An opinion…sometimes I am just walking along, living my life, and somebody just has to give it to me…about who I am, or what I am…about whether I am legitimate, or have a right to be.
I think you have all heard what opinions are like, right? Something that everyone has that generally stinks.
This phrase drives me nuts!! Because it is usually spoken by someone who thinks themself supportive, and they have no idea how it others me, demeans and diminishes me.
Can you imagine, as a cis-gender person if someone else came up to you and said “Hey, if the truth you need to live is that you are a (fill in the blank), then I am all for it!”
You would just laugh, and think “what an idiot”. Right?
But with me, when they say this, it is as if they think that they have somehow conferred some legitimacy on me and then posed themself as the paragon of acceptance…
I think next time this happens, Ima just do this:
What am I supposed to do, stuck in this skin of some biological male creature that so many seem to have attached to, and now hate me because that creature has been revealed as who it was all along…and that revelation happening to me at the same time?
Do you have any idea how it feels to be othered so hard that certain people now act like I am dead? And when I am blessed enough to have communication it is of the harshest, cruelest and most dehumanizing form possible, stripping me of personhood, of being, and reducing me to a verb, or a mask, or a nothing?
I can never remember a time when I did not feel this way…never. Reading about these children, wow.
So I post this…for your thought. Likely there is not much we can do now about our own body image issues…but we darn sure can be kind to others now. We darn sure can touch our children with gentle words…and no matter what we can speak to other human beings cognizent always that they are stamped with Mama’s image, they are riddled with God’s Image, and are thus just a smidge lower than God and are as gods themselves.
In case you weren’t convinced that hating yourself is a learned behavior
Physical shame comes from parents, teachers, media, and peers. It’s not something you’re born with. You were born naked, wonderful, and gorgeous, and no one should make another being feel as if that wasn’t, and isn’t true.
Letters From Those Abused and Afraid | Disrupted Physician.
Dear Constance…I am blessed with such a plethora of amazing, wonderful followers.
That would be you…Constant Reader…Constance.
One of them is at the link I just posted, and he is a truth teller, more rare than gold dust as an amazing person commented over there.
“But why, Charissa? Why would you share such a topic as the one you chose?”
Because it is eerily reminiscent of the treatment of transgender people at the hands of…well…virtually everyone in our society. The double binds that are illuminated, the abuse, the policing and othering, the way the system protects itself and eliminates any possible threats to itself…
Yeah…this is the life of a transgender human being every single livelong day.
The system is a giant virus, and it has gathered to itself other virulent viruses and they all are completely sold out and committed to the mandate of one thing and one thing alone: survival and self-replication. And we, all of us, are in the belly of this beast.
Some of us are the pilot fish of privilege…circling the jaws, living off the shreds of flesh that trail off those teeth sharp and cruel. Some of us are between those jaws, ever consumed for the survival of the virus, and some live in the bowels, in the rot and excrement of everything that must take place in order for the thing to keep alive.
How are we to live?
The monolithic nature of this thing prohibits mass action, but what about individual action? Will you consider changing the way you interact with every single person you meet? Just think…if we all did that, loved our neighbor as ourselves, loved God (or if you believe you do not believe then loved being kind, being forgiving, being truthful and merciful), and refused to participate in injustice…
…there might be cracks, and then rents, and then in a rush a breaking down of the walls and the death of the virus.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
…who tell me how they imagine dysphoria is when they are not dysphoric:
“Do not mock a pain that you haven’t endured.”
Bullied Girl Commits Suicide After School Officials Tell Her “Toughen Up”.
Here’s a thought: how bout each one of you who reads this go to your school board and tell them that if this sort of thing is tolerated in your school district, you will file civil suit against them as culpable for the death?
How bout you simply say to them you personally will not tolerate anything whatsoever except a no bullying stance?
Or is it to you as it is to so many: the equivalent of the Aztec hearts held up to appease the angry god of the patriarchy and preserve your own privilege?
| — | Katherine Bernard, reading Maggie Nelson’s “The Argonauts” |
This.
You’d have two completely different views of the trans movement if you either read all the recent articles, or just the comments on them.
Articles: Tipping Point! Hollywood trend! Rapid change in public understanding & acceptance! We love you!
Comments: Sick, disgusting, delusional, predatory harbingers of utter doom and destruction! Who are also ugly!
