Miss T.R. Gendered

Mental Migration

2011-10-24T22:13:00.000-07:00

I have made the move. I currently set up in a little farm house on a couple of acres, with a big garden out back that hauled in 100+ lbs of tomatoes this year, and i'm sure at least double that for next year. I am looking after the dogs, cats and chickens of two of my friends (to read more about the land and the lovely family that makes their magic here check out: This Rural Life.
During the day I drive up the hill to our new home, a single wide trailer sitting on the hillside.

Picture this:
When you stand up from lighting the woodstove, the cats brushing by your feet to get a taste of the toasty warmth you've ignited, you look out the window. The view, past the trees filled with squirrels and bluejays, the hillside goes down and down until it reaches the large and dammed kootenay river, and then back up the other side to a tree covered hillside. When the sky is clear out here the stars are so plentiful and bright that they look to a city kid like "movie stars". Stars like in some movie where a romantical scene is playing out on the front of a car, lovers looking into each others eyes while shooting stars blaze across the seemingly painted milky way.

I live in that storybook now.

I am grateful that I escaped the city. And today I honestly answered someone for one of the first times about what brought me here. I was buying a mattress off of some guy from the internet and he asked me what brough me up here. I told him straight up, "mental health." He echoed my words to assure that he had hear me correctly. I assured him that yes, I can't handle the city, and I am hoping that the quieter life helps.

The last few weeks in the city really served as a climax, confirming that I did in fact NEED to leave. In some cruel act of conspiracy against me the city was ensuring me that I needed to leave. I was having panic attacks almost everytime I left my house. Going out for meals, shopping on a busy street, or taking a bus were out of the question. My anxiety had sky rocketed. My sensitivity to everyone and everything around me felt like it was being pumped through an over driven amplifier. A new family moved in upstairs. We lived in one of those houses which had never been designed or even properly remodeled to have 2 separate groups of people. The power box for the whole house was in our bedroom (a corner of the somewhat finished basement.). The upstairs families storage room was mysteriously downstairs in a room that saddled both our rooms, with walls made of a single layer of drywall. And the upstairs family wanted a reasonable living condition for their babies. I get that, but it doesn't happen easily in Vancouver. So many landlords know that they can turn down requests for upgrades and repairs, because they will probably find another tenant who will pay more for a continually degrading living condition. Housing vacancy rates are very small (about 2.2% as of 2009) and affordable units make up even less of that. Anyways, by some type of strong arming or coercive 'the secret" style jedi mind trick manifestation, the new tenants had managed to get the landlady to assess and address the faulty electrical, falling off gutters, leaky roof, broken windows, and unstable back porch. This may have been fine, but it was headed up by the house next door, which had just been sold to new owners, being completely dug up to have water and sewage mains replaced and the foundation re-sealed. Given the density of the houses, this meant there were crews of men slinging gravel and operating mini-excavators about 2.5 feet outside my single pane bedroom window. Then, as construction of the house immediately across the street picked up, the city joined in, digging the street up and cutting pavement every morning starting at 7am. As the combined projects ranged from city crews to 2nd shift temp labourers, the heavy noise would sometimes go for 13hrs a day. Then the landlady started pricing out the electrical work, which would involve rewiring the entire house up to code, laying new cable from the street and addressing the fact that the house had not been properly grounded. So the crews were coming in to my space, and shutting off the power. With so little escape the panic and anxiety continued to skyrocket. When I tried to go out for a walk a ship would be pulling into the shipping port, sirens would be going off and helicopters would fly low overhead. Luckily my lovely partner and some dear friends were able to help with the packing and moving. Dealing with all of this left me feeling like I had been run through the spin cycle on a washing machine with cheese grater sides. Eating, sleeping, forming sentences, all had becoming more complex tasks than I could undertake alone. I watched endless amounts of television in an attempt to mentally escape to Weed's Agrestic, Big Bang Theory's Pasadena, or the quiet village where Angela lansbury and her army of magic dancing nylons and armoursuits defeat a nazi raid in Bedknobs and broomsticks (disney1971). I couldn't find a way to maintain peace, order or sanity in my own home, and it became addictive to escape in these alternative universes.

I got out. I won't say unscathed, but I got out. I have some recovery and healing to do. I am feeling it start as my days start feeling longer. I am not spending so much of the day waiting, running away, or hiding. Going out to a book launch yesterday wasn't too overwhelming, as I knew there would be less than 20 people in the room. When I got there I was relieved to be reminded that there is no cell phone service in the remote location. 20 or so people, without the unpredicatablity of all of those people tapped into a broad network of everyone they know via smart phone, facebook, texty texty tech. I realize that as my anxiety has elevated, my paranoia about people, environmental disasters, surveillance and general apocalypse stuff has gone right along for the ride. I hope to write another post about the book launch once I've given the book a read, but so y'all have the heads up its by a woman named Marcia Braundy. It's a book about men's resistance to women's participation and general integration in tech work spaces. I am looking forward to reading the book and hopefully getting to know this woman and swapping ideas and experience with her. Book is available through Fernwood Press and is called Men, women and tools.

I hope that this is the magical place of healing and growth I need right now. I need to build myself back up. I am tired of feeling broken and vulnerable in a space I can't seem to trust.
and ... mad gratitude to the many of you who've done your part to keep me alive and close enough to well in the city for the last few years. It's a tough place for lots of us; I want to give credit to the teamwork that kept it going as long as we did. Thanks.

2011-09-27T14:04:00.000-07:00

I did it. I quit facebook. I downloaded all my data, deleted it all from my online profile. I have essentially attempted to remove myself from the service. It's not designed to be quit-able. I hope people will still send me emails and call me up. I just don't want all my interactions to be filtered through a sink hole of online marketing propaganda and data mining any more. When you want to hang out, give me a call. Want to make plans? send me an email. Stop by and knock on my door. But don't expect that FB will reach me anymore.

Ins and Outs

2011-09-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

I almost always have trouble writing when I haven't been reading enough. It's a pretty even equation.

> Reading = >writing
Since waking up today, I have read 3 different books. A young adult novel about fairy princesses, a collection of short stories and a thoroughly inspiring non-fiction book around radical organizing across barriers.

Also, I have had at least 3 people ask about my blog lately. So, I am reminded that people will read if I write. These 2 factors, add in my new state of unemployment and exciting upcoming transition I have the pieces.

Content check
Encouragement check
Time check

So. Here Goes.

I'm in the process of throwing it all up in the air, hoping I can get the pieces to fall in order, get it right. I'm finished working in Vancouver, starting off on unemployment as soon as it comes through. Just bought a car, a subaru forester '00, real "family goes 4 x 4ing" as a friend said last night. I've got friends scouting mountain hideaways for me and my partner to run away to in the looming very near future. I am taking the steps I need to go and live that dream. The one that almost everyone of my friends admits to having in some variation.

move to the woods
grow food
make babies

Setting off to be that live-off-the-land-lesbian I am deep down inside. Or more like, find-ways-to-make-rural-living-accessible-and-sustainable-queers... but they are only a slight mutation away from one another.

I've been asked if I will be accounting my experiences, to which I say, "sure, when I feel like it." As I am taking on some pretty big exciting things, I may very well get all stoked and want to share it in longer form than status updates allow. And telling y'all now, getting feedback helps. When I hear from readers that I have said something that resonated with them, it sets me up to write more. If you are however the type of reader who reads this to send inflammatory hate driven spews of discrimination, disgust or disagreement- just keep that to yourself. Maybe you should think a bit, about how the things that you write on the internet go to actual people out there. People like me who have opened their heart and experience to you. I hope that my writing can challenge things for people, discuss the topics I write about with your friends, family members, share it on your facebook, tweet it, maybe take it to counseling if it fills you with things that are gross and mean. *hate mail inspired heart rant over

As I write this I have pots on the stove making hot salsa from green tomatoes from my garden. I added habeneros, sweet peppers, red tomatoes, onions, salt, pepper, apple cider vinegar and Innis and Gun beer. I am excited to have things put away for winter, so far peaches, red chunky salsa, tomato sauce, whole tomatoes and now this hot salsa. I am especially excited about these things as I will be moving up to a snowy mountain side in about a month, where I will have a winter filled with dreaming, scheming, crafting, setting up shop, and playing in the snow. My dreams are filled with snowshoes, ice skates, sweaters and wood stoves. I'm hoping that I will be also doing the school starter course through AERO, and that I can use that to help solidify some of the details of my school/learning center/knowledge exchange hub that I have been dreaming about making happen for years now. I'm pretty sure that if I looked through old files I'd find markered up sheets of the first visioning that I did for this project about 5 years ago.

It doesn't all look exactly the same, but here's the basic. I think that a big issue that looms over us as peak oil passes us by, climate change hits hard, economies plummet and governments do stupid things like the omnibus crime bill (which for those readers south of the border and over and about, is an attempt by canada's current super right wing government to "crack down" on crime and make canada safer by locking everyone up. The legislation creates mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent crime like possession, creating more challenges for canadians already taking the shit end of addiction, poverty, pain, and marginalization. I guess I have some opinions. But I feel they are pretty well grounded, like in science and numbers, since research everywhere has proven that prisons don't work as mental health treatment centers, addiction recovery centers, job training centers, health care centers or deterrents to crime. Even the united states is pulling back from mandatory minimum sentences and the war on drugs more than canada, there's a long way to come, as Troy Davis could tell you in his last hours today. Our "criminal justice" are criminal, and busted. The numbers say it straight, prisons cost a shit tonne and they don't "work" for the things that their proponents are proponing them to. Even a coalition of churches is advocating against prison expansion, you can check it out here: The Co$ts of Prisons
*politically inspired heart rant over

As we face a world that is falling apart at the seams and more and more people are catching on to the "we have to do something different if we are going to survive" thought wave, we need to find really good ways to do this. By this I mean share the knowledge, explore the options, make the changes. Can we do that in ways that consider those who have often been left out of such knowledge exchanges? Can we find ways to address the sexism that is often overwhelmingly present in technical learning spaces to ensure that our community members, all of them, have access? Can we find ways to make the ways that we share survival, and THRIV-IVAL skills inclusive of people with disabilities? Can we find ways to involve dialogue around "dirty work" and attitudes around manual labour that involve honesty and growth about the racism and classism interwoven in the ways that we address these issues? I really recommend this book, Bridging the Class Divide: And Other Lessons for Grassroots Organizing for more on these questions and how they may apply to other ideas.

I think we can. That's what I want to do. I want to start by creating a place that acknowledges and processes the intersecting oppressions that are default in spaces of learning the hands-on, creating safe and supportive learning spaces, and using that as a hub for intergenerational, interexperiential, knowledge exchange of the tools we need to make this global shift on a level that is practical and useful to the local area of the West Kootenays. I have been reading a really amazing book that has been a huge reminder and re-inspiration, I really recommend Walk Out, Walk On for those that are nodding along to this dream scheming I am dribbling out here.

So long story short, I am running away to make my dreams come true. I look forward to sharing the stories, and the salsa with you along the way.

Tired: An open letter to Gay Bars

2011-05-25T20:14:00.000-07:00

I'm tired. So fucking tired and I don't want to write this. But I will, because I need to. It needs to be written and I wish it didn't. Maybe if I write this this time, I won't have to write it again, won't have to feel this again, and maybe, just maybe, it might get better.

I tried to go out dancing on Saturday night. I was visiting my home town, and I really love going out dancing with my mom, her sisters, my hometown friends. I like being able to get a little loose and shake down. Unfortunately, the choice in my hometown, Victoria, is fairly limited. The one gay bar with a dance floor and DJs is called Paparazzi, or the Pap. And I can tell you that I would rather have my cervix scraped than have to go back and put up with the same nonsense they pulled this past weekend.

My mom and I got to the bar fairly early. It was still dead. I got on my phone and texted most of the queers I still know who live there. I made some calls and an hour later filled a table. We were all being good customers; drinking consistently without becoming messy, belligerent or violent. If I owned a bar I would crave customers like us, looking hot, buying drinks, dropping some fine moves on the dance floor and making it look like a real fun place. As the bar filled up, and the dance floor got more crowded, fairly typical gay bar behavior ensued. Servers were topless and bringing drinks around to the tables, topless twinks on the dance floor grinding up against strangers, and super perky staff performing strip shows in the intervals. As I got more into the dancing I couldn't keep my top on. I pulled my t-shirt and binding undershirt off and left them at my table and made a round of the dance floor. I heard the comments, a murmuring hush of the word "boobies" around me and I danced through it all. I was dancing really hard, harder than I could've done with something restricting my breathing or bumping my body temperatures to unsafe levels.

The DJ announced the last song, thanked the crowd for a good night and I went to go and try and grab my stuff. I have trouble with stairs, and unfortunately this place is at the bottom of a pretty intense flight. It's one thing to hoist myself up, but another entirely when I am fighting crowds of drunk and tweaky gays. I got part of the way to my table and one of the topless bartenders called me over.

"I'm gonna need you to put a shirt on."

I asked why. He went on, saying that he didn't have to wear a shirt because he was a man, but that I had to because I had boobs, and it was indecent exposure. I told him that the law doesn't actually restrict that, (I went home and checked- the law was changed in 1996 in Ontario, and since then it has stood as a precedent- leading to the city of Vancouver changing their regulations in 2008. Check out TERA or Topfree Movement for more on this.) and that if we were really going to get into legality, my legal government issued ID says Male, and regardless of how my body looks or what my ID says, I didn't come to a gay bar to have my body or gender presentation policed. He deferred to security, who came over to our table and attempted to eject me. I told him I would leave, because they were closing, and because I could tell that I wasn't welcome there, but that I would not leave because I was not dressed appropriately. And no, I wouldn't put a shirt on. I could go out into the street and not face any charges or difficulty with my bare chest, and I'd be damned if it would happen in a space set up to be a community gathering place for folks of diverse sexual orientations and gender presentations. I asked to speak to management when it became clear that the security guard didn't want to respect me or my friends. This request was denied.

According to the website of the club they are "Hottest Premiere Gay and LGBTS Community Nightclub in Victoria." and "created for a clientele in demand of unparalleled customer service". I've heard people say that often in the LGBT acronym, the T is silent, and I will say that this venue takes things one step further. Not only are they restrictive and policing of how trans people can present themselves in the space, but the bar staff feel entitled to assign sex/gender to their clients and hold up bogus "laws" to enforce their assumptions. This bar has marked male and female washrooms only, and has been known to forcefully remove clients who they think are using the wrong one. This has led my friends to boycott the place on numerous occasions, write letters, organize alternative parties. All of these things are great, but don't seem to be making the type of impact that is needed. The management and staff of Paparazzi (and too many other bars in too many other cities) think that they can treat trans people in this way, neglecting and disrespecting us, telling us how to conform and how to be "good gays".

I think that it's time that management and staff of gay bars take a look back to their history. Before stonewall and the social justice advancements that followed gay bars were under constant police scrutiny and raids. If it weren't for the brave gender warriors who were fed up with being told that their clothes didn't match their gender fighting back these bars could not now exist. Women like Sylvia Rivera are the ones who threw the first bottles, fought back against police repression of gathering of queers. If you want to include the T, there is some work that needs to happen.

1. For start, acknowledge the important role of transpeople in your history and communities. Do some reading. There is no shortage of writing about us or by us out there. Read my blog, do a google search for transgender history. Read Transgender Warriors. Read wikipedia.

2. Think about the way you set up your space. You run a gay bar. Queers of all stripes have been challenging the gender binary for all of eternity and people of all types have, and will continue to urinate so long as we can. The thing about having a bar that is supposedly for the queer (T inclusive) community, but then only providing binary options for urinating sort of cancels each other out. It's not a tricky thing to take down the signs on your washroom, label them as stalls and urinals or left and right, I don't really care. But your clients don't all fit in the gender binary, so your bathrooms shouldn't either.

3. Drop the double standards. Whatever your wait staff and performers wear sets the standard for what your clients can wear. If some boys are welcome to be topless and others are not, check where you draw that line. Because you are probably using a line that constitutes discrimination. BC is in the process of becoming more explicitly clear around what discrimination of trans people is, and how it is wrong. You may want to look into this and think about how your business would fare with a human rights case on it's hands.

4. Train your staff. If you want to hold your claim as "Hottest Premiere Gay and LGBTS Community Nightclub in Victoria." and "created for a clientele in demand of unparalleled customer service". You need to do some work to show that. One staff member approached me afterwords saying that he was appalled, and that he felt it truly unjust that he was paid to take his shirt off, while I was kicked out. If you want the queer community to frequent your bar, hire more staff like him. And let the other folks go. Especially if you offer them some type of cultural sensitivity training (maybe- given your track record, outsourcing this would be a good idea. How about calling in PFLAG or Transaction or another group that does really good work with the trans community in Victoria.) for working with the trans and queer communities and it doesn't stick. Your staff should understand that policing someones gender expression is a pretty class one No-No and have some skills to have conversations with patrons that show that they respect and honour their identities.

5. Expect a slow down in traffic. I have a pretty wide readership, and I know that a number of very influential community organizers were with me that night. Expect that queers and allies in Victoria will find (or make- like homospun: this party was started in a response to lack of safe and inclusive spaces to party behind the tweed curtain) alternatives. People will tell their friends. People will hold you accountable to your supposed "inclusion". You will need to show some pretty serious changes in the ways you operate to rebuild the trust of the queer community. This isn't just about a small population of trans people either. I trust that you will get letters, and not business, from gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, queers, and allies that want to be able to party in a place where the T is not silent. I'm hoping that you will take the extra time on your hands to make some change.

6. Don't stop working on this. You will always be hiring new staff, having new customers. Standards of acceptable practice will improve and you should do what you can to lead the way on this. Find ways to work with your community. Conduct community needs assessments. Invite feedback from patrons. Once upon a time, in my highest of drag I was asked to have a regular show at Paparazzi, I didn't take them up, because my lack of safety in that space, and their complacency of other performers playing disgustingly racist pieces I didn't feel I was up for the uphill battle. Maybe, once you've done some of those first steps you will be able to find some really rad people with good anti-oppression politics who want to run programming in your space. It's not really ideal considering it's physical inaccessibility, but working WITH your community will be a good way to help make sure that they don't shut you down or leave you empty over pride weekend.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for acting. Thank you to the queer and trans people and my lovely and supportive straight mom for having my back Saturday night. Thank you to friends and community members who will write the bar management and tell them what you need to feel safe in their bar. And thank you to all of you who can manage to find other places to get your dance on until something changes. This may be the summer of kitchen dance parties and late night beach fires. But hopefully, this will be the kick in the pants bar management needs to take these things seriously.

