(in)visible

this is because i am out: notes on visibility

2012-02-23T11:01:00.003-06:00

Originally posted at In Our Words

So often i hear people tell stories about coming out in specific moments or about getting outed. Italways causes me to wonder what it’s like to get outed in a traditional sense. What does it feel like to have an identity that can’t be seen? Although i often feel that i’m invisible to people, it’s not quite the same. My invisibility stems from peoples’ incapacity to fully acknowledge or accept my identity, not from an actual lack of visibility. What does it feel like to have that identity made visible against one’s will? i imagine it could make one feel vulnerable. Maybe it could also be empowering to be seen for a moment. Maybe something else that i can’t imagine.

This is not to say that i don’t get outed, i do. i out myself. Every time i meet someone, they are instantly able to see my queerness. It can be really hard sometimes, given most of our society’s reactions to queer and transgender identities.

Last week i scared someone in a bathroom. i was using a women’s room in a restaurant in Iowa City. When i opened the door to leave, i met a woman face to face. She recoiled in horror and shock. She looked at the other bathroom door, trying to figure out which of us had made the mistake. She looked back at me, her face still contorted. This is because i am out.

A few days ago someone i casually know was talking to me and a coworker. Most of our conversations have been one-on-one, and as a consequence, have not called for any personal pronoun usage. This time, however, he referred to me. He started to use one pronoun, stuttered, started to use another, and stuttered again. Then he walked away from the conversation, mid-sentence, to avoid either challenging or affirming my gender. This is because i am out.

Within minutes of meeting someone, she said, “I really admire the bravery of what you’re doing.” There are too many assumptions in this nine-word-phrase to unpack in this 755 word post. Suffice to say, she read some aspect of my queerness and attempted to affirm me in a very patronizing way. This is because i am out.

A self-identified gay man once asked me about my pronouns. Being the honest creature i am, i told him “she and it.” To the latter, he responded in disgust and dismay. He told me it was “objectifying and dehumanizing.” He took my self-identification and vigorously raked it through the stagnant mud of his preconceived notions of acceptability. This is because i am out.

Someone once threw a sandwich at me from a school bus. This yellow hunk of metal was barreling down the street while i was waiting at a bus stop. One of the students saw my queerness from far enough away to rifle through their bag, decide they’d rather not have their lunch that day, and shout “Are you a boy or a girl?!” while hurtling their food through the cold wind. This is because i am out.

A few weeks ago a CTA bus pulled over on the side of the road, passengers in tow. The driver started honking and cat-calling. Four inch heels under a 6’1” femme is an admittedly visible thing. That said, i don’t know that it calls for harassment. This is because i am out.

Sometimes though, being visibly out can be tremendously affirming. Even though other people can see these aspects of me and frequently give me shit, my people can see me too. A trans person that frequents the place that i work frequently says, “Hi creature,” upon seeing that i’m there. This is consistently the warmest part of my day. Afterward, i walk around floating. This is because i am out.

i ran into someone i know casually on the train the other day. We started talking about what he was going to wear on his date that night. i told him he should wear something fierce and fabulous. He responded to this suggestion by saying that i was a “different kind of beast.” He can see my difference. This is because i am out.

Queer people consistently come out to me, seemingly at random. i think that the visibility of my being out helps them to feel safe. Queer people consistently tell me i am made of sunshine and beautiful. Their tacitly flirty compliments are welcomed by my being out. So often, these moments follow yucky ones that are seemingly wiped away by these affirmations. This is because i am out.

trusting an archer, trusting myself

2012-02-21T01:17:00.000-06:00

My back is pressed against warm metal. The heat becomestactile comfort as it absorbs through my ratty t-shirt. Tears dry on my faceleaving tightening trails of salt on my otherwise perspiring skin. i’m 15 yearsold and i’m lying on the hood of my friend’s car, the engine still hot from thedrive.

My heart is broken. A love lost seems to afford infinitepain without the chance of healing. This is worsened by the fact that i do notknow who or what i am, and i am painfully aware of this lack of knowledge ipurse my lips around an illicit cigarette in hopes of finding comfort in thisact of embracing destruction. This is met with some degree of success. My sobshave faded into breath, yet i remain hopeless. How can life ever be worthwhile?Without love? Without self?

My eyes meet the brilliant Wisconsin sky, stars no longerobscured and fractured by saline sadness. Tiny points of light come intocrystalline focus. i notice one pattern in particular. Seven distant points oflight have sent waves across eons to meet me in this moment.

i recognize Orion and stare in wonder. i become infinitelysmall and feel my body in waves. i begin to resonate with the universe. Thispain is a part of the spiral shape of the universe, meted outsemi-formulaically to all who draw breath. Somehow this fatalistic perspectiveaffords me further comfort. i smoke and eventually i doze. i awake with themorning dew and meet a new day.

Fast forward. It’s five years later and i’m wearing black,all black, from my knit cap to my shoes, even my keffiyeh is black. i’m alsowearing points of light. My clothes are covered in broken glass. A not-so-closefriend and i had gotten in a car-totaling crash during an Appalachian blizzard.

We had been stranded for a few days before i could catch abus out of Clearwater, PA. i had taken 2 buses already, am on a third, with thedaunting reality of two more to go. The fact that i cannot attain a more directroute is confounding.

i press my face against cold glass, the buttons on my blackcap ticking against the window with each jolt. Sighing, i stare off the edge ofa mountain into the oblivion beyond the atmosphere. i feel alone. Even when ieventually reach my destination i will still feel alienated from all of mysurroundings, and i still do not know myself. This fact has become even moreacute in the years after the moment in Wisconsin.

Again i am greeted by seven distant balls of heat. i inhaledeeply, the crisp air cooling the depths of my lungs, and i remember. iremember that i can see Orion from home. i’ve been able to see Orion from everyplace that i have ever thought of as home. i recognize it as a touchstone and irealize that perhaps home is something that is with me.

Flash ahead again. The next year i am still wearing black. i’mattempting to push down a consistent alienation from myself with desperategrasps at identity. Tonight though, i’m also wearing pink. My floppy mohawk hasbeen brightly dyed to cast a queer contrast to my ostensible militancy.

i’m lying on my back on the roof of the Pilsen apartment i’mstaying at. i’d spent most of the preceding summer in a valium haze, givingmyself temporal distance from a rape that i blocked out of my psyche after ithappened.

Apparently i couldn’t block it out forever. i had readsomething that led me to remember. Remembrance in a flush of feeling. A bodymemory. A reliving. How had that happened? i immediately recognize mysubconscious’ capacity and motivation, but i cannot not imagine a way forwardand question its wisdom in cluing me in at this moment.

So i’m lying on my roof, drinking shamelessly out of abottle of merlot. This is a love affair that will last quite some time. i lookto the street for answers. Seeing only pollution and trucks and desolatestreets i look skyward. It’s a cloudy night. It’s windy and cold. But i won’tgo back inside, or else i can’t.

i look skyward and eventually the clouds break. They revealan archer, pointing toward a truth. i open my mouth and i scream into theemptiness and i cry. i am not open to guidance from the universe. i cry. i wantthis to be circumstance and i try to believe that it is. Eventually my sobbingbecomes too heavy and i too tired. As i lay on the tar roof, resigned, i becomeopen. i will give myself time and space to heal. i do not yet recognize thatthis will be a life-long process. i breathe.

A couple years and a couple genders later i am in Iowa City.i’m generally more in tune with myself. My struggles have shifted to a place ofexplicit self-awareness. Again i have lost love. i’d worked to learn to trust againafter a long abusive relationship. That trust has been hurt, as have i.

i’ve come to visit a friend and am hoping to clear my head.My friend invites me out to their back porch for a cigarette. Some comfortsseem ageless, so i accept. As i step outside i meet a friend older than time. ican only discern one constellation between the clouds. i breathe deeply, ihaven’t thought about Orion in a long while.

i press my back against the house to feel something otherthan spiritual conspiracy. This has the added effect of shielding me from thewind. i look at my friend, who somehow seems to understand the significance ofthe moment. i look back at the sky, tears beginning to well, an old pain settles in and overwhelms. “You just somehowknow, don’t you?” i become grounded. i resolve to try to trust in my ownstrength.

self-checking my ableism

2012-02-19T22:43:00.000-06:00

My perception of my identity and the reality of my life as aresult, have made me more receptive to the unique oppressions of other groups. itry to be aware, not merely of other vectors of normativity, but also the waysin which that normativity is (re)produced. Recently i’d been thinking a lotabout the standard of able-bodiedness. This process led me to also think aboutstandards of able-mindedness. i’ve been interrogating my own ableism and tryingto check my privilege and policing.

i’ve been explicitly challenging myself in the past few weeksto eliminate language like “crazy” and “insane” from my vernacular. Thecolloquial use of these words seems to operate in the same way as epitheticalusage of terms like “gay” and “tranny.” Frankly, this is not a cultural normthat i want to reinforce.

In this process i’ve found that, for me, this type oflanguage was very present. i often define (and i keep this in present tenseexplicitly, as this is a process that is still quite current and active) thingsthat i see as irrational or bad in this way. By linking these definitions toirrationality and badness i play into a cultural process of stigmatization.

Like with many other things, people exist and operate alonga spectrum of varying ability and need. No single point on this spectrum isnormal, they are merely different points. To play into the cultural idea of “craziness”seems to delegitimize folks lived experience by casting them in this negative light.To paint someone’s thoughts or actions as “nuts” is dismissive on the groundsthat their brain should function like a mythical normal brain. i don’t see thisas different than when folks dismiss queer and trans experiences in similarways.

So i’ve been working to cut this language out. In realizinghow common it was in my vernacular i have struggled to redefine the way i thinkabout things that i don’t like or don’t understand. i’ve been searching forlanguage that is more accurate to what i actually mean in the first place.

i’ve defaulted to the word intense a lot. i’m not yet sure ifthis is better, but it is definitely a step in my personal process of growtharound this issue. i often find myself saying that things are “crazy” when ifeel overwhelmed.

My lack of understanding does not equate to someone elses' “craziness,”and i’ve been trying to own that. i’ve also found that this process has led meto try to understand people more explicitly. i’ve asked for clarification more.i’ve found myself being more open to people about my uncertainty about theirmeaning or intention. This has created spaces for conversations and commonground that i would not have found before starting this process.

i’ve also begun to notice how common this is in other peoples’dialogue as well. i’ve tried to challenge other folks to grow with me.Sometimes they get it, sometimes they don’t. But i am making conversationshappen, and i tend to think that is a good thing.

i’m far from done here. This is the beginning of myownership of a specific vector of my own privilege. i hope that it continues tobring me growth and insight. But more than that, i hope to find more ways tochallenge ableism on a cultural level because all people deserve to have theirvarying needs and capacities acknowledge, honored, and respected.

plain donuts and the normalization of normalization

2012-02-09T18:01:00.000-06:00

       Today at work—i work at a coffee shop—someone asked me for a donut. However, she (i read her as a she, and will own that) didn’t simply as for “a donut.” She asked for “a plain donut.” This is where the challenge ensued.