If there is a truth, I suppose it’s somewhere between. Trendy monsters perhaps? Loathsome darlings? Delusional seers?
When can we just be us?”
Constance, this quote below…just this.
All you have is your experience in this world. The good…the bad…the whole and broken…add to that the sorts of experiences that the quote speaks of.
I would add one thing: dysphoria is a real condition that exists, of utter dislocation that transcends understanding, acceptance, and action. It can be managed and worked around, even built into certain things? But it can never be thought away, prayed away, or believed away.
The brain and body of a person with gender dysphoria will never flow together
They are oil and vinegar.
As such, they can be a fabulous and tasty dressing…but they will not find the congruence that is present with a cis-gendered person.
So all the crap and stuff that all humans endure? Differently abled people endure all that with additional conditions placed on their lives…dysphoria is one of them.
That doesn’t give me or any dysphoric person a pass…because each human has conditions on them that are invisible to everyone else.
So be tender hearted…understanding…full of forgiveness…and above all be kind.
Lives depend on it.
Of all the things I keep trying to tell cis people, “don’t presume your child’s gender” is the one that they consistently, deliberately refuse to understand and it is so deeply telling.
You cannot truly understand the transgender experience, and cannot count yourself an ally, until you accept that the trauma of being transgender is not inherent, it is a product of being coerced into thinking that you had absolutely no choice but to be the gender you were assigned.
Not “born with”, not “biologically”, the gender you were assigned.
The problem is assignment. The problem is doctors and parents believing it is their place to dictate their child’s gender, starting before they can even conceptualize what a gender is, let alone have the mental development necessary to object to what they’re given. This defines a child’s entire life, cuts short countless possibilities. It etches itself into the fabric of our developing minds and it is a ticking psychological time bomb for those children who are given a gender assignment that they cannot or do not wish to live with. This culture of dictated identity must end if transgender people are ever to be regarding as whole and equal members of society.
this old stone house,
so grey and brown,
rough in texture,
tough in time,
shingled by
moments.
I finally got
the electricity on inside,
I finally see
from room to room
and everything
between,
and just when I found
the windows and
the verdant greens beyond and
the aqua blue beneath
it all went orange and then
began to change to red.
All red, all around
and blue beneath my feet.
The doors are locked (for now)
and windows blocked
and I am trapped inside
the stone and brown
beneath the shingles scratchy
and surrounded by the red
that fades to brown
and then to nothing
But it flows,
that blue stream
alive and cool and sweet
and whispers to me
of a place where all is true
a place where all is blue
blue beneath my feet
3 Lies We Need to Stop Telling About ‘Negative People’ — Everyday Feminism.
Very good article, and it addresses yet another binary prison.
Constance, your pursuit of happiness is not going to be actualised in the elimination of people you think of as negative…
…and this is largely because true happiness is something that has everything to do with who you are or are not, not others. Haven’t you noticed yet that every single “rilly rilly kewl” person you meet eventually does something or says something or is something that is unpleasant or (gasp) *negative*?
And I will say this, but speak for myself alone: I take a certain pride and joy in interacting with “Eeyore” people, and then bringing joy to them.
How in the world is anyone ever going to influence anyone anywhere for joy?
People who are toxic and will destroy you if you let them? Okay, those people you would be wise to avoid if possible, or if not then be suited and booted around.
But people who are simply “negative” are likely reminding you of something about yourself that needs changing, and so Charissa says keep them around, and learn to grow! Give them some grace.
Someday you’re gonna need some for yourself.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa
Constance, I likely will not post an awful lot about the Jenner Transition Announcement until she gets further underway.
I totally, utterly get where she is at right now. She is thinking things about how she is not that worried about pronouns, and how she is willing to overlook the othering and policing that is going on right now, yadda yadda yadda…she feels a responsibility to other transgender people to effect a graceful transition with dignity.
But deep down inside…all those things are hurting her, affecting her, wounding her. She doesn’t need me adding to the cacophony of noise surrounding her (and all of that exacerbated because of the family dynamics she married into). Eventually, she will begin to find her bearings and her voice, or if she already has, she will begin to express it in her own unique ways.
But I will be commenting on things that orbit her transition, things that are revealed and illuminated as a result of her decision, and here is one of them:
On my Facebook page, a friend linked to an article about her transition. That article is here:
What was telling was in the comments on the Facebook post, all generally very supportive, but one stood out to me. It simply said “Who are we to judge…”
“Who are we to judge…”
Constance, do you see why that comment jumped out at me? Yes? Jot down your thoughts about it…or No? No you do not see anything odd about that comment in relation to gender identity?