24 article response

2011-04-01T11:32:00.000-07:00

This article was published in todays' 24hrs Newspaper. This paper is widely distributed across transit in the Greater Vancouver area and syndicated across much of the country. I often flip through it to get my trashy celebrity gossip and horoscopes, but this morning I stopped on page 4, where I couldn't go any further without responding. Here is my response:

I wanted to write you to give some feedback on your article published in today’s 24 newspaper here in Vancouver.

I am a transgender person living with mental health challenges and it always excites me to see the mainstream public advancing their knowledge about both mental health and transgender issues. Seeing your article in this morning’s paper gave me hope of this being a very “mainstream” outlet from which to continue to advance these conversations. I was however upset to read your article and see how much it continued to muddle issues around gender identity and presentation with that of sexual orientation and mental health. Many trans people are queer, or read as such, but not all are, and discrimination based on gender presentation may be linked to the perception of someone’s orientation, it is actually something else altogether, most commonly referred to as transphobia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transphobia) . Please allow me to make a few points of critique to your article. I am excited that you have such a broad based audience to engage in education and dialogue around mental health, I’d like to provide this feedback to further this dialogue.

Last week, a ladyboy was my waitress as I dined in the small city of Pattani, also a few days later at a Burger King in the seaside town of Hua Hin. Last month, fledgling Thai airline PC Air hired six transsexuals as flight attendants, all of which will be given special uniforms that identify them as the “third sex.”

Understanding that biological “sex” can be determined by genitals, hormones or chromosomal make-up and that gender is the correct term that refers to someone’s presentation or identity. This can be most simply broken down by understanding that sex is what’s between the legs, gender is what’s between the ears. For some folks that is the same (cis-gendered or non-trans people) and for others it is not (trans as umbrella, or transgender meaning that the gender is different than the sex assigned at birth) while for others that is something that they wish medical intervention with (transsexual- using surgery, hormones, electrolysis etc to change the sex characteristics of a persons body). It is also important to note that within Thai culture, according to my understanding and echoed by your statements here, “lady-boys” are not accepted into society as the gender they feel or present, but are given the option of “other”. This is great for some people, myself included, who do feel other from the options of male or female, but in the larger context of transgender and transsexual acceptance and understanding it’s important to note that some trans people do not want to exist merely as “other”, but would like to be accepted as the gender that they feel and present and respected within that. This would mean transwomen (MTF or male to female transgender or transsexual individuals) would be hired, uniformed and treated as women. Creating a separate category, as exists within Thai “ladyboy” culture or India’s hijra class where trans people are “accepted” but still treated as “less than” is not equality or true acceptance.

In Canada, attitudes are slowly changing, but unfortunately homophobia is still rampant. Last year, a teacher at a Catholic high school for girls in Vancouver was told to work from home after parents complained about having a lesbian teach their kids, and sadly a year hardly goes by with out some rednecks “gay bashing” an unfortunate gentleman in the West End. Yet, we are far away from accepting “ladyboys” in our workforce.

These are examples of violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, not gender identity or presentation. There is no shortage of examples that can actually refer to what you seem to be attempting to communicate here, transphobic violence or discrimination. One place to find such reports is here: http://www.transgenderdor.org/ the online home of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to acknowledge and remember the violence perpetrated against members of trans communities. Also relevant to this would be information about the bill C-389 which recently died on its way through government due to the call of election, this was a private members bill sponsored by Burnaby MP Bill Siksay which would add gender identity and gender expression to list of discriminations protected under the Human Rights Act.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the authoritative source doctors use to classify mental illnesses. Presently, the field of psychiatric medicine is using the fourth version, DSM-IV. But as cultural attitudes continue to change and psychiatric knowledge continues to grow, there will undoubtedly be a fifth edition and then later a sixth.
A person can freely express himself in one culture and be mentally healthy, and yet in another time and place they would be deemed disturbed. In Canada, people who don’t fit into the dominant heterosexual orientation mold, the stress of either hiding or expressing their sexual orientation can be very severe. To be mentally healthy, a person needs to feel like they belong.

It’s important to remember that although homosexuality was removed from the DSM-II in 1973, gender identity disorder remains on the DSM-IV, which means that people whose gender identity doesn’t match their body must access mental health services and be diagnosed with a mental health condition (GID) to access hormones, surgery and other physical remedies to this physical health and societal condition, which for some reason remains a classifiable mental illness. We can hope that GID will be removed from DSM-V, but the debate remains amongst cisgendered health care professionals about how best to treat conditions of gender diversity in the medical system. Being a “mentally well” trans person is greatly dependant on societal attitudes, matters of acceptance and freedom from fear of discrimination and violence; but as the matter stands, any trans person who wishes to access medical assistance or intervention must be diagnosed as mentally ill according to the DSM-IV.

Isn't it interesting to think of the prevalence and variations of mental illness diagnoses within the context of cultural differences? Let us not forget that a cultural shift in attitude can bring about positive changes in mental health.

You do pose a good question in asking the public how a reframing of mental illness according to how cultural understandings of “normalcy” shift. I think that this cultural shift is dependent on a clear understanding of the issues at hand, including the distinction of sex and gender, the differences between transphobia and homophobia and the ways that the mental health systems holds the reins on transition services for people outside the gender binary. Thank you for bringing discussion of mental health into such a mainstream publication, hopefully this dialogue and discourse can continue to develop a better understanding of mental health issues. This development of understanding and public dialogue is needed to end the stigma surrounding mental health; I look forward to where you may take it next.

2011-03-20T16:39:00.000-07:00

Dear you/me,

I know we've had a real up and down relationship over the years, but I wanted to take this opportunity to air the drama, and lay it out clear where we stand today. We've made it through so much, as we've both changed, changed names, changed bodies, changed pronouns, changed politics. We've both grown and I am glad to say, from where I sit today, I feel we may be as close as ever.

I remember when we first met, slow starts, playful glances and pushing boundaries. Poking at flesh, all pinkish and young and warm and fresh, as I pulled and poked I grew to know you. I learned the sounds you could make, the places you could take me, and the ways that working together was to our best advantage. I remember the early years, where neither of us could be entirely sure who we were, trying on different truths to find safety, acceptance, inclusion. Sometimes going back and forth on such extremes neither of us were recognizable from one setting to another. Victim, rebel rouser, hide, stand out, draw attention, disappear. I was so glad to get to know you more and more, enough that we could eventually be public about our love. As oversized hoodies and jeans 3x bigger than either of us or our insecurities found their way off the front lines the truth could begin to be shown.

As you started meeting other guys, and then girls, and then guys and then guys who were once girls and girls who were raised as guys you showed more and more of yourself through them. I am grateful for everyone of them, and that first copy of "body alchemy" that found its way off the shelf and into our hands. As we flipped the pages I remember your side eyed glances, the hmmm, you think? Could it be? How would that be? Maybe that's what this is about? And the arguments we got stuck in for the next couple years. The fight for life, where I tried to throw you off the roof top and you pulled me on a trip through your darkest corners, the parts that terrify you and paralyze you. Thank you for going through that with me. Thanks for pulling through that with me. Your vulnerability and strength showed me that I am filled with more than the world ever told me about, and that as much pain is there, there is also beauty, magic, potential, art, music and so much fucking hotness.

That brings me closer to the now, I can't tell you how I feel about you without acknowledging the ups and downs we've been through, but once thats been said there is so much more too, the survival and everything that's made it worth it. I've watched you change so much since then, wither, bulk, tits turn to pecs and back again, asses melt to little bellies and back to curvy hips. I've watched the boy sprout through the flesh on your face, scratching it's way to the surface. I've watched the femme and your sparking princess find it's way out, rhinestones and bike grease, you shine in the ways that make me excited about the world. I've watched you lose strength, going from tank messenger legs riding mountain ranges like they were your breakfast to struggling with walking, stairs, and I see the way your smile melts when you glance over your bike, knowing that no matter how equipped it is for touring, hitting the road at the perfect pace to see and hear and feel the world around you, that knees and backs that've taken the impact of an s.u.v. aren't as amicable to such plans. I see how you hate yourself, I hate it, I see how sometimes getting fucked up enough to dance your ass off without feeling the pain in the moment is what you need to do. I see how your tumultuous relationship with alcohol and drugs spin you around, and how these relationships are tied to daily pain and aches and the pain of losing a physically fit body at 23 and the years before then, marked with the scars of self hate and the strains put on a body that hasn't fit the world's expectations. I know you well enough, i see how messed this whole thing is, and all the ways it makes sense. I see when you wince and wheeze your way through the day, and i want you to know i know about your inner strength, I know about your secrets, and I know your beauty.

I love the way that you adapt. I love your flexibility. I love the way you build compromise at the closet, balancing physical ability,safety and fancy. I love the way your tattoo stretches and ripples over your ribs. I know you've had mixed feelings about protruding hips and shoulder blades that play angel wings. I know you've heard the bullshit, the harsh accusations of ill health and disordered eating. I know how that makes it hard to love knobby knees and the parts that show the female strength and "childbearing" hips, especially when the knees throb and the hips carry a little dick, not quite one or the other, and skinny, and being both and neither and everything and nothing is hard work. But I'm into it. I'm into the way your tits bounce when you ride a date, and I love the way your sweat pools on your mustache when you pound the shit out back out of them. I'm into the ways you figure out to make the things that hurt work, I love the way you use your cane like a pole to dance up on and keep yourself up with this highly eroticized extension of self. I'm into the way you smell, and the ways you scrub yourself, in the lawn chair in the shower, letting the warm water melt some of that pain and free up your breathing, getting heavier as your soap your cunt and ass. I love the food you make, you blow me away again and again with the ways you can translate the dregs in the bottom of the fridge into a meal that nourishes my soul. I love the way you do your work, I love the way you talk about consent, barriers, self confidence and communication and admit that you continue to learn about all of these. I love the way that you learn from your own lessons. I love the way you figure things out as you go. And I love the ways you've figured me out. I feel safe with you now, I feel like I can show you how broken I am, how shattered i feel. I know you'll get it, and I trust that you'll help me figure it out.

I'm a survivor and in this case, like attracts like. Your survival, your modifications, your adaptations, your rewriting any rules the world may have told you to follow... It gets me going. It makes me want to stick around and see what we can possibly collaborate on next. This is the most exciting relationship I've been in, and you've seen me through all the others, so you know that you and me, we have something big, something that lasts, we've made it through so much, and we've found the ways to compliment each other. You are my other half, you are my outer self, my mirror, corporeal to spirit, and I am so into you.

<3

This was written for a project that can be found in full here http://innerfatgirl.tumblr.com/post/3965073330 soon. Thanks legay

Bill c-389

2011-02-13T19:37:00.000-08:00

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/transgendered-rights-bill-headed-for-defeat-in-tory-held-senate/article1902266/

With the passing of Bill C-389 the government moved one step closer to legally protecting the rights and self determination of trans people. As some people celebrate the passing of Bill C-389 this week, others wonder where it will go from here. It may be another thing that gets clogged through the appointment seats of the part of government with the least amount of accountability to a votership.

I worry about this, and my worry comes from what I see as a separation of understanding. People who are resisting this change, people and parties who are framing trans people as predators, are doing so from a comfortable distance from trans community resistance, and trans lived realities of mistreatment, unemployment, homelessness and other things that a bill like this may have a impact of change around. Trans people are not a part of their everyday lives, their families, their communities. For large part due to the economic segregation of people facing oppression like transphobia, but also in a culture that extols gender variant people as sex offenders, not including them, even in your own families seems natural. I don't know of any specific trans people who have been excommunicated from their politician families, but I have seen it happen across other socioeconomic and cultural landscapes. So what is it in the values system of people on the "moral right" that thinks that this type of behavior should go unnoticed, unprotected? I attended a service this morning, at the Unitarian church. The sermon was talking about moral and religious involvement with politics. This is a complicated and many faceted topic, but one thing that really came in to my head from the sermon and following conversations was this:
The "moral right" is bringing "religion" into politics, so without the moral logic of social justice minded individuals creating a balance, where democratic thinking and ideas, human rights and equality within diversity can be shared on the same platform, the platform will by default be overwhelmed with the attempts to de-humanize individuals by forcing fucked up power driven decision making "values" down our throats.
Another thing that was re-brought to my attention, both this week and over the last little while in general is that the bible, the supposed moral compass of so much of this fucked up shit we see from the barring of trans rights and protections to the shutting down of women's health centers to the barriers to accessing clean rigs, is FULL of things like this:

Isaiah 10

¹ Woe to those who make unjust laws, ¹ to those who issue oppressive decrees,

² to deprive the poor of their rights ² and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, ² making widows their prey ² and robbing the fatherless.

Guess what "moral right", we can read your scriptures too, we can see what you are supposedly basing decisions off of. And I call BULLSHIT! You want to know who are oppressed of your people?

The people you are posing as villainous creeps out to molest your daughters; our own daughters and sisters who continually get fucked over by the presumptions that people make about their identities because of parts of their bodies or pasts. The people that have been stolen, murdered, fired, evicted, beat up, raped and terrorized; the women, queers, trans people, indigenous people,immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities... need I go on. And guess what, some of us fit into more than one of those categories! And fucked up shit happens all the time, especially to those of use who fit in these up little boxes (which have their own complication as they restrict us down to one element of self) . We are the widows become prey, widowing large segments of a generation ravaged by the effects of HIV and stigma. We are the fatherless, as more and more trans youth end up finding themselves at younger ages, parents still kick people out, cut people off because they are self determined. Are these the people that the "moral right"want to "save the world" from with their unjust laws? Look at your moral compass conservative party, there's a very clear direction. Are choices being made by values? Cause I'd like to call yours to question.

In between

2010-09-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

I received the following email through the networks that I get queer and trans new updates from. Please read for your own info and continue below to my thoughts:

Fwd: Information regarding MSP approved FTM Chest Surgery:

If you know of anyone else who is MSP-approved for FtM chest surgery and has
not had their surgery yet, would you please ask them to contact me? We will
be actively seeking those who have not had their surgery, but if people
approach me directly it helps the process.

Thanks very much!

Carol Anne

Carol Anne McNeill
Policy Analyst
BC Ministry of Health Services
ph: 250.952.1555
email:

CarolAnne.McNeill@gov.bc.ca

Further information:

Those who are transitioning from FtM and are approved for funding for
mastectomy (via MSP) will be contacted at the end of this month, providing
more details regarding where and when surgery will be done.

* Dr. Bowman has been given OR privileges in a public hospital to perform
FtM chest surgery. This will be available to MSP-approved FtM transitioning
men at NO cost to them (including any consults and male chest contouring).*

*This applies to ALL FtM transitioning men who have been MSP-approved and
have not had their surgery*, including those who may have been on Dr.Musto's
waitlist or on a waitlist at a private facility. This surgery will not be
available to anyone who has not gone through the MSP approval process. Feel
free to post this as necessary – hopefully it will control the rumour mill.

Carol Anne McNeill

I have been approved. I was not yet on a wait list as shortly after I got my approval I started having second thoughts. These thoughts were fueled by a number of things but I will try and break them down in a way that makes sense.

Firstly I was primarily responsible for the pre, during and post surgical care of one of my best friends/former lovers. The surgery was incredibly intense, and after a few days of helping empty drains and comfort my friend because the anaesthesia had backed up his digestive system I had to bail. As he dealt with the compound pain of A)just having had all his breast tissue removed, B) having the remaining skin and muscle pulled and sutured into a way that would look more "appropriately male" C) Having drain tubes coming out his sides for a week + D) AND the OMG I haven't shat in a week and I can feel everything i've eaten slowing backing up and threatening an exploded colon feeling. For him, that procedure was self motivated. He was getting the chest he wanted, could see himself with, dreamt of himself having and ultimately what he needed to survive. He bound so heavily everyday before surgery that he was developing back problems, but ultimately if he hadn't bound so tightly or been so stealth about being trans he wouldn't have survived his everyday work environment.

I do not live with that type of pressure. I do not bind. I haven't for a couple years, primarilly because I find that having asthma and pectus excavetum I already operate on limited oxygen. When I bind that puts me at a level where I am running on constant dizziness, increased fatigue and generally, I can't do my life in a way that feels safe or comfortable. Which should, ultimately be the point in binding, to make you more safe and comfortable in the world with the way that your body appears.

I am incredibly lucky, as the jobs that I have held and positions that I have had within institutions have allowed me a freedom wherein I can express my gender queerly, I can have a beard and visible breasts, I can be publicly trans. I don't know that that will be the case for ever. In some situations within my life do I dress in a baggier shirt and keep my lips sealed around issues of gender, this is a matter of self preservation. But I also think critically about my motivation within these circumstances. For example, if I was teaching a shop class of 15 year old boys, I would most likely be on the DL. WHY? Because 15 year old boys bodies are developing in a way that causes many of them to be incredibly self concious. They are receiving media messages and peer pressures that they SHOULDN'T have breasts. Breasts to teenagers become a dividing point. A sexualized feature present on girls (who in turn become sexualized) and a mark of "Freak" on anyone else. For a person, especially a skinny person, who appears to be male and has visible breasts, this stands out as "wrong". No one in our society is more tune to what our society deems as right and wrong body presentations as teenagers. This is compounded by their own self conscience. But being a model of the error in that right/wrong system also opens space for people to expand their perceptions and lesson the pressures that they have on their own bodies. I think that body positive movements will have a great impact on the ways that the media effects body image, creating space for self love in place of eating disorders and self harm. I just don't know how long I want my body to be the front lines of that battle.

I intend to have a child, from my own body, as I have written about here in the past. I want to ensure that my child has the best opportunities to nutrition and wellness and I believe that breast feeding would be a part of that. Luckily I have a partner with fully functional breasts, not discordant from her gender identity or presentation in any way, who is into sharing parenting responsibilities, in the best ways we can. She also feels that ensuring that our children can be breast fed is in every bodies best interest, but understands my feelings around maybe not keeping my breasts that long. Having that support makes the decision a little closer to easy, but it's still so far from anything decisive.

I discussed this with a friend who has a similar relationship to his gender, who had top surgery a few years back. He's said that for him, losing his breasts was a tough decision too, but that since surgery he's felt that much more able to play with his gender. I agree with this sentiment, as I have felt so much safer to fuck around with gender since being able to grow a beard. I am a fairy of a fag more than a butch or typical (if there is such a thing) transMAN.

I don't want to lose the opportunity of a free-ride surgery with one of the most experienced and talented surgeons in the country when it's been offered to me. I also don't know if I that is meant to be a part of my transition. I feel so in between. In between genders, in between transition options, in between defending difference and comfortably cutting my way into safe conformity, in between loving my body and hating the way it's looked at and treated by a world that doesn't have space for it.

