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.

Robopoetry

Sometimes the writing doesn't turn out the way I want it to. This has been happening a lot in the last few days. I've still been able to eek out a few post and some serviceable content, but it's been feeling a little thin lately.

Probably because I am focusing a huge chunk of my brain powers on grad school applications. But also because I have poetic itches that need some scratching.

it's been a long while since I posted any poetry on this blog but today and last night poetry was what ached for my attention.

This is an unfinished snippet of a poem I arranged and translated using a silly but very fun facebook status generator.

The generator itself pulls from all the things I've posted on fb in my 6 year tenure on the site.
One of the things I noticed is that the robot inside this generator had a hard time making sensible phrases and words. It often suffered from verb/noun confusion. At first this frustrated me but then I realized with pride that it was probably confused it because I use diction is some pretty unpredictable ways. Ways that are sure to trip up most simple robot poets.

Only about 1 in 5 of the statuses generate made much (poetic) sense but I harvested them all the same. It's drafty of course but here you go:


While listening to some android poetry
I dual meaning through the morning.
Sleeping with my laptop,
despair can be effectively duped
by a conscious effort toward not wearing pants.

I tried to sneeze but had to yawn instead.
I don't want to do
I won't ever
let you know I'm performing.

I don't want to come
but soon the road came tripping down,
broke the unfocus
I accidentally wrote
Thursday instead of silence.

but before I start to feel
I'm playing with ice cream and wine,
Skirting dignity, I sleepwalk
into a ridiculous relationship.
Find a way to accommodate
marriage and its shelf life
with the compounded cost of water
and ginger garlic broth.

He is a potluck on lonely Friday
has love left over, 400 extra bones
and a fantastic insight into how this
grammar is all sides.
Got love thinking that
You should come

But apparently my bicycle had other plans.
I'll be an uphill smile on Saturday night:
pasta,
cheese,
some peppered broccoli,
and to be home;
but sometimes
I just need to be a poem.

I don't want anyone to pay me
I don't want to be tough.
I am a cheesy avocado pariah
I am ham
with 400 extra bones.

Soon the road tripping down
is going to rip open
the sky with dreamfilled trigger fingers.

Kneebloom bruise
punctured by goosebumps soothed
purple in my defense
I was sharing her semimetaphorical
box. Serious ache for nourishment
but she can't come

from your flying dreams. Lately,
you wake up gravity. Still
drowsy but using only one syllable words.
"I'm not crazy I'm just coping.
I don't want to get more deeply into tomorrow."

Suddenly the road came tripping down
turned around and cut up
my bicycle had other plans
it turned my stomach and my literary crank.

Disclosure: I've fucked up and I'm still learning how to do relationships

Yesterday one of my friends wrote a post about his history within the culture of "gaming" women and pick up "artistry".

I appreciate his narrative and others like it. But I also realized how that often when we talk about relationships going wrong we only talk about the mistakes on the part of the men in those relationships. I recognize the trend of relationship violence being men-to-women. But that is a trend and not the whole story. My friend's candor in his discolure inspired me to go through my own romantic history and identify the sexist, abusive, and manipulative behaviors I've engaged in as a woman.

Today I wrote many things that are too personal to share on this blog. What I wrote contained numerous details of my past and present relationships. Enough to compromise the anonymity and emotional well-being of the people I share(d) relationships with.

Instead of posting the whole thing I'm just going to share some of the insights I came to:

• Essentially I drove headlong into relationships with the secret agenda of "make me lovable!"
• Initially these relationships would seem absolutely spectacular. I would suddenly seem like a whole person. Everything would be shiny, happy, and gloriously intense. Each of these loves felt as if they "completed me". It was so novel to me to be seen as a whole person that seeing myself this way made me feel kind of high.
• I was much less likely to say "no" to someone I was dating because I framed all their attentions toward me as loving.
• At my most insecure anything that took my partner's focus away from me immediately kicked off a spiral of thought that always ended up in the same sodden conclusion. I saw myself as unequivocally unlovable and deeply unimportant. It didn't matter what it was that took my partner's attention or how earnestly they'd professed their love to me previously. I was convinced in some part of me that I was unlovable. That part of me still exists (current/recent partners will corroborate this).
• Because of my own insecurity, I've been clumsy, and I'll say it, abusive in some of the ways I've sought validation from my romantic partners. I would come on strong. The words "LOVE ME" streamed so loudly though my veins, I couldn't listen for other people's boundaries. I've violated boundaries because I came into interactions seeking only to be validated. And for that I am so so sorry.

The ultimate takeaway here is that I used to (and sometimes still do) let my insecurities lead me into relating to my partner(s) in harmful manipulative ways. I'm working on this. The first step is owning up to my failures.

