Today's post brought by listening to Abba at 9am

I love dancing.

I had the great fortune of going dancing with a new/old friend on friday night at White Horse. I danced so hard the inside of my jeans ended up wet with leg and back-of-the-knees sweat and my hair got slicked down wet from it's regular poofy stance.

The advice "dance like nobody's watching" has never been relevant to me. In fact it really doesn't apply at all. When I dance I always imagine everyone is watching and everyone is entertained and slightly light aroused by the coolness of my moves.

There is no other place I feel more comfortable taking up so much space (minus when I am reading poetry on stage). When I dance I prance around. My feet move much more than most of the other people on the dance floor. I think sometimes I scare them and I don't care. One time I tried to keep my feet stationary on a dance floor and failed. Music makes my feet allergic to stillness.

I have always been bad at the whole bump and grind. Sure I can handle partnered dancing, but that is not my MO. My dancing is much more self centered. I love just letting my body chase the melody and syncopation with movement. My conscious is not in the drivers seat when I am dancing. It's a big beautiful feeling. I know that dancing is not the thing that sets most people free or that everyone finds even enjoyable. But I do. There is noting I want to do more when I hear music my body recognizes.

Rage Rant (all I have time for before my haircut)

Sometimes I rage for no reason at all (or at least for no reason I can immediately discern). Right now is one of those times. The minuscule shortfalls of life feel like personal vindictive misfortunes laid out by a vengeful god. It's a good thing I don't believe in god because my anger would make me a very poor believer.

Acceptance of anything feels just out of my reach and all my joints are swollen with anxious fluids. My ankles feel just about ready to pop. And fuck, today was a good day at work. This collapse into seething is sudden and vicious and I am beginning to feel guilty about even feelings this way. I hate myself for letting it get this far. Blaming this body and its shortcomings has always been the easiest course of action to manage. I hate my hands for being dry and my fingertips for bleeding.

I've started to envy the people on tv who always have a reason when some awful feeling crawls inside their body. I wish there was always an answer beneath every outburst I feel might come spilling out of me. I just feel angry. There is no reason to it at all.

I can never observe myself with an anger like this. I can only be with that anger. There is not room for noticing what kind of person I am. And as much as I have fantasized about releasing the pain of self-consciousness I am scared of what not noticing myself might cause.

Even now after I have escaped the suffocation of my work environment, have scuttled away to the safety of a cafe and am sitting somewhat comfortably I still feel like my heart might be a volcano and that my dry hands could smash clean through a forty piece china set. I want to punch every motorist in the balls because one car came too close on the way over here. I want to give up entirely on the belief that good exists in anyone.

Again I blame myself for the venom. I think "I shouldn't have had so much diet soda" or "I should have drank more water" and I sometimes I just get exhausted thinking about how to attend to all the implications of the concept known as "self care".

Hard Rituals. In which I resolve to keep my gender's yellow safety on.

My partner and I moved to Oakland from Seattle in January. And having cycled in both cities I have to say that it often seems like nobody in Oakland wears a helmet when they're riding their bike*. Now I totally see the appeal in that. I see cyclists wearing funky hats and rocking kick ass hairdos. And I kind of envy their freedom. Especially since (when properly trimmed) I like to coax my own hair into a something between a pompadour and a mohawk:

This hairstyle really can't survive being stuffed into a helmet. Despite how awesome it would be to ride around looking fly and feel the wind move through my bouffant, I don't feel safe when riding without my helmet. I'd get the chance to look more like me if I stopped wearing one. But I think I would stop acting like myself if I decided to stop wearing it. 

Wearing a helmet is part of my politics and process as a cyclist. It shows that I believe in prevention and preparedness when it comes to taking risks associated with moving through a world made for cars on something that is distinctly not a car. It's bright yellow dome is an advertisement about my concern for my own safety and my awareness of the risk I am taking on. It shows that I know how to take care of me.