       Now, i knew exactly which donut she wanted. There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in my mind, and, for the record, i ended up being right. But i have a bone to pick with the concept of “plain/normal/regular.” Fortunately, in my line of work, there are literally hundreds of opportunities to pose challenges to this way of thinking.

       So i drug the moment out. It could have been over in a flash of money and smiles; i could have sent her on her merry way quite easily. But i chose not to. i pretended not to know what she meant. “Which one?” i asked.

       “The plain one,” she repeated herself as if the issue were one of decibel level instead of clarification.

       “i don’t know what’s ‘plain’ to you, that’s very subjective,” i began playfully. “This one is covered in powdered sugar, is it ‘plain?’ What about the frosted ones, those look pretty ‘plain’ to me. Then, of course, you’d have to choose what’s more ‘plain,’ black or white?” i framed with a wry smile.

       i posed these questions in a friendly way, both because i wanted to keep my job and because i wanted her to be receptive to the lesson i was trying to teach. That said, i waited until she gave me an adjective that was actually descriptive of what she wanted and not laden with normalizing values (she chose, “the one that is just cake, with nothing on it)”before i gave her the donut she wanted.

       This wasn’t just to be rude, and i really do think that she was receptive. But the pervasiveness of this idea of “plainness” or “regularity” is incredibly frustrating, especially as a trans person in the service industry. There’s an assumption of a standard from which all things deviate.

       At the café where i work alone there are so many manifestations of this logic structure. There are “plain” croissants, which are cast as having no flavor when compared to their almond and chocolate neighbors. But, in reality, they taste like butter. They too have a flavor, but this flavor goes unacknowledged. Butter is apparently the whiteness, the straightness, the cisness of flavor. It is the flavor against which other flavors are measured, thus it is allowed to remain invisible.

       There are “muffins” and “vegan muffins.” In this case, the dairy content of the former category is obscured in an invisible language of normalcy. The vegan muffins are linguistically rendered as different, that which requires a modifier, while the dairy muffins are allowed to remain the unquestionably Normal muffin.

       The problem here goes beyond difficulties in communication. There are so many repeat interactions in the coffee industry that one quickly learns exactly what people mean when they use certain phrases, regardless of whether or not these phrases are accurate or descriptive. Further, i’m a relatively savvy individual and can usually discern meaning, if only by utilizing clarification questions.

       The issue here is that the process of normalization is itself normalized. People often perceive certain choices or characteristics to be neutral, rather than perceiving whatever choice or characteristic to be merely one on a spectrum. Other choices or characteristics are then, by necessity, labeled as deviating from a norm as opposed to just being one of many possibilities.

       This perfectly mirrors identity based normalization processes within macro-culture. Beyond the café, (and frankly, within it as well) these processes result in the largely unacknowledged dis/privileging of various identity categories. Categories that are constructed as normal are privileged while those deemed other than normal are assigned various adjectives, rendered visible, and denied certain privileges in the process.

       i would argue that this not only mirrors broader normalization processes, but reinforces them by making the process itself seem more normal and more innocuous. What’s the harm of asking for a “regular coffee?” Nothing really, at least not outside of any sort of social context. Although, as a note, people who don’t drink caffeine often have incredibly limited options at cafés, and while that sucks i wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as oppression. But again, the process here is parallel. At the end of the day although the phrase “regular coffee” is not necessarily playing into a (dis)privilege power dynamic, it normalizes the idea that there is a normal.

       If there is a normal for everyday items, then normal becomes an everyday word. It’s meaning, and all of the problematic nuance behind it, is obscured by the sheer amount that it is used. Normalizing normalcy in this way makes it easier to cast other things as normal, easier to understand the world as full of things that are either regular or irregular.

       Because this is both an easy way to construct things and is rendered invisible as a process due to the frequency of its use, normalization has become something that, not only do people participate in without realizing it, they also become relatively incapable of understanding the process itself. This is kind of like how it’s hard to truly be aware of air, because we breathe it and are surrounded by it. This is true in my experience at least, insofar as it is difficult to help people to understand how normalization processes happen, how frequent and consistent they are, and how they impact people who are constructed as not normal.

       That said, i have also noticed that once people get it, they really do seem to get it. For example, i was having a conversation with my mom about normalization, one of many. One day i broke down the example of “ethnic food,” and she really seemed to get it. Since that conversation, other conversations related to the idea of normalization have become much easier. It’s like there’s a normalization map onto which other various processes can be superimposed and more easily understood.

       This is not to say that there isn’t nuance between normalization processes. But it does seem to be easier to see where it is happening once the concept is cohered. Inspiring and cohering this concept is what i hope to achieve in attempting to render the process more visible in my day-to-day life. i hope that people will realize that their actions and choices are not normal, they are just on an array of possible actions and choices. i hope that this understanding will grow to a realization that they themselves are not normal, but are one of an infinite array of possible people.

       Further, i hope that they will realize that when they play into a normalization process they are participating in the continuous creation of society, a society that other people have to negotiate. i hope that they realize that their constructions of normativity have very real implications for others’ lives, implications that are often difficult and problematic. i hope that they realize that this is not just about a donut, but is about identity and visibility and oppression.

a beautiful blemish

2012-02-05T17:16:00.002-06:00

“i am going to be a blemish on your ugly society.”

This is the way that someone i used to know described his personal draw to a punk/metal presentation. At the time, i was a 21 year old punk activist. The statement resonated with me immediately as a truth of my being that had not yet been put in words so accurate or succinct as “i am going to be a blemish on your ugly society.”

Holy Jesus fuck. How powerful?!

When i shaved my first mohawk i said something to the effect of “This will make people not want to talk to me, and i don’t want to talk to those people anyway.” This was before punk became incredibly accessible and the advent of bro-hawks. At 14 i was aware, on a relatively conscious level, of social processes of Othering.

i’d been an Other before i became a punk. i was a sissy. i was a nerd. People told me i was a faggot, and maybe they were right. But punk was the first time that i was able to own my Otherness; it was the first time i got to construct it for myself, the first time that i got to utilize it.

i knew that this would add another degree of separation between myself and the broader group of people who either harassed me, or didn’t interest me at all. If they didn’t want to talk about anything other than popular comedy movies, we probably weren’t going to be all that close anyway.

So i patched the holes in my jeans with flannel and embraced a newfound cultural dissonance. i embraced it completely because it did more than just create a buffer between myself and mainstream culture. It was more active than that; punk, for me, was directly resistant of cultural standards that i would never quite meet anyway. i was a skinny boy, and this was in the era of bulky guys in Hanes commercials, not the heroin-sheik hipster masculinity that is cast as ideal these days. i wasn’t everyone else, nor was i what i was told to be.

It allowed me to not give a damn about what people thought, to be myself… not be really, that’s not quite right. It allowed me to create a self. i painted my nails and learned to self-advocate. It felt so incredibly empowering to give people a pink-polished middle finger in response to their homophobic hate. Here was a homo-punk response to spin their hate back around; i had found a way to stop internalizing others’ cultural violence. i didn’t need to worry about their norms, because i was different. i could fight back.

Then i learned to turn that fight into one that was broader. i became active. My newfound consciousness of my outsider status gave me perspective. Not only could i actively separate myself from a poisonous culture, i could turn around and push it back, try to shape it into something healthier. i learned from punk culture. Punks created their own media, their own communities, the “culture” in “counter-culture” was vibrant (albeit, admittedly, not perfect).

DIY cultural construction became useful to me as organizational tools. A show could be a fundraiser. A zine could introduce people to an issue. With some speed ball, some old nylons, and a picture frame i could screen-print slogans onto patches. i was trying to push people to reconsider normativity in everyday moments. They’d see a patch, or disgustingly beautiful photocopied poster, and they’d have to confront something within themselves. Maybe they’d walk away thinking whatever fucked-up thing they thought before, maybe they already tacitly agreed, maybe they actually reevaluated an issue or two, but they were made to be aware… of a blemish.

Later on, i changed my name and started living in a different gender. Initially i tried to embrace a relatively binary femininity. i should have known better than to think that anything “normal” would fit, but i would be lying if i pretended my femininity had always been explicitly resistant (besides the inherent resistance of transness, that is).

The day i stopped attempting to fit into a binary was much like the day i got my first mohawk, albeit a bit more consciously this time around. i realized that i had begun to internalize our society’s poisonous feminine beauty standards. i had taken as truth, despite my explicit radicalism and feminism that I needed to be a certain way to be beautiful. Skinny. Pore-free. Makeup caked. Appropriately dressed.

None of that was going to work for me. So, i made a choice to commit myself to deconstructing femininity and rebuilding it. i sealed that commitment with a new mohawk, one that would eventually turn into dreadlocks. i began presenting in a way that made me hyper-visible.

This hasn’t been easy. Not only do i take a lot of shit from folks for my non-binary presentation, i also fight myself. There are still deep pangs of wanting to look like women on magazine covers. But i don’t actually want that and am working to de-internalize those feelings. They were implanted by a society that dead-set on continuing a centuries-long legacy of Western patriarchal dominance in the form of rigid beauty standards.

i want to resist that. i am committed to cultivating that resistance within myself. My resistant form of transness draws on my prior understanding of a punk aesthetic to reevaluate what is or isn’t beautiful. The process has been difficult, but it’s been incredibly cleansing, even liberating. Hopefully it continues on this path. i am trying to be truly holistic in separating myself from social expectations that are built on poisonous cisgender standards. Most days i look in the mirror and like what i see.

i am my own form of beauty and am a blemish on an ugly society.

survival: turning oppression into energy

2012-01-30T23:04:00.000-06:00

Survival is tough. We don’t give evolution enough credit. Outof all the creatures to have ever been, those that are present now made itthrough a lot. Those still around are the ones that had the strength to survivetheir environments; they adapted. I think this is a perfect trope for queer folk;it’s certainly how i see myself.

Queer life can be tough. Our society is fiercelynormalizing. Our culture works very hard, and is fairly successful, atrendering us invisible and irrelevant. We’re denied jobs, housing, healthcare,affirmation, etc. And we experience a very high degree of violence as ademographic. Despite all that, we’re still here.

The fact that my queer body is still breathing means that ihaven’t given in to all the pressures to conform or die. Despite how frequentlyeach of those options seem easier than living the inherent difficulties of mylife, i’ve refused to give up. i want to be proof that no matter how viciousour society, it is possible to both self-determine and survive.