Well, Cis-Constance, imagine yourself being introduced to someone, and them very kindly and sagely assessing you and then saying to you and everyone “Who are we to judge…” and then shrugging as if to say “to each their own”…
as if your gender identity is something that is up for judgement in the first place!
as if your gender identity is an article of clothing that you simply decided to wear that day.
as if your gender identity was a moral choice you made or make.
Gender orientation is put into the same classification as sexual orientation and then judged as a moral choice, and this is simply incorrect and unfair.
There is orientation that is a given…and then there are behaviors that descend from choices that we make as creatures who are moral creatures and subject to moral constraints as determined by God and current cultural climate (and those are rarely congruent, btw)…the behaviors themselves are what I choose to do…but the orientation is who I was born to be.
Orientation is not moral behavior. It is simply the given baseline.
You as a cis-gender person are never subjected to the statement “Oh…you say you are a (fill in your biological chromosomal state). I see. Well, who am I to judge?”
And that, Constance, is the very epitome of cis-gender privilege!
Don’t get me wrong…I love the compassion that is at root behind the commenter’s post…but gender orientation is not a matter subject to judgement any more than race is, or that there is a brain in a skull, or that there are arms and legs on a human.
The deep underlying ignorance that is being exposed in the light of gender-education right now is the notion that gender-variance is a moral issue! The deep presupposition fostered in our binary is that any person who is cross-gendered is by definition subject to moral assessment should they decide to authentically live out who they are in spite of the external casing they are housed in!!
Do you see this?
The commenter is correct: we are not the judge of one another and should not judge one another. But the issue that she applied this moral principle speaks volumes of how far we have to go yet as a culture, and why we transgender people are subject to such tremendous othering.
Even the way we are supported is often times OTHERING!
I have the same internal response when people say to me “Hey, whatever makes you happy makes me happy”…and they are sincerely “for” me in terms of their willingness to accept me.
But they have no idea just how deeply they sentenced me to more time in the gender penitentiary.
“Mr. & Mrs. Cis-Gender Constance: Tear down this wall!!“
Constance, this lil essay below illustrates a similar experience that I have virtually everyday, except from the other end of the spectrum and working back.
I liked it, for it did a great job of revealing the underlying obligations that the paradigm encumbers all of us with.
Please chew on it awhile…and then think about how you can take people for who they are as the inside soul reveals, rather than how the outside accoutrements imply…one involves assumption, and one involves relationship…
“swanjolras:
okay, i have been trying to say this in a way that makes sense for ages, so here goes:
a lot of hatred of dresses, pink, stereotypically “feminine” stuff is based on internalized misogyny. and that’s definitely something we all need to look at within ourselves and address and work on.
but: a lot of hatred of dresses, pink, stereotypically “feminine” stuff is based on the fact that femininity is compulsory for people who are assigned female at birth.
like, this is a fact. this isn’t something i’m making up. femininity is compulsory. i have to wear dresses and makeup to be taken seriously when i go to job interviews, when i go to social occasions, when i present myself in any formal setting. when i don’t do that, people notice. they’re rude to me.
when i shop in the men’s section, store employees and customers glare at me! my relatives press feminine clothes on me during the holiday season because they think i should dress in a more feminine way! when i go to get my hair cut and ask for it to be cut in a certain style, the woman cutting my hair literally ignores that explicit instruction because it’s “too butch”. femininity is compulsory! i am not allowed to present my gender the way i would like to present my gender!
it’s not the fault of femininity that it’s being forced on me. and the patriarchy does devalue femininity. and the current rhetoric of “you can wear pink and skirts and still be a feminist and still be queer and it’s other people’s fault for not taking you seriously, not yours for dressing that way” is great.
but i’ve heard people say to me, “you can wear lipstick and dresses and still be a feminist” about a thousand times, and i have never, ever,ever heard someone say to me, “you can refuse to wear lipstick and dresses and you are no less of a woman than someone who does wear them.” i had to figure that out all on my own.
i’m allowed to be angry at the cis women who force me to present myself in a way that i don’t want to present myself. i am allowed to do that.