Last night my partner and I had one of our first serious talks about the possibility of me taking testosterone (inspired by our new favorite TV show). When he asked me how I felt I took a long time and gave my answer as an incomplete list of feels (lists help me cope):

Complicated

Attracted

Conflicted

Frustrated

Ashamed

Scared

Complicated was a segue into everything else. But let's address the fear first. I fear medical procedures of any kind. I fear that my sensitivity to most medications and chemicals would make introducing testosterone into my system a change too enormous for my psyche to handle. I fear I will lose that very sensitivity. It can be a burden sometimes but I cherish it deeply. I fear losing the ability to cry. I fear that taking testosterone will make my masculinity (more) hostile, that it will turn me into a Bad Guy. I fear losing my ease of empathy. (this list goes on and on)

But the changes T would likely evoke in me are also attractive in many ways. I'd like a higher muscle to fat ratio. I want to be able to grow (more and darker) facial hair. I want to not have to hide curves to get the look I want when wearing mens clothes. It'd be a relief not to feel I have to "put on" any clothes or behaviors to be seen for who I am.

This is where the frustration, conflict, and eventually shame come into play. Granted I think I'd look good with many of the characteristics T would bring out. But I also feel angry and disappointed in myself for being attracted to/seduced by that. Because I like the way my body looks now. And I see the masculine in it. So do many of the people close to me. I love my body for the way it is now. I don't want to give it up. It kind of feels like I'd be abandoning a part of myself I am comfortable with, just to satisfy what I feel are the false standards of masculinity.** My demanding others see the masculinity in my big breasted, wide-hipped, and sweet-faced casing subverts these standards. It challenges convention by requiring those who associate with me to rethink what they learned about gender and body.

The ugly and common underside of this is that my demands are often rebuffed. People (even those I love and who love me) will refuse to recognize me by willfully ignoring my pronoun preference. And when I try to explain myself or my gender I'm sometimes blamed for the confusion and subsequent discomfort of others. If all that sounds tiring that's because it is. It's a lot of work. 

But for now the set of demands my identity requires is an honor and a privileged I'm willing to pay for. Making these demands is a ritual I give my energy to every day.*** Just like the practice of securing the straps of my helmet under my chin, it's tiresome and restrictive. It keeps me from appearing to others in exactly the way I'd like, but for the most part the security it grants me, and the hard message it sends, are currently necessary to my being.

*In California the law only requires that those under 18 wear a helmet. While there isn't a state law regarding helmets in Washington state, King County law requires all riders to wear one.

** This is absolutely my personal perspective on my own transition process and is in no way fit to apply to or reflect the transition or rationale of other trans people.

*** I'm no martyr. I know that I may not be able to "pay" this price of my energy forever and that a transition into a gender role society will readily accept may be in my future. I just want to fight while I feel I can.

Pitting: myself against the system

Today at work I sweat so profusely that the sodden cotton of my work shirt started chaffing against my armpits.

Usually I arrive to work sweaty (from the bike ride). With only five minutes to change before clock in, I peel off my street clothes with a relief I'll quickly smother under my "uniform". I'd like to say that putting fresh clothes onto my sweaty body is my least favorite part of the workday. But I'd be lying. There's something about being paid poorly to work that makes each slightly unpleasant task seem like it's the worst thing you do. It's a negative meditation technique I think. Keeps my body sharp and my mind off the numbing crawl of time spent on the clock.

I'm a sweaty person by nature. And I swear that I am just getting sweatier and sweatier as the years go by. But usually once I've been working for a half hour most of my bikesweat has dried. And I just sweat a bit throughout the day from doing my customer service work. That sweat accumulates throughout an 8 hr shift and by the time I clock out I'm grateful to change into my still slightly moist-pitted street clothes. Which I proceed to make even sweatier with a quick-as-I-can-make-it ride home.

This morning a customer and I went through an extremely stressful transaction before I was even able to hit the 30 minute mark (a cascade of system/equipment errors were mostly at fault) and my sweat glands got kicked into high gear. Which is where they stayed for the rest of the day. Today was an anomaly. But I pretty much sweat my way through two shirts on a workday anyhow.

Now I know I could probably avoid so thoroughly dirtying as many garments as I do on a workday by riding more slowly. But riding slower goes counter to my style. And its means spending 10 more (unpaid) minutes doing stuff related to work. And at just a scrape above minimum wage, they ain't paying me enough to smell like roses or do work off the clock. It's pretty fucking lazy, but I see my pitting as a quiet, revolting yet beautiful sort of resistance.

Sick day: a body of jumbled thoguhts

I started feeling sick yesterday afternoon and gave myself a nap and a much longer amount of time than usual to put together and post my essay. And it's only gotten worse. It's been a challenge to convince myself to eat a decent amount of calories.