I pride myself on the work I do to be more intentional and ethical in my relationships. But that pride doesn't mean hiding or never mentioning my mistakes. While crafting this post I experienced a strong impulse to defend my past transgressions and then compare that to the actions of others, or frame it differently, so that I might not come out sounding so bad. But really that's the "not enough" insecurity talking. I know now that I don't need (your) love/approval to be "lovable" (I'm a human and therefore lovable). And honestly it doesn't matter that my bad behavior was "not that bad" it matters that it was harmful and that I want to do better.

A word about social constructs

I want to caution people from talking too much about problems as they are sources from social constructs. It's alienating to those who disagree and it also takes conversations about humanity to a strictly philosophical level that does not address the nitty gritty real world concerns and oppression and suffering that people face from the enforcement of social constructs.

Yesterday I had a chat with a new friend about whether or not gender itself is a social construct. I used to believe that it was but now experience plenty of doubt about it. I recognize that a lot of the specifics of rigid gender roles certainly are socially constructed but gender itself  (as I am constantly realizing) is complex.

Gender and gender roles are markers used by systems of oppression and those that enforce those systems. Erasing those symbol of oppression (if possible) does nothing to directly combat oppressive behaviors

One of the things we also discussed was a world without gender. In all honestly, this sort of world is appealing to me. But it seems naive on some level. I don't want to slight my friend by saying so. I also find claims that race or class should be abolished naive.

I am skeptical of spending too much time thinking about a world without damaging social constructs. I don't think it's impossible to reach at all. But envisioning and working toward the goal of a world without certain social constructs is work I'm not practically or ethically interested in doing. I'm much more interested in doing work that more directly reduces the very real everyday harm caused by the enforcement of social constructs. The goal of abolishing supposed social constructs like gender roles is not a practical solution to the harm caused by gendered oppression. Especially if those "constructs" provide the scaffolding for people's identities.

Part of this has to do with what confronting ideologies and social constructs means. Changing social constructs requires that everyone change their minds and ways of thinking. I respect the individuality of people, which means I respect their allegiances to social constructs (even if they are not constructs I subscribe to, like say religion). This doesn't mean I condone any dehumanizing behavior people might ascribe to their constructs but I respect social constructs as the legitimate components of identity.

Saying we should work to abolish gender roles or religion or race essentially says to people who consider these things to be vital parts of their identity that they need to abandon and rebuild their identities. And maybe in the future people will, but you know what? Today, in my world, asking people to drastically change and reshape their identities to fit my utopia seems not just impractical but deeply insensitive and even supremacist.

Social change also takes time. And mistakes. Lots of both. If certain social constructs are in the end missteps it's not going to just take more than just an acknowledgement of them to remove their effects.

There's an additional danger in focusing too much on the absence of social constructs. It can often lead us to think that the removal of social constructs is as easy as acknowledging that such constructs exist.

Social constructs are deep seated in our subconscious, which our conscious minds hold little to no immediate power to change. Changing the subconscious, whether it's of the individual or of culture at large is a long difficult process of changing thousands of micro habits of thought and action. When I say "social change takes time" this is exactly that I mean.

I consider myself a normal human (despite my many abnormal attributes) and it's taken me months and years to reach minimal deconstruction of certain social constructs in my mind. The reasons oppression based on social constructs are not very easy to eradicate because social constructs are much firmer and deeply rooted on our brains than most of us realize. Our knowledge of a social constructs doesn't itself mitigate the way we internalize & project that construct. Knowing about social constructs doesn't stop those constructs from affecting us constantly.

For instance:
I am a generqueer/genderfuild person. I try to keep my or other people's genders out of the conversation if gender is irrelevant to our interaction/topic.When telling stories about strangers I use the pronouns "they/them" or say "that person". But my making the gender(s) in such stories neutral is something I do after the fact. Whether I disclose it or not I am constantly making split second assumptions about other people's genders. And my own.

I work at acknowledging these assumptions with language like "the person I perceived as fe/male or masculine/feminine." But I can't stop my, very human, subconscious survival tactic of making snap judgements about my surroundings and social environments.

What stops me from imagining a world without gender roles or race is the knowledge of my own inability to change they way my subconscious has learned to reflexively sort people into socially constructed categories.

I think the denial of these snap judgements is one of the most dangerous risks of putting too much faith in the abolition of social constructs. I've witnessed this denial in many supposedly progressive spaces. The denial of internalized subconsciously oppressive judgments run rampant in the white male dominated spaces. (like say groups of the tech savy, and those interested in science/atheism).

It's not uncommon in such spaces to be ridiculed for calling out sexism or racism with the defense: "if you're seeing it, you're the one being racist/sexist."

