137 lines
9.0 KiB
HTML
137 lines
9.0 KiB
HTML
<!doctype html>
|
|
<html>
|
|
<head>
|
|
<title>Zk | 2013-06-15-self.update</title>
|
|
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Gentium+Plus&family=Lato&family=Ubuntu+Monodisplay=swap" />
|
|
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/style.css" />
|
|
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
|
|
<meta charset="utf-8" />
|
|
</head>
|
|
<body>
|
|
<main>
|
|
<header>
|
|
<h1>Zk | 2013-06-15-self.update</h1>
|
|
</header>
|
|
<article class="content">
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p>type: post
|
|
title: self.update
|
|
slug: self-update-2
|
|
date: 2013-06-15</p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p>I told myself when I started writing more that I’d spend less time writing about
|
|
myself and more time writing about the things that I was learning. There is
|
|
use, however, in being able to think things through in the process of trying to
|
|
form them into words. The effort it takes to translate things into language
|
|
from thinking or feeling is sometimes enough to tease them into greater clarity.
|
|
Besides, I’ve written one of these before, and I suppose I should document at
|
|
least some of the stuff that’s going on.</p>
|
|
<p>It’s kind of amazing watching the way identity and dysphoria shift. I’ve been
|
|
off what hormones I was on for the last seven or so months and that’s led to
|
|
quite a few changes. Of course, there’s the strange roller-coaster that’s been
|
|
my libido as things shift around chemically, but other aspects, as well, such as
|
|
hair growth, skin texture, energy levels, and temperature tolerance. Hair, of
|
|
course, seems to be at the center of its own well of dysphoria, as I think it
|
|
might be for many. I remember friends talking excitedly about being able to
|
|
shave for the first time, and here I am struggling with a mix of too much body
|
|
hair and too little hair on my head; genetics is really working against me here,
|
|
and it’s exasperating how bad it can make me feel (and how stupid I feel for
|
|
feeling bad about hair).</p>
|
|
<p>Really, though, I’m not sure what that means for myself, or what it should mean.
|
|
I know for a fact from hard-won experience that one is hardly pinned to a gender
|
|
identity or affinity, and that it’s the type of thing that fluctuates over time,
|
|
but it’s hard to internalize that sometimes. Being able to just say “Oh, I’m
|
|
$IDENTITY” at all times would be a helpful sort of thing, in social situations.
|
|
People I’ve known for a long time could then easily assume that it’s safe to
|
|
call me the pronouns that fit with $IDENTITY down the road, just as it was
|
|
before. It’s hardly that simple, of course, and even setting time aside, I’ve
|
|
found myself using different pronouns in different aspects of my life.
|
|
Masculine, of course, for unsafe spaces and work/professional life,
|
|
singular-they for some other places online, and more aggressively gender-neutral
|
|
pronouns elsewhere, though to be honest, I’ve yet to run across a pronoun that
|
|
doesn’t make me feel awful, so I guess it really doesn’t matter which.</p>
|
|
<p>All this by way of saying that I’ve been drifting more and more aggressively
|
|
neutral, or something like it, and I don’t know what that means. I’ve got these
|
|
things that make me feel bad, and no real way forward for dealing with them,
|
|
since it often feels as though there’s no way forward that doesn’t involve
|
|
expressing <em>something</em>. I’ll always be this dumb 6‘2” man-shape with a receding
|
|
hairline (or “high forehead” if we’re being generous). What way out of feeling
|
|
bad is there? So far it seems to involve pretending to be a fox-person on the
|
|
Internet a lot of the time, which is helpful that it’s so easy, but certainly
|
|
involves less getting-out-of-the-house-ness than I’d like.</p>
|
|
<p>So how does that really fit in with the whole trans* thing, anyway? I still
|
|
suppose I identify as such in a broad and general sense, an umbrella term
|
|
encompassing gender-queer and so on, and I know I’m not <a href="http://gendermagick.tumblr.com/">necessarily</a>
|
|
<a href="http://cnlester.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/beyond-the-binary-question-four/">alone</a>. There’s a lot to be gained from the label, such as the sense of
|
|
identity, the community, the support, the recognition, and so on. After all,
|
|
transgressive matches that expression, and transgressive as it is, I really
|
|
don’t feel strong enough to push forward without that community and identity.</p>