This sometimes means utilizing strategies that aren’tnecessarily socially acceptable. Over the course of my life this has meant alot of things. It’s meant adopting a punk-inspired, no fucks given, attitude.It’s meant accepting the fluidity of my own identity, because boxes seem tosuffocate. It’s meant strategies of dissociation: drugs, alcohol, andmelancholy music. Its meant damage control: smoking, and controlled self-harm.It’s meant limiting time in more dangerous places and rarely leaving urbanareas. It’s meant finding strategies of self-care: reaching out for support,cultivating compassion, meditation, crafting, and writing.

These strategies, and their varying degrees of health, areall responsible for the fact that i’m still here. Each one has meant that i’vestayed on this earth. This is something i actively choose to believe has value.This is not out of any sense of arrogance, but i feel like there is still workto be done. This world still needs to be made more safe, more compassionate,more accepting of fluidity and variance. This is work that i’m driven to do;and i do this both actively and by simply existing as visibly queer.

This realization has led to theneed, and the capacity, to turn oppression into energy. To me, this meanscreating things to shift our society in the general direction of compassion andunderstanding. My most frequent method to do this is writing. This may soundobvious, but i believe that writing about experience, especially non-normativeexperience, carries a value in that it can open folks to broader levels ofunderstanding.

But it also means fighting tomake spaces safer. Fighting may seem incongruent with compassion,but i’d operationalize the term in a very non-violent way. When i fight i seek to make spaces that i inhabit more inhabitable. Whetherthis means checking people’s assumptions in dynamic, and hopefully effectiveways, or something more callous, there is a constancy of confrontation. i usethis word despite its connotation. By confrontation, i mean looking a situationin its eyes, recognizing difficulty, and choosing to engage in a way that ispositive.

Each time i encounter somethingnegative, i try to find a way to leave a trace or ripple of change. Frequently,for me, this means shouting at folks who harass. In these moments i hold noillusions that compassion will change minds, i simply hope to foster anenvironment where folks recognize that the things they say will not always gounheeded and unchallenged. Often though, this requires more tact anddiscipline.

When assumptions or statementsare more tacitly problematic (read: subtler forms of racism, trans-misogyny,ableism, body image standards, etc.) i coax from myself a more dynamic andgentle form of fierceness. In these moments i strive to not put folks on thedefensive, allowing myself to take small steps of growth with someone. Theseprocesses are often more frustrating for me, especially in my longer termrelationships with folk. i want them to instantly “get it,” but recognize thatchange and growth are inherently slow processes that require commitment andcultivation.

This is something i’ve beenconsciously engaging with in my own life for longer than i’d like to admit, andlord knows i’m still not perfect. So i try to breathe, and do the patient workof consciousness raising, all the while treating every moment as an opportunityfor both activism and personal growth.

Turning my oppression into energyalso means that i try to push the radical and queer circles i’m in as well. Ourwork and our interactions operate multi-laterally as a challenge to hegemonyand power, and to be the most effective in that process need to be consciousand engaged. In this regard, i’m as committed to challenging folks who areon-point as much as i am folks who aren’t.

It means taking in moments andusing them to reveal gaps in our culture and coming up with creative ways tofill those gaps. Currently, for me, this means working with and challenginginstitutions that are semi-inclusive, or inclusive in name but not so much inpractice. It also means slowly building longer term projects that willhopefully work to shift consciousness and foster openness on amore-than-individualized scale.

This work seems valuable. i hopeto look back on this strategy and feel that i haven’t wasted my time and myenergy. i hope that transforming my oppression into energy is as fruitful as itfeels. At the very least though, it helps me to survive the tougher moments inmy life, and that, in itself, has immeasurable value.

fraying categorical consciousness

2012-01-27T10:17:00.000-06:00

i madea ball of rag yarn. It's a beautiful cluster of scraps. A ratty spiral ofremaining bits of cotton that i had turned into 50's dresses, dutifully andcleverly recycled into a tediously beautiful artifact. It's been on prouddisplay on my bookshelf for months.

One ofmy friends recently asked me what it was going to be when it was done. iresponded the only way i knew how, "it is done."

Thiscaused me to reflect on a few things. There's a certain sense of utility asbeing necessary for a thing to have worth. My friend would have understood thepoint were i making a scarf, something that could be used or worn. Something,frankly, that fits into a pre-constructed category of value. I think my friendwould also have understood were it something that was classically beautiful.Again, the key here is this idea of pre-constructed categorical value.

Thefact that my yarn ball was both an end in itself, and is atypically beautiful madeit difficult to interpret or accept. i'll be honest, i've always been attractedto a certain type of aesthetic. DIY culture found its way to my heart yearsago, and i've been alienated from a lot of people for it since. But the pointhere is not what i like, or even why i like it.

What'sinteresting to me is the general incapacity of folks to consider things fortheir own merit, independent of social mores. This is where i locate a link togender. There are sharp, binary, cis-centric categories, into which humanbeings are mangled and crammed. There are even a small handful of non-ciscategories, or categories that bend the binary a just a little. But the minutea person starts to stray from said categories, they enter a realm beyond theunderstanding of most folks.

Over christmasmy uncle referred to me as "young man," and quickly apologized andcorrected to "young lady." i was thankful for the acknowledgement ofhis mistake, it meant i didn't have to internalize it and carry the weight.And, for the purposes of this essay at least, i'm going to willfully ignore thecategorical disparities between "men" and "ladies." It’sthe existence and enforcement of categories that’s interesting.

i foundmyself thinking, "why can't i just be a 'young critter?'" Although isometimes identify as a woman, i primarily do this out of necessity. There'snot a category for my gender. i'm trans-feminine, sure, but that's just ageneralized sense of directionality for me. It's a far cry from a location, andan even further cry from a permanent or solid location.

Unlikemy ball of rag yarn, i'm not done. Queer theorists call it fluidity. i justcall it openness. Openness to change from within myself. Openness to catalyzedchange from the outside world. Openness to daily shifts of whim and fancy.Openness to a multiplicity of identities and expressions coalescing into asingle being; a single being driven to allow that tattered multiplicity totwist itself into a ball of creation.

Thisincapacity to accept the idea of a fluid nature is perhaps an even biggerobstacle to overcome. If my identity were solidly and consistently one thing, icould probably come up with some sort of functional definition that allowedpeople (and this assumes they're willing and putting forth effort) tounderstand my gendered sense of self. If i always identified as genderqueer,which i sometimes do, i could patiently explain that and fight for anunderstanding of a singular unique identity. But, because my gender is bothnon-categorical and in motion, i'm left in a self-specific jam.

Gettingpeople to respect my femininity is hard enough, but a lot of people do. (Notso) sadly, i don't have the privilege of a binary identity. This is sad becausei'm frequently reduced to using lowest common denominator descriptions of self,purely to accommodate people's incapacity to allow for my flux.

This isnot so sad because my gender is absolutely my own. i say this with zero senseof certainty, but, i think that type of consciousness is not one oftenachieved. So despite the hardships of living a gender that is difficult todescribe or identify, i relish the hard fought privilege of living in a genderthat is comfortable.

Like myball of yarn, my gender is made of frayed scraps. It's twisted around itselfinto a, not so cohesive, whole. Different colors and patterns shine throughdepending on the angle of view. An amalgam in style and texture. A potential toadapt and remain beautiful, even if that beauty is expressed in a whollydifferent fashion.

Again,like the ball of yarn, this makes folks uncomfortable. i've been asked why ishave parts of my head if i want to be read as a woman. i've been brazenly toldthat my identity must be a masculine one on days that i wear pants. i've beentold, to my face, that i look scary. Every one of these incidents, andcountless others, was based in another human being's incapacity to accept thati, the queerly gendered creature in front of them, do not fit neatly into acategory. Each of these moments happened because my gender is beautiful in itsown way.

It'sunfortunate that people are incapable or unwilling to stretch their capacity tounderstand beyond categories. A perfect storm of socialization has armed oursociety with an ignorance that forces me to be at odds at almost every possibleturn. A binary induced rejection of otherness has left me with very littlechoice save to be an apocalyptic little ball of yarn that is resilient in itsbeauty.

miss categorization

2012-01-24T21:20:00.000-06:00

A cisgender female co-worker recently said to me that, “Real women havevaginas.” Putting the insensitivity of saying this to a trans-feminine personaside, this statement is problematic for obvious reasons, and is personallyfrustrating for other, not so obvious reasons. Very basely, this statementobviously invalidates the identities of pre-op and non-op trans women, who arewomen, regardless of their genitalia. Further, it implies that folks withvaginas are all women, regardless of how they identify. And fuck all of that.

This was an incredibly hard thing to hear in my workplace,in which i fight every day to be respected and to be seen. The communities andinteractions that i choose are (mostly) affirming and positive. And whenthey’re not, it’s a conscious trade off i make to be involved in saidcommunities. But, like many folks queer or not, i don’t exactly have choice inmy workplace.

This statement sank into my heart and left a rock in mystomach. It hurt. Despite the fact that i know, at least academically, thatgender and genitalia are not linked, this statement incited a lot of pain thatmy co-worker was able to walk away from and i am still carrying.

Instantly, my brain began the all too familiar process ofresponding to trauma. My consciousness fled my body, leaving my brain amechanical husk, incapable of emotion or real interaction. This was the safestplace for me to be. At that moment, my only other option was one of an intensebreakdown and self-violence; an option that became a necessity later in theday. But at that moment, i had to work, because i had to eat.

So i spent the entirety of my shift completely vacant, lostin vaguely sad dream-space that i can’t ever quite locate. This is the sameplace i have gone when i’ve been attacked, mocked, hurt in myriad ways. This isa place that i’m coming to identify with my job more and more, because thefrequency of deep pain inflicted is so great there.

i was reminded of my ex, who invalidated my opinions,ignored my identity, and upon breaking up with me talked about getting to bewith real women. Each time i left my post to use the washroom i looked in themirror and hated what i saw. This is not something that normally happens to me.i have waged a war in my head and on my body and am sometimes truly able toshake off social normativity and think that i am beautiful. i consider thesesometimes moments to be a miraculous triumph. For me, this negativity came fromthe outside and pervaded each corner of my heart.

It’s been two days and i still haven’t quite shaken the oddfeeling of detachment. i want to truly return to my body, but both cannot doso, and am afraid to do so because of the imposed violence that now lurksthere. But what i really want to talk about is the concept of realness.

Our society has set up rigid standards for folks to tracetheir identities to. These standards are usually the aforementioned biologicalessentialism. The next tier of openness is allowing for a binary, medicalizedtransition. Regardless of how “accepting” these standards may be, they arestill standards that don’t function for all people.