I do not love my body today. I have trouble loving my body when there is wailing ache in my tendons and when the pain between my ears is so loud and makes concentration impossible. I hate the pain but the pain is also part of my body. The messages my brain is reading as pain are parts of me.  And I sure as hell don't love them right now.

As someone who's dealt with chronic illness, who experiences gender dysphoria on the regular, and someone in a community of people who often take steps to change their appearance and bodies to reflect their identities, I take serious issue with some of the simplified and often heavily gendered sentiments of body positivity.

  

Nobody feels beautiful and content with their body all of the time. Life, our own unique brains, and mostly our toxic culture has made "loving yourself" a task that is uniquely difficult for everyone. Meaning yeah, it is harder for some of us.

The oversimplified directive of "love your body" can be excruciating to someone who is dreaming of, intending to, in the process of, or has gone through a physical transition process. As well as for people who are feeling sick or ill.  As with many things, when we attempt to simplify, package, and universalize it, body positivity can get twisted, exclusive, and misleading pretty fast.

This is a very similar process to the cultural awarenesses of LGBTQ experiences. In the sense that many people who aren't LGBTQ think of "coming out" as a simple one time easy task, when it is in fact a very long, involved, and individualized process. "Loving yourself" is absolutely as complex as that. It is a process not a single accomplishment. And not one that everybody has the same resources to endure.

It can be a denial of someone else's pain to demand that they love themselves. If I get hives, or have just been catcalled, or think no one will ever see me as a boy, I am not going to be able to "love the skin I am in."

It's hard and it kinda hurts to do it but I try accept people's feelings about their bodies. Because those feelings are real (even if they conflict with the way I perceive/know reality to be). One of the hardest compassionate things to do it to just be with someone when they are feeling awful and not try to make them feel better or "fix" their way of thinking. Even if what they're thinking about themselves is problematic and even harmful it's not something anyone else but them has the power to change.

Now this is not a wholesale condemnation of body positivity by a very long shot. I love it as a movement and I love that it challenges people to have healthier thoughts about and relationships with their bodies. I love that it's changing and complicating the balance of images and messages we're taught about our bodies.  I just want us to be vigilant, and handle everyone like they are each the unique individuals they are. Which means a simple slogan that works for some ain't gonna cut it for everyone.

I'd written most of this post before realizing someone else made a comic that did all the work already:

Thinness and Gender Fluidity: breaking androgyny's rules (WITH SELFIES!)

I asked this question last night after another friend of mine asked facebook who was the most high-profile non-bianry/agender/genderqueer person.

I asked this question because all the people I thought of as symbols in terms of my ideals for gender bending are all pretty thin. 

  

Lack of symbols has been a serious problem for gender minorities for pretty much all of modern western/white history. Fortunately and finally trans folks are showing up in media outlets. Not in droves, but in high enough numbers that gender minorities now have at least some known individuals to identify themselves with and see as role models.

The problem of invisibility for gender minorities is slowly but successfully being resolved. The hitch for me though is that, as a conspicuously not-thin genderqueer person, I have can't find any modern role models who look like me. It's often a tough sort of work to feel comfortable loving my own body. And I think this is part of why.

The images of these gender benders, which I am endlessly thankful for in so many way, transmit to me (along with many other valuable things!) two very harsh messages about gender nonconforming:

1. In order to be visible to others as androgynous/genderqueer one must be thin. 
2. The masculine must always be given more prominence, and physically feminine qualities (like curves) should be played down or not there at all. Femininity is best expressed through makeup or outfit choices and not though the body or facial/emotive expressions.

These are the unspoken rules of androgyny (as I receive them). They're held together by a crude mix of masculine centrism and fat phobia. 

For me these rules mean that my hips, breasts, and butt should be either insubstantial or easily hidden. Which they aren't and probably never will be. The last time I was svelte by any means was when I was 14. Then the estrogen fairy visited me. It's taken me a while to get here, but today I love the curvier parts of my body. I love they way they look and feel.

But this love is brought into a false challenge when I try to express my atypical gender. When I dress masculinely I feel reflexively critical of the fact that my breasts are a visible bulge under my button down and that my hips are obvious even in mens jeans. It seems wrong. It goes against the rules I learned about gender bending.