I will scream the bolded from the rooftops for you if you want. <3″
they’re visible, don’t worry, it’s now clear.
you’ve made them known to us, you’ve brought them near.
you’ve parted the black night to show their flurry
you’ve pierced the darkness with them, they are here
in front of me, swinging in violent sphere
and they connected judgement with rank fear.
those hard bones writhe, they crawl beneath your skin,
those bones now brittle with the pain within
and become sharp-edged, cutting thru the din
with angles, planes, indictments of old sin
imagined, perceived lurking deep within
and cloaked beneath your tattooed skin so thin…
and seeing those determined self wounds glare,
those prison house tattoos inflicted…where?
haha! where not is more the likely question!
those long years harboring the things you think
and living with that historical stink
to birth your athenaeum of hot ink.
I see them hanging, disconnected fists
I see the ritual mutilating notes
written on you, canvas once so soft
and now a record of your fists aloft
and shaking clenched, like Charon’s fated boats
attempting to defeat the smothering mists…
I beg you…let your hands let go of you
and let the ink run backwards up your arms
and let forgiveness work her healing charms
and let your face be wet with grace’s dew
whatever…regardless, I love you
i’m befuddled as jokes,
while i sit here and stare,
at the ordered brush strokes
that are hung there, mid-air
translucent and shimm’rey
in a gloaming lost day
i have witnessed the fading
of the old beauty way
while the efforts of many
seek orange everlasting
orange for my heart,
bits of white lay contrasting
and the nuance is gone,
disappeared in the mist
along with soft kisses,
it’s all been dismissed
by orange fading soft
into white then returning
to orange, and orange
and then just more orange
so i sit here, i wait,
i remember another time,
other days full of
sweet music and rhyme
before it was orange,
with some white thrown in there
cus nothing rhymes orange
it just hangs in the air.
Constance, I post about men, their sense of privilege and entitlement, the mutilation of their soul they are forced to ritually endure as payment for that privilege, and the twisted and scary ways that sense of entitlement and the actual rape of their souls replicates itself in their actions…
…and I often get messages back that are variations on the “not all men” theme…cus these individuals have not taken the actual physical actions that I post about…even though they disregard their own violent and presumptuous writing style that is arrogant, presumptive, and ultimately such a perfect manifestation of the very thing I write about…
Well I am posting this below as illustration of a general thing by virtue of highlighting a specific.
And remember, men: I grew up in your midst! I was there, me Charissa Grace…watching, listening, horrified and traumatized when I was naive and new…and then tired and tearful when I was older and on verse 3, 214 of the same tired-ass old song that you each and everyone think is one you wrote…YOU wrote, and thus your every word is so important, so heavy with weight…and if only people listened to YOUR way of explaining it they would finally understand…
um no. What is listed below? It is the unvarnished, unsophisticated version of what the vast vast VAST majority of you do over and over and over again…such as the nice guy I read yesterday who was mansplaining all about how women would not be effective leaders when they were on their periods because their hormones would make them irrational, or less rational…
which omfg ignores sooo many things, assumes sooo many things…and one major thing is that rationality is any better compass for providing leadership than other things like say intuition, or heart, or feeling, or compassion, or…or…or…or…and then assumes that women ARE more irrational than men…what the actual F**K?
Rational? Like the poor person below…
um, no.
PS: all comments below are from the original post, not me
genuinely the scariest person i’ve ever come across!!!! the first message was one from where he messaged me yesterday
the last message exchange was from another girl who posted her interaction with him, and after her message back to him after he VIDEO CALLED HER MULTIPLE TIMES IN A ROW he proceeded to tell her to “shut the fuck up, whore” when she explained how weird it wasi’m now blocked from his fb and i’m just sharing this in case any girl ever gets a friend request from him!! i have no idea what state he’s from and i can’t access his page anymore so please be careful ily!!!
OH MY GOD
Okay somebody please report that shit to the police he genuinely sounds like the kind of guy whod shoot women in a university. Like srsly people living in the us do something about it
EVERYONE, CONTACT HIS PARENTS, CONTACT THE POLICE, CONTACT FACEBOOK SUPPORT!!! Don’t let this asshole get away with it!!!
Here…these waters.
How did I end up here?
Off-shore, un-moored
and docks all far away
behind me in the mists
above me in the air
above the waters
I traverse?
And guppies become barracudas
goldfish become sharks,
how did that happen?
Something in the water?
Something that doesn’t belong?
I guess that would be me,
heavy metals and radioactives
tainting all I touch.