This concept of being required to meet said standards beforebeing viewed as real is, to me, one of the most hurtful possible ramificationsof normativity. i am starkly aware that i am not often seen, at least notwholly seen. My experience with the constancy of at least partial invisibilityhas left me both resigned to this being a fact of my existence and committed tothis being the impetus of my resistance; The relative weight of each of the aforementionedshifting dependent on my general level of wellness at any given moment.

Regardless of the specific invisibility in a given interaction,some element of my identity is ignored. People conceive of me in a whole messof ways. Some have told me how they see me, some have strongly implied, otherstreat me as if i were a man. In almost every interaction, some aspect of myreality is excluded.

This common social tendency to construct categories, intowhich things fit and become real, leaves me in an impossible quandary. Do iaccept the aforementioned categories as valid? No. i don’t, truly. However, myunderstanding of the inapplicability of a given category in validating my senseof self is most often irrelevant to other folks’ readings of me.

i sometimes wonder if, in these types of moments, people seeme as fake. And i don’t mean “fake” in the, often sexist, way of pointing to vapidity.i mean truly fake; do people see me as attempting to fit into a category inwhich i cannot fit? Do they consciously invalidate my identity? If they do,what internal language is used?

i tend to think that folks readings of me are not soconscious; everything i’ve learned about sociological theories of Otheringsuggests that this process happens on a subconscious level in society. But itis so conscious and present for me that i cannot help but wonder. i cannot helpbut to feel that folks must, on some level, recognize the incongruences thatthey seem to glaze over when interacting with me.

i don’t know how much any of this matters. But i do know thati feel real. My blood and my tears are real. The sadness of being renderedinvisible feels real. What i do know is that it’d be nice if other folks started treating me as ifi were real.

learning consent 1 (in anticipation of future learning)

2012-01-19T22:23:00.001-06:00

My life has changed a lot since an incident of partner rapeseveral years ago. Much of this has been merely congruent change, but much hasalso been consequent change. Some of this has been unconscious, involuntary. Mybody twitches and spasms a lot. i startle easily. i feel intensely vulnerableand more scared than beforehand. In the couple months directly following theevent, i took enough drugs to block out the sun but not the pain. This habitshifted for a few years into alcohol and meaningless sex.

Eventually, i cleaned up, came to, and did a lot of activehealing and trying to understand my reaction to this experience. Mostimportantly, i learned about consent. i’m talking about real consent, not justthe “they didn’t say no” variety. The fact that my partner hurt me taught methat i could hurt people. This is a lesson i haven’t taken lightly, and alesson that actually makes me thankful for the experience.

i’ve learned to be careful with others. i’ve learned thatthings that i mean to feel good might not. i’ve learned to ask. i’ve made ithabit to ask if people are ok, if what i’m doing feels good, if they still wantto be there.

i’ve learned that communication happens in different waysfor different people, or at different times. Sometimes asking “Are you ok?”works well, sometimes it seems more effective to ask “Are you here? Do you wantto be here?,” or “What do you want in this moment?” i know that i’m morecomfortable with certain methods of consent at different moments.

i’ve learned to look for subtle cues. These are often cuesthat i’m aware that i give, like a muscle spasm or a lack of eye contact. Buti’ve also taught myself to learn with people, to listen to their bodies as wellas their words. i have worked hard to acknowledge that i can hurt by notactively working at not hurting.

And i’ve learned that if i hurt someone, i can check thatand support them if that’s welcomed. In my own life, it’s not the worst thingto be hurt, especially accidentally, but that a lack of acknowledgement andsupport feels much worse for me. In recognizing this, i’ve tried to become opento hearing other folks’ experience and trying to provide what they need in agiven moment.

At some point, it dawned on me that consent wasn’t justimportant during sex. Consent is relevant in every interaction. A conversationor question can be as unwelcome as a touch. So i try to check in when thingsget heavy. i want to give people the capacity to shift as needed, and to askfor support if they want it.

None of this is meant to imply that people cannot handlethemselves. i’ve simply found that it’s easier to self-advocate when givenexplicit room. Again, this is not to say that folks cannot stand up if theyneed to, but i want to work to make that easier. i’d like to set the precedentthat it is ok to have needs in any given moment, and making explicit room forthem is a way that i work toward this end.

i’ve also learned to self-advocate more clearly. i’velearned to say no, and other ways to slow, stop, or shift situations, sexual orotherwise, that make me feel unsafe. This is not universally true, but isincreasingly so.

Further, i’ve learned the importance of initiating, andparticipating in, check in conversations outside of whatever event. Even ifsomething was totally ok, it’s nice to have space to say that, and toappreciate that if something wasn’t ok there would be space for it. This tendsto make space feel safer in the future, and cultivating safe futures feelsincredibly important.

None of this is to say that i, or people in general, aredangerous and terrible, or that contact of any sort should be wrought withfear. Quite the opposite, really. People can be fantastic. This is only madebetter, in my experience anyway, when i know that support and openness are norms.Simply having this space for “no” seems to make “yes” so much fuller.

Learning to cultivate this space, learning to support,learning to acknowledge my capacity to damage, has made me thankful for myrape. Despite all the hardships that came from it, that still come from it, itwas an impetus for a profound change in my life. This change has made me abetter person, and has hopefully made the lives of those around me feel safer,if only for a moment. For this, i am deeply thankful.

a path where a location should be

2012-01-19T19:11:00.001-06:00

Originally posted at In Our Words

As a basic introduction of my current sense of my gender, i identify, among other things, as both trans and genderqueer. For pronouns, i use “she/her/hers.” And if you can do it with respect and understanding of significance, “it.” i use “she/her” and identify myself to most folks as a trans person — or sometimes as a woman. i don’t do this because it represents a true understanding of my gender but because it’s the closest most folks can come to understanding my sense of myself. This is especially true given our culture’s current climate around the subject.

That said, i see myself as “neither/nor” in relation to the man/woman dichotomy. i don’t mean that i’m between genders; i’m not. There’s no “man” here at all. i’m, at least in some ways, femme. But i mostly identify as a queerly gendered creature beyond category. i didn’t come to this unique understanding of my gendered self overnight. It’s been a journey, one i’m very much still on.

In some ways, my narrative fits the commonly known, and somewhat accepted, transgender narrative. i have memories of longing that predate a lot of other memories. i played with Barbies, dreamt of being a Disney princess, hung out with girls growing up. Like many, a normative gender was forced on me by culture, and i learned to hide my feelings from the world and myself.

But that’s where my story stops fitting the “capital-S” Story. In high school, i found the punk scene, thank god, and learned strategies to not give a good god damn — or at least to pretend with a relatively high degree of success. i painted my nails and responded with a “so fucking what?” to remarks like, “He thinks he’s a girl.” i took dance classes. I learned to fight, both literally and figuratively.

i went to college and hung out with activists and Gender Studies kids. i dyed my mohawk pink and presented even more queerly. Thinking of myself as a punk-rock faggot and as genderfluid, i started seeking hormones and taught myself how to do makeup. i experienced a lot of harassment and harsh violence. So, i hid again, this time more consciously. i grew a gnarly beard and cultivated hyper-masculinity into a wall. When i looked in the mirror, i saw a mask. i learned to live with that.

But it was an untenable strategy and my queerness resurfaced, a cetacean coming up from the depths for air. i got into therapy — because i was under the impression that this was a prerequisite for a hormone prescription. i started taking estrogen and tried to present in a more classically feminine way. i thought that might be easier. But again, i looked in the mirror and saw a mask.

i felt like feminine standards fostered a lot of self-loathing and self-violence. i committed myself to tearing femininity down, brick by brick, and reconstructing it in a way that didn’t feel poisonous. i was cultivating a femininity that was, in no uncertain terms, completely my own.

i re-shaved my mohawk and became empowered in the trans part of my identity, in my visibility. i was, and am, something not “normal,” and am at peace with that reality. i am something new and unique unto myself. The harassment started again, but it mattered less. It can still get really hard at times, but this time, i knew i had exhausted all other options. Eventually, and luckily, someone referred to me as “it” respectfully. Someone else said, in a very affectionate way, that they saw me as a creature. It took a lot of reflection, and i was terrified at how hard that identity would be to live. But it felt comfortable, felt right. i came to embrace my itness and sense of self as creature and as Other.

This is hard for a lot of people to really comprehend, but my gender is just different like that. It’s still evolving, as creatures are wont to do, and reacting to the world. It will probably always operate in this way. My gender has been more of a path than a location and this is sometimes incredibly difficult. But, the newness feels right, the uniqueness gives me perspective, and the queerness feels like home.

a lady and a faggot? why, yes

2012-01-16T20:16:00.002-06:00

Am i a man? Absolutely not. Not even a little bit. i haven’tidentified in this way in a very long time. Even the last time that iexternally identified as a man, i internally identified as “trying to be a manone final time.”

Do i have sex with men? Not cis men. Not in a long time anyway. ihave. But i’m currently in arelationship with someone with a different gender than me, meaning i’m not even in a homorelationship in the classical sense of the word. My sense of self as faggot hasabsolutely nothing to do with either my gender or the gender of those i fuck(or desire to fuck).

What purpose then does this contradictory identificationserve? Well, i’m often read as male. Because of my visible queerness, in thesecases i am doubtless read as a queer male. My identification as a faggot isnot, however, intended to legitimate this misreading in any way. It’s also notany sort of attempt to reclaim maleness, it’d be tough to reclaim malenesswhile actively identifying as not male.

My faggot identity used to be a reclamation. It was a way toembrace the fact that i had sex and lust and swish that were seen by much ofstraight culture as offensive and Other. This identity was often, though notalways, accompanied by a visible queerness. Purple polka dot hair, glitternails, an attitude and a purse.

Faggot, for me, was an embodiment of bodily resistance morethan it ever was a sexual identity. That much is still true. My body, my life,is a locus of resistance. Merely by living in the world in a way that iscomfortable to me, congruent with my sense of being, i am forced to resist.

i daily resist standards of normativity. Macro-culture tellsme time and again that i should be a Man. That i should stand tall, work hard,wear loose fitting pants, and a whole mess of gendered bullshit that absolutelydoes not fit. Hyper-affirming cis women often affirm my femininity whilesimultaneously ignoring all other elements of my identity. Transphobic elementsof cis gay culture cast me as a traitor, a person to weak or afraid to be gay.Although this doesn’t recognize the strength and honesty that it takes to beme, it is something i’ve heard and read more than a few times. Mainstream transculture encourages me to transition "properly," to pass, and to “be just likeeveryone else.”