As a champion of selfies I notice this in the way that I have staged/posed photos I've taken of myself and in how I view them:

Note how in the first photo I seem somehow "less androgynous" with my butt stuck out and the very obvious curving of my body (and also the kick-ass pump)? I could be wrong but I think most people who saw that photo out of context would not assume I'm genderqueer. 

In the photo on the bottom however, because I've reduced the visibility of my breasts, butt, and hips, put on a pair of sunglasses and my best blue steel face, I more closely resemble the culturally accepted idea of gender bending.

Now. I like both of these photos. But honestly I feel the one on the top to be more expressive of me. The sunglasses do play some part in that, but mostly it's because there's a playfulness to the first photo that's missing from the second one. When I look at the one on the bottom I think to myself with a chuckle "geez that guy takes himself way too seriously." I find the masculinity a bit (comically) over the top. But I posed that way because it was fun to try on and also because that is how I have seen androgyny/gender bending portrayed. 

Note the fact that I've posed and framed the second shot in a way that makes me appear thinner and taller and that in the first shot you can see much more of my body and have a sense of its actual size. My hips don't lie. It's the skewed representation and people's subsequent assumptions about gender bending that lie to them about my hips.

So enough with fun and games and selfies:

I'm really starting to hate these rules of androgyny/gender bending. I hate being the only one working to remind myself that yes, my breasts can be masculine and that yes, I can harvest a lot of manly in my big hips. It hurts that there is not room for my curvier parts within the cultural ideals of gender bending and androgyny. 

It stops people from seeing me my gender as transgressive. And I'm fairly certain it stops people from seeing me as transgender, and from getting my pronouns correct. Part of the reason I take so many damn selfies is to create evidence that me, my gender, and my body are not invisible and can all exist simultaneously. So I can see me, in all my impossible glory. 

And fuck, it's tiring being your own role model, so after some googling and with the help of those who answered the question I opened this post with here's photographic evidence of two badass and gorgeously fat genderfuckers:

      

Courtney Trouble is a badass                                  Gladys Bently. Just Awesome.             

maker or queer porn and other

queerly beautiful things!

I've taken on the impossible (Essay a Day Challenge)

It is an absolutely true fact that I have no time at all to write this essay. Or any of the daily essays to follow that I have now pledged myself into cobbling together. For instance I am right this very moment writing this sentence from the bathroom at the yoga studio where I 'm already late for the noon reverie.

I spent the morning neck deep in all sorts of poetry (the genre I'm angling to have masters in 18 months from now) and will be at work til 11 tonight. The only time for additional scribblings are the half hour gap between yoga and work (that's if I skip the shower) and a 45 minute lunch I generally like to spend in the parking lot as the token non smoker in the smoking area.

This project is impossible. But then what is the process of creating, if not slinging ourselves at the impossible and aching for others to follow us through nonlinear implication into some semblance of mutual understanding. Which isn't really the same, but close enough that resonance can be achieved

Yes. This project is impossible. Which is part of what attracts me to it.

I am an impossible person. My body and my genders are impossible. I mean things my body will likely never be able to reflect and encapsulate and my words are always too short, to calm the constant fever of confusion that heats my life and pushes my engines forward.

....

I am skipping the shower. The smell of my motor oil be dammed. Now each sentence is coming between furtive bites of cottage cheese and leftover ratatouille: my makeshift lunch. I gobble between keyboard flicks before I fly off to my grueling sentence of customer service numbness. There I'll have to get over how under the skin my temper gets when someone asks "how are you?" without ever wanting to really know that answer. As if such a personal question could be a stand in for the beige conversational rocking horse of "hello".

The answer of course is "I am impossible." A terribly unreasonable greeting by most counts. And we must not upset the customers!

I've begun to worry about my bicycle which, for expediency's was sake, was left the porch. But now I worry her wheels are beneath someone else's pumping. And fuck.

I thought that by committing to this impossible task, I might find some fucking reprieve from the anxious thoughts that plague. I thought that if I could plan away every minute and even cover up the possibility of a fallow moment that the worrisome waves would stop smashing into me. I thought I'd reached dry land with American perseverance. But I guess there's still some saltwater in my engine.

I hate how this is turning into a prose poem. This is supposed to be an essay. An impossible piece of literature that is ragged on the edges and long in the mouth, yes, but still very much so an essay.