I was always chained to edges,
I was always tossed by tides,
back and forth
up the beach
and down to seas relentless,
in the running of the tides of time,
in the running from the tides of time.
But now I swim unmoored
in unfamiliar deeps
surrounded by voracious
cruel cold creatures sleek
and fit for fit survival
by merciless sharp teeth
and furious assaults
of shredding ruthless words
and I’ve no idea whatsoever
how leaving the docks
marooned me here unmoored in deeps
surrounded by cold sharks
**yes, I am cognizant of the litanies writ, spoke, imagined, nursed and harbored…I know the recitations red and rough, I have my own remembrance, written in blood and sweat and tears, and silent visits in the night to sweetly sleeping angels soft, and exhalations beautiful and smelling so of life…and hair, scented like bread fresh from some heavenly oven and broken for me and put in hair…pulling me thru the valley of death…
…and discovering that my grateful declarations were in fact resented and received as guilt trips laid, it crushes me to my core…and something is defeated there, something there has died, in my core…
this is the unmooring of which I speak, the unknowing in which I am marooned…
and worst of all is the finding of complete strangers in places I knew every inch and wrinkle, and it is this that unnerves the deepest, for now every word spoken, every question asked, every thing created, I have no idea if what I think about it is real, is actually real…my truth meter pegs and then it seems all others call that up “down”, that north “south”…
…and I send up SOS flares, ask trusted hearts to read and to consider offerings of soul and heart, attempts to understand…and silence towers, and life looms and busy threatens…
that is what this poem is about. Swimming in strange waters in a strange land with strange sights and fearful creatures so hungry for my blood and so uncaring of the carcass left behind and so disinterested in the living heart that fiercely cries out “we are here we are here”, hoping Horton is out there, somewhere, a faithful elephant who never forgets…
Long ago the Psalmist asked “Whom have I but You? Though the mountains fall into the sea, though the colored dawns turn to shades of grey, I am learning to see the beauty of the greys and the glories of the canyons whose majesty is manifested in the things that were removed…
I do have Father, and I do have my Good Shepherd and Great High Priest who passed thru the heavens themselves and not a veil of cloth and skins…and I do have Great Holy Spirit, whom my heart cries to again and again “Mama”, She of wisdom and tender mercy, She who was there at the Lord’s beginnings, She by whom all was made that the Lord made…
…I have Them, and being unmoored with Them is like taking my homeland with me regardless of where I roam**
You’ve shown up…well, your true colors have
in wild-thrash-hurled, paint-vile-ent words,
sword-tongue-rash-cut strokes pretend to be brushes,
on this present canvas fouled in yesterday’s deathstyle…
fevers, phantoms, ghosts (the spectacles on your nose)
distorting memory, warping past-tents days
with present-tense poison wounds.
And you! Pretender!
Tragic-noble-hero-little-guy,
you sit on that shipwreck with hemlock twig narratives illusory
and call them olive branches, story-straighteners, record-revealers!
You almost had me,
until I noticed those web feet and knew
you were just a garbage scow gull and not
the promised dove of rest, release, redemption.
Your raucous cries rapacious echo wildly,
and you wheel and spin so hungry and flap so furious
over those bones there, that ship run aground at last
and you eager to get at that dead garbage and feed,
you so careful to sing when doves cry (you imagine)
but just managing a greedy gull’s squawk (or parrot).
I am over here…floating…under this graceful sail
full of fresh wind, faint, feathery, but substantial
(at last, transubstantiated and become living flesh),
and I see them…those webbed feet, those clay feet
dirty with aggression, aggrandizement, anguish…
and I wish I could fall at them,
those webbed feet, sobbing, and wash them
with my tears and dry them with my hair.
Her Name Was Taylor, by Lori Duron
Constance, I often run across the statement “This has to stop” in connection with accounts of the bullying and suicide epidemics that transgender people face. And that is good, that people are beginning to get it, the monstrous othering and policing that we face every single G Dam day of our lives simply because we were “guilty” of being born into this life with the knowledge that our gender orientation and our assigned birth biology are at odds.
But I am restive with the ease with which in this internet age we can flourish our fingers over a keyboard and then move on from post with the feeling that we have actually “done something”, when all we have actually done is in effect restate the problem without attempting resolution. It is sorta like having a math test and re-writing the problem
6 + 11 = x as
x = 11 + 6 (and we be sure to draw attention to our use of different colored font and italics).