But i’m not like everyone else. i’m a faggot. i’m a lady anda faggot. My existence beckons me to be a site of resistance. i resist femininebeauty standards that i both can’t and don’t want to achieve. i resist thesestandards both on grounds of their broader legitimacy and on grounds of theirgeneral aesthetic. For example, i think that it is oppressive that our societytells its femmes to tan until they’re orange. i also find this de-natured normunsettling on a very visceral level.

i’m a faggot and a lady and i resist ignorant affirmationsthat “i’m normal and just like everyone else.” i don’t want to fit into abinary category. i don’t want to be read as cisgender. i am, and want to be readas, something new and unique.

i’m a faggot and a lady and i don’t support family values.i don’t think that my people, queer people, should have to make our familiesfit the template of normative families. Our families should fit our needs, ourdesires, our visions for the future. Our families are our legacies, and ourlegacy need not be that of either patriarchy or imperialism. Our legacy is one ofadaptability, of love borne of necessity and oppression. Our families shouldreflect this.

My faggot identity is my resistance to both the impositionof these norms by culture at large and a resistance to the assimilationistelements of the LGBT (and no, there’s no Q solidarity here at all) movement.i’m a faggot and i’m less worried about a marriage contract allowing me tovisit my partner in the hospital than i am about transphobic doctors refusingprovide them the services they need, or worse.

i’m a faggot and a lady and i’m an anything but a consentingtarget. i walk in the world the only way that i can at this point. i live mytruth every day. This makes me a target. Fortunately, at thispoint, i have the strength to resist the (non)solution of conforming to genderstandards as a way to avoid abuse. My sense of self as faggot allows me to walkin the margins and refuse to comply with rules that don’t apply.

i’m a faggot and a lady. i’ve been raped and attacked andmocked and i refuse to quit, refuse to hide, refuse to give up. Thoseidentified as faggots have historically been resistant, simply by existing,oppressed yet alive. This identity offers me an alignment with that oppressionand that endurance. My sense of self as faggot is much of how i do not becomeclosed off from the world, distant. This aspect of my identity allows me tolive and to love.

My queerness is rife with identifications that may, on thesurface seem to conflict. And i admittedly use a lot of words to describe myself. Thesewords often shift and change depending on the day or the situation. They allserve different purposes. But i’m a faggot and a lady, and i have learned howto embrace contradiction and to resist with heart and teeth.

queering space, carrying safety

2012-01-09T15:45:00.001-06:00

Anonymity is a privilege, while visibility can be a boon. Not that either is always a choice. People often just get read how they get read, and that can change, whether they want it to or not. i had an experience a few months ago that helped me learn to appreciate my visibility in a new way. A way beyond allowing (some) people being able to see me the way i see myself.

Someone that frequents the café i work at struck up a conversation while i was ringing their order. i mentioned something about being queer, and i am very obvious in my queerness. They asked me to get coffee with them. i had read them as a cisgender punk kid, this was my assumption and i will own that.

Anyway, when we got coffee, they asked me my pronouns and inquired about my transition in a seemingly overly curious, yet respectful way. At first, i thought that maybe they were just getting used to the uniqueness of their new friend. But then, out of the blue, they came out to me.

They told me that they’d been feeling very uncomfortable in their assigned gender. They described themselves as wanting to be androgynous and unreadable. Without delving too much into their story, they put themselves out there in an incredibly vulnerable way.

Of course i listened intently, and supported them the best way i know how. They eventually became a good friend, and someone i consider with the fondness of a queer older sister for a younger queer sibling. Later though, i became introspective.

i realized that my visibility operated in a way that affected people beyond myself. Prior to this, i selfishly conceived of my visibility as only affecting how people treated me, and felt differently about this at different moments. But here i realized my visibility allowed me to alter spaces, to carry safety with me. My visibility was now a shining beacon to others. It allowed this person to feel safe and comfortable in their vulnerability, in many ways because they saw themselves as a “like object.”

i had recognized my visibility to other queer folks as a method of achieving solidarity and welcome into spaces. But i’d never thought that my queerness could create an aura of safety for others. i was instantly accessible as a person with answers and insights, a person that could offer support and a safe ear.

i spend a lot of my time organizing safe spaces and educating those around me and writing on gender. i quickly came to embrace this newfound benefit of my visibility. i, by existing, was service, was safety. My capacity to queer spaces simply by existing in them began to become more apparent to me. i found myself reveling in it quite often, letting it wash over me and fill me with joy and love.

i won’t pretend, even for a second, that i always like being visible. i get harassed a lot. From my conversations with other folks, it seems that i get harassed more than most folks in my generation/location/etc. I think that the level of harassment that I experience is, in large part, consequence of my visibility. Although after these moments i always come back around to the self-empowering idea that i don’t want to change my presentation to avoid said harassment, i acknowledge that my visibility often carries a price.

But when my newfound friend was able and willing to reach out to me, it made that price all the more worthwhile. My visibility was no longer just about my own comfort and sense of self; not that these are invalid in any way. i was emboldened by this additional element of visibility. i began to see it as an elegant boon, and i began to notice it cropping up again and again. Visibility became something that i can use to carry safety for the Other with me like a torch, and that’s not something i’ll soon forsake.

interrogating binary affirmation

2012-01-04T13:55:00.001-06:00

Some of my cis-woman friends are incredibly affirming of my femininity, and i can’t say i don’t appreciate this. Gender affirmations are few and far between, and i deeply appreciate the support in my life. But i’ve had a few interesting situations occur that have caused me to interrogate the nature of said affirmation. One friend told me “Oh, you’re not a tranny,” after i had identified myself as such. Upon reading a piece of mine in which i referred to myself as a “critter,” another friend similarly stated, “You’re not a critter.”

While i appreciate the intent, which is doubtless one of wishing to make me appreciate the fact that my womanhood is valid, and the attempt at helping me to cultivate my self-esteem, these types of comments limit my capacity to self-identify. Their attempts to respect (their understanding of) my identity have the opposite effect of rendering important components of my identity invisible. My identity is rejected in favor of what their conception of my identity should be.

In both of the above cases, and others, people attempt to insist upon my having a binary identity. It seems that the first case stemmed from an unwillingness to acknowledge the capacity of transness itself to have value. i am not a cis-woman. i never have been, and i never will be. i am proud of my transness, it gives me strength and power and insight.

To render this invisible is further privilege cis identities. Cis identities are normative, expected, cast as that from which one can deviate. This deviation is then understood by society in myriad ways; these various understandings are often problematic and minimizing. To impose that a binary identity, a “now the other gender” identity, is the best means to respect someone who self-identifies otherwise is problematic in the same ways that refusing to respect a binary trans-person’s identity is.

Most self-identified allies would immediately recognize the need to respect someone’s shift from male to female or female to male. And these shifts, obviously, should be respected. But to assume that these narratives are universal and are the way to respect all trans and queerly gendered folk follows the same logic structure that assumes that an at birth gender assignment is somehow more legitimate or real than any other gender identity or expression.

The second instance seems to have stemmed from an incapacity to internalize my identity as a queer creature. This one is admittedly more difficult; i even find it more difficult to describe than my understanding of empowerment in transness. That said, this understanding of self is as, if not more, central to my identity.

Despite the fact that i do often identify as a woman, i also identify as something other, something beyond man or woman. This identification is not even one of “between” genders; and here there’s at least something of a template within certain communities.

To deny my conception of self as a creature delegitimizes another aspect of my gendered sense of self. This is an expression of solidarity with non-human creatures who are not confined to a social gender in the way that we, as humans, are taught to be. This solidarity is not, however, a political one. My claim to creatureness is not an act of defense; it’s more of a method of understanding.

This is not to say that other beings don’t have gender. They may. There’s potential evidence for it, although that would be imperialistically imposing our social construct on another species. But that’s not the point here. The point is that my creatureness represents my understanding of my own capacity to construct my gender in different and fluid ways. My creatureness allows me to respond to my environment, my community, myself.

In both of the above cases, the purpose of affirmative solidarity is defeated in the attempt. In trying to respect my identity, my identity is rejected in favor of their conception of what my identity should be or can be.

Now, in both cases, i appreciate my friends’ attempts to help me deconstruct internalized transphobia. And i do think this is what they intended to do. What’s more, i have internalized transphobia that leads to self-violent thoughts. This, i think, is a perfectly understandable response to being trans in an incredibly transphobic environment. And, when i say things that actually are transphobic about myself, i really do appreciate the help of folks who care about me in checking said statements.

However, my empowerment in my transness and my understanding of my own creature status are not ramifications of my internalization of transphobia. i think a better way to handle this would be to simply ask for clarification. In the context of a respectful conversation about gender i would not be offended by a question like, “Why do call yourself a tranny?” or “What do you mean when you call yourself a critter?” Shifting from assumptive support toward dynamic openness would truly help our society as a whole to push forward an understanding of, and respect for, gender variance.

pronouns are not a preference

2012-01-01T16:07:00.001-06:00

i've been thinking about a trend within queer and trans-aware circles of asking someone hir pronoun preference. Although i do think it incredibly respectful to ask someone's pronouns, the language of "preference" here is intensely problematic. There is nothing preferred about my pronouns.

My pronouns are "she/her/hers," or if i give you explicit permission, "it." That's all. There's nothing preferred about these pronouns. They're simply the way(s) in which my gender can be accurately and respectfully referred to within the grammatical space of pronoun usage.

The all too frequent way of posing the question, "What pronouns do you prefer?" or "What are your preferred pronouns?," carries an agonizingly problematic social weight. Defining someone else's pronouns as "preference" preserves the privilege of the person making the reference to use the pronouns of their choosing. It reifies the capacity of the speaker to gender the referent.

Unfortunately, people in our society are not often allowed to self-determine their gender. Typically gender is assigned at birth, and enforced rigidly, even violently. This trend is made more starkly apparent in the stories and experiences of queer, trans, and gender non-conforming folk. Our genders are consistently questioned, or harassed, or belittled, or simply disbelieved. The trend of gender as being something that is done to a person, rather than by a person, is indicative of the nature of gendered oppression in our culture.

What's more, to consider a queer or trans persons' pronouns as preferential distinguishes them as inherently different than the normative framework in which cis pronouns operate. This differentiation creates separate linguistic planes; planar separation here is intrinsically linked to an existent gendered hierarchy.

Admittedly, i expect this to be my experience when i’m interacting with relatively unaware non-queer folk. It’s a sad fact of life given our current society. Now, this is not to say that this cannot change or that we shouldn’t work toward an increase in awareness and gender sensitivity in our culture. But, the world won’t be perfect when i wake up in the morning.

What’s more troubling to me is that the issue is carried into queer circles. Frankly, i hold these people to a higher standard. There’s an increased exposure, and it follows that certain hierarchical trends shouldn’t continue. But they so often do.

This language of preference is one way in which that process takes place. Imagine asking about someone’s preference regarding something non-gendered. Say, for example, you’re going out to pick up pizza and you ask, “What topping do you prefer?” Say then, that the person responds “olives,” and then the pizza place doesn’t have olives. Not to be too presumptuous, but you’d probably bring back a non-olive pizza. This may be accompanied by a tacit apology or deflection, but at the end of the day, it would most likely be ok to not have olives on the pizza. This is true because that’s a preference.