Secret confession: I have no idea what I am doing. And without that knowing, impossible is not really a thing I can define is it? So here is my challenge to you, oh few, and bodacious readers.

Do something impossible. Trust that your logic brain is unable to compute the parameters of what is statistically possible. Give up im/possible. With the greatest love, throw your body through artists tools and ritual, at something distant, worthwhile, and impossible

I'll see you all tomorrow!

My Lumpy Bravery: on chest binders and trans superhero narratives

Last week I bought my first chest binder from a reputable online vendor. With vigor, glee, and a hunger for play I clicked the purchase button. It came on a Thursday night. When I had stomach cramps and vicious heartburn that dissuaded me from enacting the fantasy of tearing open the package just when it arrives and trying on its contents that very instant.

The next morning I was alone and had forgotten about the bulging envelope in favor of my morning piss, the laundry & various other mechanics of morning.

I only remembered it while loading up the washer. I realized that all of my sports bras (and by all I mean 3) were starting to exhibit a decent amount of sweat funk. So, with a song in my heart I topped off the washer with my current slightly rank bra before adding soap and letting her rip. Afterwards I thought giddily, 'Oh yeah, I could try it out for a bit'.

I went downstairs and opened the envelope. Immediately I didn't like the synthetic, rough fabric. It reminded me of the surface of a cast. Though less rigid. I slipped it up and over forearms and head, but it got stuck. Awkward on my shoulders. I had to slowly but stiffly tug it down my back bit by bit.

The experience didn't get any better.

I thought I might find a way to press my expectations through the discomfort. But the force of my fantasy didn't push me past the sixty minute mark. Sure I liked the way it made me look in some of my tighter shirts. But the pinch behind my armpits made me wince  and pushed my usually stout shoulders into a slouch. Besides it really didn't do much more than my tightest sports bra already does.

Wearing and taking off the binder just made my breasts feel absolutely massive. Having all of the pressure on my chest, just served to remind me every moment of each inch of flesh the binder touched. I could never not be thinking about my chest and it's size while wearing it. I'm sure I could adjust out of feeling this way but honestly I don't want to. That didn't stop me from wanting to want to and feeling guilty for not wanting to.

The worst part came when I took it off and I was hit in the chest with the realization that the only other garments I'm comfortable (com)pressing my chest were wet and swishingly unavailable. I just sat there with red stress marks in my armpits, my chest achingly huge and aware of itself.

My sports bras do more for me in terms of getting my breasts out of the way when it comes to moving though the world. But more than that, they get my breasts off of my mind, which is great. They enable me to think of my chest as just my chest. This ease and flexibility is an extraordinary tool in navigating my gender.

I mostly ordered a binder out of sartorial naiveté. Because I lust after the clean lines of menswear and want some of my looks to not include a lumpy chest. I have a vague desire for smaller breasts and a more muscular chest but for the most part I love my breasts and have no animosity toward them. (I recognize I am lucky in this regard).

There's a part of me that loves thinking about clothes and presentation as all fun and games, but the truth is, it's only on my best days that I get to feel that way. Many days result is me feeling that my clothes are confining me.

All of the 50 minutes I spent in, putting on, and taking off the binder were painful and unsettling. But I kept it on for that long because I wanted to show myself I was “tough”. Or because some part of my brain shamed me away from comfort by screaming 'Real trans people are willing to suffer to ease their dysphoria (and so you should too).'

The shame and self loathing I felt gave me flashbacks to trying on prom dresses in high school. Except this wasn't about not being thin enough participate in the concept of pretty (which I never got that hung up on anyhow). This time it I felt like I wasn't tough enough to be trans and that because my gender dysphoria isn't actively painful that I am incapable of bravery or sacrifice.



Oftentimes trans* people are laughingly and empoweringly referred to as superheros, badass mutants, or as having extraordinary powers of bravery, endurance, or chutzpah. These are important stories. But they are just that, single stories about individuals. The trans* community is so diverse.

I love the power in these superhero narratives. But the way they glorify, and mythologize trans people's choices oversimplifies the complex and individualized abilities and tactics trans people create to cope with the suffering and discomfort of gender dysphoria. Worst of all it offers very few models and resources for newly out/realized trans folks (like me).