In loving memory of Deloris

2010-09-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

I never thought I'd be a car person. Then I got hit by one. It's been a little over a year since I was struck in an intersection while riding my bike. The ways that this has impacted me are numerous, but this post is not about that, as much as how it changed my relationship to the automobile.

So as I said, I was struck, smashed from the side by a luxury urban SUV being driven through a traffic circle that crosses a bike lane and thrown to the road. I sustained numerous soft tissue and joint injuries, and my bike was close to totalled. It took me nine months of completely stripping down both my physical condition and also my ride to get them back on the road, and still, I have a limited capacity compared to before. About a month or 2 after the crash my parents told me that they were planning on scrapping their old car, and asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I was preparing to start a term of automotive class in January, where we were recommended to have a beater to work on. It all fit together quite nicely. I worked on the car, and developed a relationship with it. I hit the road in it in February to escape the Olympics, and found that her name was Deloris (or Del when feeling particularly butch). The first trip down the coast resulted in her heater core blowing out in Portland. I was lucky, and very grateful, for the man at the jiffy lube who showed me which pipes I could disconnect and bypass to avoid the 600$+ 2 day + repair. When I got back to Vancouver, my automotive lab partner and I disected the car. We took it apart far enough to get into the heater core (which sits under the dash, behind the instrument panels, past the steering column.) We got it apart, we put it all back together. It seemed like an endless project, and that made it that much better when we completed it. We put a new stereo in, as well as air filters, belts, a battery. We tweaked and tuned the accessories, replaced a couple tires, re-habed the brakes, balanced the wheels, replaced a CV joint on the drivers side axel. We went through the car finding problems, diagnosing them and fixing them.

All this was happening as I was going through physio, relearning ways to cope with stairs, sitting down for low things like toilets. Finding the right combinations of vitamins and pain meds to get through each day. I got to know Deloris as I got to know myself. Since the crash my medical situation has spiralled in complexity. As doctors try and figure out how they can classify my connective tissue problems I have taken at least 5 chest x-rays, 10 EKGs, 2 echocardiograms, a contrast CT, a spinal MRI, an abdominal and thorax aortic MRI w and without contrast, a stress test, numerous flexibility tests, body measurement procedures, opthomalgist's exam, a genetic screening, a chromosomal kereotyping, and have had my blood pressure taken at least 100 times. The doctors still don't know what's up.

After all the tests and repairs on Deloris we still had no idea how deep her problems ran. She was a life line for me, an access to mobility that I needed so much. She was a way for me to stay involved with community activities when the process of getting there was too much. I was able to become the sober driver. The helper who'd pick things up and make sure people could get home safe. I was the accompaniment to the big box stores, the access point to acquiring things that were just too big, too far for a bike cart or a transit trip. She was the easy ticket to the woods, making it easy to go berry picking, take dog adventure hikes, and go midnight swimming. I took her on my first date with my partner. Having a car played a big role in the role I could play in my community. As I had become the one who couldn't help move things, couldn't do the heavy lifting, the physically demanding, I had a tool, that even in a community of people who are "green" and socially conscious and don't like cars, they really appreciate having one around.

This past weekend I drove Deloris to Calgary. I was scheduled to have another series of tests done, still looking for answers to my body and it's challenges. I drove with a couple friends and as we crested the foothills and started the decent into Cow-town, she started to smoke. It was getting too hot, and there didn't seem to be much I could do to help. I added water to the coolant system, gave her a break and coasted in. We made it to 5 minutes away from our destination when she finally kicked it. We pulled over and added coolant, noticing that it was spurting out of the coolant flange. I got the part and replaced it. Probably one of the easiest repairs I'd done on the car, it had to be too easy. I went to start it up again. Dead. The battery had drained over night with an accessory left plugged in while I was in the hospital. Jumped. Still wouldn't go, we called a tow and then I noticed the broken wire between the starter and the battery. Reconnected these wires and then dismissed the tow. It was fine. Drove her down the hill and went in the house for dinner. I felt so relieved, as this was not just a matter of my car, my mobility, my way home, but also the way for my friends and the dog to get home. I had a sense of accomplishment that I had found, diagnosed and solved so many problems, all just on the side of the road, without help, with out a shop at my disposal. As I leaned over and fixed the wiring I was able to name and explain every part under the hood that my travelling companion inquired on. I felt proud and accomplished. After dinner we piled back in the car, and she was dead again. I The next day tried again, big jump from the tow truck got it going and we dismissed the truck, before noticing 10 minutes later as she sputtered and died that there was still coolant leaking from somewhere else. Somewhere less easily accessible. Luckily my friends mom purchased me an CAA membership on the Saturday, and by Monday morning it was activated and we were able to call the final tow on my account. We had it towed to a garage, and after a long day of waiting to hear the verdict, they finally told me, that her head gasket was most likely shot, and there was a possibility that her engine block cracked. Her water pump was gone and to fix everything it would take another day we didn't have and upwards of 1300$. There was no way I could rationalize spending that money. It was money I sure don't have, and more than the car is worth. She's old. She's tired. She's jenky and persnickity. So I took off her plates, pulled out that new stereo and drove away in a rental. I left her to be pieced off, or crushed, or maybe repaired on someone else's bill. But I had to leave her there.

The mechanic said that a lot of her little problems were attached to this big one. It was a number of symptoms that in a big picture were telling of something integral. It took so long, so many tests to find the problem, and even then, even at the giving up point, it could've been something bigger. Tests, tests, tests, small solutions to bigger problems. Big mystery problems that don't have names, don't have bounds, beginnings or ends.

Biological sex - gender

2010-09-16T09:20:00.000-07:00

I am well aware that there are many people who have a gender identity that is in contrast to their hormonal sex, or biological appearance, and I am really exploring how those things feel for me as my body reassigns itself to female secondary sex characteristics.

It's been almost 6 months since I stopped taking testosterone. I was 3 weeks short of 3 years, and it had really worked its way through my body. My breasts had shrunk to almost nothing and my general muscle/fat distribution was doing things in a "male" sort of way. My face was sporting a full moustache and beard. I smelled like a man, talked like a man. Any situation that I wanted to pass in, I could, so long as I could keep at least one layer of clothes on.

I stopped taking T because I want to have a baby. I wrote about this back in April in the post "Paternity Pulsations". My feelings about that have changed, but only in the sense that I don't know that I will be a FATHER, per se. I have really had the opportunity to claim my genderqueerness this past year. Getting past the "neutral pronouns are too complicated and confusing for people" bullshit, to the point where I can admit that pronouns are complicated. Pronouns, and the genders attached to them are so complicated I don't know from day to day where I can fit within them. And I am finding myself really spun by the biological determinant bullshit that, politically and emotionally I refute beyond all doubt.

What I mean is, as my body is undoing the undoable effects of T (my boobs grew back, my beard has softened and I shaved it off, my cycles started again, I am capable of experiencing and expressing emotion with an intensity I hadn't seen for years) I am being sent on the roller coaster of SEX/GENDER. I am feeling that for me, my gender, and the way that I relate to it, and the ways I am challenged by it is shifting with my secondary sex characteristics. I find it hard to feel male as I am changing a tampon, but likewise I find it hard to feel male while I am changing oil in a car. I don't know about "feeling male", as I am not entirely sure what male is, so how would I know where to or how to feel it. I know what it means to be perceived as male, and I know that the less my body is feeling "male" the worse that perception/presumption feels. There are some parts of my body that will never be as they were pre-T. I am post-T, I can never be pre-T again. And I don't say this out of regret for choosing to go on testosterone. But I feel like my gender is BIGGER and more encompassing than one perceived biological sex can contain. This is where genderqueer feels like home, but also has its limits. I will not be losing my tits at any time in the foreseeable future. My face is not going to stop growing hairs either. I fall some where in between the boob-ed man and the bearded lady, while being both and neither all at once.

I know that this whole thing comes across as rather scattered, hard to follow and unput together. But, maybe that's the whole point. I am all over the place. I don't fit neatly in one, the other, or even the "other". I don't even do trans in a way that is expected or understood. The joys of being genderfull in a world that's still just starting to try and understand.

Deaths around me/Death surrounds me

2010-07-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

I walked past a man wearing a t-shirt declaring "good die young" this afternoon. This very statement has seemed true over the past little while as a couple of delightful people who I knew, not well, but shared the stage with, people I shared community with, people I felt inspired by, have passed in high profile deaths. Perhaps more of my peers and former acquaintances have died and it's passed through my awareness, but I doubt that with facebook memorials and the never ending gossip mill that is social networking would allow that. This morning I turned on the CBC when I awoke to hear the host interviewing a local long boarder about the risks associated with the sport, and about Glenna. Her and I share 14 friends on facebook, and have shared space at least that many times. We both lived in Victoria at the same time, and I would party with her, watch her perform with the Velo Vixens, and generally be awe at her ability to spin fire, ride tall bikes, wear incredible outfits and be so genuinely friendly (often all at once). We weren't really in contact, but I knew that she was in now in Vancouver, and our paths didn't cross as often, but I'd still see her at events sometimes. On Friday she died in a death that's made the CBC, Vancouver Sun, Global TV and numerous online new sources. She was beautiful, young, athletic and artistic. I suppose that makes good news. Or at least sellable news, I wouldn't call this news good for anyone.

This is the second time this year that I have seen familiar faces across newspapers this year due to death. Back in November I was shocked to see the face of Pest on the front of the Sun on my way to school. She used to live in her van in the back yard of a house I lived in, often occupying our living room, filling it with song, vivacious energy and sharp laughter. Again, we weren't really in touch anymore, since we had both moved away from Victoria. She had returned to Hornby since leaving my yard and was killed on the dock where her boat home was parked. Being a fairly odd occurance, a murder on Hornby hit front pages all over the place. I was reminded of Pest's unicycling antics, bright green hair and impressive wrenching on her vintage VW bus-home.

Perhaps I am reaching an age, an age where people around you start dying, maybe this is what happens. I know enough of us who barely survived adolescence, and now a couple of us who thrived until our mid twenties, only to go out in big ways. Many of my closest friends have been suicidal at some point or another. That might be a crazies attract crazies situation, or it may be tell tale of the overlap between struggling with discordant bodies and minds and the often associated mental health challenges that come along. Or maybe those of us who've survived that and really want to be alive now have a way of finding each other. If I can think of 2 people who seemed to make the most of life, adventuring with abandon, creating and expressing the darkest and brightest sides of experience, it would be Glenna and Pest. I know that their worlds overlapped and I may be even be as presumptive to think that this drawing of Glenna's (found on her website) was about Pest's funeral/death.

As I know I am not the only one feeling the loss of these inspiring young (27, 25) women. Creators, circus performers, artists, friends and really lovely people. Gone. But from their faces across the papers. It seems to make it even more surreal. If I am to imagine the 2 of them in an afterlife scene though, it's even more surreal. I see them, both on stilts, possibly riding a comically large bike and unicycle respectively, most likely wearing skull masks and completely on fire. Entirely under control, while dancing their way through their own fiery performance of afterlife. Their tracks would paint out an abstract masterpiece and the sounds of their vehicles would combine into a discordantly sweet melody. Good, young, dead. Surreal but true. I hope that the works left by these women continue to impact the world and inspire that sense of shameless expression that they both embodied.

Man on the Street

2010-06-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I put on a very pretty summer dress and went out to a local rad queer dance party. I was with a bunch of friends and I felt gorgeous inside, "fancy fancy" and appreciated. At one point I had to leave the party and return to my car. I then was making my way back from the car, to the event venue, one long block away. I walked onto the sidewalk and found myself almost matched in step with a man I had never seen before. He may have appeared much as I do on most days, mid twenties, white man walking alone along the street at night. I walked faster, not looking back and not losing step. I was very aware of his presence and attempted to walk faster, making my way to the safety of the crowd of smoking queers at the opposite end of the block. The man said, "excuse me...?" and I picked up my pace. I didn't know what he wanted, but as I was bearded and in a dress I could only assume that it wasn't a compliment. I increased pace once again when he said again, "excuse me, do you have the time?" I felt intimidated, potentially in danger and wasn't about to open my purse and get mugged for my phone. This has happened before, while in street "boy clothes". I forged forward and made it to the party without interacting with the man, except a simple "no."

I don't know if this fellow had any idea how intimidating it was for him to approach a lady, or trans person in a dress, on the dark street. Perhaps he hadn't thought about that. Or perhaps he was reading me as a man and didn't see it as intimidating. This is something that I feel very aware of, perhaps it's female socialization, growing up carrying keys between the knuckles and staying on well lit streets, or perhaps it's my existance within survivor communities. Perhaps he's never had to think about how scary he appears, not because of himself, but because of the violence that exists towards femmes, ladies, sex workers, trans women, genderqueers, and others for whom alone in the night can be or has been a scary scary place.

But the dark dark night is not always scary, and living in a gender queer existence is not a consistent feeling of vulnerability. In fact, when all the cards line up right, it can be damn right empowered. About half an hour after my first interaction with a man on the side walk I had a second. This time I was not alone, I was walking out of the party accompanied by a good friend, also gender queer presenting in a cute summer dress. As the two of us walked out, me: bearded and dolled up, friend: fresh faced from laser treatment and broad shouldered. A man who'd walked across from the corner store to small talk the door man- apparently a familiar of some sort, felt entitled to comment.

"Hey, that's no woman", he exclaimed.

Initially we both continued walking, sort of looked at the ground and barely at each other. But I became aware of the support I was surrounded with and so responded to his rude and out of place comment, first just asking him who he was talking to. I had hoped that his being forced to face the fact that he was talking about a person, in front of that person, and that person could hold their own, and could hear what he was saying so he'd better shut it.

"Well both of you I guess." he said.

I politely asked him if he knew where he was. He had no idea. I very clearly told him, and by this point I had 4 super tough friends flanking me from all sides, and a couple allies who appeared out of the crowds of smokers to hold the space, "you are outside of a very queer party, filled with all kinds of very queer people, lots with really queer genders, and if you feel entitled to tell any one of us who we are, how we can dress or what gender we can be... well you'll probably get your ass kicked. So you should go." I didn't really want to implicate a threat of physical violence, it's not my favourite, but sometimes just reminding people who don't live in fear of getting hurt, that it could happen to them this time- well it can feel good. Even as a most of the time pacifist, I get the bash-back philosophy. He became apologetic, and tried to call it a learning experience, stating that he was ignorant and wanted to learn something from us. I reminded/informed (maybe he's never heard it before) him that it's not our job as queers to teach him about how to treat us. It's not our job as trans people to teach him how to respect diverse genders. And if he really gave a shit he could go online or to the library, the internet and books are teaching resources, not people who you are harassing outside of a dance party. A party organizer showed up, and offered assistance while also commending what he'd seen, saying that it seemed that I was handling it all really well. I was so glad to have had the backing of my friends, I was so glad to know that the organizers prioritize and address these things as real live issues. Some of us live in fear, some of us less so, or less so at certain times. If we can create spaces where less people live in less fear, more of the time, where more people have more voice and less bullshit like this happens, we win. That's what community is. That's what safe space is. That's what solidarity is. That's what survival, resilience, and prosperity are.

Shop Safety

2010-05-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

I enrolled in a program to teach future high school shop teachers a little over 2 years ago. I came into it with the perspective of having been a girl in high school shop classes and seeing, feeling and living the dominant shop culture of sexism. Even when teachers are "including" female students in classes, "welcoming" them to participate in an environment that continues to be ripe with misogynist language, sexist behavior and the all around "dude-off" that some how erupts out of the combination of steel, grease and male entitlement can be toxic. I came into this program hoping that I would be able to leave the establishment with the required pieces of paper and bag of tricks to set up a shop space where this is not only acknowledged, but managed, countered, and overturned. I want to be a shop teacher because I feel that there are not enough people taking anti-oppression work, privilege analysis, and empowerment into workshops. I believe that making things is one of the best ways to develop self worth, feel pride in accomplishment and work towards becoming more self sufficient (a necessary process for those utopian anarchists waiting for the revolution, best to get some skills ready for when it all falls apart and DIY becomes not just the best and most affordable option but the only).
I was "welcomed" into the program. I spent the last two years leaving parts of myself at home and putting on a personal shield to enter the ring of the dude-off to try and pull what I could (for myself as well as the betterment of others who don't feel that they do have access to such opportunities). And I would agree- lots of people don't. I may even venture to say that I didn't/don't and have been really stretching things to make it OK enough to get through. By the end I am exhausted. What are the reasons that this program pushed me to my breaking point, what made it so hard for me to push through, why might I JUST be able to slip through on my last bits of strength if the teachers look favorably upon me?

When a person who experiences oppression, violence and abuse talks about a place feeling safe it is not only a matter of physical elements. For a queer to feel safe in a work shop space depends on more than proper guards over blades. For a woman to be safe in a shop, it often requires more work than may be required for other people coming into the setting with a different set of privileges. This is not because queers are unsafe workers, or that women are stupid and require more instruction to "get it".

A shop instructor can "welcome" women, queers, people with disabilities, and others who are often left out of industrial education into their class, but without doing a few things, personal things, the instructor risks "welcoming" those students into a dangerous situation. The reason for this lies in the default power structures existing in male dominated spaces. Women can and do become incredible trades people. Often working longer hours, for less pay, and busting their asses to produce higher quality work. Queers can produce beautiful artifacts using a whole slough of technological processes when given the opportunity to learn their way through them safely.

So when I say "safe", what do I mean here? The instructor is not actively doing anything malicious against their students, the shop set up isn't unsafe to others in the class. Namely those who don't experience oppression in the forms of risking one's physical safety outside the shop. Someone who has never been harassed, assaulted, threatened or otherwise violated because of their identity or presentation may have a default (everyday "normal") feeling of safety. Those of us who ARE subject to such treatment often walk through the world on edge. We have a guard up because we need to. We are careful because the reality of our experience is that of physical violence. Especially so in spaces dominated by people with that innate feeling of safety, the comfort in their world and their bodies that has afforded them the privilege of NOT thinking about it. Spaces facilitated without consideration to that bias automatically create a space with the potential of feeling unsafe to those who may feel unsafe in the greater world.

Many (mostly male) intellectuals at the heads of technology departments wonder why female enrollment continues to pale in comparison to the male counterpart. The female students who do enroll and stick to the programs have incredible success. And incredibly thick skin. What keeps more women and queers from having an open door to technology education?

Unchecked power and default structures of oppression do not create space for women and queers to succeed in technology. It becomes the job of the individual to create that space for success. I would like to see it become the job of instructors, in all fields, to do personal work. Unpack your backpack, take a reality check about how and why you know and feel the things and ways you do. Take a second look at language. Think critically about the ways that you present material- what bias do you come from and what bias must your students have to follow you? And most of all, who do you think deserves to have access to your lessons, and will you do what it takes to make sure that is delivered? Please comment with experiences of sexism, homophobia and transphobia in shop spaces and amazing teachers and facilitators who've created a new "normal" in their shops.