This comes from the assumption that conscious knowledge of a social construct absolves the knower of its effects. It puts too much stock in what we can control with our conscious minds (which science has repeatedly shown to be less than we think!). It allows those that have knowledge and education about social constructs to think that they are above its influence. Which is dead wrong. This is how we end up with purportedly progressive people saying that we're "post-racial" or that a code of conduct isn't necessary because a "culture of respect" is enough to prevent gendered violence and harassment at tech conferences.

Knowing about social constructs gives us some information about how harm is caused and can be used to build ways of being that cause less harm. But knowing about them, and even being in a community of other who know as well is only half of the work. Whether we know about them or not the harmful aspects of certain social constructs are still inside all of us. It takes more than just knowledge to reduce harm. It takes the constant work of self-interrogation, deconstruction, and the imagination and rigor needed to build new habits of thinking and doing.

Don't call me lady (pt.2)

I REALLY want this shirt. (despite it's problematic use of "crazy")

Last year right around this time I wrote about my relationship with the word "lady". Since then more of that relationship has unfolded. Consider this a part two of that post.

In that post I cite the confining femininity and class status of the term as my reasons for no longer using it. There's more to that story now but first I have to disclose & summarize:

I don't think it is always a classist term, nor do I think ladylike femininity is a bad thing in and of itself. But much of the the ladylike femininity I've often experienced or witnessed is a femininity the I have little preference to be involved in. I recognize that there can be power in claiming the term lady. But that power is not for me.

Writing about this is scarier and closer to my identity than writing my post about "lady" last year. It's harder because I have personal stake, because it's not just my politics. It's because of my gender(s).

I am genderfuild. My gender is both an adventure and an open ended question. I rarely know what gender(s) I will be when I wake up in the morning. Some days I don't even figure it out what I am. But I am lucky in that there are a few things I am certain I am not.

One of the things I am NOT is a lady. When I am feeling like a woman or a girl, I am always a weird one. (If weird where a gender I might claim it). I'm closer to a a crone or maybe, tomboy, or something that has no name yet. I'm always too messy for lady, too frank to be demure, and the way I flirt (no matter what gender) often resembles that of a 15 year old boy.

I have never really identified with the term lady (even when identifying exclusively as a woman). As a teenager I would often make the self deprecating joke of "really I just don't DO dainty". This phrase popped up after I'd spilled 3/4 of my oreo milkshake onto my winter formal gown. I said it first shamefully and as an excuse to my date after apologizing profusely (he had to drive me home for a change).

I used to pine after the idea that I might be a lady someday. If I tried hard enough, if I behaved well enough, if I descended a grand staircase elegantly enough, if I held my body in just the right way, I could be a lady too. I even looked up and mimed charm and etiquette tips. Acting them out felt excruciatingly clumsy and forced.

I wanted to be a lady because I knew that's what I was supposed to be. I knew that was what I must aspire to be. I noticed the people in my life, but specifically the men I dated back then, holding deep admiration for the women we'd identify are "real ladies". And I wanted that admiration an the respect that came along with it.

In the last few years I've been so lucky to find a loving partner and community who support my exploration of my own weird gender. It's taken me a while. But with support, I've figured out (or maybe unlearned) a thing or two.

The respect I garner has very little to do with how I do my woman hood or how well I perform as a lady. I realized, even before I came out as genderqueer, that people  were already seeing the way that I did my gender and respecting me for it. I did not have to subscribe to traditional gender roles to gain the admiration and respect. Some people still admire traditional gender rolls, but I am more interested in people who admire others for being themselves (in this case respect me for being myself). Those who don't respect and admire the way I do my gender are not the people who I'm going to choose to be my long term partners or friends/family.

I want people to respect my weirdness and a lady is very rarely allowed to be weird. There needs to be room in whatever label I choose for me to be the very very strange creature I am. And the constraints of lady, while sometimes fun to visit are never a place I want to put down roots. I respect the choices of others to claim this term and even understand why it might be comfortable to people who're more intrinsically orderly and demure (or really just different!) than I am. But it's not for me anymore. And actually, it never was.

Titles I prefer (most of the time):
dude
buddy
friend
warrior
writer
poet
girl
boi
badass

For more details on my genderfluidity you can buy my chapbook!

Marketing Feminism: I'm not buying it

So I'm wildly excited about this.

I support this project 100%. I think it is a vitally important development in safety and transportation. The critique this project has inspired has nothing to do with this product or its development (both of which I applaud). It has to do with marketing.

If you watch the promotional video, which is masterfully cut and filmed you'll notice that it and the article I cite lean primarily on the novelty of "women doing science" to sell their product.

I am wildly excited about this helmet as cyclist, science enthusiast, and feminist.

In that order exactly.