We see these “strong trans characters” and assume that transition and trans lives must include certain activities and compromises to be considered socially acceptable or brave. In Sophia McDougall's piece I hate Strong Female Characters she states that “The Strong Female Character has something to prove. She’s on the defensive before she even starts.” I would a argue that superhero trans narratives have done the same. And while the thing we're on what defensive about is very real and very dangerous we are more than just our fights against our own dysphoria.

I have a trans friend who will brush off or object whenever someone calls her “brave” for expressing who she is. Part of what I read into that refusal is her acknowledgement that being willing to suffer or to choose different forms of suffering is not bravery. She defines her dysphoria as suffering; a constant ache which can spike randomly or in reaction to certain experiences. Whereas I identify my dysphoria as a discomfort I regularly find myself bumping up against. The conditions of our lives and dysphoria differ. So too must our metrics for bravery.

As someone who has to balance the discomfort of my dysphoria with the discomfort of chronic pain and social anxiety, I don't always have the willingness or resources to suffer in order to ease my gender dysphoria. Sometimes I have to choose to ease my dyspepsia or my social anxiety first.

But too often that choice leaves me wondering, am I a coward? Am I  a disgrace to trans superhero narratives every where because I chose not to suffer the discomfort of a chest binder?

Of course not. (says my logical brain)

My body is a multi-purpose space for working on feeling okay. My unique gender and gender dysphoria are only some parts of this work and are not confined just to my physical body.

Because I've got many long term bodily concerns not related directly to my gender, I often prioritize my short term physical discomfort. This runs counter to the superhero narratives of trans folks that I love and clung to in the past and that have become a beacon for young trans people today.

For me complication of this narrative means choosing (for now) to forgo the discomfort of a chest binder. And to continue building myself and my expressions sans a traditional trans narrative.

I've decided that bravery, like dysphoria, has many forms. My bravery is apparently lumpy and unbound.

The long goodbye or 30 days of salt

Tomorrow I'm stepping on a plane, ready to give my former city one last, month-long goodbye kiss.

I plan to ride my bike to the beach, sit on some driftwood, stare out at the Puget Sound and
get lost in conversation until my butt is completely frozen.

I plan to visit my favorite local haunts and stuff folded poems between couch cushions and under the legs of wobbling tables.

I will drink tea.

I will collect more hugs than I can stand. And I will not feel any shame.

I will shiver off my fingers while climbing the vicious of Seattle's hills. I will not give in or give anything away. This month will be about taking it all in. I will live by desire and steep in the fruits of my greed.

I will savor the cold even as it is my reason for leaving. I will not stay inside.
I will catalogue the smells of the people I love.
I will make soup.

I want to bathe in the salty air.
I want to dip my heart into the brine,
I will keep the salt in me as something stronger than memory.

The Puget Sound is in my body and my body is an organism most at piece within its systems. I think I could find comfort and function someplace else, and I am ready for that stretch. But right now, my body is rejoicing in the anticipation of this long goodbye. Its salt will ease the difficulty of building a brand new home out there in the unknown.

I should climb more trees

This morning started out with very little promise. The ache I'd hoped to sleep off last night still clung to my ankles and seemed to have doubled in the crook of my hip sockets. I lazed about for most of the morning, made a huge bowl of oatmeal, and only ate half of it.

Seeking a change in scenery I took a shower and decided to make my way to the library.
On the walk there I dreamt up a list of topics I'm looking forward to dipping my pen into:

• The negative affects that being sick (consistent intestinal distress) has had on my sex life.
• What it's like to feel my capacity drain and become too weak to run errands.
• How the last thing we should ever need is forgiveness.

BUT the library was closed today (on account of it being a holiday). So I proceeded on to Lake Merritt  to write the old fashioned way, still fully intending to write about heavy depressing topics. Not two full blocks away from the library's closed doors I came upon a situation in need of adventuring.

Last weekend, a windstorm tore through our Oakland neighborhood and felled Lake Merritt's 150 year old eucalyptus tree. Despite the caution signs it became a community playground. The ache in my joints and abdomen gave me a moment's mouth-twisting hesitation and then I jumped in.

I tightened my pack, slipped my boots off for optimal traction, and then I started to climb.