Creating Safe Spaces- proactive vs. reactive

2010-05-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

(Trigger warning: sexual assault)
This weekend I returned to my hometown of Victoria for one of my favorite holidays of the year. A bunch of my friends and other bicycle enthusiasts organize the bike riders ball (bikeprom.ca). It is an event centered around the love of bicycles. People always go all out, decorating themselves and all types of bicycle related machines to ride through the city and dance late into the night. The VeloVixens perform and a good time is had all around.

This year, leading up to the event I heard about a discussion that was happening within the organizing body. I couple of organizers were advocating for safe space policy to be put into action, recognizing that proactive work needs to happen to create the space that is safe enough for all of our friends to feel welcome and safe. This was challenged by others who had never done such work, and I'm assuming, have never felt unsafe or oppressed in "community". I don't know what that conversation or process looked like. I have only heard about through the grapevine, and saw what actually made its way to the party.

I got myself all done up for the event. I rebuilt my bike, after 6 months since I was hit by a car while riding it, it's undergone a full rebuild. I am still not able to ride a whole lot without knee pain, but I wanted to show up on a bike, and show off my sweet new ride. I found a pretty white dress with rhinestone strapless neckline, my friends help me sew in a bike tube corset back into it to make up for my extra large ribcage. I had big hair, a flashing tiara, make up and of course full beard and entirely practical shoes. I felt hot. I was hot. I got ready with a bunch of friends and rode down to the party.

Not 10 minutes after walking in a complete stranger walked up to me, to tell me that she was "glad I was comfortable with my facial hair." I can only assume that she was trying to compliment the beard and dress combo, but no matter which way that wording is analyzed it comes off as backhanded and patronizing. It sort of set me off, but I didn't do to much with it. I was having a great time. Dancing, catching up with old friends, getting my hair crimped by strangers in the coat check. Having a gay old time. Until some man, a complete stranger, came up to me on the dance floor and grabbed my tit. I can't even begin to think of what his motives were, but my immediate reaction was to remove his hand, with the force necessary, and VERY strongly tell him that he was out of line. The more I tried to communicate with him the unacceptability of his actions the less he seemed affected. He stood where he was as I told him that he would need to leave.He apologized for offending me, and I told him that I wasn't asking for his apology, he hadn't offended me he'd assaulted me, and that I needed him to go, not apologize. Too late for words. By this point I was fucking raging, yelling in his face and telling him that he needed to get the fuck out. He quite clearly wasn't listening to me, he didn't respect me from the beginning, but I hoped that my clear needs (you: leave, get your shit and don't come back) would go somewhere. It didn't. I had backers, people stepped in, echoing the need for him to leave. I walked away from the situation and went to the front door of the party. I asked the ticket takers if there was security working the party, there was not, as this party was "friends getting together in 'safe space'" One of the door people stepped up and listened to what was happening and joined me back over to the dude who was still standing there with the first people who had stepped in. He wasn't listening to the first masculine appearing person in a dress, or the tough quebecois farmer queer, but maybe he'd listen to a slightly larger guy in a red dress. Luckily the door volunteer was committed to seeing the guy out. He walked with him to get his bag and escorted him out. Another guy who stepped in came to me after to tell me that, although this was not an excuse, it seemed as if this guy had no idea that what he'd done was assault. No idea that grabbing someone's body in that type of way without consent was unacceptable. I don't know what rock this guy's been living under, but it was time for him to learn. I hope that this experience was lesson learned for him, I hope that he gets a better idea about how to interact with other people in a respectful way. I hope that this doesn't happen again, to someone who didn't feel that they had the backing to stand up the way I did. If the party wasn't organized by friends of mine I may not have done that. If I wasn't able to look around and know that I had a whole load of people backing me, I may have kept quiet. If I had been drinking I may have brushed it off.

The fact that this guy didn't know is a problem. Trying to create safe spaces with people who are ignorant to the basic needs of safety for the people in the space they share is an uphill battle. I believe that creating a safe space requires a proactive stance around accountability. I was glad to see this poster on the door of the venue. I wish that it had been on the posters, on the website promo, on the facebook event. I wish that there was more of an opportunity for education for guys like this who "don't know" how to interact with other people respectfully, to learn what that means, and know that they will be held accountable. This conversation NEEDS to be ongoing. It NEEDS to be at the forefront of event organizing and promotion. Because if it isn't, the default is douchbaggery. Ignorance, discrimination, assault, rape, violence and hate are so prevalent in our society that they are the default. Creating safe spaces involves taking those things apart and PHYSICALLY creating spaces which are based around respect, inclusion, access, safety, fun and community.

I am very grateful for all of the backing that I had at the party. I am incredibly appreciative of every person who stood up to this predator and put him in his place. I am so thankful for my friends, who give me the confidence that when I am violated I won't be standing up or fighting back alone. Now I'd like to see how this translates into the organizing strategies of my community. It's not over.

paternity pulsations

2010-04-13T22:31:00.000-07:00

I went swimming last night. I had attempted to arrange it as an All Bodies Swim, setting a time + place + putting it out to the masses. I hung out and waited for other friends to join me. No one appeared, so I entered the pool. I have stopped wearing a top in the swimming pool over the last couple months. I figure beard trumps boobs, and the rest of my body sort of leans to freak already, so I may as well enjoy the ability to breathe while in the water. Moving my shoulders and arms moving freely in water is incredible. I wish for all people to know the joy that I experience through this. But lot's of my friends don't swim, haven't been in the water in years. They don't have anything to wear, their bodies don't get exposed to the level expected in swimming pools except, for some- with lovers, after building trust, coming to agreements, and in a completely negotiated environment. And some even less, but I need to float. It grounds me, it allows me to stretch, get my blood pumping and my head relaxed.
Last night I went swimming at a pool that I love. It seems as if it were designed by a bunch of gender revolutionaries and family minded individuals and (dis)Ability activists, all teamed up. The UNIVERSAL changing area is the main changing area of the place, it's made up of sections of stall/shower combo units, unplumbed changing stalls, accessible shower stalls, banks of lockers and open showers. It is open to the pool, and the first option when entering the facility. Gender neutral is the default. So I entered, switched from my carharts into my neon orange patterned shorts I just got from Value Village, showered off, stashed my stuff and entered the pool. I know that people look at me. I don't let that take too much of my attention. I think about what I would like to do, hot tub (WITH A RAMP INTO IT!!), big pool for diving and laps, giant pool with warm water and a current channel, waterslide... so many choices!!! I enter the crowded steam knowing how many eyes are on me.
The pools, all of them, were filled with babies. And dads. Every way I looked there were dad's and kids. I have been suffering from a very serious case of baby fever lately. I think about being pregnant all day every day. I count in increments of 9 months, I think about what I could wear, where I could go. I wonder if I would feel comfortable to go swimming in public while visibly pregnant. Would I feel safe? I feel like I have heard enough people say, and write online, about how they'd kill a pregnant man if they saw him, to save the baby from having such a horrid life. To have a parent who wants you THAT bad, horrid indeed. I will be an amazing father. It won't happen by accident, I don't often enough find myself in "oops, oh we may have been too drunk and I don't even know ... ahh, maybe we should have some tests done" types of situations to warrant fear. Now is not a good time. I have no money, I am not in a place to bring a baby into. I don't have room for a baby. My team hasn't committed, we haven't sorted out the details. But when it does happen it will be amazing. I will be a wonderful father. I saw the pools full of cute, obviously sperm producing men, I watched how they interacted with their kids. I watched how they interacted with me, and about me. Kids always smile at me. Maybe they know I am fun. Maybe I am the coolest grown up in the pool cause I'm wearing neon and have a twirly mustache. But regardless, kids look at me, they talk to me, they chuckle with me. And being a grown man, alone in the pool, playing like a child, walking with a limp, wearing neon and with a mustache and tits. Apparently my current look lies between a kid's fun and a grown up's creepy.
These things all combined with my eyes, red with chlorine, making it look like I am higher than I am. I lay in the warm water pool with an inflatable ball on my belly. Holding it and floating face up. I am sure that my facial expression was plastered with impregnation, morning sickness, growth, cramps, stretching, pains, confusion, feeling like I would need to have a buddy to the pool. I asked my doctor what kind of time she's recommend being off of T before trying to get pregnant. She agrees that all ducks are not in a row, half reminding me that I still need to confirm or deny my connective issues before I can know how safe it is. Or if I have some genetic , "weird and wonderful thing" (how the resident repetitively described genetics) that I may or may not want to risk passing on. She says it might take 6 months for cycles to return and my body to become a non-toxic baby zone.
As the ducks line up they say, no, not now, not yet. But ducks build nests before laying eggs. Perhaps that is really what this is all about, I must begin collecting sticks.

husbands and husbands and wives and wives

2010-04-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

Husbands and Husbands

While chatting about the plans for this upcoming summer with my mom, I became aware that this is a summer of weddings. I guess we all come across them, at a certain age, or in certain economic climates, or whatever the variables are that lead people to throw the party and tie the knot. This year is one of those years for me.
The conversation sidetracked to talking about a friend of my mom's whose son is heading the prop 8 campaign out of LA. Him and his team are working to get gay marriage on the ballot in California for 2012. This will hopefully give them enough time to get people on board for returning the right to marry to all in California, since that was revoked with the passing of Prop 8. They had initially intended to have it go to ballot this year, but have it fail would shut it down for too long if not ever. The religious right has put some serious backing into "protecting marriage" and "family values" (see my post Walking home for my thoughts on family values) They have so much behind them that it will take 2 years for even such a celebrity backed campaign to have enough mass to confidently make it through the polls in California. It seems preposterous to me, cause this is a wedding year. And like every other wedding that I have attended in my adult life, and probably will, they are all queer.
The first wedding is 2 friends, who my mom described in this conversation, as probably the gayest couple she's ever met. Transfabulous fags, the wedding will be chock full of slutty femmes, genderfucked princesses of all genders and lots of unicorns. And their families. Their co-workers, their community, gay, straight and otherwise.
The second wedding is my sisters. My sister and her fiancee are another type of gay wedding. It had never crossed my sisters mind that her wedding couldn't just happen anywhere, or that any old preacher wouldn't perform the ceremony. My sister hardly thinks about her gayness. Doesn't have a rooted history or relationship with the queer community. She's just a "normal" guy marrying her young femme lover. At a sailor themed wedding, with my family, so again, very gay.
The third wedding I have on the books is another type all together. They may pass as straight, their wedding may even be "straight" in the sense that perhaps folks there, not knowing that the groom is trans will not see the queerness (except of course in the guest list). Even this wedding, with the couple that appears straight wouldn't be happening in California this summer. At least not for 2 or more years. When trans people are restricted the ability to change all of their legal documents they remain under marriage legislation that doesn't seem that it should have anything to do with them. And seriously, even if a wedding or relationship appears straight, when we get behind closed doors something about getting down with trans folks is always going to be queer.
(that's my take- and know that not all trans people agree, but really- straight men aren't gonna do me [unless wasted or not really straight], straight ladies aren't always too sure about it [although often convinced after]- I can't possibly imagine how (or why) I could ever have straight sex in this trans body.)
I don't know how I feel about having my relationships legitimized by the state. I imagine that it won't be something I will ever feel entirely included in, being poly as well as queer, but I would like to know that my friends and family can do it if they want to. When the groom in the 3rd wedding was hospitalized a couple of years ago, we were all seated in the waiting room all night, and into the morning. Not being able to get reports on the status of his condition, not being able to visit, because we weren't his "family". We were the ones who drove him there, checked him in, and slept in the emergency room waiting area all night until we could take him home, to care for him. We cooked for him, we drove him to his appointments. We looked after each other. That's my understanding of family. And if his getting married allows at least one of his chosen family the access to be there with him when he's ill then I think its a good thing. If my sister's wedding allows my sister in law a chance to have a family she lost when coming out and losing her own, I welcome her with open arms into mine. If my faggy tranny friends in the prairies can buy a home together, get a mortgage and legal ties around sharing their lives, then I think its a good thing. If you want or need state legitimization of your love, your family, then you should have it.

Drowning

2010-04-04T09:43:00.000-07:00

I live in a community that has roots in a bar. I exist in a community that is drowning. In a greater society where alcohol is a generally acceptable substance of choice, the queer community is sure to not be left out. Many important historical and social events of our people have happened in bars, over pitchers and martinis. I would like to attempt to re-write my future.

Being sober is an exception to the norm. Something that is often called into question, challenged and misunderstood. Not unlike my gender, sexual orientation and associated politics, many people that I meet for the first time (and some who I have known for years) cannot understand a conscious decision to not participate in the consumption of alcohol. People ask me daily, why the limp, why the cane, why the dress, why the stache, why the ginger ale? These are questions that depending on the day, the mood, the amount that have already been asked may or may not get answers. But for the sake of clarity, let me answer the last one.

I have "quit drinking" a few times in my life. When I hear other people talk about addiction, talk about the first time they experienced that certain substance and what it did to them, it makes me think of my early experiences drinking. The first time I was drunk was at a cast + crew after show party. A house full of actors, dancers and fellow stage tech nerds. A 4 pack of mike's hard. My pupils dilating with each breath. My parents picking me up too early. Sitting awake, and drunk, in bed weighing out if I could climb out the window, down the roof, and walk across town before the party was dry. 15. My parents made wine, and I found my way into the boxes of it. I created a fictitious club with a friend so we could have bake sales to raise vodka money in the halls at school. I couldn't get enough. About 8 years of my life (save for those points that I recognized the problem at hand and tried cold turkey sobriety for a couple months at a time) can be tracked as a somewhat blurry line from weekend to weekend. Party becomes party until they hardly distinguish themselves. Regular every day things became about drinking- I got so into drinking a cold beer in a hot shower that I would make a trip to the beer store before bathing. I would drink alone. I would encourage , nay pressure, others to keep up.

This wasn't hard. Being a freak in high school provided enough opportunity, although it hardly seemed so at the time. Being an exchange student in Denmark was a 12 month binge. Returning to Canada, coming out as queer, finding my way into the queer community, I found a whole world of people who drank as much as I did. Finding people to share breakfast Caesars with was never hard. Finding people who would play sports as long as there was beer involved: a breeze. All night dancing, late night pizza, stumbling home, with whoever became a lifestyle. Even as I started to pull back from that, party less, I noticed that every element of my life tasted a bit fermented.

In the fall I was started on heart medication. I was told that I couldn't drink much on the meds, or they wouldn't be able to do their job, keep me alive. I tried moderation. I tried having "A drink". I tried to only drink on the weekends. It wasn't working. As soon as I had "A drink", the line disappeared. It became not such a bad idea to have "just one more". So I had my last beer on my birthday. My date took me to the Pumpjack and I drank one last winter ale. I suppose the choice to quit could've been hard. Acting on it and sticking to it could've been tough. It sure hasn't been easy. But knowing that I was on a medication, intended to keep my heart going, which ran my body through the wringer, and couldn't give me any benefits when mixed with booze made it easier. After about 3 months I was taken of the meds. I seem to be doing ok, and don't need them as much as originally thought. Time is said to offer perspective. Sober time in a alcohol obsessed community sure does. I was able to see my patterns, recognize my relationship to booze. See it spill through my friends, my homes, my neighborhood. I could start again. My doctors haven't advised me against it. I have. I can see what that pattern looks like for me. I have broken up with alcohol. I even wrote a harsh break-up letter. And I know that even with time, hooking up with ex's can too easily be a quick trip into old patterns. The patterns that emerged out of my relationship to alcohol are not those which I wish to get back into.

But like the queer community, small and insular as it is, I know I cannot escape my ex's. We live in a small bubble. I must learn to live with alcohol while living without it.

Embodying Glamour

2010-03-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

My friend Oliver is in the process of putting a blog together about glamour/gender. I was interviewed with Sammy and Hugs on our feelings about gender, glamour, and the politics surrounding these topics. Check out the interview (2 parts):

Oliver is currently moving his blog to a new address, I will post it here when it's settled.

walking home

2010-03-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

I recently reunited with someone from my past who has been on a very different track over the last 6 years since we went separate ways. When we parted I was leaving the church, leaving my bible thumping high school days for world exploration, a lot of substance use and the gays. I had no idea how many times I would walk away, come out, start over and customize my support network to meet my current needs. This old friend has spent the last 6 years becoming more fundy and more entrenched in religious establishment. Now she's ready to walk away, and the thought is somewhat terrifying.
There is very slight memory of the fear that filled me when I thought that my coming out as a dyke would mean the end of my family. I came out in tears to my mother, over a focus on the family inspired article in the church newsletter about protecting family values. I was scared that my family would continue to chose the values that the church offered them. I was scared that living honestly would mean a life in which support systems are built on partners and friends, queer community centers and trained professionals. All of these things, I have found, are not so bad. In many situations having a "family" made up of people that one chooses to have in their life for specific purpose is very practical. I was also very fortunate that my parents chose to value family over "family values". I guess realizing that the last 20 years of raising kids was all to shit if you disown 2 adult queer children could have influenced that, but I think that my family has been a testament of valuing family and thinking with the heart. Every time that I have come out, as a dyke, as genderqueer, as trans, as queer, as gay, as a smoker, as a weed smoker, as a sober alcoholic, as kinky, my family has done anything they can to if not understand, support my choices and challenges.
Over these comings out and transitions I have also learned the value of chosen family. In times while I have been figuring things out, learning and growing, I have found mentors, teammates, brothers, sisters, and dear dear friends. I have lived and loved with my chosen family. We make dinner for each other, we drive each other to the airport. We cry and we cuddle. We will grow old together, we will raise each others children. Where we find each other, and how we become family is the part that may be harder to understand.
Coming from a church background it is very easy to understand community support. A group of people with shared values and motives gather in a shared space and support each other along the prescribed path. This is found in a building, classified by a denomination. Broken down into particulars and boxed accordingly. It's easy. Until you start thinking of a life outside those particulars. When your values stop mirroring those dictated by the establishment, that connection to community is fractured. Sometimes that's about being different, sometimes it's a recognition of in congruence, or a need to support loved ones who don't prescribe. But walking away from an easy access community is challenging. Especially when the practice of churches is to try and save those who stray and are lost into temptation. Taking a moment to think for one's self can be enough to get the church ladies praying for you and encouraging you to come back to the fold where decisions are pre-considered, values are clear cut.
Where do we find community? As queers we sometimes find our way to queer community centers and organizing groups. As activists we find our way to radical bookstores and communal houses. We find community in gender studies departments and dance parties. Quite often the spots that we center around are also centered on substance use (a separate post to come...). Quite often the places we find don't meet our spiritual needs (again, another post for another day...). But as they say in the church, you are never alone. Community support waits around the corner. It's safer to walk away than they will ever want you to know. I have been walking away, reformatting things and customizing my life, identity and support networks since leaving the first church (which I left to become more entrenched...) about 10 years ago. A community that expects' its components to compromise self or values for a pre-written code of accepted ways, will continue to find weakness in that compromise. The result is fundamentalism, staunch systems that become increasingly harsh and dictatorial in place of acknowledging diversity of self and experience. And that's what I love about my community, my chosen family, in recognition and celebration of our differences, we are allowed freedom.

