On Not Passing

I didn't start to transition untill I was 59, by that time testosterone had already rendered me bald. Even after 21 months of Estrogen patches and nearly as long on Spiro I still present as male. Oh I have boobs, my body hair is paler, and am told my skin is softer but at a glance still male. While I might be able to pass with the aid of a wig I still doubt it. I am luckyvo have a group of trans and gender queer friends who accept me as a woman so not passing isn't as bad as it could be. still to have the rest f the world se me as a man is annoying to say the least. Bathrooms are the biggest annoyance, I hate having to use the men's room and love gender neutral bathrooms. I adjust the best I can to the world around me and gather strength in knowing I am a gender queer Woman.

Morning Does Not Become Me

The bright yellow thing in the sky is back so it's time to post something.

It seems as good a time as any to acknowledge my privilage and I have it on several levels. I grew up as a white middle class male on the west side of Los Angeles giving me boat loads of privilage right there. I had so totally repressed my famine side in middle school Somali suffered relatively little bullying and that stopped in high school. In the seventies in California it was possible to go through the Cal State University system on the cheap, even a working class kid could do it much less me with a father who was an aircraft engineer. So I was a collage graduate with no student loan debt, anther boatload of privilage. Being in collage also meant I didn't have to worry about the draft during the Vietnam war, mor privilage. Even tough I spent most of the next decade clerking in a bookstore when I got married family contacts landed me a good job, privilage in action again. My wife also came from a middle class background so when the occasional period of unemployment hit we had family resources to help see us through, privilage in action again. When our parents passed we inherited two houses the one from my parents was free and clear. My old home was in a formerly working class neighborhood that was now prime real estate so I could sell it for a boatload of cash, another huge amount of privilage comes through for me.

So yes I have had a lot of privilage in my life and I know it. I'm acknowledging that here so you know it too, when reading this little blog remember how my views have been shaped by that privilage. Me acknowledging my privilage is not me wallowing in liberal guilt it is me trying to get a more objective view of the world correcting for my biases.

A Last Thought Before Bed

A year and a half into my transition I know I'll never pass, there is just no way. So do I think transition isn't worth it? Not in the least, I love the way Estrogen makes me feel and helps me cope with life. There's more to being feminine then just looking the part. For all the problems that come with transition I love being a gender queer trans woman. A year and a half of Estrogen has just confirmed that this is me.

Who speaks for whom

In this country it seems stright white cis male pundits with help from a few straight white cis female pundits speake for everybody on all issues. Oh there are exceptions, a few POC who will be quoted if there is an incident involving their ethnic group & a few rich white gays and lesbians who get to speake for all TBLG people. But day in, day out straight white CIS people speake for us all. This, gentle people is bullshit.

The only people who can speake athunticaly for a group are people who belong to that group. Only a black woman who has had to endure the daily injuries of dealing with casual raceism and sexism can truly speake of the effect theses things have on black women. This is true of all groups, it is also true that only members of that group can decide what issues are important to them. The spectacle of conservative white male pundits telling black people in the wake of the murder of Trayvon Martin that they were focusing on the wrong problem is obscene.

This does not mean that only blacks can speake on black issues or trans people on trans issues, it does mean that if your not a member of the group you're studying you have to be damn sure and double check your biases and privilage or risk creating another monument to bad scholarship like Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book)

 or The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. Of course if you're a stright white cis male and produce such idiocy you will be defended for just criticism, if you're any one else you will be ignored.

The glory of the internet is that it has given various groups a chance to speak for themselves. A few of us have even risen to some prominence. Now the rest of us need to listen to the voices of people from groups not our own. It can be difficult to listen because sometimes it seems like what they are saying is a direct personal criticism of us but even if it is we need to listen and learn. 

Morning in the Mountains

*tap* *tap* 'testing, testing, anybody out there?' Well it is morning in the Tehachapi Mountains here in California where I live. I'm just trying to get my brain to start functioning by doing some writing. Now what to write about?