Compassion is a bicameral quality. It has two lobes. It has the feeling, heart lobe…that throbbing, dripping, bleeding tender outpouring of sympathetic alignment if we have not experienced something for ourselves (and just so you know: if you are not transgender, it is impossible for you to empathize with a dysphoric person, just as if you are white you cannot empathize with a person of color…you can sympathize, but don’t deceive yourself into thinking you empathize)…
…but for it to be true compassion, it must have the action side as well. What will you do with your sympathy?
Lori Duron has again posted a truly moving recounting of a tragic tale of bullying and othering and policing that ended in another transgender life lost…and I will recite yet again the litany of 2015: a lost transgender life approximately every 30 hours since 2015 began!
As if it is not enough of a burden to face: the nearly overwhelming unendurable constant achy angst of dysphoria. Oh no…to that is added the onslaught of ignorance, fear, and hatred as expressed in the evil of bullying which drives so many to self-destructive action in addition to having to bear gender dysphoria!
But Lori goes one better: She posts people you can email, places you can step up and actually take action that extends beyond the hypothetical feel good phrase “This has to stop” and manifests in real, measurable action…and takes baby steps as a compassionate act.
And then I myself will go you one better: there are marches coming up in major cities…in June. They have various names, monikers…but at heart they are the same, in that they are opportunities for you to express–directly–your support with your body side by side with other bodies, facing gawkers and haters, the curious and disinterested, and others who have walked in solitary confinement in their skins…
Transgender Pride Marches.
Yes, there will be people there who look different than you…who walk or talk different than you…and who want/feel/think/need/deserve exactly the same things you do as human beings! Your presence there as an ally will mean more to them than any of them can say…in addition to the emails you write or the lawmakers you contact, or the PTA meetings you attend to make your cis-gender privileged voice heard that it is not going to be tolerated, this epidemic of transgender suicide and murder…and your other actions that you are thinking of and planning to take.
You are thinking of them? Actions to take? Plans to do something? Someone you can maybe even smile at? Befriend?
In the Portland Area, I believe Transgender Pride March Day is June 13th. I hope to be there and intend to be, God willing. I intend to walk, with a sense of presence and dignity (a word I use very reluctantly right now as it has been wielded against me like a sharp phallic sword to rape my heart and spirit, but I use it none the less to mean a sense of presence that contains worth and significance simply because I am a human being)…I intend to hold my head high and not angled down, and my eyes moving from face to face and eye to eye rather than always staring at the space in between…
I hope to see you there, beside me…cis, trans. But if I don’t? It would mean the world to see you standing at the curb, a smile on your face and a nod in your eyes.
This has to stop…this expression of emotion that lacks the manifestation of action.
If you don’t support in word and deed, then you don’t support.
…in baseball bat threats,
and shifting blame bloviations?
there is a narrative constructed
and characters are run thru the mill
Procrustean beds wait, rimmed in razor words
and made up in straight jacket axioms
of hero killing Zeus, Medusa slain
but ‘ware the mirrors lest the true face be glimpsed…
…and you, you both have hitched to this?
your bones know, don’t they?
Or do they? Crawl inside your skin
when you feel the truth dissolve
and lies (half and whole cloth)
kick like something wicked waiting
to slouch towards Bethlehem
in the kingdom of Ozymandias?
Your silent disengagement lets our history
be Big-Brothered in Orwellian style scripts
and becomes tacit agreement with things
that go against your grain like sand paper.
Oh may your grain glow gold and run deep
for ruin holds this day and devours the moon.
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!!
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
anonymous asked:
How do you feel about Redmayne playing a trans woman?
1) I don’t know that we really need any more opinions, but since you asked..
2) Straight men hurt trans women because they’re afraid other men will think they’re gay for liking them. They think they’ll look gay because society, largely thanks to media, portrays trans women as men, and gay as less masculine and valuable. Having cis men play trans women contributes to this and puts trans women at risk. Plain and simple.
3) This is happening and nothing is going to stop it from happening, so my hope is that the producers will recognize the issue and do everything they can to mitigate the damage they’ll inevitably cause. I have friends that know Redmayne and assure me that he’s taking all these issues seriously. Obviously it would have been best if he had refused the part, but he’s no Jared Leto either.
Tangentially related, and perhaps selfishly, I’m less concerned with cis actors playing trans roles as I am with the near total lack of trans writers. I believe we’ll have a far greater impact when we are telling our own stories.
via (3) Tumblr.