Hair

2010-03-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

Hair.

One of the first gendered presentation realms we are introduced to as children. I, growing up as a young girl in the 80's with long blonde hair, was not allowed to cut it. When I turned 12 and my dad's hairdresser cousin came to town offering to cut my hair and keep the 6 inch braid for my mom's mental health I started to exercise control. Before that the occasional trim, especially during the bang years, in the bathroom of my grandmothers, getting the perfectly square across the forehead snip was it. After it was an ongoing string of home haircuts, dye jobs and hair dressing school 5$ specials. I dyed my hair so much during my teen years that I didn't witness the process of my hair going from blonde to brown, it happened under layers of black, magenta, copper, fire, purple, blue, green, pink, orange, fire engine red and bleach.

After that first chop at 12 it was an going process of earning/negotiating approval to cut more and more. Eventually, by the end of grade 8 I was rocking the ear length mushroom cut. Not the most glamorous style: as always, parted straight down the middle. That haircut was a part of what led the boys I went to school with to bestow upon me the name man-child. I didn't even know how attached my hair was to my gender, I didn't have a conscious gender presentation, but subconsciously I was making decisions about my appearance that led the world to read me as male.

Now I feel that it is important to address racial assumption in terms of hair as well. I have always been read as white and I know that if the colonial intent of erasing the indian hadn't been quite as successful in my lineage things would be different. If the generational process of native women, treated as white, to raise "white" babies, all with white names and pride in their white lineage and silence and shame in their native roots hadn't been a process of eugenics which resulted in me losing my dark hair shortly after birth and becoming the passing blonde haired, blue eyed child my colonial patriarchs would be proud of. I know that if I was read as my native my hair perceptions would be different. I have had really good insight on this topic from Tobi. Hair, the way it is grown, styled, presented and read is subject to intersecting contexts. To be a native man with long hair, or to be a woman, managing limited mobility, with a short easy to maintain style is never just about gender.

I find that transition is often obsessed with hair. Ladies better grow your hair out to pass, men must be able to grow beards to be read as 'real'. This narrow minded perspective on things continues to perpetuate exclusion and discrimination within our circles. It's a challenge to our socialization to use female or gender neutral pronouns for a bearded individual, but a challenge we should be willing to pick up, as hair, and where it grows and how, does not make the man, woman, gender queer etc.

And of course what would a trans-man's post on hair be if to not address testosterone's effect on the hair line. I have been letting my hair grow out over the past 6 months, and it's almost long enough to pull into a little top knot. While doing this in the mirror the other day I noticed that my hair line is sitting a hell of a lot further back than the last time I took note of it. I thought for some reason that I would be immune to the transman's hairline blight, with a father with a full head of almost still brown hair and a fully grey mother with thick enough hair to choke a team of clydesdales. My paternal grandfather rocked a mean comb-over, and his wife didn't go grey until after she couldn't eat or hold herself up anymore. My mom's mom has lots of silver (she's always been adamant that red hair doesn't grey- it silvers) hair and her husband was dead before I can remember anything about his hair line. Even if I could remember cancer treatments would have skewed my perception. Now here I am, 24, almost 3 years on T and I am going grey more than I care to take note of and my hair line is slipping. I have grown hair on my chest, my face and belly, my legs are a forest and my arms have always been those of a pale chimp. But my head. I am having the resistance attitude, the "well if I am losing it I'm gonna hold on." I'll grow it out, continue to style it over my forehead, continue wearing hats, and possibly hold off on hair pulling (at least from the front). I figure I've got years to go before I feel a need to address the lack of hair in a more serious way, and I'd like to work all the hair I've got for as long as I've got it.

What's your relationship to hair, like it, love it, just waiting to leave it? What does your hair say about you? Are you a control freak who tops your hair into submission, or do you let your hair pull the strings? Do you participate in hair removal, extension, dying, perming? What's your relationship to how your hair is perceived?

For more on trans men and their hair check out Original Plumbing issue 2- Hair.

A fairy tale of Space, occupation, defense and solidarity

2010-02-28T15:56:00.000-08:00

I have returned home. Sort of, I have found myself in a city in some type of bizarre explosion of horns and sirens, helicopters and hundreds of cops and thousands of drunk hockey fans. I tried to avoid the olympics but I think I may have returned just in time for the money-shot.

On a separate note I would like to talk about space, occupation, defense and solidarity. This story is about a specific incident in a specific place with specific collections of people. The story is familiar. It is told over and over again. It is a fairy tale that lives on, evolves into different things, characters shift, places change but the story is the same. So this, this is a story about space, occupation, defense and solidarity, change the elements and it may be your own.

While staying at a rad somewhat queer in all kinds-a-ways punk house in Olympia I had the pleasure of attending their final farewell party. I had met some really rad kids in Oly, found some real amazing things and was generally impressed by this capital town at the tip of the head of the puget sound. And I have been blown away by house parties in Olympia, the incredible diversity of those in attendance, the enthusiasm from the crowd and the fact that neither party attended got shut down by cops at any point, or fielded complaints of incredibly loud music, people spilling out into the yards. I am not used to attending house parties that reach such an undisrupted critical mass. I say undisrupted hesitantly.

As I said the hosts of this party were all kinds of DIY queers and friends. As were many of their friends. All types of presentation of gender were in attendance. Including the hyper-masculine generally disrespectfully acting variety that is known in various places as various things. They were practicing the art of douch baggery in numbers. There were little posses of them through doorways that were gathered in fear, discomfort and definite misunderstanding of the people whose space they occupied. They laughed out of puzzlement, fear and a sense of superiority. Their comments aimed to show that they were bigger, stronger, better at being men, ridiculously entitled and really uncomfortable. This is one incident that happened and the way I managed it. I feel like a good person to mediate in party situations because I am quite often one of the few sober ones present. I take pride in that skill and don't let it go unused. When first approached with these specimens of gender play its most unconscious form I walked through. Head on the muddy ground and posture held inwards. I felt that was stupid, I don't need to take that.

I walked into a room in the house that had been designated the free room. All things from the house that needed a new home got put in there for folks to take. 3 men found their way in too. The men laughed aloud, snickered to each other and pointed as I walked in with my black pleather booty shorts and bra, fake eye lashes and makeup in work boots. I stand 6' 1" and was navigating the crowds with a cane. I had just decided I didn't need to take their shit. I confronted them.
"Can I help you guys with something?"
"No..." "Nuthing" "Nu-huu"
"Well I noticed you were laughing, I wanted to know if you were laughing at me or with me?"
"Uh with you for sure.."
"Ya, so funny thing is, I wasn't laughing. You were laughing at me, and I don't appreciate that. How do you think you'd feel if I just stopped what I was doing to point and laugh at you and in your face all the time?"
And then they brought it up a notch.
"Well it'd be different if I was asking for it, drawing attention an all..."
"Oh, you think I am asking for you to laugh at me? Cause of how I'm dressed. Well guys you aren't exactly right, if I wanted you to laugh at me I'd of dressed up like a clown. This isn't a clown suit and I am not laughing, so you should know that your laughter is not welcome. If you think something about this *scan my body like vanna white on wheel* is funny, then y'all should leave."
"uhh oh uhhhh but.. uh...." *drunk stumbling and mumbling and looking into each other eyes for cues of how to react to having the queen sass them back. and laughter, uncomfortable "oh shit" laughter
"Ya, if you think somethings funny, you need to leave."

I know that I was not the only one catching the receiving end of their non-pliments (a negative remark phrased as a compliment), laughter and sneers. The attitudes of others in the party quickly reflected this. The room that had been set up as a make-out room had a hand scrawled sign taped up to the door saying "QUEER SPACE" taped up to the door. The room was packed with folks upset that their space was filled with douchebagery. Understandable. It made me feel militant. I was enraged that my people were held in a part of this house. A closet is a closet even if you label it as such. I thought we were past that. I stormed out, ready to spot those out of line and assist the house with getting them to move along. I would be reasonable and non-violent, clear and uncompromising and entirely hands off. I wouldn't be using tactics like cops and borders, profiling folks on the clothes that they were wearing, the way they were dancing, the colour of their skin or the people around them. I was from out of town and without personal affiliations to 99% of those present.
I chatted with others in the space who were feeling upset, some who volunteered them selves as bouncers, others who left to avoid conflict or continued descrimination, I witnessed some who drank more, got objectified more and repeated to deal. And I found that they way that each of us dealt with this occupation was completely different, in every way personal. I was upset to see some member of the queer community unable to deal with the occupiers in a way that left them feeling empowered. I want my community to know about conflict resolution, and know that the values that we gather around including respect, extend to those who don't demonstrate it. I would like to pass on these suggestions to members of the queer community in hopes that we can learn and grow from experiences like this.

1.) Use words. Learn words, practice them, listen to them and act according to them as opposed to reacting to them. Words carry long fucked up histories, and can sling daggers. They can also heal, negotiate, mend and build bridges.

2.) Playing by the rules of the occupier feels wrong. It probably always will. Sometimes it doesn't feel safe to do very much about that. A big part however of what makes that the case is due to a lack of communcation, see 1. But sometimes while accumulating skills, allies, strength and clarity it seems necessary that we pretend to be following the rules, pretend just enough for those who have a limited view on things to see, but not enough to crush your spirit.

3.)Violence is not the answer. Physical altercations are usually judged by the rules of the occupier, see #2 and #1. Plus getting beat up sucks for everyone, especially those that you were trying to defend or protect or whatever your personal motives were.

4.) Question your own assumptions. For example if you think that a couple of hets are in the make out room hogging the space and flaunting heteronormativity up in the space as some type of afront, think about how you deal with that assumption. Because the two you are assuming to act in malice may just be 2 reasonable, communicative, sex positive transfolk who won't appreciate it much when you tell them that you perceived a female bodied person and a male bodied person getting down in the queer space and that it was upsetting folks. Firstly they may not want to know that you credit their bodies differently than the they way identify or present- that's transphobia. Also, even if you had asked us what are genders or bodies included and different, it's not actually up to you if what's happening is queer or not. But you may have more luck suggesting that their are folks who want/need to enter the space and feel intimidated or uncomfortable about the level of PDA in the space. They'll probably be willing to listen. See 3, and remember that violence is not restricted to the physical.

5.) Check in. With yourself, your community, your friends and people that you feel are making you uncomfortable (see 2). I believe that we have an incredible capability from ourselves and each others. Try it.

I am sure that I will keep thinking of things that I could add to this list. I have been very pleased, and somewhat overwhelmed with keeping up to comments on here lately. I hope that this continues as an open community resource. We manage, survive, resist and deconstruct oppression and occupation every day. How do we do it? Sometimes it's changing the wording on that sign to say "Queers + Friends Space" and posting it above the bumping sound system, sometimes its chocolate bars and sometimes being all gay up in folks places. Everything has it's time a space of course, but sometimes these things aren't as far apart as we think.

Now I guess that coming back to the olympics in my town isn't really that completely different after all.

Cane Dancer

2010-02-22T09:38:00.000-08:00

This journey down the coast has been a real trip in exploring peoples perspectives on disability and impairments, and where they intersect with a handsome young guy like myself.
My relationship to visibility, pain, management and assistance:
I have a cane. I don't bust it out all the time, but if I know I am going to be walking for a long time (or conversely if I don't know how long I will be walking) I will grab it and use the prop.

–verb (used with object)

to support, or prevent from falling, with or as if with a prop (often fol. by up): to prop an old fence; to prop up an unpopular government.

to rest (a thing) against a support: He propped his cane against the wall.

to support or sustain (often fol. by up).

–noun

a stick, rod, pole, beam, or other rigid support.

a person or thing serving as a support or stay: His father is his financial prop.

as opposed to prop in the theatrical sense:
Property:
Also called prop. a usually movable item, other than costumes or scenery, used on the set of a theater production, motion picture, etc.; any object handled or used by an actor in a performance.

Using a cane is not acting for me. It's assistance. Its a little push from my upper body to get up the stairs, along the road, across a span, down stairs etc when my knee doesn't feel like participating as much as would be ideal.

It is a signifier for those around me too, especially in new and/or crowded space, that I may be moving slowly, I am probably in some degree of pain, and I may be having a low balance threshold. Give me some fucking space. This spurs a whole other topic, in which folks generally are not providing space or consideration for invisible impairments. My body, with out a prop, looks pretty normal. A chiropractor or masseur could see how my spine twists and a thermal camera might be able to show my knee responding to being impacted with an SUV. But from the outside I look "normal". Being a "passing" transman with an invisible disability makes me sometimes feel like the parts that are the biggest things that affect how I go through the world are the hardest for outsiders to perceive.

But when they do: First and foremost it makes people uncomfortable, and they don't want to believe it. And they call me into question. The other day in Fred Meyer I took advantage of their motorized scooters to get around the store while gathering edibles. This is something I have done before out of boredom, out of laziness and because being in those stores is ridiculous and when one must enter through its giant automatic doors to find some bananas 2 km into a concrete and packaging wasteland anything helps. This particular time I left the cane in the car, walked into the store and grabbed a scooter. A sales person asked me;
"So are you hurt or something?"
I said "Yes I got hit by a car." I should have cut her off. I should have told her it was none of her business. I could have snapped back and inquired about her neoprene supported wrists. But I let her drill me. She wanted to know where I was when I was hit. She wanted to know that I could still walk. She wanted to know that her perception of me as a young able bodied man being silly in the scooter wasn't shattered. I left there angry. And then returned to a queer space. At a house party in San Francisco I was called a trooper, assumedly for dancing with a cane. Choice of words, really? This country is full of veterans my age an younger, lots with resulting impairments. So the dude dancing with the cane is a trooper??? Actually I just really like dancing and needed the cane to get into the building and appreciate the extra balance it gives me. And cause if I use it to get in and then set it aside it becomes a prop (in the theatrical sense) the act (as it becomes) is off. I encountered another woman who felt that she wanted the answers to her questions too, how long had I used a cane? Did I really need it? Oh, I have a friend who had to use a cane for a while and then got better, are you getting better? What happened? Is this an early onset condition, something acute or something recent? I felt comfortable in this space to stop her. I told her that its the first thing that everyone wants to talk to me about, and that I am frankly not in a mood to talk about it. There are other things about me that are awesome and interesting, as I am sure there must be about you, if we could move on to them and you could remember that not everyone with a disability that becomes visible to you at any point wants that to be the focus of the conversation. She first got defensive, saying that it wasn't the first thing we were talking about (I'm sorry hun, but a I like your fashion, I like yours too doesn't count as a lets build trust and comfort starter). And then walked away.
I would like to go on about the line between fetishization and a-sexualization of both trans folks and folks with disabilities, but I will save that for later.

On the Road

2010-02-19T20:08:00.000-08:00

I got a message recently from one @feral geographer asking if this blog should be removed from its listing as a part of the queer blogs listing. I will admit I may have needed that kick in the pants. Once again its been a year since a post ++ and yet I still hold on to the attachment of having a blog. Let's be honest folks, I have had aspirations of being a blogger. I was decent at it back in the days of geocities and boy band fan sites, but these days I haven't really got it in my ritual of doing things to post public writing very often. I will once again declare to change that. Hold me to it, if you read this, comment, message me, remind me that there is a readership to which I write this. Or at least curious individuals who want to read what I have to say.

So; along the west coast I travel, just me and my little car Del (Deloris when its feeling fancy femme). Packed to the gills with my mess of cds, maps, clothes (oh so many clothes), camping gear, road food, arts and crafts projects and tools. I have been traveling solo, about which I have mixed feelings. I have been reading "Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck while I rest along road sides and like what he has to say about traveling alone:
"Having a companion fixes you in time and that the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down past, present and a forecast are all equally present."

"As the time went on I found that my reactions thickened. Ordinarily I am a whistler. I stopped whistling. I stopped conversing with my dogs, and I believe that subtleties of feeling began to disappear until finally I was on a pleasure-pain basis. Then it occurred to me that the delicate shades of feeling, of reaction, are the result of communication, and without such communication the tend to disappear."

I reached that point to a mild degree, the point where I remember that I am an extrovert and am fueled by interactions with others that I have not indulged in for days, save shopping grunts and formalities. Luckily I was to return to the homes of friends, for if I were to continue my driving alone and making noises just to remember what my voice sounds like could have driven me to a new kind of talkative delirium or unintelligible blabber.

The places I passed through and the ones I stopped in were different and yet the same. The salt water taffy made in front of you is the same shit all down the oregon coast and the tourist key chains at the redwoods are the same as the ones you'll find in the olympics and the same you'll find at the sea lion caves. The people change, but they don't. The attitudes and politics shift from place to place. I notice some places feel safer than others. Some places I will make sure to wear a shirt in the pool others I know I am welcome to be out and crude and vulgarly queer. I don't know how I can describe this, I think it will take more than some rambling musings to figure out what makes a place feel safe. What makes a place feel like somewhere that I can break my stealth appearance (no encounters with strangers have had this pleasure this time around- I think the being alone plays into this)? What about a place makes me wonder if I should peel the little rainbow triangle decal out of the window til a new sign of security has been achieved? What makes some places into suction cups for gaggles of queers and radicals? What allows other places to hold a sense of fear over those who appear "outside or different"?

What is safety?

one more case of poor funding decisions

2009-01-30T16:55:00.000-08:00

I got a call from a friend today. He had his appointment to receive his assessment, the truth of whether or not the BC Medical Services Plan would pay for his medically necessary surgery.