Gender doesn’t operate in this way. My sense of self is not your option. By asking someone what pronoun they prefer, what’s being implied is “I will try to respect your identity but I may fuck up.” There’s a sort of deflection here. Allowing one self to conceive of acknowledging a pronoun as anything less than absolutely necessary is completely disrespectful to a person’s identity. Someone else’s identity is no one’s option save hir own. Period. To not own the responsibility of respecting a person’s pronoun is an oppressive operation of privilege, and needs to be checked if we’re ever to gain a liberated sense of gender.

So, what are we left with? How does one express respect? Why not simply ask, “What are your pronouns?,” or “What pronouns do you use?” These methods both acknowledge the fact that someone else’s pronouns are not truly known until they’re explicitly stated. This is good, because it checks the possibility of assumption. What’s more, in these phrasings, the burden is appropriately placed. The person’s pronouns are cast as theirs, as necessary.

This is a point where I am thankful for English grammar, and this is a rarity, because “pronouns” is plural in the above phrasing. This can refer to a single set of pronouns (ex. Ze/hir/hirs), because a pronoun set contains multiple pronouns. It also allows for a person to claim more than one set of pronouns; it allows for a complication of identity at the discretion of the person answering the question.

After the above question is answered, and the responsibility placed where it belongs, it’s necessary to respect said answer. i can’t count the number of times i’ve heard queer folk say something to the effect of “I just 'they' everyone because it’s safer.” i’ve experienced this myself, and it feels so incredibly disrespectful. It either means that a queer person has willfully disregarded hir capacity and responsibility to inquire about how to respect, or has ignored the fact that a pronoun has already been made explicit. In either case, the importance of self-determination is cast aside as unimportant.

Don’t get me wrong, i’m all for using neutral pronouns when they are appropriate. However, these can be as ignorant of one’s gender as using an incorrect binary pronoun. When someone calls me “they,” they aren’t acknowledging either my femininity or my sense of self as a queerly gendered creature.

Sadly, queer space is often the only space in which i even stand a chance of not being rendered significantly invisible. This trend of universalizing “they” relinquishes the responsibility to accurately refer to someone and makes queer space unwelcoming and un-affirming in the same way that non-queer space is.

So let’s get it right. Let’s get it right in our community, and then let’s spread it. Queer folk are under constant fire from the outside world, we shouldn’t face the same problems within our own circles. What’s more, we’re constantly expanding our sphere of influence merely by existing. Whether we want to or not, we’re setting precedents for the future of gender in our world. Let’s not continue the old, patriarchal framework in which gender is not defined by the Subject. Let’s shift this dynamic in our community now so that we can then expand self-determination in broader culture as well. But, disregarding politics, let’s work to respect each other for the sake of respect itself.

normalizing respect

2011-12-24T17:35:00.002-06:00

Typically, i don't hold out too much hope for trans allies. i've heard too many brazen assumptions and simplifications and apologisms to not be a little bit cynical here. i can only hear the "They're just like everyone else" argument so many times from cis-lips before feeling so invisible i could scream. But sometimes i'm surprised and given hope. Sometimes i like to be wrong.

A regular at my work, who is a real sweetheart, surprised me in this way. she is a student at a nearby university and is always at the coffee shop where i work studying. She rants about feminism and is just generally a pretty righteous individual. So, when she asked me my pronouns, i didn't doubt for a second that it was from a place of respect.

Frankly, that question is usually pretty respectful, save one recent experience that i recounted in "a lesson learning." So i responded with a simple, "she."

She responded, "I thought so. Me too."

This response was where she went above and beyond. Not only did she respect my gender, but she put us on the same plane by implying that her pronouns also need to be explicitly defined.

So often it is the burden of gender non-conforming folks to explain themselves to others. This is bizarre because all genders are assumed, constructed, put-on. Why should queer folk be the only ones to acknowledge that? Normalizing this respectful verbal communication of one's gender could go a long way toward breaking down transphobia and social stigma. i was pleasantly surprised at this level of allyship and was reminded that it is, in fact, possible.

why i transitioned twice, and never transitioned at all.

2011-12-22T13:16:00.001-06:00

The word "transition" is a loaded gun. Six chambers of connotation and stereotype. Each time it's uttered there's a sure-fire game of Russian roulette in which i'm left to suffer the assumptions that lay between the ears of the listener. Unfortunately, i don't have better language for this concept and find myself using the word frequently. This is especially difficult for me because my transition has not followed any sort of socially recognized template. In many ways, i've transitioned twice. In other ways, i'm still transitioning. In others still, i have never and will never transition.

i knew for a long time that i would need to transition at some point. i knew it in my heart and in my bones. Deeper than deep. This was the kind of knowledge that in other contexts is often referred to as faith. It was simply a matter of when; a question of motivation and resources.

When i was about twenty-one i decided it was time. i got into therapy and started seeking hormones. i do want to pause here to state that hormones and therapy are by no means necessary to a trans identity — i don't want to reify that all too common misinformation. These were, however, elements of my personal process. i also shifted my outward appearance.

i got really queer. i grew out specific bits of my mohawk and tied a pony-tail in back and put a glittery barrette in front. i got really tight jeans and a grungy purse. i did gaudy makeup and shaved off my mutton chops. i changed my voice and swished.

i got read differently. i had presented as queer before, but it was more of a punk-rock faggot sort of thing. So this was new. It was the first time i'd heard a little kid ask their parent if i was a boy or a girl. It was the first time i heard people say, "What was that?" when i passed by. Stares changed. Their energy shifted.

i didn't know how to handle any of this. i thought that i would be ok. i'd been read as a freak before, but i had been able to dissociate. People being weird about my counter-culture presentation actually felt gratifying, while their adverse reactions to this honest gender presentation felt so deeply personal. All of my gender theory and general bad-ass attitude wasn't enough, but i held on tight.

And then came the violence. i don't want to draw too hard a line here because words and looks can absolutely be violent, but here i mean physical, hate crime violence. The first few instances were relatively tame. Something thrown from a moving car along with a shouted slur, that sort of thing. And i pretended that these were isolated incidents, echoes of a high school oppression that was already fading into the haze of memory. i pretended it was random until it happened again and again.

i grew vigilant, withdrawn, scared. But i remained determined... until i drove through St. Louis. The details of the incident aren't crucial here, but suffice to say that i would not be here right now had a stranger not put their body on the line for me.

So i retreated. i decided i didn't have the strength or the energy to transition then. i started wearing a grizzly beard and flannel and hit. i hid from myself. i hid from others. i tried to be a man.

And it worked, for a couple of years. But, these things have a tendency to resurface. Eventually, i shaved my face. Then i shaved my legs. i changed my name, started hormones, started actively becoming. i am now a lot further along and it's been longer than the previous time. It hasn't been easier, i've just been more ready, more fierce. i'm less silent when people say things and i have developed some, admittedly not fool proof, strategies for self-defense.

But in the process of my second transition i uncovered something unexpected. i don't identify as a woman in the way i once did. i sometimes use that word, but it is almost always modified by the prefix "trans" or "queer." And, most often, i identify as something else entirely. Still a trans femme, but with a non-binary understanding of gender.

The word "transition" seems to elicit this image of crossing from one binary location to the other. i draw this conclusion from people's assumptions about my identity, or when they say things like, "You're just a woman to me."

I'm not just a woman. i once longed to just be a woman. i don't long anymore. i'm in the gender i want to be in — right now at least. What's more, i'm committed to my own fluidity, my continual transition. So, if transitioning means being just a woman, i haven't transitioned. If transitioning means having to renounce my queerness, my Otherness, my transness itself, to achieve some binary that doesn't even feel right, then i don't want to ever transition.

It's really just people's incapacity to broaden their understanding of what transition means that's the issue here. Most people seem to be incapable or unwilling to acknowledge any experience that they can't fit inside of a per-constructed box, and i just can't do that.

cultivating femme

2011-12-20T11:00:00.001-06:00

i'm a femme. i haven't always been a femme, hell, at one point i was a hyper-masculine, bearded hipster. But right now, i'm a proud femme. This word is tricky though and is laden with history and connotation and subtext.

Obviously this word doesn't apply to me in it's historical context. i'm not a cis 1950's lesbian who is devoted to her butch partner. The world has changed to the point that this interpersonal dynamic seems to be one more often read about than lived.

But i'm so thankful for the stories of these high-heeled bombshells cutting their lover's hair and cleaning their blood stained knuckles and the like. i know that i romanticize these stories. The tension and pain of being read as straight while seeing a different type of violence done to your most cherished must have been incredibly intense. And this is not my experience. i don't want to commandeer these stories at all.

But i don't think that my experience is so far off that i can't relate. i'm often read as cis, usually a cis man, though increasingly as female, both of which feel like i'm being cast as that which i am not. So i know what it's like to not be seen or acknowledged. And the people i love most are oppressed. So, i can relate to that bit too. These stories give me a sense of precedent for my experience.

Mostly though, i want to learn and grow from these stories. To be able to weather years of this type of pain must have required an incredible strength, and to do it with the care and compassion commonly associated with the word must have called for a nearly infinite grace.

My life has already, and for reference i'm in my mid-twenties, been difficult, sad, painful, violent, you name it. Unfortunately the world doesn't seem like it's going to change tomorrow. So, for me, identifying as a femme is not merely about the fact that i don't leave the house without eyeliner and carry a purse on my broad shoulders. Being a femme has much more to do with cultivating capacities that will help me and my loved ones weather the storm that is our fiercely normative culture.

My compassion gives me the tireless energy that i need to care for the queers in my life. Compassion birthed the patience to hear about the same type of oppression over and over again without becoming disengaged, because people need to have their stories heard by someone who can relate. It bore the love needed to selflessly offer my support time and again. It gives me the courage to endure; to hear about rapes and attacks and accosting interactions and still be present when called upon.

When i embrace others i seek to absorb their sadness and pain. When i rest my head on my partner's chest i want my affection to make them feel cared for and acknowledged. My compassion allows me to let people stay at my house when all i need is to be alone or to let people talk when i just need silence. It teaches me to feed others when i don't have food because i know a lot of other queer folks have even less. It allows me to search through my painful history for useful fragments of wisdom when others need that.

Compassion has taught me grace. Grace has helped me to forgive the well-intentioned cis folk in my life who have said incredibly ignorant things or who have hurt me, often without their asking. Grace has allowed me to take the same type of disrespect every single day but remain smiling and full of the sun. Grace has taught me that i can be the sun for others even when the sun doesn't shine on me. That energy has been cultivated within my soul and shines outward.