Constance…the timing of God never ceases to amaze. Events of Holy Week this year…events of great import and significance took place.
And on In The Grave Day, I heard a missive written about me, a little to me, or maybe indirectly all to me, I don’t know.
It was the worst thing I have ever heard in my life, and as such it chokes my heart. I guess what was ultimately most sorrowful was to see how deeply broken and in pain the writer was in spite of what were my best and highest efforts and intentions…and obviously woefully short of the mark in every single facet, bar none.
It cut off response, for it declared all of who I was null and void and all of who I am pathetic and weak.
Well, I left that missive in the grave on Sunday, and simply have no choice but to go on, forgetting what lies behind and pressing on to be more yielded, more surrendered, taking hold of Them Who have taken hold of me.
But I will comment in this one way:
I love you with inexpressible beyond understanding love.
I miss you terribly.
I am so sorry that so much of what I desired, intended, was received and twisted into this present snarl.
I get it now, Papa…why Your one and only answer to every question hurled in Your Face by Your creatures was to take on our form, and come to our existence, and be crucified horribly suffering all things in Yourself.
Oh Love…if I could do that, and give you back yourself I would do so and gladly.
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
“I Was Born a Baby Not a Boy”: Sex, Gender and Trans Liberation | sheisrevolutionarilysuicidal.
Constance…this is a longer, somewhat intellectually oriented article and covers a lot of cutting edge philosophical territory.
I include it on Grace Notes because it is interesting and worthwhile…but I would not say by any means it’s indispensable.
Enjoy.
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….
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.
“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
Ya know how people say that before you can really be loved you have to love yourself?
Um, yeah no. No. I think this is one of those things that sorta sounds right, but is insidiously, horribly imprisoning. Loving yourself is hard, freaking hard. And I am not talking about selfishness or narcissism, both of which are symptoms of self-loathing. I mean genuine unconditional positive regard for self.
I will confess here: I don’t love myself. That is the truth. I am taking steps in the right direction to walk in unconditional positive regard for myself. But mostly no. I am told I am worthy of love and respect, and I find within myself the desire to be loved, but far too often I find no sense in this notion that I am worthy of anything.
And then, my heart hearkens, back back…back to these words in 1 John: “we love, because He first Loved”…it is an axiom, found in the Bible and it gives an axiomatic accounting for love, where it came from and why we all want it, and do it too.
I do know that They love me. They have shown this to me in many specific individual ways, as well as the universal ways we all are shown love (such as beautiful sunsets, the smell of baby’s breath, the sound of the wind in fir trees, the taste of exquisite food, the sweet sorrow of parting with a well-loved friend that you will see again)…and I am working on loving myself…learning how to abandon those who are abandoners.
But I ain’t there yet…and that’s okay
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
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…
This is a good piece to digest as well…I am reblogging this primarily directed at my Religious Readers who know they are right and are so proud of that while being so patient and understanding of the rest of us who mill about blindly at the foot of their great mtn of revelation…*Charissa does slow burn*
Instead of promoting Christ, Christians often promote …
their theology
their culture
their values
their creeds
their traditions
their spiritual practices
their specific type of baptism
their required form of communion
their style of sermon
their church
their denomination
their definition of salvation
their philosophy of evangelism
their form of ministry
their brand of worship
their interpretation of Revelation
their interpretation of the Bible
their favorite leadership model
their social customs
their laws, rules, and regulations
their political beliefs
their moral values
Imagine if Christians introduced people to their God instead of their religion.
Unfortunately, we often evangelize our own specific type of Christianity to other Christians rather than sharing the Gospel with unbelievers — preferring to convert, criticize, and attack our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ because we feel their version of Christianity isn’t as good as ours.
In a pluralistic society obsessed with consumerism, marketing…
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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.
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:
what am I?
besides being
a tranny bitch
a tranny freak
a shim
a shemale
a heshe
a waste of a perfectly good man
a river too far
that’s what I’m called
by others who other me
everyday each day
over and over
again and again.
and insults and slurs?
they are the costume
they make for me
to comfort themselves
while searching the mirror
and seeing themselves
while trying to get
a handle on me…am i a singer
of this song that spins
out every day
into the ether
right here and then gone?
am I a brush
grasped in a hand
waved at the world
leaving some streaks
of texture and color
smeared thick on the day?