          

There was something magic in it; the danger of falling somehow very charming. In some ways nature has always been my favorite "bad boy". The air smelled of happy sweat, vinegar, and a surprisingly small twinge of eucalyptus.

***


I've climbed to a welcoming perch and am watching the children and a few adults crawl over its downed pale appendages. Although wood is not the most accommodating of seats and my body demands to be re-arranged avery 5 minutes, at this wise intersection of branches, I feel more comfortable than I did in bed or even with the shower's warmth pouring over me.

This tree is very strong medicine for my body. Cradled eight feet up by the tilted blond branches, I am a child. All my frustration drains.

My concerns dwarfed by the smell of open soil and the confusion of newly horizontal ants. The gift of last week's violent winds is deeply healing. Its gravity a tilted reminder of just how decadent the weather is today. Low 70's and kind sunshine smiling on my stockinged feet. Ducks and cormorants dive and bob for their lunches. This is my paradise. Finally, I'm truly excited to be in the Bay Area.



***

I stayed in that tree for two hours. Several families came, climbed, and left while I was there. I climbed around on unstable branches fell a few times, dirtied my clothes with sweat and tree-skin, and got some well-earned scratches on my arms. I considered staying longer. But the groceries I came out for were still at the supermarket waiting to come home with me.

I slipped down gratefully and smiled as wide as the sky until the sun went down.

I don't need to be jaded to do good work

In radical conversations I've had other activists let me know that they're shocked by my 'optimism' and that soon I too will become jaded like them. I am surprised every time this happens. I think I can sort of understand from whence this cynicism comes. It comes from burnout and overwork and years of frustration. Activism is frustrating work and doing it in unsustainable ways over the long term can create this cynicism.

Part of the reason I can't be jaded is because I need the work I do to be satisfying and sustainable. Now before you go calling me decadent and depraved for saying so I need you to know this: I have a non apparent disabilities that affect me whether or not I am working. I need my work to be satisfying and sustainable or else my personal disabilities will make doing them impossible very quickly.

So no. I don't need to be jaded.

I am dead set against being jaded. My long term survival depends on avoiding the repetitive stress of cynicism. 

I'm not going to be jaded but I am going to continue finding more specific and radical things to take issue with. This doesn't mean I won't be angry or that my anger will be worth any less or be any less powerful. I strive to apply my anger as strategically as possible. I recognize anger as a powerful tool to make change but the bitter of cynicism can make us insensitive to how it affects those we apply it to. This insensitivity can make work faster but it also makes it hostile and sloppy.

Being optimistic takes my time and my energy and it makes the necessary good work slow. But its the best way I've found to keep my compassion intact. I'm not going to do it faster if it means moving forward without acknowledging the humanity of those who don't work with me.

Whether they benefit or oppress us, we all live inside the same systems, to approach anyone as if they are not worthy and capable of your collaboration is elitist and needlessly divisive. 

What jaded people see (and perhaps misunderstand) as my optimism isn't as simple as they think. Before I begin any sort of strategic politics I accept the failure of that act before I begin it. I never feel entitled to the success of the things I write about or go into. I hope for it. I'm frustrated when I am misunderstood. I do fight my ground but I see that in the act of doing so I also give way my right to success. Bringing an idea outside of my head invites its failure and even while locked in a well reasoned argument, I try to remember and accept that such failure is a possibility. Because my worldview and brain function are different from everyone else's.

In my mind people who are jaded or cynical, just can't handle the failure of the things they believe. They aren't leaving room in their worldview for people to have have difference experiences and come to different conclusions. And believe me. I understand this I have been there and am there with them when I hear someone who is saying something or doing something I find absolutely atrocious and dehumanizing. My immediate reaction is to write them out of my world. But, when I can, I work to undo such erasures.

There is difference between accepting the possibility of failure cynically, or with an open heart. Someone who is jaded comes into whatever they are coming into with the full expectation and bitterness of not getting what they want. The person who accepts possible failure with an open heart comes forward with full knowledge that their efforts may fail, but in contrast to the jaded person, they are at peace with the idea that they might not get what they want and still view the endeavor as worthwhile and valuable.

If I can't ask for things to change without accepting that I might not get what I want then I am not ready to move ask. If I move forward without accepting the potential failure of my actions, disappointment can become toxic. It takes time to reach this level of acceptance. I don't work on all of the projects I want to because of it. But I take more time with my politics because they need room for optimism and failure. My politics need room for all humans and all possible humanities.