Grace allows me to admit my limitations. It's hard, but i can own what i can't do and can seek out folks who can. i can be selflessly matronly in this way. Grace allows me to be flexible and reevaluate what's needed. Grace gives me the precision to call out problematic elements in my community in a way that feels like i'm not being disingenuous or driving a separatist wedge in my community. It allows me to honor both a need to push the community to grow but also cohere it because we can't afford to be more fractured than we already are.

Grace and compassion have taught me strength, although admittedly, strength came much easier. Part of this is about privilege, because i was taught strength both by mainstream culture and by counter-culture. Mainstream culture values masculine strength and punk culture values brazen strength. So it was valued in my youth, while both the former qualities were not, and were thus necessarily more consciously cultivated.

But grace and compassion together helped me learn to tailor my strength. Most of the time, i can check my own pain and panic, whether this means putting my emotions on hold to support another or stalling my panic to be able to call out an offensive stranger. i've transformed my strength into a selfless, community focused, utilitarian strength.

Femme, for me, is about passion for life. i'm not talking about a lust for adventure, but a willful embrace of the more stereotypically monotonous or mundane. i relish the opportunity to care for others. This day-to-day life is where that caring takes place. i also love to learn and grow. Although this love is partly selfish in that there is an element of pure love for growth, there's another element that loves to grown and learn so i can share my skills and my wisdom.

None of this is perfect yet, nor do i think it will ever be perfect. But i'm going to keep refining my femme self as long as it feels right, as long as it feels useful. i am thankful that support and compassion and patience and grace all feel deeply good in my soul because they are much needed in my community.

a lesson learning

2011-12-18T12:00:00.004-06:00

i work as a barista. Being transgendered and in a very public part of the service industry has it's peculiarities. A lot of it is good; a lot of people are surprisingly sweet and support me and are totally wonderful. A lot of it is terrible; some people are just ignorant or rude. But, like life, most of it is gray.

i had a weird interaction with a regular the other day. He's sweet. He's a self-identified gay man that loves his husband. Until today he's at least tried to be sensitive around gender. The second time we interacted he called me "sir" and then caught himself and asked what i prefer. i told him "ma'am" was closer to accurate, though neglected to bring up the problematic nature of the language of "preference" in this situation. Anyway, since then he's been really good about it. He's gone out of his way to call me "ma'am" when he didn't really have to interact with me at all, which is sweet, if not a touch patronizing. It's especially sweet since a lot of people seem to go out of their way to identify me as a man, which is both patronizing and rude.

But today, as i passed him a cappuccino, he said, "Thank you sir." i gave him a cock-eyed glare that seemed to last for a whole minute, though i know that it didn't. He apologized and corrected himself. But he undercut this apology by saying, "Didn't we talk about this? Don't you use two sets of pronouns? What do you prefer?"

i know what i'd said to him before. But my instinct is to be open and honest and forgiving. These are instincts i've consciously cultivated for various reasons; they're all deeply important to me. So, i told him honestly, "i mostly go by 'she,' but i sometimes use 'it' with queer people that get what that means to me." Needless to say, this left me in a very vulnerable and trusting position.

He responded by saying, "Ew, I don't like that, it's so dehumanizing." He then ignored my attempted explanation and shifted the conversation to be about him and his desire to be more queer. This is not only selfish, it's rife with privilege to want to put on queerness as a fad like this.

i was left holding this heaviness for the rest of the day. He got to walk away from what he said. He placed his opinion, his dislike, his feeling of disgust on me and went on his way.

i've had several dialogues run through my head. My favorite so far is the thought "How dare you ask me, and you asked me, what i prefer and not be open to my answer?" This is such inappropriate allyship. Cis privilege needs to be self-checked. i need to be allowed to self-identify in any way i want or that feels right.

i don't care what you think of my gender or identity, because they are mine, and it is absolutely inappropriate to say "ew" or that you don't like my answer. This is especially unacceptable in the context of asking me about my identity. This type of questioning carries an implication that my answer will be heard and respected. Unfortunately that implicit trust was breached in this situation.

Here is another site of dilemma. This idea of trust and openness has been problematic for me. i like my openness. It's loving and joyful. i learn from it. It allows me to connect with people in ways that feel meaningful and allows me to grow.

But, my openness also leaves me vulnerable. Honesty opens a gap that allows people to hurt me. In a society that is violently normative and largely ignorant of gender variance, this is an alarming prospect. i don't like getting hurt.

Despite my instinct toward openness, i also have an instinct not to touch a hot stove. This second instinct is wrought in pain.

i don't know how to reconcile this. This painful experience begs me to exercise caution. That flies in the face of my desire to be a completely open human being. i don't want to grow cold, cynical, withdrawn. i don't want my transness, rather people's reactions to my transness, to teach me to be a spiteful person.

i want to interact compassionately and fruitfully and i can't do this if i'm closed off or shut down or protective. i want to believe there's a balance here, but i'm not sure there is. There's an unfortunate trade off. Thicker skin means less pain, but it also means callousness, feeling less. Sadly, people's transphobic responses aren't going to stop anytime soon, so i'm left with a dilemma. i've fought too hard to live in a comfortable gender to hide or become cold, so i will endure and keep shining, because that's my only choice.

gratefully enduring

2011-12-16T15:55:00.000-06:00

i am grateful for my oppression. Let me be clear here, i am not grateful to or for my oppressors. Nor am i wallowing in misery and pretending that this is beautiful in and of itself, although there was a time when i was wont to do that sort of thing. i am also not speaking of the sheer, unbridled pleasure of a resistant gender. i am grateful for the experience of the oppression itself.

Most definably, i'm grateful for my perspective, for my outlook. i have seen several sides of privilege and am all the more learned for it. i have lived as a man — a white, literate, passable as middle class, possibly, even ostensibly, straight man. i have existed as a willfully poor punk-rock faggot activist. i tried, however briefly, to ascribe to a normative femininity. Now i bask in a gender all my own. It should go without saying that i have been treated very differently at these various points of gender.

i have known privilege, massive privilege. It feels like a past life, but there was a time when i could walk down any street, beard as shield, unfettered by worry of violence. i have gone to clubs sure that my limp-wristed masculinity would be well received by the punky boys i was interested in. Now, i get patronized and harassed frequently, and even when people are mostly cool about my gender, they typically don't truly get my queerness. Now i get to worry about the very real potential of violence from bigoted strangers and the certainty of systemic violence. Again, this is not a plea for pity. It is merely a remark upon the reality of privilege and social class; and i am grateful to understand this experientially as well as academically.

The deeper part though, the less linguistically discernible part of my gratefulness is far more important to me. i know that i can endure. This is not to say i'm tough or strong or anything like that. These are only sometimes true of me. But my love, and my kindness, and my honesty, and my beauty, and my insight can and do endure.

My love has been rendered immutable and is absolutely not a fickle love, because to allow myself to love at all from a position of such vulnerability requires a truly open and unencumbered love. My oppression has taught me to love purely. To be kind in the face of such stark cruelty requires a kindness that springs from an infinite well of compassion. Choosing to be honest, even after making the tough choices queer folk are forced to make daily, requires an insatiable thirst for openness. Being sweet and beautiful and leaving a positive imprint requires a willingness to risk being hurt day-in and day-out.

In my most self aware moments, i find myself in shock that i am able to feel the things that i do, despite all the motivation toward cynicism. It often feels uncanny. But, at the same time, it feels necessary and natural to respond to oppression in this way. My oppression has forced my hand, forced me to adapt and become. It has taught me and shaped me into the loving, compassionate creature that i am. For this, i am deeply grateful.

gender is an ocean

2011-12-15T22:34:00.002-06:00

i'd playfully posited this metaphor last night. But, after i said it, i began to think about it more and more. Queer and trans folk, in my experience at least, seem to often wonder why their genders so often surprise or alarm cis folk. i wonder this too, especially after some of the more vitriolic comments i hear.

But when i really think about it, the answer is a simple one. Cis folks have genders that are never questioned or challenged. They are not obligated to introspection and live in a privileged state of unquestioning certainty of their own normalcy. They are not encouraged or provoked to assess their own gender or it's role in their life. This doesn't mean they don't have a gender identity, just that they aren't conscious of it (to me this fact seems sad).

Gender is often referred to as a spectrum. i take issue with this. i think that theorists using a linear alternative to a binary reifies the normalcy of polarizing gender. In this model there is masculine across from feminine and there is room between. This hardly seems like a liberated sense of gender.

i prefer to think of gender as an ocean. It is vast, infinite really. It is flowing and dynamically changing. It evolves. Gender forces the evolution of new genders continuously and dialectically. It is simultaneously ever-present and defined by impermanence. This ocean flows and storms. Theoretically each molecule of this gender ocean will eventually touch every other molecule, leaving an infinite array of potential gender options. This literally fluid model of gender seems far more congruent with how i see gender as operating both now and historically.

The aforementioned problem of normalcy seems easier to digest here too. A vast majority of people live at the center of the gender ocean. At any given moment in time, there is a dominant set of species. This would be the normative genders of a specific time period.

These creatures would of course be shocked by creatures from a different time, a different ocean. They would be taken back by a fantastic gendered creature that's traveled from another sea. They would be scared of wonderfully bio-luminescent genders of the deep that glow and flash to attract mates, or prey, or scare predators. These centric creatures would not be able to comprehend the function of a specifically gendered creature that grew up in a tiny, niche environment, developing skills and features so perfectly adapted to a specific environment. Understanding of variance is belied by a sheltered environment from which most don't stray.

Anything that falls outside of the feeding frenzy of normative gender could be seen as shocking. Unfortunately, people in our society seem to have a sad tendency to hate and fear things that they don't understand, things that stray into what they consider their waters. But the water of gender has always had and will always have currents. There is no ownership of water and everything underwater flows.

what's in a name?

2011-12-14T13:10:00.000-06:00

Name's are tough. Well, i think they can be anyway — maybe they're not for other people, i don't really know. But a name is a stand-in for a person. A name is a group of letters or syllables that is used to represent a necessarily complex and dynamic being with hir very own nuance and drive and passion, etc.

How can a name possibly do a good job at that? And that's just the, ostensibly universal, philosophical bit. God forbid we add gender to the mix. Most of us, by which i mean people, are given names at birth based largely on genital shape.

i don't want to do the boring, standard trans discourse about how sad it is that our society teaches us to assume gender based on our perception of someone's name. It's important. But it's been done to death. And frankly, there are painfully obvious conclusions to be drawn from the above use of the word "assume." Please draw them and read on.

So, obviously, some of us are left with names that don't work for us. Surprise, some of us even change them.

i've been thinking about this a lot lately because i have found myself wishing i could somehow exist in society without a name. i want people to just know me for me. No assumptions. No baggage. Just me. All other barriers to someone truly knowing me aside, there would be some hefty logistical issues to not having a name. How would i cash checks? How would i call service providers on the telephone? How would i fill my prescriptions?