Well how about what a brilliant writer Natalie Reed is? If your not reading her blog you should be. She explores transgender issues better than any one I know including me. She also puts me to shame with her ability compelling entries daily, sometimes twice daily. She is a major talent and I admire her greatly.

Well that's it for this morning. More this afternoon when the topic will be agency and who speaks for whom.

That Sinking Feeling

Mmm, Hi there it's been awhile. A lot's been happening in my life of late/ Follow me on twitter if your interested.

Meanwhile there has been a new jobs report and it's pretty damn good. Which is really bad news for the Republican presidential hopefuls. An incumbent president is tough to beat in an election, you need some extraordinary circumstances.A really crappy economy is one of those circumstances. A improving economy and incumbency are as  close to a lock as you get in politics. So if this jobs report is heralding faster economic growth the Republicans can kiss the White House goodby for another four years.

SOPA Thoughts

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and it's handmaiden The Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) have been widely discussed and denounced.  Others have discused the details better then I could. The main point is it makes it easy for a company to get a court order to disrupt or shutdown an offending site. The accused would have only five days to appeal before sanctions are invoked.Theoretically these provisions would only be used against sites hosting copyrighted material without authorization. The problem here is that the definition of intellectual property is a bit vague.

Remeber Lotus makers of the 1-2-3 spreadsheet? They were notorious for suing rivals for infringing on the 'look and feel' of their software. More recently Apple and Amazon have brought a number of similar lawsuits. Now instead of going to the trouble of filling a lawsuit and the attendant messy trial just get a nice court order and in five days your rival is out of business.  The burden of proof is shifted to your target, they have to prove their not guilty. It's a nice way to strangle a rival in their radle so to say.

It's a nice way for the big guys to stay big. Now what was that nonsense about a free market?

The 'T' Word

Yes I mean tranny. It should be clear by now to everyone that the word is a slur. Worse as pointed out by voz Latina it is a slur thrown just before violent attacks on trans women. It is used as an insult as in 'Hot tranny mess' by pipsqueak no talent cis gays. Yes I use it in referring to myself , telling myself to get my tranny ass moving in the morning. This does not mean you may use it around me ever or you will have one very angry trans woman on your ass. I don't care if RuPaul says it's ok to use tranny, he isn't a trans woman so he has NO standing on the issue. Which brings up the point that the community that seems most reluctant to give up the word is not the bible thumpers but the cis gays. Tranny is an insult and a call to violence against us so just stop using it. And no I'm not going to 'lighten up' or 'get over it' so just fuck off and die.

Depression

I suffer from clinical depression, mostly in remission now. I will never be rid of depression, it will always lurk in the background. Depression can still lay me low without enough energy to get out of bed or even eat. It can still trigger self destructive behavior like smoking and drinking to excess. What has changed is now my depressive episodes last hours or a day at most. They used to last for weeks.

It's taken a lot of therapy (thank you Dr. Cooper) and work to get to this point but I have managed to avoid anti-depressants. For those who are on anti-depressants and whom they help, good for you and I wish you the best.

Depression is a very real, debilitating and sometimes fatal illness. No one in the grip of a depressive episode wants to hear 'get over it', 'pull tour self together', 'turn that frown upside down' or any of the many variants of these. Believe me if we could just pull our selves up by our bootstraps we would. We can also mange our illness so we don't need to be treated as useless and fired or not hired because of it.

In the meantime I live with my depression knowing anything or nothing at all can trigger a depressive episode. As Christine Smith says, for us pessimism is easy, it's optimism that's hard.

Rock and Roll is my Religion And My Law

Well not really as I have no religion but pretty close. Rock'n' Roll is what first gave me a sense of the widder possibilities in life. That white middle class button down values weren't all there is. While it took 45 years to finally break out of the last pieces of repression and realize that I was gender queer it all started with Rock 'n' Roll.

So all those bible thumpers were right Rock 'n' Roll is a threat to their way of life, ain't it great?




Oh, and I would have so done Bon Scott had I ever had the chance.