This Body is a Metaphor: thoughts on weight loss and gender

I lost 15 pounds since I started a restrictive diet experiment six weeks ago. 20 pounds total since this spring. Even though I've been tweeting and speaking publicly about the effects this diet has had on my health overall I haven't talked about my change in weight. Partly because I don't want to be buried under a barrage of accolades.

I don't want to be congratulated on decreasing a number society has so inexplicably tied to my worth as a woman. Even when I tell people about the weight loss in private I make certain to include that the reason I've dropped weight is that the diet I've started for health reasons has me eating less.

I've been consuming an average of 1,500 calories per day. For my size and level of activity this is probably too little. I've also been spending more time alone which for me means a decrease in appetite.

But the thing I'm especially unlikely to talk about is the satisfaction I feel about losing weight, I can't deny that some part of me still buys into the less is better mentality. But the rise warm feeling I have about the small changes in my body is more than just a reflex of learned attractiveness.

I'm pleased because the only parts of me that I've noticed as discernibly smaller are my breasts and my thighs. I'm delighted that my belly has stayed decidedly paunchy. I enjoy having breasts but lately I've been fantasizing about having smaller breasts tighter to my chest. Breast that I could have at least some success at pressing into a straight line.

I've considered buying a binder for this purpose, but the tightest sports bra I own does a pretty good job already. And I worry that a binder wouldn't do any better and that bra. More importantly I worry a binder would kick up my acid reflux even worse than my sports bra does. The heartburn makes me sweat nervously. This makes the sports bra itch. I want to wear button-down and tie without having to disguise awkward lumps with patterns and loose fits.

I like my clothes to touch my body and show off the stability of my barrel chested square torso. I'm scared that if I keep losing weight my belly and waist are going to become more concave.

It's been a year or more since I stopped trying to define my waist. I still have a few fabulous belts for showing off my high waist. Which is sometimes want to put on but mostly not. But the desire exists.

I'm both afraid of and desiring the loss of my belly fat. If the fat stays I know I will enjoy its benefits of balancing out my torso. I will more easily look masculine. But I also know I will miss wearing pretty belts and lose out when the urge to do so strikes and they don't fit anymore.

It hurts me that perceptions of gender aren't flexible enough for my expressions to seem genuine. I didn't mean to write about my gender but writing about my weigh makes me worry that I am not trans or genderqueer enough and that I should just commit to expressing my masculinity exclusively.

But I still like being feminine and I'm angry to tears that the vast majority of people I meet & even know and love won't be able to see me as truth of the delicious fluctuating mix I am.

Changing my diet has changed the way I relate to my body. It's seemingly impossible to think about such changes without triggering thoughts about body gender, perception, and presentation.

The categories of recognition and representation society offers me is an array of compromises, each limiting and inaccurate. My body's given me one such compromise in the form of my digestive health. Finding ways to be both satisfied and nourished on this restrictive diet sometimes serves as a painful reminder of how my identity is impossible to balance and communicate is a way that nourishes me.

I know I can't ever fully know my body with all this stuff in it: food, fluids, the bacteria that is more numerous than even my own collection of cells.

I'm comprised of many things. I often wish I had more body more bodies than I just this one.
The experiences of trans people are often laughed off and oversimplified with a joking or oversimplistic reference to being “trapped in the wrong body”. It's not funny to me. It's actually peculiar to me that so many people are so settled with just the collection of cells that they've got. Have these people never been sick or felt the pressure of an insurmountable ache?

It's not urgent or acutely painful but I feel nostalgic for a body this is as changeable as my mind both consciousness and subconscious. Dysphoria isn't a joke. It only is peculiar, but I'd be willing to bet it's more common than I think humans allow ourselves to realize. It happens to children whose parents call them inside and tell them to stop being to be dinosaurs.

Writing about all this stuff makes me think about the literally transformative power of metaphors. The audacity of assigning identity or meaning to anything is just an illusion. One we can take back at any time we choose.

The task of communicating our being is an impossible and obsessive dive through language, projection, and prediction. Anything shared between humans is a metaphor and it's metaphors all the way down.

This body, these words, they're just a metaphor. I am who I am independent of the meanings I or anyone else decides to make up about them.