So, since i've chosen not to completely abstain from society, i've got a name. i tried to craft one that fits, and that may be the best i can do.

My given name was technically gender neutral. The first time i heard it used for a cis-woman was about five years ago. i was only out to a few people at the time, but i knew then (and beforehand) that someday i would transition. i didn't know when or how or what that would look like. But to learn that my name was neutral-ish was jarring and odd. It was also kind of revelatory. It helped me internalize the idea that my assigned gender was not essential. It made me feel less isolated.

That said, i still chose to leave that name behind. i liked it, and felt close to it, but for me the process of self-actualization begged for a new name. i see it as an emblem for myself. Something to remind me that i can self-determine. i also wanted to remind other people to see me differently too.

i chose the name ellie. Yes, i use lower case. i did that with my other name too. This actually started as a rejection of privilege, masculine and otherwise. i don't want to lend myself authority or propriety within a power structure. i want to disarm any power or privilege i have. Lower casing my name places me on the same plane as all other words and leaves significance to the action i take (you may have noticed that i do this with "i" as well).

Even though i needed a break from my given name, i still chose to modify my given middle name into a first name. It was elliot — also technically neutral. i liked it better than my old first name and often wished people would call me that instead. Even though it was neutral, i wanted to feminize it. People so often ignore my transness as is, so i don't want a namethat lends credence to people's avoidant tendencies.

The real boon of cropping elliot into ellie though, is what it represents. For me, it emphasizes that, even though i can change/become/self-determine, i am still very much working with what i have. i can shape my present and future in a lot of ways, but i do have a past and i don't want to pretend otherwise. i'd lose a lot of growth if i did. i am proud of my history, it brought me here. And i'm proud to be trans, so i bear it in my name.

My middle name is june. It sounds nice preceded by ellie and i like that. i only use it sometimes. i only sometimes feel it. But, i'm from the Midwest, which is in a lot of ways culturally like the south. Sometimes people use two names here. i like having the capacity to do that when it suits me. i like being able to claim a home, a history, a bit of culture in an introduction. And i like that June is in the middle of summer, because i'm often made of pure sunshine and that should be reflected in my name.

i also adopted a new last name, navidson. i borrowed it from a character in a novel i like a lot. It's a book most people haven't read. i'll maybe tell you which book, but only if i know you and trust you. The importance for me here is twofold.

First, when i came out to my parents things got weird. i didn't know if i was welcome. It's not about rejecting patriarchy (although that's definitely a valid thing to reject) so much as asserting my independence. My gender and my identity are my own and do not originate from a biological clan, so neither does my name.

But, it's mostly about the idea of fiction becoming real. I've always known about my queerness, but it often seemed fantastic or impossible or out of reach; fictional in some way. I mean, it wasn't fake, it merely felt that way because it wasn't outwardly apparent. Now it is. The name is fiction realized.

It's also important to me that it's an obscure reference. And this is not because i'm some sort of pompous hipster. Transness is not a thing that most people experience. It's not a thing most people get or can associate with, at least immediately. It would feel disingenuous to have a readily accessible reference for that reason. That said, there's not an intrinsic link between the book and my gender or identity; i just liked it a lot, and that's enough.

i recently made this my legal name. i hate the idea of reifying "realness" in legal terms; i don't feel a need for juridical validation for any aspect of my identity. But, like the question of marriage or gender markers, there are pragmatic complications that arise. For example: jobs. i love my job and am glad to work where i do, especially since i'm fortunate enough to have a job where i can be out as ellie, a queer trans person. But i probably won't be a barista for the rest of my days and will need to apply for other positions. Frankly, it will just be easier if my legal name is also the name i use. Although, that assumes i will still be using this name when that happens — who knows what turns a life will take? But, until otherwise noted, i'll be ellie june navidson; but mostly, i'll be me.

truth in verbs

2011-12-12T14:39:00.001-06:00

i'd had an incredibly vivid dream in which everything in my life was exactly as it is now, save one thing. Rather than being the queer, trans-feminine person i am, i was a trans-man. Upon hearing about this, someone i know giggled and remarked, "It's almost like your transness is more central to your identity than your femininity."

All humor aside — and this is rife with humor — this struck me as true. This is not to say that my femininity is not important to me or central to my identity; it absolutely is. My femininity is a shining gem that i hold outstretched in cupped hands for all the world to see.

But to me, the noun is less important here than the verb. It is in the act of crossing, of transgressing our violently normative binary, that is most precious to me. It is in the active moments of this process that i have gained insight and compassion, that i have learned to be and to love. The becoming itself gained a meaning that i never could have anticipated.

My transition — and i have to apologize here, because i hate that destination-based word, but don't have another — has given me a unique opportunity to learn about myself and the about the world. This ongoing process of growth and determination feels so much closer to my heart than my gender ever could be.

My transness has also allowed me to come into a gender that is completely my own. i used to try to fit into the binary gender system. i very consciously hid my queerness behind a perfectly practiced masculine mask, and i used to conceive of a future that entailed a complete and archetypal femininity.

The latter never really came to pass. At this point, i can't imagine fitting into the gender binary or being normative in that way. i revel in the fact that i get up every day and am consciously true to myself. On many days that absolutely means being really femme, but on as many others it means something else, something less immediately discernible.

Again, here the significance lies in the verb. This searching, this becoming, this being is about being able to walk unencumbered in the world. Gender can be so heavy. Gender can define actions and responses faster than neurons can fire. But in being true to myself, instead of trying to achieve some sense of normative gender, i have shed a lot of predispositions that i may have not otherwise even been aware of. In breaking it down, in crossing, i've found a capacity to shed so much of that baggage and feel that, in this way at least, i'm not as weighed down as i once was.

This verb, this trans-as-action is far more important to my sense of self than any sort of gendered directionality. The fact that i feel invisible when someone calls me "sir," instead of being rendered invisible by a "ma'am," seems so much less significant than the fact that i am rendered invisible at all, frequently even. i'm not trying to equate all trans and genderqueer experience here, it's as variant as anything. i'm merely saying that being different runs deeper than the details of that difference. And it's a difference i've learned from and grown with; a difference to which i've grown incredibly fond.

she/it

2011-12-12T13:32:00.003-06:00

i've had some time to reflect on my recent positive experience with the word "it" used as a pronoun for me. i've done a lot of thinking and talking about this, trying to make sense of it.

First off, the context was really important; hopefully this fact is obvious. i was in a conversation with some (self-identified) middle-aged cisgender lesbians. they'd approached me and asked me about the possibility of non-binary genders. They asked me, a decisively visibly queer person, in an incredibly respectful and interested way. One of them said, " When we first saw you, we weren't sure if you were a boy or a girl... and I liked that; I didn't care. I told my partner, 'He's attractive. She's attractive. It's attractive."

As i was correcting her out of habit, i realized that in that moment "it" felt right. "It" felt right in a way i'd never felt before. i know that the queer people closest to me get my unique and personal conception of my gender but, beyond that tiny circle of folks, i feel that some part of myself is rendered invisible. i'm either a man to people, which is way the fuck off, or "just a woman," or even "just a trans-woman."

So, in that moment, "it" felt right. Again, it was the respectfulness that made this work for me; and i've totally gone off at people for using it disrespectfully. i was initially uncomfortable with this realization because of past experiences and other queer folks' stories of "it" being used violently or to dehumanize. But this was not that type of malicious usage at all. Her use of both "he" and "she" before her use of "it" implies that she respected my humanity before engaging my Otherness.

Obviously "it" is non-gendered. i like that. i like that "it" doesn't impose a gendered reading on me. Unlike "ze/hir" or "they," which imply gender neutrality, the word "it" leaves room for my gender. "It" doesn't force me to be "between" or "outside;" it is merely non-gendered.

Also, excitingly, "it" isn't even a pronoun at all. i've been trying to re-define my understanding of gender; trying to step outside the binary. A i feel like i don't fall "between genders on a spectrum," although this is absolutely spectacular for folks who do. i am something different altogether. This is not to say that i don't have or do gender. i do. Frankly, i'm heavily gendered. It's just a unique understanding of gender.

Because of this, using a pre-existing framework for discussing or describing my gender doesn't work; especially in this linguistic context. "It" isn't a pronoun, so unlike gender neutral pronouns, "it" doesn't try to squeeze me into a social construct that i simply don't fit in. Let's face it, these gender neutral pronouns, because of the way they are used, call on us to utilize an established understanding of gender to then understand an individual's relationship to the larger gendered structure. Again, this is fine and dandy for a lot of folks, and that's great, i just can't be and don't want to be understood in that way.

"It" is also commonly used to describe non-human creatures. People often refer to pets as "it," for example - and this never seems to bother anyone at all. Somehow non-humans are largely exempt from our culture's impositional gender construction. i want this exemption to extend to my queer-creature self.

My partner shared a thought with me along these lines that i like a lot. They said they liked that "it" didn't place people above other animals. i like that sentiment very much. This is a holistic and cleansing outlook. This is an outlook that allows me to perceive my gender not only as reshaping myself, but as reshaping my relationship to the world, and hopefully, in reshaping that world in the process.

"It" also doesn't have to refer to a living entity at all. "It" can be an event or an object or anything else. "It" is non-judgmental. "It" is fluid. "It" is universal. i particularly like the idea of being an event - or a series of events. i like that i can just be what i am, for a moment in time, without lugging around a cumbersome identity. i can move with a freedom as an "it" that i can't as a "she," a "he," or even a "ze." i can move with a freedom beyond pronouns and beyond gender.

i also think that it's so perfectly appropriate that "it" can feel, for me, both like the most respectful and understanding reference to myself and also one of the most hurtful and ignorant. Gender is a locus of both beauty and pain, so why not a pronoun to match?

i do, for now, want to continue to honor my femininity and the aspects of myself that do happen to align with the social construction of gender. Also, as separate as i often feel from the society in which i live, i am and want to be a member (in some ways at least). i want to retain that membership by using a recognized pronoun as well. So i don't think that i will be "it" all the time. i think i'll be a "she/it" (yes, in that order). And i'll only be an "she/it" with people who get what that means, which, frankly means that i'll still mostly be a "she," and i am great with that. And even to queer people that get it, i'll be a "she in public for both safety and reasons of precedent; god forbid folks who don't understandstart to think that's ok.

i'm sure i will keep thinking about and writing about this one for quite some time. i've also been reminding myself not to get too caught up in pronouns - they are, at the end of the day pronouns and not identity as a whole. one could very easily neglect key aspects of self by focusing only on pronouns. i do think, though, that pronouns can provide a lens through which to view (aspects) of identity. My shifting comfort levels with different pronouns strongly implies a shifting sense of self. A sense of self that is ever more comfortable and continuously my very own.