I think I am words
for they never stop
welling inside me
piled up and pushing
there thru the darkness
under the bright stars
slicing the darkness
with brilliance and beauty
i am my words
the brilliant and broken
the loving and least
in total summation
the holy and horrible
here all at once.
words are all I have left,
soft and furious
like ocean waves
breaking on themselves
far out to sea
and lonely
because there are no rocks
to dash themselves on
sometimes those words
get frozen inside my mouth
because everything around me
is cold and static
but the words are insistent
and well up inside me
soft and furious
The rawkus bands boast
of being back
and in black.
Like somehow this
confers some strange authority.
It’s like a mantle they don,
and they are infused
with some strange reckless power
and become “more than”
in electronic banshee screams.
But I am different…back in black
because I was knocked there,
nine ways to Sunday.
Kicked back into shrouds
and disabused of slipper notions.
And yeah, I am back…in black,
and weeping over Rama
My, my, hey hey, and Neil Young
and Rust and Burnout
and back…in black.
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!
That long slow glacier spit me out whole
Into the ice-cold sea, fully formed and floating.
Everyone saw me hit, that splash, those waves,
and my voyage launched and me christened.
They broke their arms patting themselves on the back
because I was looming, tall, could sink ships and loose lips,
and I made them forget how deep the ocean really is.
They didn’t know I was born breech and upside down.
They didn’t know I couldn’t breathe.
Have I told you my recurring dream, that I could breathe underwater?
In that dream I go where I want, I am free, and I suck in
great draughts of release and blow out winds of release
and I live in the place of one, limber and lithe and little
until the dream-ender smashes my face in again, and I surface and choke again.
Storms rage, waves rise and billows blow against me
but I just float along, every once in awhile catching my breath
between waves, when they are careless and let me snatch a gulp.
But I have noticed something…the rhythm of the storm, and myself
and the timing of ruin running and tugging in deadly gravity:
It’s gonna follow Napoleon into Russia, and when it does
I will be ready to go all counter-intuitive flippy-floppy!
Yep…I am going to turn upside down and let my dreams come true
Stick that soggy, waterlogged drowned rat soul straight up into air,
just roll in the waters until I have no choice whatsoever but to breathe.
Maybe there will be water-jewels showing? (They look like carbuncles to me)
Maybe there will be pits and secret crevices shocking that the leering crowds
will peel, eat, and throw away as they move along to the next carny freak show…
But at least I will be able to breathe…finally…and dreams at last come true.
“In the case of this jewel-like iceberg, the ice is probably very old. In glaciers, years of compression force out air pockets and gradually make the ice denser,” according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
“When glacier ice becomes extremely dense, the ice absorbs a small amount of red light, leaving a bluish tint in the reflected light, which is what we see.”
“In addition, minerals and organic matter may have seeped into the underwater part of the iceberg over time, creating its vivid green-blue color.”
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.
Sex redefined : Nature News & Comment.
Giggles…big time!
I wanna see the person who will tell her now that they are enforcing the binary on her that they have sought to enforce on me…and tell her she is not really a woman.
Here is a crude and sad fact: in a large group of minds genitalia and gender are identical.
How ignorant. How blind. How sad.
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 — 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.
looking through them,
at me here inside
rattling my tin cup
back and forth
clitter-clatter-clikity-clak-clak
shouting, raising a ruckus
and raving about the lost key
buried somewhere out there with you
in the snow and sheep dip and shed wool…
and yet you stand, stare, and bleat
about bearing crosses and binary rules
uncrossable rivers and unforgivable sins…
even in frozen air
the smell of sheep
is pervading everything
A Letter to my son Jacob on his 5th birthday — Medium.
Gender orientation…once again. In another brain, in another place, in another genetic pool, unrelated to me, unrelated to “demonic possession”, unrelated to “unsubmission and rebellion”, unrelated to “mental illness”…
…related to the gender spectrum and continuum of creation as human, male at one pole and female at the other…related to hormone washes over body and brain and the differences in how they align…related to a world that sometimes spawns cleft palates, holes in hearts, heart murmurs, diabetes, etc. etc. …related to a world where the miracles of modern medicine exist to alleviate suffering and give life fulfilled and joyful…
…pushing against your taboos…pressing against your prejudices…pounding down your judgments…piercing the veils of your ignorance…presenting to you new understandings…
…those with ears, let them hear…
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.
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?
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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