There is a local doctor, trained in Belgium under special contract from BC MSP to learn and practise various types of Sexual Re-assignment Surgeries. Unfortunately the public funding authority BC MSP won't let this talented and specialized doctor preform surgery in a public hospital, the procedures must be performed privately. This subsequently raises the cost very significantly.
The amount that BC MSP will pay for this friend's surgery is 1500.
Now I may add that this gentleman is a fine example of what the doctors officially are looking to support. He's hardworking, well educated, straight appearing, weaned off of anti-depressants and working off thousands of dollars of student debt (now that is a whole other story for a whole other day.). He has the kind of chest that requires a very heavy bind for him to feel safe working in his industrial job and comfortable out in public. Usually 3 high tension bands surround his chest, causing back pain and restricting breathing and movement.
The total cost of the surgery will be more like $6000, plus time taken off of work for recovery, prescriptions and related expenses. That means that less than 25 % of the cost of his surgery will be paid for. Unfortunately this makes this medically necessary procedure prohibitive due to cost.
The Hippocratic Oath, upon which modern medicine was structured and developed, states as its final and closing remark,
"To keep the good of the patient as the highest priority."
The current funding decisions at the hands of BC MSP funding authority is blatantly going against this ideal, when considering that for many trans patients the chronic back pains, respiratory issues, skin conditions, as well as depression,risk of physical harm due to transphobic violence and the physical dysphoria experienced by trans patients continues while surgery is unattainable.
A hark working modest individual who doesn't want to put on a show to survive and doesn't want to ask his other broke friends living in the same or similar conditions to help him through this is stuck.
Please Minister George Abbott, allow Dr. Cameron Bowman to perform SR surgery at public hospitals in BC, and ensure that the cost is never a prohibitive matter to patients. This is a system built to take care of the citizens of BC. That includes transpeople.

Media Watch on Gender

2009-01-26T19:25:00.000-08:00

This week I have noticed the ongoing gap in general understanding of trans identities and politics starting to close in some ways, and perpetually continuing in others.
The first article was in Victoria's Times Colonist.
Growing up Different in BC
Including interviews with transfolks (who's pronouns they get right part of the time), doctors, some of whom actually advocate for local surgeries, and the health minister who seems to continue to believe that until trans patients waiting for surgery in BC make up a majority of his workload, they don't deserve to have the care and safety of having surgery close to home. I have written about this before and will do it again, the trauma caused by post-surgical travel is unnecessary and detrimental to patients in a very fragile physical and emotional state. Airplanes are not a healthful healing environment, and airports are not a safe space from discrimination and harassment. I am happy to see the paper in our province's capital covering this topic, but I would like to see province wide publication of this as news, and province wide response to Health Minister George Abbott. We are here, we want surgery and we want it close to home, in top notch facilities, with well trained doctors like Dr. Bowman, and we want it covered by provincial medical coverage.
Is that really too much to ask? It would be a financial savings to the province in a very short time if they quit exporting patients. It would keep the economy of SRS locally based and not dependant on inter-provincial travel which can be undue harm to patients post surgery.

And in completely other news, the mainstream public (in this case the riders of Translink in Vancouver) continue to be bombarded with transphobic media like this:
http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/Entertainment/2009/01/26/8143556-sun.html
The "joke" that is transwomen working in the sex trade is an ongoing target of physical abuse and emotional harassment. This little entertainment piece, published in Vancouver's 24 hrs News Paper which is given out free on public transit continues to perpetuate this with lines including,
"the actor... failed to realize that the scantily clad sexy blonde giving him a lap dance wasn't a woman, until the stripper removed his wig"
"Kiefer was lost for words and hastily pushed the stripper off his lap..."
"Kiefer's jaw dropped and he shoved the she-male away as pals collapsed screaming. He looked angry...."
It seems that for straight men to feel "deceived" by the gender of someone that turns them on is still a rational excuse to lash out in physical and emotional abuse. I don't think so 24hrs!

2009-01-02T20:30:00.000-08:00

I imagine a number of blog writers may have returned to stale pages this week as a new year causes some of us to check in and resolve to absolve, re-start creating, re-new exploration and generally do something with the time spent inside, hiding from winter, almost ready to get back into the full swing of whatever our normal lives are, but are riding out the last weekend of this string of winter holidays resolved to make positive changes in our lives, or at least not get bored. I have a little bit of both, I will admit. I have been flooded with time without homework, no readings, no projects. So much down time to watch videos, smoke week, lay about, cuddle, sleep, drink hot chocolate and eat so much. It's reminded me that I have stories and visions, dreams and ideas. The time I have spent socializing this season has reminded me of those stories waiting to be recorded, drawn out, written out, layed in concrete allowing me to reflect on them and perhaps lay them to rest, or at least to a deeper understanding. I have decided to record at least one of those stories everyday, in the medium most appropriate. So far crayon illustrated narratives and pencil crayon life time lines have started to make their way on to paper. With any will and the dream of finding spare time to work on this after next week I will have a virant collection of my stories, presented in all of their unique ways.

Trans Day of Remembrance. 08.

2008-11-20T12:09:00.000-08:00

Some say that the subconscious has a memory of dates, others say that due to a collective subconscious we feel our loved ones and our community through ourselves.
Sometimes we are overcome with feeling that doesn't seem to come from anywhere we can understand. High levels of anxiety, tears from nowhere, fear and discomfort.
All from nowhere, until you look at a calender.
That was how my day started today. I didn't realize until after the anxiety had subsided, that it is the 20th of November. Trans Day of Remembrance.

Today is the day that my community is gathering to assemble publicly to remember those of us who have been brutalized, attacked, murdered and lost in the past year. It is never a short list, and the names and stories are always a mix of disturbing, painful, heart wrenching and disgusting.

Last year I was a speaker at the TDOR event in Victoria, as I was asked to be again this year, I was with my community as we joined together to cry, scream, hold each other and feel the strength found in our collective body. This year I am in school, in a school without a TDOR event, or an organized collective body to find strength in. Making my way into school, to a crowded noisy classroom where no one has any knowledge of the gravity of the day. Perfect way to add anxiety to anxiety. I know that my community is gathering today amongst the madness of the world, the millions who have no idea what today is to me, or the thousands of others that will be gathering today. My community is gathering to remember, to honour, and to acknowledge the strength found in our collective body. Although I can not be physically in the presence of my people, I am with them. My head and my heart are with the fallen today, and with those left standing amongst the dead. I feel as if I am standing alone today, but I reach out to all of you who have stood on your own everyday. Those of us who exist invisibly, or dream to someday blend in. Those of us who live alone, the only gender diverse individual around, and to those of us who live in loving supportive communities, vibrant with diverse and powerful individuals. Today we stand together, in remembrance of those who have fallen and those who face adversity everyday. Today we stand together in resistance of continued ignorance, violence and brutalization of our community.
None of us are standing alone.

Catching up on physical time.

2008-07-05T15:27:00.000-07:00

Early on in my transition and before I heard people say that they never felt in their bodies before they made the adjustments to make them into "their" bodies. I never related to this. Until now.

Now hear me out, I have never felt out of my body, I have always felt sort of about where I was. But a time has come to my life where I feel that I am catching up on the physical.

I used to write a lot, think, draw, research, converse. My existance and identity were built around thoughts and feelings, living from my head. These days I am finding it hard to sit down and write or think too deeply, because I want to be moving, inspecting facial hair growth, touching myself, learning all about my body and how it works. I feel like a two year old boy who can't keep his hands out of his pants because he has just realized that he has a little penis in there and wants to know what it can do. A four year old boy that won't sit still to eat his sandwich cause he'd rather race up to the top of the slide and scream all the way down just to hear what his voice can sound like. And in many ways I am that. I am a young boy, getting to know myself physically. And all the changes that have been happening in my body give a constant ability to discover something new. All of this physical time is compounded, the years as a young teen that I never masturbated, the years as a young adult where I was a lazy fucker and couldn't bare to get up for much, well not saying that my laziness has ceased, but the ways I find to fill my me time have shifted. So excuse me if I am not a deep thinking emotionally intelectual individual. I have a whole lot of physical time to catch up on, I'm probably watching the way my muscles flex in the mirror, or debating which parts of my face to shave, or touching myself, or riding as fast as I can, taking physical risks of speed, height, agility that I never would've and probably shouldn't. I'll be ok. Its just a bit of catch up.

Public Forum Coming to Victoria

2008-06-09T20:27:00.000-07:00

Public Forum on Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS)

Posted May 30, 2008 by Jennifer Gibson

Island Sexual Health Society is pleased to host

A Public Forum on Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS)

with Dr. Cameron Bowman & Alison Whelan

Friday June 13/08 at 7:00 pm

Lecture Room A240

Human Social Development Building

University of Victoria

Free Admission

ALL WELCOME

David Letterman is an ignorant transphobic asshole.

2008-06-02T21:11:00.000-07:00

This is what I sent to CBS in response to this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr_kFIXL70w
I am writing to express my disgust with the transphobic comments of David Letterman's list :top10 messages on the pregnant man's answering machine.
It demonstrates ignorance to a revolting degree when such a powerful figure in media makes statements that incite hate on Mr. Beattie and transsexual and transgendered people. There are many of us out there who are discriminated against, physically endangered and tokenized in our everyday lives. Your television network, shows, writers etc have a chance to change things here and now by making transphobia an absolute unacceptable practice. I would expect that your show hold a matter of accountability when it comes to descrimination whether that be based on gender, sex, race, ethnicity, physical ability etc. Please consider the hate that you are broadcasting and the wide scale impact that it has on people - not only Mr. Beattie who has been specifically targetted, but all transsexual and transgendered people who have been made into a "freak show" by your programming. Which we are not, we are hard working people with the extra added challenge of a physical body that doesn't work to present our gender as easily as yours. Consider your priviledge and consider your impact. This is disgusting and I will not be watching your network and encouraging others to do the same until a public apology is made.

Long time coming

2008-06-02T14:29:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, I know, a month, a busy month with little to no updates on here. I f ind when that expansive of a time period passes it can be hard to amass it into something tangible, but I will try to touch on the big important things.

First, Hoo-ha follow up:
On the 11th of May we had our long awaited Hoo-Ha at Swans hotel. It was a gathering that I had spent months wondering if or how it might happen. Who would come, what they might have to share, and how it may change the course of events in the trans and related queer community in Victoria. I was pleasantly surprised with an attendance of 20 people, all ranging in backgrounds from long time activists and allies, to new fresh blood stoked to make big changes in the way we support one another. We had people representing advocacy groups such as UVIC Pride, PFLAG, AVI, and private activists, many with years invested in the betterment of transpeople's status and rights. We were able to put together a timeline of various projects we had worked on over the past 20 years, and compile an up to date resource list of what's happening now. From a group for transguys, to a trans archive in its early development at UVIC, we all have a lot going on, but it was clear to many of us that the lack of sense of unified community was a problem. The fact that there are still people who don't know of the resources that exist or how to access them is a problem, and the fact that many of us live this life alone, often with no sense of how many of us there are in this life together is a problem, both of them with visible solutions. Obviously these being big things can be very overwhelming. The ideas of how to organize a disconnected and often invisible community can be more than a small group in an afternoon could ever begin to handle, but we're taking the first baby steps of a community coming together. I'm sure that this afternoon will not be the last gathering of this group, and our friends, allies and others waiting in the wings, we're going places.

I however, have gone other places altogether. I have made the big move to Vancouver. I have started a new position in the field of AIDS prevention outreach work with youth, and am moving into a house this week with a number of straight men. I have never lived with straight men, with the exception of my own father and I really have no idea what to expect. I am also undergoing this move in a method I never would've considered doing. I am stealth, out as queer, but completely quiet thus far about my gender and my past. I have only met one of the boys so far, and intend to meet the rest of them and feel it out before I decide to maintain the stealth mission of passing in my own home, or out myself as a non-op transman to men who I assume have never questioned their gender, sexuality or considered gender and sexuality politics. I will for sure be following this progression online, as it is an exploration in my transitioned gender which I have yet to experience. I also am really looking forward to integrating myself in a broader queer community here in Vancouver, being that it is a larger place, and there are more queers of all genders, we'll see where it takes me.

the meaning of a better man

2008-05-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I participated in an event organized by my good friend, a talented facilitator, as a part of his Women's Studies thesis. The event was entitled Nacho Average Macho, and it was a community discussion on men and masculinity. The evening was hosted in a local community initiated cafe in the community focussed alternative neighborhood of Fernwood. The participants ranged from grandmothers to men in their 20s, and the 3 panel speakers also ranged widely in perspective and experience.
The first panelist was a white academic man, who has studied fatherhood and the relationships and lessons we learn as men in this society.
The second panelist was a counselling professor from UVIC, miqmak background, giving him the experience of growing up in a more Matriarchal culture, access to first nations traditions of maleness and also the perspective as a someone in the counselling field.
The third panelist was me, a young transman, with only a couple of years experience living and passing as a man, and a life of observance on "the ways of men" from the outside.
All event participants were encouraged to think about question for Men that will improve the way things are. One of the big topics was about emotional understanding of one's self.

Who am I? What am I feeling?

Men in this western North American culture are not encouraged, taught or guided in answering these questions, unless we ask them of ourselves, and our sons and the next generation of men and their way of understanding masculinity.
In a brief comment during the small group discussion part of the evening I imparted my experience with emotions and testosterone; when I attempted to go off of taking my biweekly injection of testosterone for 2 months, I felt over loaded with emotions. Everything was very intense. Granted that is a complex situation to analyze, but it seems that at least partly testosterone limits the spectrum of easily accessible emotions, for me at least.
During this past week I have been moving and getting through a change in my life that I didn't expect to be affected very much by, but when push comes to shove, my emotions have turned around and slapped me up side the face.
My anger swelled to a point in my life where it reached explosion point and that was my over flow of emotion. I haven't cried in months, and even then, it is sometimes for odd circumstances, or I'll have a situation where I feel like tears would be most appropriate, but I feel that that certain expression of emotion is not as accessible as it may have been a few years ago. I can quite often answer the question, "how are you?" as "great" or "fine" but a lot of the rest of the time it's "not bad" or "going" or simply the internal "I really don't know what to say here."
It seems that even if I wasn't necessarily raised with the "ways of men" I have no problems not accessing my emotions. I think this is a challenge for me, all men and all people, because is obviously isn't restricted to men raised as men. Ask these questions of yourself:

Who are you?
What are you feeling?
When was the last time you checked in with yourself?
What does that check in look like for you? (for me it often involves writing, asking questions of myself and others, drawing, spending time alone, long bike rides, saunas etc.)

Queer Victoria Online

2008-04-10T22:51:00.001-07:00

There is a new website that I just found out about this afternoon, yet to be fully launched, but available and growing as a networking tool, resource and potential online home for our archive project.

Please check out
queervictoria.com

If you like what you see and want more, consider volunteering. The site needs people to volunteer as editors, approving postings and the like, and also is needing a group to help write up a policy/statement on terms of use and acceptable material etc. If you are interested please contact the site admin: editor(at)queervictoria.com

Organizing Meetings and Safe Spaces

2008-04-09T20:32:00.001-07:00

As I have written before, safe queer space in Victoria is something I feel passionate about. "Queer" spaces that are not safe for myself, my friends or anyone from my community are missing something big. It's a something about human rights, about human decency and about humanity. Brutal attacks on anyones safety especially anything in an apparently queer space is absolutely unacceptable.

This conversation has resurfaced after last Sunday, when the local drag king/performance troupe took to the stage at the one local gay bar and attempted to make a musical joke out of every racist stereotype out there. I hope they got the point that racism is not a joke when more than half the audience left, even after a public apology, prompted by audience complaints. I believe that the crowd didn't leave because they wanted to make a statement however. I believe the audience members left because they had been brutalized, shocked, and made to feel that they were not safe in that space, and at that they were at the potential mercy of performers who'd attempted to make hate funny. I may add that these performers were visibly white. Performing a number attempting to downplay racism. It may have been a response to complaints about racist material they had in their previous show , or not. But it reminded me of something I experienced in Albany last year.

I was in the Free School community while the organizing structure of this neighborhood with its own alternative school, community banking alternative, housing organization, parks, natural building projects, gardens, community art space etc, was being called out on its racism. Things were not being said, and nothing as greatly offensive was happening in the open. It was a conversation being had in a community about the bigger picture. Why an organized community wasn't organized to ensure equality, and committed to working towards toppling the dominant power paradigms of the oppressive world around us. It was complex at times, and heavy, but it was a community, not unlike the queer community in Victoria, which had come to the time in which it must realize that it becomes a safe, inclusive group dedicated to unity and combating the isms that pit us against one another and leave us on different rungs of the power ladder or we divide. And to be honest, we all lose out when we divide.

The time has come that all major organizing bodies within the queer world of Victoria (and across the board) need to adopt policies of anti-oppression. Ensuring that the spaces which they hold promote inclusivity, safety and awareness. Currently there are too many situations in which a marginalized section of the already marginalized queer community, whether it be queer people of colour, trans people, people with disabilities, queers of different body sizes etc are made to feel unwelcome, unsafe or not included in events, activities, spaces etc.

The time to move is now, and as some times happens in spring time, local activists and advocates, policy makers and enraged public are coming out of the wood work to undertake a large and very important project.

It has three basic parts:
1) Archiving the history of trans and queer activism and advocacy in Victoria.
2)Networking queers and allies with each other and the resources we have available to us.
3)Finding people who can work on drafting a safe space/anti-oppression policy for our organizations and the spaces we use; lobbying for that policy to be adopted and adhered to.

The meeting where all this will go down will be at Swans Hotel, in the Collard Room, on Sunday May 11th from 2-6. This space has a wheelchair accessible entrance on Store St, and a single stall accessible non-gendered washroom. Child care is available with prior arrangement by calling 381-0994. Beer is brewed and available on site and food can be ordered. Please bring any documents you may like to share with the group, stories, contacts, and remember that this space will work to be as safe and accessible as possible, and no hate will be tolerated.

Cisgendered- A Definition from the Urban Dictionary

2008-03-31T13:42:00.001-07:00

cisgendered

22 up, 5 down

adj form of cisgender

The opposite of transgendered, someone who is cisgendered has a gender identity that agrees with their societally recognized sex.

Many transgender people prefer "cisgender" to "biological", "genetic", or "real" male or female because of the implications of those words. Using the term "biological female" or "genetic female" to describe cisgendered individuals excludes transgendered men, who also fit that description. To call a cisgendered woman a "real woman" is exclusive of transwomen, who are considered within their communities to be "real" women, also.

Some of my friends are trans, but I'm cisgendered.

by genevieved wisconsin May 25, 2006 email it

cisgendered

20 up, 8 down

Not transgender, that is, having a gender identity or gender role that society considers appropriate for the sex one was assigned at birth. The prefix cis- is pronounced like "sis".

John is cisgendered, he just holds to his role as a stereotypical male.