I am excited that women in technology are making fantastic products, but honestly I feel pandered to by their marketing strategy. I gives me big sads to realize that the idea of women doing good science is so alien to most people that it's actually considered an unexpected marketing idea. Women have been doing science all over the world for a long time. It's not a novel thing folks.

I appreciate the fact that Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin highlight the ways in which they faced sexist discrimination and I think their stories around it are important. But right now what's important to me for their product launch is their product information.

You know what would excite me more than the 'shocker' that women are doing hard and concretely useful science? Actual specs on how this helmet works. I want to know if and how this helmet protects against neck injury and whiplash (something traditional helmet are notoriously bad at protecting from, but that this inflatable model looks like it might reduce). I'm curious about the tests run on it.

In this case my practical concerns for safety as a cyclist trump my concerns as a feminist. Not everyone viewing this product will share my priorities, but putting the rocket of girl power behind this product's ad campaign implicitly sends the message that it's more important that women like this product than it is that it will save lives. Impracticality is not feminist.

In general and in this case I am opposed to gendered/sexist marketing strategies. If this helmet's primary features are life saving ones (that make it safer/more practical than traditional products on the market) then all cyclists should be marketed to.

Looking cute and girly is a wonderful thing but I'm sure it's not the top concern for all the cyclists who're interested in this helmet.

As I mentioned before I am excited about this product. My irritation at its gendered marketing is only emblematic of my constant irritation with gendered marketing strategies in general.

Since their advent of public relations marketers have been looking to get consumers to buy things through the use of psychology and manipulation. I think there can be ethical marketing strategies, but marketing in the US comes from a long history of such manipulation.

The Hövding helmet's marketing strategy is to stimulate solidarity and support for the women who made it. They are selling the false feminist novelty of women doing science.

I think solidarity & support for women scientists and entrepreneurs is excellent. I think giving women in science and tech fields more visibility is excellent. But neither of these things should be a marketing strategy. The use of feminism as a marketing device is unappealing to me. It limits feminism to those privileged by a capitalist society.

As much of an anti-capitalist as I am, I delight in products that're both useful and considerate of their users in design. The Hövding helmet appears to be exactly that. But no matter how much girl power is pumped into its marketing campaign, buying one will not make me a better feminist. I want the marketing to stop telling me that it will.

No use for the obtuse (when writing about the less privileged)

Yesterday I straight up walked out of a poetry reading on a college campus. I found the content of one of the readers repulsive and degrading. He was using "washed up" strippers and sex workers as props to create a post apocalyptic fantasyscape and that was not okay with me.

I am a huge fan of post-apocalyptic fantasyscapes. But the use of sex workers as the primary prop to do so made me gag a little. Okay, a lot.

Old white novelist guy this one's for you:

First off newsflash: sex workers are people yo. Please don't use them, or assume that based on the services they provide that they as a group of humans can be treated as a stock of stereotypes to paint a more sleazy setting. You were probably thinking something on these lines: oh yea I want some sleaze, I'll just use some sex workers, they don't mind being used and dehumanized right? They won't mind or have any more thoughts or personality. It's their job to be used so they won't mind! Sir, fuck you. For your sake and for the sake of your readers I hope you learn how to write better in the future.
                                                                                  WRM

In particular this guy's description of the older, desperate-eyed, drug fiend, stripper with "buckshot tits" who would kill you for your money or for drugs, was the moment I knew I had to leave. I couldn't take it anymore.

On the bright side. Two women also walked out during the reading of this same piece.

But both this reader and the one previous read content that leaned on cultures they knew nothing about in order to create bombastic "entertaining" content. The first white cis male reader opened his set with a poem called "Slaves" and featured prison imagery and language reminiscent of what I guess he thinks is the ghetto or prison.

But his poem didn't say anything or reveal anything new or enlightening about the history of dehumanization forced on certain people in our culture. It did nothing to critique the prison industrial complex and the culture of captivity we've forced so many (people of color) into.

Or maybe it did say something. Maybe I'm just not educated enough to have heard his critique. I guess in well off academic circles it's enough just to mention or hint at the forces which violate the lives of so many. Maybe I don't get such subtlety

One of the reasons I am afraid that I will never understand or fit into academic or prestigious schools of writers is because I choke on the implicit. I have no use for the obtuse. I find it clumsy and grating when a poet or writer talks about those of lower status without acknowledging that they have an agenda.

Some advice to those who wish to write about people who are more/differently marginalized than them:

If you're going to talk about people with less power than you be clear, otherwise you are hiding the fact that your voice is more valued by society. When you are confusing or clumsy with these people's narratives you are reinforcing the exact same skewing of value by not clearly stating what you believe. By not writing about these people with their full humanity in mind (not just the affectations you've stolen from your stereotypes) you are erasing these people just by mentioning them. You are rewriting their stories over to top of their very real lives.

And that is a big fucking shame.