well, 12 Suggestions for Traditional Churches | A Queer Calling
Loving LGBT People Well, 12 Suggestions for Traditional Churches | A Queer Calling.
Good Morning Constance! 🙂 Once again I want to thank you for being here, on Charissa’s Grace Notes with me, and journeying in your own ways from works and death to Grace and Life…your presence here, your comments, your shared humanity brings me hope and adds ammunition for those lonely times in the night when all are sleeping, all is still, and I watch…awake on the walls. ❤ Thank you ❤
So the link above is from an interesting blog that is worth perusing. It lists several suggestions for Christian people to love and serve in ways consistent with the gospel, and likely far more congruent with the heart of Jesus Himself, the Great Friend of Sinners.
We have all heard the old saw “love the sinner and hate the sin”…heck, prolly a whole lot of people who read here have even said that. I have before…much to my great regret…I have indeed. When I did, I didn’t really realize what that said and implied about the person I was speaking to…and even worse what it said and implied about my own heart and self evaluation.
Alas…what I and others were usually saying is we think the loving thing to do is make sure the person knows they are a sinner. And quite simply, this is just not the way that Jesus did things…oh wait! There were times that He outright called people out on their sins! I forgot about those!
Yeah…it was to the Pharisees! Ya know those folks of that day who were the ones who loved to point out how everyone else was a sinner! He ripped them a new one over and over and over again because who they were in their own eyes was more important than who their neighbor is in God’s eyes…and that is fatal.
Of course I am not advocating “loving sin” by opposing the use of that phrase! Don’t be ridiculous! What I am saying is you ought to major in people, and minor in sin management. After all, your skills at sin management must suck, or Jesus would not have felt the need to descend from His state in Heaven, take on human flesh, and then suffer and die for you (ya know, a sinner). Right? If you were capable of managing sin, well then He would have just encouraged and taught you until you got it right!
Jesus never said “love the sinner but hate the sin”, and no one believes that meant that Jesus was compromising, prevaricating, or condoning anything evil. No…Jesus understands one crucial thing:
Saying Yes to Love is far more effective and powerful than saying No to sin.
The true YES renders the no moot.
And that brings me to why I link to this article, because if we are going to discard futile harmful platitudes, then how to we pick up effective and edifying alternatives?
They list a dozen, and they are “process oriented” and not items that you can check off on your daily righteousness list.
They demand that you see the people in your life as your moral equals.
They demand that you give the people in your life the same standing as worthy of God’s love as you have.
They demand that you understand that your perspective is extremely limited and insufficient by definition, as you are a very finite, very imperfect, and very limited being.
As you go, take with you my lil motto that I have pulled from Micah 6. It is a superb guide for keeping it simple and loving. And it has an order of listing for a reason.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Why did David Reimer commit suicide?
Why did David Reimer commit suicide?.
Dear Constance:
Okay, so you wanna know what it is like to be transgender? Well…read the article at the link above. It is the story of a natal male who was horribly maimed during circumcision and was then subjected to a further mutilation of his body to “change him into a girl”. The theory was that gender identity was purely a matter of external plumbing, and that if this little person “woke up” and saw their external plumbing was female, and that their clothes were female and their name was female and they were treated as female by everyone else, well they would just “be female”, case closed and everyone lives happily ever after.
Except it was an illusion. A tragic and horrible illusion. And it ended in suicide after 38 years of horror and suffering. The article explains that all very well.
So how does it relate to a transgender person? It goes to the location and seat of gender identity! Under the current paradigm of the binary gender orientation, I am defined by my external plumbing. From birth, I have been named, dressed, treated and socialized in the role consistent with my external genetalia, regardless of how I feel, think, or see the world which is totally the opposite…and this contradiction results in the same sorts of feelings and reactions as this poor soul in the article. Oh, I processed things a bit different, but as I read of his despair, well it was too close to home.
Imagine for a moment: if you woke up tomorrow, and all your clothes were the other gender…everyone you knew called you by a name that felt like sand in your own mouth and heart…you were expected to excel in the roles assigned by the opposite gender…you were expected to “know” the things the opposite gender has as inherent to them…
Maybe even at first you would think “cool”, what a chance to see the other side! (Disregard the fact that you have prior experience already “seeing” your correct and natural side and would carry that experience with you as a help and buffer…we transgender people don’t even have that much).
But eventually, you would tire of this…enough, you would think. I am going back to my real self, laying all this crap aside.
Oh but wait! Everyone everywhere and every arm of society is now poised against you like the bramble bushes that were against Prince Charming as he sought to set Sleeping Beauty free! It is all one giant Mirkwood filled with Shelobs and worse! You show up to work wearing your right clothes and get mocked, threatened and terminated.
I think you get my point.
Gender is not located in external plumbing, and when your internal sense of gender and your external manifestation of this don’t line up the conflict is cataclysmic!
But the reverse is also true! When a person’s body is surgically attended to with skill and care, and brought into alignment with the internal sense of gender, why voila! The conflict dramatically diminishes and even disappears…and normal life happiness results.
We have always been taught not to judge a book by its cover. We are taught that it is not outward appearance that impresses God, for They regard the heart and assess that. So why in the world do we insist on imposing gender standards from the outside in, rather than discovering who our family and friends are from the inside out?
Listen: being transgender is not a mental illness. It is not a demonic spirit, any more than epilepsy is either of those…or a cleft palate is either of those…or a leaky heart valve is either of those.
Being transgender is a state of being, one that has been a part of the human experience of gender as far back as historical records extend, and it is across all cultures and races…it is something that is a function of the core of some people’s lives…
BUT: if this condition is left untreated, then that neglect can result in horrible consequences: addictions, depressions, emotional and spiritual despairs, and ultimately the overwhelming desire to not hurt anymore, suicide.
But no…for some reason that completely mystifies me, we think that transgender humans are “adopting a lifestyle” or “adopting a new sexual proclivity” or are “seeking to overthrow marriage” or “rebelling against God”, or “are freaks” or…or…or…
It never ends, those “or”s.
If you are an ally, thank you, and please continue to support with your time, talent and treasure until these lies are shattered and a whole beautiful segment of humanity is liberated.
But if you aren’t…if you are “neutral” or simply new or think it is blechy…well just imagine if you were forced…yeah. Not good.
I am a letter, and the envelope I am in has changed…a lot. But I am still the same letter I always was…and if you have courage, maybe I will let you read me! 🙂
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa
Silken Tears: Written in the memory of Leelah Alcorn
i saw her there, in the dark woods,
so fair of movement, fair of face
she walked beneath the milky moon
and bathed in silken light like lace.
she glowed with beauty’s blessing kist
upon her brow, but knew it not
for hatred choked her slender throat
and in its death grip she was caught.
i ran to her, and called her name
my voice it was a whippoorwill
my voice a falcon stark and shrill
i called her name in terror-trill
but she could not hear me approach
her, buried under long reproach
so cut off from a future hope
and bound by hate’s black biting rope
so I just stood beside her there
just her and me, her broken stare
and dirges echoed through the night
and she in tragic silken light…
and then she ran straight to the moon
it rushed at us! alas, i swooned
upon the snowy cold fields fair
and when i woke, she was not there 
i asked the owls and talked to trees
and heard the moon had stooped so near
had come down to grant her release
from stony hearts and hatred’s sneer…
so now i haunt those woods, those vales
and listen hard inside the night
in case a singer runs for me
as i to her ran desperately
but silence croons so clear and cold,
the lonely moon is wreathed in gold
so distant, never drawing near
to where we stood in silken tears.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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