Safe Queer Spaces

2008-03-31T10:18:00.000-07:00

Victoria is a town with a few too few queer spaces. In fact, it is a town with one gay bar, that gets away with too much because it is the only one. Without competition management doesn't need to hold agreements with performers as sacred, because they don't really have an option to go somewhere else. The lack of variety also has a double edged knife effect on the crowd, especially on weekends. It is THE leather bar, THE dyke bar, THE twink bar, THE bear den, THE queer space with a liquor license and a dance floor. Sometimes the mixing of everyone all together feels like a big happy rainbow splattered gay family, and other times it makes me want to throw up on people for being so disrespectful and ignorant.
Friday night was the UVIC Women's Studies pub crawl, so the crowd in the bar by the end of the night was pretty feminist heavy, usually a good thing to have a bar full of people who have some sort of understanding of privilege of safety, but one can't judge the whole bar by a core sample. Somehow, for whatever reason I am not entirely sure, but every week there seem to be a few straight couples that find their way into the bar. I appreciate and acknowledge that sexual orientation is not always as it seems, and sometimes the most het looking couples are really as queer as fuck, but then you get the ignorant ones. The man and woman couple who have never had to question or notice their straight cisgendered privilege. The straight couple that somehow end up in the mens bathroom at the gay bar at closing time.

I stand over the toilet, emptying my whisky filled bladder, I hear a woman enter, with her boyfriend.
"Cock lovers, I need to piss, oh fuckin cock lovers I need the can... "
I can only guess she is in here as to not be more than 5 ft from her boytoy therefore preventing her becoming potential lesbian bait.
My stream becomes a dribble and I pull my pants up and walk out of the stall, the urinals to my left.
"Yeah, I can piss in the urinal just look at my huge cock, don't you just love it?"
I avoid eye contact with the girl. Make my way over to the sink to wash my hands. She turns and follows me, approaches me, "You have to excuse me, I'm not judgemental, I don't want to judge you, but I saw you out there dancing, I think you are beautiful, I just want to know something."
"Oh ya?"
"Are you a man or a woman? Cause I saw your big hoop earrings and your breasts and I assumed, but then you come out of the stall in the men's room where you were obviously just standing and pissing into the toilet and your voice, and your moustache and well. I am not judgemental, I just want to know."
"Oh ya, so you want to know which pronoun you should be using when you want to gossip about me later? A much more respectful way to ask that would be privately, asking if I had a perferred pronoun, but thats not something I would usually give up in a first conversation with someone, especially if that was the entire context of conversation."
"I am not trying to be disrespectful, I just want to know."
"Well maybe my gender isn't public knowledge. Also- So you know, it would probs be better to just avoid the use of pronouns or gendering if you are wanting to shit talk someone that you couldn't peg their gender. It's not appropriate to ask, it's none of your business, so when you are wanting to gossip about me later you could just refer to me as the person at the bar with a completely confusing and indeterminate gender. That'd be just fine for me."
"But honey, I think you are beautiful, I just well... want to know if you are a man or woman."
"Ok honey, maybe you didn't get that I am not going to tell you, and as a very important lesson- NEVER EVER question someones gender in a mens bathroom."
"But, i'm out of place too, I am a woman in the mens room."
"True, and you will walk out of here and still be a woman who was in the mens room."
"I walk out and I am that freak, the one that is going to get their ass kicked, or just not given the same opportunity to get fucked cause some bitch in the bathroom felt that it was her job to attract attention to my confusing gender in the mens room. Maybe you don't understand the safety concern here, people die over this shit."
Boyfriend comes out of the stall, "If it's MtF just call it a trans."
"It is not an appropriate neutral pronoun, and you are wrong about me."

I turn and exit. Leaving the hets in the mens room left to puzzle over my gender I grab my coats. On the way out I follow them up the stairs and hear her say,
"God, why do some people get soooo defensive?"

On that note I'd like to get some business cards printed with my web address for such situations, so I can just say,
"This space has certain guidelines of respect, you crossed the line, and if you don't understand what I am saying, or what it means to be respectful i'd ask you to please stop asking me what my gender is, and instead read up about why I might not want to tell you."
Anyone have printing hookups?

2008-03-30T15:21:00.000-07:00

Trans Day of Resistance Speeches: HK Doty

2008-03-30T15:10:00.002-07:00

We don't fit into the assigned. We feel cramped in the restriction and out of place in the norms. It takes some of us years, or a lifetime to find the why or how. Repositioning where we fit on the one or another of binary gender.
We inject, ingest, digest, dissect and reconstruct our bodies and identities to find some place we can fit better.
OVERWHELMING, FRIGHTENING, MIND BOGGLING
I find myself naked, leaning on the bathroom counter. Shower steam thick, smell of alcohol swabs increasing the nausea caused from the inch and a half needle loaded with testosterone in my hand. Destination: Glute.
Marked
Aimed
And my arm freezes. A slight prick of blood starts to drip out of my cheek and a flush fills my face. I become dizzy, fall to my knees and hold the syringe in hand.

"Maybe you have such trouble doing your own shots because you shouldn't be taking them."

A stronger, sharper pain strikes deeper at the thought.

SELF DOUBT, INSECURITY, A TEST.

I mean after all gender is just a construct right?
Could I move past the "need" to transition.
Theoretically, But theory is always written by someone else. We all have unique personal experience of gender. For some of us it's something consistent, others can't track a common gender from day to day. And we all have our own way of understanding and feeling that out.
Unfortunately there is a common misconception that transitioning is a common journey, with a beginning, middle and end. The very terminology we use to describe trans genders implies this. Male to Female, Female to Male. Transition complete.
When applying for social assistance a couple of years ago I listed my transitional gender as a barrier to my employability because I found that my confusing gender didn't lure peopel into hiring me, but instead not knowing how to read me, dismissal was an easier option. The woman asked for clarification, "So you were born female, becoming male?"
Simplest Answer: Yes.
"So when will you be done?"
Simplest Answer: We won't.
This isn't something that is at any point done. We aren't going anywhere. We aren't going to dissappear into binary genders, as much as some of us want to, and do, we all start somewhere and there will always be someone finding their way, and many of us who find that our way is NOT to one or another binary gender. Although this is not a lesson easily unlearned. We gender from birth, before even. In utero the question, "Is it a boy of a girl?", is the first asked after fertilization. We learn as children that a misgendering is embarrassing and as young adults that it is a fearful disgusting insult. The medical system that holds the keys to prescribed assistance requires a certain understanding of one's gender and associated dysphoria to even become accessible.
Luckily there exists an alternative. A small but growing number of us who don't fit into the boxes on M or F questionnaires. We resist using our transitions to reinforce binaries and our allies who are teaming up for events like today's. Just this past year we have seen the forming of a trans alliance here at UVIC. We have see the first Trans Day of Remembrance in Victoria this past November memorializing the trans people who've been victimized in violent crimes since the previous November. We have seen a collective resistance to transphobic policies at a catholic hospital in Vancouver which refused to perform a scheduled non- SRS surgery on our friend when they discovered he was trans. We have seen growing numbers at drag and gender bending shows throughout Victoria. We have seen the formation of a collective to plan a surgery fund raiser to help pay for his eight thousand dollar chest reconstruction. We have seen close to 200 people come out and support that fund raiser and friends and allies banding together to provide post-surgical care for members of our community.
And now here we are, collecting together to stand up against fear driven violence, transphobic decisions at the hands of government, like for example the recent decision to cancel all in province SRS surgeries despite trained and talented doctors in Vancouver waiting to help us, and the everyday challenges thrown at us by living in a world obsessed with binary gender.
By being here with us today you are making a difference, I invite you to join us this afternoon to learn more- learn ways to be a better ally and make this campus, this city and our world a safer and more diverse place for us to all live.

Trans Day of Resistance Speeches: List of Names

2008-03-30T15:10:00.001-07:00

Sally Camatoy: Dubai, November 19 2007. Found Dead on the pavement near Sharjah Mall, after going to a nearby computer shop around noon.

Kellie Telesford, London, November 21 2008. Found at her home on Leander Rd, Thorton Heath, on 22nd November 2007, strangled to death.

Elly Susanna, Jakarta, November 7th 2007. Killed during a police raid, her body was found partially undresses and signs show she was raped, likely by the police.

Gabriela Alejandra Albornoz, Santiago Chile, died on December 28th 2007 after being stabbed in the throat. She and a pair of colleagues were reportedly working a street corner when they were approached and attacked by a group.

Patrick Murphy, Albuquerque, NM, January 8th 2008, Shot three times in the head by a long time lover, after apparently calling him "an ass."

Stacy Brown, Baltimore, January 8 2008. Found dead inside a house in the 300 block of W. North Avenue near Gwynns Falls Park. Shot in the head, in the house shared with Brown's mother and sister. People were home when police arrivede, but have yet to explain the circumstances of Brown's death.

Fedra, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, January 22 2008. Found lying face up in a pool of blood in an alley.

Three unnamed trans people (plus 7 gay men) reported missing in Iraq, on January 24 2008. Taken by a Shiite cleansing campaign. Missing, presumed dead.

Ashley Sweeny, Detroit, February 4th 2008. Shot in the head. Her body was later found dumped in the east side.

Saesha Stewart, New York, February 9th 2008. Stabbed by an ex-con who discovered that she was transgendered.

Lawrence King, Oxnard CA, February 12 2008. Shot in the head by a classmate in their middle school computer lab.

Simmie Williams, Fort Lauderdale, FL, February 22 2008. Gunned down by two young men for wearing a dress.

Adolphus Simmons, Charleston, SC, February 22 2008. Found bleeding from gunshot wounds on the front steps, died while waiting for the paramedics.

Lars Watson, Jan 06 2008. The human heart does not pause for pronouns. It just keeps beating until it stops. Lars was genderqueer and the daily grinding down got to them.

Cameron McWilliams February 15th 2008, committed suicide after telling their mother they wanted to wear make up and being told they weren't allowed. The mother had previously teased Cameron for wearing thier sisters underwear. Cameron was 10.

Trans Day of Resistance Speeches : Chris Tuttle

2008-03-30T13:44:00.000-07:00

Here are the transcripts of some the speeches from Tuesday' s event at uvic. The first speech was by Dana Waldman (still awaiting copy for that). Brodie Metcalfe spoke about legal stuff in a very well researched speech on the gay panic defence (also don't have copy for that). Then Chris Tuttle read her speech;

When I started to question my gender, I realized there really wasn’t a way to stay in the closet and still be happy. Every change that I wanted to make to my life that deviated from the heteronormitive male standard came not with empowerment and confidence, but with embarrassment and ridicule. I had to defend my gender the moment I started questioning it, just to save my sanity. I didn’t identify as gay, at least not how I saw the word then, but the word suddenly floated around with my name. So I came out as trans, earlier than I probably should have, because if I was going to have to defend myself, it might as well be for what I really am, not what people think I might be.
At this point I still wasn’t on hormones, hadn’t had time to grow out my hair, and had almost no clothes to wear. In short, I didn’t pass. Not passing meant I had to defend myself against practically everyone I saw or met for the first time. I’ve never been in as many staring wars with bewildered or hostile strangers as when I didn’t pass.
Worse than stares and sneers were the conflicts, being bullied out of lines, having tea thrown at me, being yelled at or “prayed for”.
The worst of all were the silences. So many people I knew stopped talking to me, barely acknowledged my presence. Every time this happened I couldn’t help feeling like they didn’t want to be seen associating with a tranny. It still hurts. These people aren’t strangers, they’re people that know me and had, up until I came out, decided I was worth talking to. The silence of the people who watched while someone ridiculed or intimidated me was like cold suffocation.
Slowly though, I got into the medical system and got a diagnosis and a prescription. My wardrobe rounded out along with my hips. Now, a little over a year after coming out, I’m finally starting to feel comfortable in and with my body. If I’m not perfectly happy with how I look, well who is?
Being comfortable with myself means that when someone first sees me, that little visual processor in people’s brain often yelps “girl” instead of “boy”, or “trans” first, before I even say hi. Of course, this is part of what I’ve been waiting for all my life. My gender is not just about how I see myself, but also about how others see me.
I’ll never pass all the time, and there is always that risk of an unprovoked attack, but to some extent starting to pass is pulling me out of the realm of constant physical danger from strangers. Sadly, I’ve been seeing new ways in which people can be hurtful.
I don’t feel like I should have to tell someone that I’m trans when we first meet if they don’t realize it. I consider myself pretty open about my gender, but sometimes I feel like talking about my privates is too much intimate personal information to bring up casually. I want to be treated like a woman. I am a woman, and in a culture that is still so rooted in gender binary, the best way to make sure people get their pronouns right is to make a first impression as at least potentially female.
It’s not that I don’t want people to know all aspects of who I am; it’s not that I’m trying to hide anything. I just don’t want to talk about it right away with everybody I meet. Otherwise I start to feel like the only way I’m defined in the world is through my gender, or my deviance from it. And as important, as critical as my gender identity is to my life, there is more to me than just that.
Even more recently in my transition, I’ve started to realize that I don’t need or want to pass as “male” or “female”. My gender identity lies somewhere in between. After fighting so hard for the freedom to express my gender identity, I don’t want to have to fit into another gender presentation that doesn’t fit just to be safe. I don’t want to be defined by my birthgender even after I depart from it by being labled a MTF or a transwoman. I’m trans*, queer, and genderqueer, and I prefer female pronouns, that’s specific enough.

How I’d like to be treated:
I don’t mind being stared at, but when or if I meet your gaze, I’d like to see, not a look of disgust or horror or bemusement, but a smile.
I’d like people who find themselves attracted to me to realize that it’s O.K. It doesn’t take away from your manliness, or your queerness. It doesn’t make a straight person queer, or a queer person straight to date me, or to sleep with me.
I’d like for people to know that I’m not going to sleep with you before making sure you know what’s going on.
If I come out to you, I’d like you to think for a minute or two before you say anything. A lot of unintentional pain can stem from saying something you don’t actually mean.
I’d like people to know that if I do talk to you about my past and my gender, it usually means I think I can trust you. Please don’t betray that trust. It’s up to you to figure out what that means.
I want people (by people I mean friends, acquaintances, class and workmates, not complete and total strangers) to feel comfortable talking to me about my gender if they want to, but to be respectful of some of the more private details. I’d also like people to remember that not everyone within earshot is educated about gender. Quieter voices are nice sometimes.
.If you knew me before I transitioned, then I know you don’t have an obligation to me to not spread rumors, or to outright tell people things that might not be common knowledge. But I’d like you to remember that many little hurts can be devastating. And the amplified effect of still living where I grew up means there is a large potential for the little hurts that come from people talking behind my back. Besides, just because you know my past, doesn’t mean you understand how I identify now.
I’d like for my gender presentation to not matter so personally to strangers around me who only have to interact with me in the small, superficial ways throughout the day.
Thank you - by Chris Tuttle.

Amazing Week of Action

2008-03-28T19:56:00.000-07:00

The events of the past week have been amazing. It's been crazy awesome to have what feels like a solid core of trans people and queers and allies gathering together to cause a fuss, teach each other, share stories, make art etc etc... Its been a bit utopic.

Out of the past week the following ideas have emerged:

-The necessity to archive our actions, including doing the research into the past, potentially organizing a gathering of people that have been involved to share what happened before we started to keep track.

-To establish a website/wiki/blog that members of our community have access to, providing organizing resources, event promotion, online forums and discussions, resources such as a list of trans friendly doctors, links to existing and allied groups. This will be called TRANSACTION- demand change.... or something along those lines. A.T. has agreed to design a logo, patches etc. We need some web saavy folks who might know how to put together something like that.

-That trans people are beautiful, strong, sexy, empower(ed/ing) and irresistible members of community (well we already knew that, but this week was a good reminder.)

Over the weekend I have a lot of writing to catch up on here, including transcripts of the speeches from Tuesdays event and photos of the quilt (still in progress by the way, and in search of inside temporary spaces to put it up for people to read and admire- it's BIG... you'll see...)

2008-03-28T19:52:00.000-07:00

2008-03-20T17:50:00.000-07:00

Featured in the MONDAY MAG.

Fighting Back

By Bill Stuart

Mar 19 2008

A day of action to combat transphobia and homophobia

The recent brutal killing of 15-year-old gay teen Lawrence King in Oxnard, California, at the hands of his classmate was a chilling reminder that hate-fuelled acts of violence are sadly not a thing of the past. This week at UVic, a day of action planned to shed light on the ongoing problems of homophobia and transphobia. Transman activist Hayden-Kori Doty took some time to answer Monday’s questions about the rally and the cause.

Monday: Tell Monday readers about what is planned for this upcoming rally.

Hayden-Kori Doty:  The demonstration and action planned for the 25th of March at UVic is really a four-part event consisting of a rally, workshops, film-screening and community-building art project, all to resist the fear-based violence that threatens queer and trans people today. The event is being held in response to the unusually high numbers of reported homophobic and transphobic attacks and resulting deaths since the Trans Day of Remembrance we hosted on the 20th of November. The number of murders in the last four months alone is equal to the total number of trans people killed in an average year. The rally is a reaction to this violence.

Monday: Who should attend this week’s rally at UVic and why?

HKD:  It is open to everybody. Anyone who has heard of these killings, such as the murder of 15 year old Lawrence King, and would like to take a stand against the hate and injustice that causes these acts to continue is welcome. Also, anyone who would like to learn more about queer and trans people, our stories, our challenges, and learn how to ally themselves with the concerns of queer members of our community. UVic students are highly encouraged, but we would also really like to encourage members of the off campus Victoria community to come over to UVic and get involved.

Monday: How can people combat transphobia and homophobia?

HKD: By learning more, and taking a personal responsibility to educate themselves. Ignorance is one of the biggest causes of transphobia and homophobia. The workshops on Tuesday will be a very good opportunity to access knowledge and resources, but there are also endless resources available online and in book collections like the one at the UVic pride office. The number-one way someone can combat this fear based violence is by treating every person with their due respect and speaking up when people are not being treated with respect.

Monday: What local resources are available for people who have experienced transphobia and homophobia?

HKD:  UVic Pride provides a safe space for queer and ally students, faculty, and community members to hang out. The Anti-Violence Project on campus provides a safe space for anyone suffering from abuse and advocates for equality in relationships.  Student Services and Counselling services provide support for students. There is a sexual assault centre downtown to provide support for victims of sexual assault. The Island Sexual Health Society provides sexual health clinics, education and online resources.

We are also hoping to build a network out of this event.

Monday: Can we call ourselves a civilized society when hate-fuelled murders like those of 15-year-old Lawrence King are still occurring?

HKD:  Seeing things like this continuing to happen reminds us that we still have a lot of work to do. There is still a need for education, resistance, the creation of safe spaces and an elimination of the tolerance that the legal system and media have for this sort of violence.  We—transpeople and sexual minorities—are still widely misunderstood and the fact that we are still dying for that proves there is something seriously wrong.

The rally against transphobia and homophobia takes place starting at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 25 at UVic. Check uvss.uvic.ca/pride or contact 472-4393 for details.