|
|
<p>However, along with all that comes the question of whether or not I really am
|
|
part of such a community, and whether I’m really entitled to all of that. I
|
|
know that there are groups within the community that would strongly disagree, of
|
|
course. There seems to be a very ardent group gatekeeping the label, along with
|
|
many others out there, which disagrees with myself, others like me, and even
|
|
allies from being able to identify as such, speak on the matter, or even feeling
|
|
like they have the right to think about it. My partner, delightful as he is,
|
|
was notably called on the fact that he had no place talking about issues
|
|
surrounding the trans* community, which is hardly a good thing to have to
|
|
watch, or be a part of. </p>
|
|
<p>I count myself extremely lucky for the people in my life, to be sure,
|
|
whether they’re in the role of ally or along the same path as myself. I would
|
|
be nowhere without them, really, and for them to not be welcome in the
|
|
conversation surrounding a community of which I’d like to consider myself a
|
|
part, even as staunch allies, makes me feel decidedly unwelcome in the community
|
|
as a whole. Sometimes, it feels like it’d be easier to leave all that behind,
|
|
cheer silently from the sidelines, and just man it on up. It’s really hard to
|
|
take an idea that crops up primarily when I’m feeling bad seriously, though.</p>
|
|
<p>I understand where a lot of this is coming from, especially as I watch the
|
|
directions in which the culture (identity to a lesser extent, but definitely
|
|
culture) surrounding the rest of the LGB community has taken - or, rather, has
|
|
been drawn, with intense focus on marriage and other ways of being more
|
|
effectively subsumed into heteronormative culture. The argument is that the
|
|
fight of the minority should not be cast in the majority’s terms. What that
|
|
loses, I feel, is the complexity of social interaction within and between
|
|
identities. I am not solely someone who identifies as trans*, of course, and
|
|
even though I have identified as such in the past, and am currently primarily
|
|
(though not exclusively) in sexual relationships with other enpenised folk, I
|
|
hardly solely identify as ‘gay’. I guess I just feel that gatekeeping denies
|
|
interaction between identities as an unnecessary expense of focusing on
|
|
interaction solely within an identity. After all, things like sexuality, or
|
|
even gender, do not happen in a solipsistic world: I am not only confused about
|
|
gender in the context of the trans* community, but also in the company of those
|
|
close to me, and even those around me wondering “how <em>did</em> he get his legs so
|
|
silky smooth?”</p>
|
|
<p><a href="http://blackgirldangerous.org/new-blog/2013/6/17/8-ways-not-to-be-an-ally">Allies</a> make up my community, too, is what I mean to say. Allies who
|
|
understand that there are imbalances in my world, and there are some that can
|
|
and ought to be fixed. Allies who understand that language means a lot, that
|
|
intersectionality is a thing and “cisgender” is a word we need if we don’t want
|
|
everyone reduced to “trans*” and “normal”, and allies that will talk me down
|
|
when I’m at my frumpiest. The goal, after all, is not to force trans* into
|
|
being what’s considered normal now, but to add it to the list of things embraced
|
|
in the future.</p>
|
|
<p>I try not to talk in manifestos most of the time, I promise. I just want to
|
|
feel comfortable, and I want those who are closest to me, or can at least
|
|
commiserate with me, to be able to say “that’s okay.”</p>
|
|
<p>I guess it comes down to the fact that I’m still just as confused about all this
|
|
stuff as I ever ways, and that confusion is often expressed as a sort of
|
|
malaise, a feeling of being upset: upset that this is even really a thing. When
|
|
I feel like that, I think about it from the standpoint of cost-benefit analysis:
|
|
what would be the cost of just going with the most privileged option? Is it
|
|
worth feeling bad to just pretend like this isn’t a thing? Of course, it
|
|
doesn’t really work that way, but that doesn’t stop me from considering it when
|
|
things look bad.</p>
|
|
</article>
|
|
<footer>
|
|
<p>Page generated on 2023-05-10</p>
|
|
</footer>
|
|
</main>
|
|
<script type="text/javascript">
|
|
document.querySelectorAll('.tag').forEach(tag => {
|
|
let text = tag.innerText;
|
|
tag.innerText = '';
|
|
tag.innerHTML = `<a href="/tags.html#${text}">${text}</a>`;
|
|
});
|
|
</script>
|
|
</body>
|
|
</html>
|