Problematic Media Representations

2008-03-18T20:55:00.000-07:00

I need to comment on media, and the ways that the ill informed public precede to understand transsexuality, transgenderism and the trans experience.
I must say that first off, I have benefited from the time and space in which I am who I am. I live on the west coast and have begun transitioning in the 21st century. Even dealing with medical professionals for whom I am their first trans patient, I am not required to write the book for them. They have heard of transsexualism before. Common patient care plans are accessible, a standard of care does exist, not saying that either of these are conclusive or complete. When confronting transsexualism in family situations, especially considering a generation gap, having my grandmother be an Oprah fan has paid off on the basic introduction.
But, sometimes I feel that the media leave so many gaps in their version of our story, yet delivering it with such confidence that viewers can feel like they've really learned something true and profound. I come across the whole variety of perspectives during the late night youtube scan but I thought I'd share one tonight, with my commentary and rebuttals.

Section One, two and three of a program on FTM transitions, from what looks like a mainstream (LivingTV2: a British) TV Station.
Dirk seems smart, recognizing that his family and potential stressful relationships with them, would be more pain than it would be worth, the narrator plays this emotional well being as tragic. The way the narrator describes the government bureaucracy process as dehumanizing is right on the money, although the following example is so problem free it might be hard for someone who has never been through anything similar to imagine how awkward, confusing, stressful, and dis-empowering that experience can be. The narrator has no need to reveal Dirk's former name, the people in the office don't reference it so it would be of no confusion the the viewer, and is used as a purely sensationalizing tactic to make viewers associate Dirk with his "female self". This is the same sort of tactic employed with the strings of old family photos, images of transmen with long curls and dresses to show the woman in them, however forced, dysphoric and awkward as he might be.
"Exactly why transexuals should struggle for social acceptance is not clear, " this statement itself is incredibly unclear, is she pondering why we aren't accepted, or why we would bother to fight for acceptance and civil rights. It doesn't seem to match up with the clips from Jamison Green's interview and I can't seem to think why they chose that as the intro to an interview with so many possible feeders. Jamison, being experienced with media like this and being an old hand in the trannie game doesn't have any problem talking about his life as a young woman, but this is obviously something that is played up for the same reason I explained before.
The media also loves sensationalizing transsexuals through science.

So granted there is little chance that a medicalization of trans people is avoidable in this setting, at least they could get terminology right. This is horribly confusing, you would think they are talking about FTMs when they use the term transsexual male. Only when they describe taking estrogen one would realize that they are actually slipping in something about transwomen. The internal debate of the narrator, wondering if biological proof that transsexualism is real would be enough to legitimize sexual reassignment surgery is something which I sometimes forget exists. I socialize with so many people daily who have tattoos, piercings, and other body modifications, and they seem to understand changing ones body and feeling good about making those choices far more than mainstream straight edgers can seem to wrap their heads around.

The doctor from Toronto seems to feel that psychological assistance could be a viable alternative to transitioning, which, depending on the method could work for some, but I'd like to take his idea and kick it to the next level, what if instead of analyzing the life out of trannies, why don't we analyze where societies problems with transpeople lie and re-educate ourselves about how to teach gender to our children to take the stress of a binary gender system off of our potentially trans or gender variant children. Giving them lessons of empowerment, diversity and self confidence in the face of adversity.

The show has a pretty clear take on wanting us to know the "women" behind all of these transmen. Introducing post-surgery Rian as Rachael was completely unnecessary, and more confusing to the storyline, as the narrator then has to jump back and forth over pronouns like a flea on a dog. If "she" is living full time as a man, why would the narrator/writer/producer feel required to give "her" such an introduction? Is it because we are about to meet his identical cisgendered twin sister? Is is because he isn't on T? Showing his sister apologizing and legitimizing her excuse for not using his name allows people to feel that that sort of behavior is for some reason acceptable. Guess what twin sister, you probably aren't the one who is the the most "troubled" by this, it's probably more something your brother could really use your support on. This is too common, family and friends wanting trans people to make concessions for them, because it is soooo hard to remember what name or pronoun to use. Well, think for a moment how hard it could be to be the one called the wrong name or pronoun, again and again and again, sometimes in settings where that sort of incongruity is exactly what Dirk's girlfriend mentioned about safety concerns of transpeople. The same incongruous safety concern occurs when a male appearing individual gets called Mary or Alice in the wrong place at the wrong time by some family member or friend who is "having trouble"with their transition.
As for raising kids with trans gendered parents, aunts, uncles etc, we all have different levels of personal comfort on the subject and to what level it is public knowledge. But like I said before; if we change the way we teach gender, and if our infants understand that girls aren't always girls and boys aren't always boys, and introduce the family member the way they would like to be referred to with the level of disclosure that they feel comfortable with those lessons are a whole lot easier to get into.
Testosterone can change your physical appearances greatly, and some might say that they are nearly unrecognizable, but the way that the narrator describes this makes it seem like some sort of jekyll and hyde alter ego monster transformation.

She continues with sensationalized terms "like inner turmoil of reversing sexes". She describes Dirk's transition as something that has cost him dearly with results uncertain, and that Rian's loneliness comes and goes. Taking these human feelings, that are genderless, of wanting to be loved, and feel like you belong, and attaching them intrinsically to ones transition is a false presentation. The media loves portraying transsexuals as extraordinary beings on extraordinary quests, facing extraordinary circumstances to be perfectly ordinary. I'm sure there are lots of us extraordinary beings that are instead looking for space to be extraordinary, but I don't see us finding it on the commercial airwaves anytime very soon.

The story of organized history

2008-03-16T20:32:00.000-07:00

I have a friend in town who has been involved in queer and specifically trans groups and activism in town for years: longer than I have known that being trans was possible let alone identifying as a transperson. Sometimes when we get together she'll tell me stories about when a weekend trans conference happened in Victoria maybe 5 years ago, and things that have happened with various attempts to start groups and get things going in the past. I haven't researched the past, and learning about it especially on such a specialized level of the small town of Victoria's trans history. I am not a historian. But, I would like to know where we've come from, what's been tried, what has succeeded, or failed, and why, and where did the people involved disappear to, do they still want to be involved, or have they got over transactivism? So many questions, but mostly, ARE YOU STILL OUT THERE??? I want to get all the people who have been involved or interested, or burned out in the past to come out in 2 weeks to the event on the 25th or 28th. This could be it, we can bring all the parties together and develop something here.

March 25th Event at UVIC

2008-03-11T12:41:00.000-07:00

This year has seen an unheard of number of queerphobic (transphobic, homophobic etc: a fear of people of different gender presentations and sexualities) acts of violence have occurred globally. Every year at the end of November campus groups, trans activists and LGBTTIQ groups world wide gather to remember the dead of the past year. Each year typically 15 to 20 names are read at Trans Day of Remembrance vigils from San Francisco to New York, and Victoria to Rio. Many of the victims are the result of unsolved crimes, bodies found floating in bodies of water, or shot on the street corners. Many of the crimes are obvious in their intention - hatred and fear of people living in a way that doesn't fall within the "norm". Many of the dead are former sex workers, a profession which is one of the few options available to some trans people, who have been judged, dismissed and fetishized.

This year since the 20th of November (less than 4 months) the world has seen the same amount of deaths as is usually seen in an entire year. One of the most recent was the death of 15 year old Lawrence King in Oxnard California on February 12th. He was shot in the head by a classmate, Brandon McInerney, 14 in the computer lab of their school. It is believed that he was killed for being openly gay and presenting in a feminine manner.

This has caused action to be stirring in lgbttiq circles and activist networks around the world including the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Gay-Straight Alliance Network (GSA Network), and locally UVIC Pride.

Uvic Pride will be holding a demonstration, workshops and quilting bee during the week of the 25th of March. The demonstration will begin at 1:30 outside the Library at the Fountain area of the main quad. There will a die-in, during which the names of the dead since november 20th will be read and visually represented. Hankies of various colours will be decorated and hung around the fountain, all holding the stories of queerphobic violence. Transactivists and speakers Dana Waldman, Chris Tuttle and myself will be speaking. There will be 2 workshops directly following the demonstration to give a better grasp on terms and appropriate ways in which to stand up in resistance to queerphobia. Later in the afternoon a film will be screened. All of the hankies from the demonstration will be transported to a different location (TBA) for a quilting bee on Friday afternoon. The quilting bee hopes to give all participants a chance to share, build a unified resistance and create a large scale visual of community coming together to heal and resist the ignorant acts that threaten our safety and well being.

Organizers would like to see this event plant the seeds for a trans network in Victoria. There have been many attempts over the years, but typically there tends to be a divide between FTM and MTF communities, and as with many activist groups, organizers burning out and groups fading out. Please attend these events or contact me if you are interested in being a part of this new step to an allied trans front on Vancouver Island.

Cancelled Surgeries in BC

2008-03-10T12:17:00.000-07:00

I couldn't really re-tell it better, so here is the letters I referred to in my last post.

Also stay tuned for info about day to resist gender and sexuality based violence and deaths held at UVIC on the 25th and 28th of March. I will be a guest speaker.

To all of Dr. Bowman’s Patients and Referring Physicians:

As the Head of the Division of Plastic Surgery at Providence health Centre, I would like to let you know about an unfortunate situation. Due to budgetary constraints, Vancouver Coastal Health Authority is no longer able to provide the same level of funding and resources to enable Dr. Bowman to operate in the public hospital system. For the time being, this translates into a reduction in Dr, Bowman’s ability to run his practice at the current level. Ongoing negotiations are currently underway, but at this point Dr. Bowman is unable to utilize our hospital resources for treatment of his patients until the situation is resolved.

Please note this is in no way a reflection on the quality of work that Dr. Bowman has been doing. The Division of Plastic Surgery fully supports him during these contractual negotiations and is actively trying to secure resources to enable him to continue to provide medically necessary services to his patients.

At this point, you will need to contact Dr. Bowman’s office to make further arrangements. A also encourage you to contact Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and the Ministry of Health to discuss your concerns regarding this.

Sincerely,
Dr. Neil J. Wells, MD, FRCPC

Dear Patients,

I am writing to inform you of a recent distressing situation which may already adversely impact my patients. Many of you have already received notification of cancellation of your consultation with me or even your surgery, despite the fact that you may have been waiting for well over a year. Others who have already had their surgery completed may not even be aware of this situation.

At this point, due to the lack of continued funding and resources, I am unable to perform any MSP (insured) procedures. This includes any procedure done in the main O.R., but also includes consultations and follow-ups in the office.

Many of you have been waiting for more than two years for the Ministry and the Health Authority to fund a new Provincial SRS Program since I returned to B.C. following my fellowship in 2005. I was the surgeon who was asked to undertake this special training in order to return to Vancouver and lead the program. Despite the huge need and a clear demonstration of the cost savings in doing these surgeries here in B.C., we still do not have the go ahead for this much needed program. Currently, the Ministry is continuing the status quo of sending you out of province at a considerable hardship and expense for you, not to mention the extra expense for the Province.
To say that I feel terrible about how this situation will affect so many of you is an understatement. However, I believe the ministry of Health and The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority are unaware of how significantly their lack of action is affecting so many of you.

The Division of Plastic Surgery and I are currently involved in efforts to secure more resources so that I can continue my work. We have had little to no response. However, my strong feeling is that The Health Authority and The Ministry will take personal letters from patients much more seriously. We encourage you to write a personal letter, in business format, and send it to three key people in the Ministry and The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (listed below). Tell them your personal stories; tell them your experience with the healthcare system so far; tell them your expectations. They are obliged to take your letter seriously and to respond.

Once again, I truly regret that this has happened. I will continue to be a strong advocate for you, and I will keep you apprised of any positive developments as a result of all our efforts. In addition, keep an eye out for a major article to be published in the Vancouver Province sometime in March, regarding the lack of funding for the Provincial SRS Program. Please Contact us by email if you have any questions or need any further information.

Yours Truly,
Dr. Cameron Bowman.

Vancouver Coastal Health and Ministry Contact Information

Ms. Ida Goodreau, President & CEO Vancouver Coastal Health Authority
Corporate Office
11th Floor, 601 West Broadway
Vancouver BC V5Z 4C2

Email- Ida.Goodreau@vch.ca

Honorable George Abbott, Minister of Health
PO Box 9050, Station Provincial Government
Victoria BC V8W 9E2

Email – hlth.health@gov.bc.ca

Mr. Stephen Brown, Assistant Deputy Minister, Medical Services Division
3-1 3rd Floor
1515 Blanchard Street
Victoria BC V8W 3C8
Email - Stephen.Brown@gov.bc.ca

SRS in BC Cancelled

2008-03-06T22:29:00.000-08:00

I got word today, through a letter my buddy recieved in the mail, that the BC government has suspended their funding of in province SRS (sex re-assignment surgery). All patients with pending surgery dates including those who have been waiting for years- SOL. All patients who have recently had SRS done by in-province doctors and are set for follow up - SOL. Anyone who was hoping to not have to travel half way across the country (out of pocket) away from our support networks and potential post surgical care giving networks - SOL. When I get a hold of the names of people to write and harass until these policies are changed I will post them on here. Get your letter head ready folks, we've got some political change to drive. Until things are changed this puts many transfolks out of reach of a physical need. This is unjust and a poor "money saving" decision. There are very talented doctors in BC who are ready and willing to perform SRS and have in the past and done good work. This is a funding policy that is focused out of the budgets of governments and disregarding the needs of the people the health care system is supposed to be caring for. Anyways, getting ranty with this, I'll be back with detail soon.

Dependency

2008-02-20T12:04:00.000-08:00

I have a great deal of respect for transpeople who live their lives without the assistance of synthesized hormones. I have tried, again, and again I have found that my stability, comfort and sanity are dependent on a pharmaceutical product. I hate to say it, I hate to know its true. But I also know that I turn into a bleeding, blubbering, emotional basket case when I go a couple of months without it.
The effects were slow. But speed of bodily change is relative, in some ways they were very rapid too. Within the first week I felt more emotional. I felt feelings that I haven't had since starting T. Some of them were refreshing at first. But along with the deep emotional feelings comes a deep feeling of disconnect, and a reemergence with my obsession on gender. I had found a point at which I felt happy with myself, my gender, my gender presentation and how I was perceived (most of the time), and I let that go to attempt to live with out the drugs. I found myself knee deep in period blood and tears knowing that the reversing effects were sending me back down a road I didn't wish to travel.
Experiments sometimes produce effects that the scientists and subjects are less than pleased with. This was one of them. Luckily I have friends around me who are awesome support and can shoot me in the ass when I can't bear to do it myself or live without it.

Boys vs. Girls

2008-02-04T18:24:00.000-08:00

Lately at school when given the opportunity to divide themselves into fair teams for playing games, the kids have gone with the gendered split. The divisor that appears on the surface to not leave anyone out, and if they skill levels and abilities are matched within the teams it makes it easy. We don't have any kids in the program that are itching to play for the girls/boys teams in contrast to their class mate's placements of them. At least vocally. This is a segregation technique that I personally am not a huge fan of, just because I at times growing up did want to play for the other team, not because they were better, or they were winning, but I think I knew.
I once went home from grade 5 because I joined in a soccer game in which I was told I was not welcome. This was a boy's only game I was yelled at, "get off the field". I took the ball and started on my breakaway. If they didn't want me to play there was no way I was going to waste anytime. I ran towards the net, dribbling the ball as good or better than those boys could. They finally cornered me and one boy, who I still remember his name, but will remain anonymous here, grabbed me square across the shoulders. One of his 10 year old hands on each of my ten year old shoulders. Then, before I knew what had happened his knee went straight into my crotch, at full soccer playing force, while he held me down with his hands. I buckled onto the field and he spat, "I told you this was a boys only game, and whats so bad- it's not like that hurts, you don't even have balls."
I spent the day in my moms office, rolling around in the courtesy wheelchairs, ice in my sweatpants. It didn't stop me from playing gendered sports, I followed it up with 3 years boys football, where I was the one all the other team's linemen talked about.
"You hit the girl, I don't want to hit the girl"
"Girl, what girl? I didn't know there was a girl on the team."
"Take number 50- she's a girl."
"I don't believe you, but I'll take him."
I took a break from playing male sports when the rest of the guys hit puberty and all of a sudden were bigger than me. I was so upset, threw a fit cause I couldn't move up because of my size. But I was more upset that those changes weren't happening in my body.
The kids that I work withs bodies haven't changed, they are all younger than I was when I got sacked over soccer, and they like to segregate by gender. I let it go when the teams look even, but I always feel like an infiltrator, traitor, or substitution when I am playing on the boys team, against the girls. Especially with that age, I knew who was on my team, not by choice, but it was the girls. I am still sometimes surprised that I get put on the boys team, cause I feel an allegiance to both. I should be the impartial ref, or the leader who spends 20 minutes trying to split the kids onto fair teams they won't cry about that aren't split by gender. I don't know if I am the only one out on that field who feels like they're on the wrong end. I do know that thinking about that is something that doesn't even cross the minds of many/most childcare providers, teachers, or activity leaders.
Let's divide into even teams- whats your starting criteria?

reversible difference

2008-01-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

When I first started taking testosterone I was constantly on the lookout; watching the bodies of the men around me, wondering what might happen, how my body may look after these hormones did their job. Now, less than a year down that path I find myself looking around at the androgynes around me. I wonder how my hips might change and if the shape of face might become too much to handle. I soften those fears with knowing that at least my face will be hairy, and yes, maybe my jaw will recede a little and my shoulders soften up again, but my vocal cords will never return to their previous state. I doubt that I will ever pass as a woman again, despite putting a hold on my hormone treatments. Which the exact reason I feel comfortable doing so. I had my last shot a month ago. I technically should've had another 2 weeks ago, and another tonight. I have a vial of T on my bathroom counter and I have a box of needles in my room. I could grab a swab, syringe, an 18 g. and a 22 g. and put this whole questioning to rest . There is a "prescribed path" which many doctors, transfolks and community resources and old school ideas portray:

Undergo analysis
Undergo hormone therapy indefinitely
Undergo chest surger(ies/y)
Undergo bottom surger(ies/y)
Live invisibly as a straight man and NEVER SPEAK OF ANY OF THIS! unless you absolutely must and the you are allowed to use variations the following terminology to describe yourself:

born in the wrong body
used to think I was gay
I knew this was exactly since I was 2- Never a doubt
I am 100% man
etc.

I have always had difficulty doing things the way people would like me to, and have never been a huge fan of the medical establishment. So here I am, a queer transperson who doesn't fit the binary genders of male or female. I feel comfortable living my life as male, but want that to be more on my terms.
It seems similar to when I had braces as a young teen. I fought my parents for years, I hated kids with braces, and more than anything I hated the smile that kids who used to have braces were left with. It was "perfect" and exactly the same as every other kid in my grade 7 class. I kicked and screamed in a way only 13 year old girls know how to do right, that , "I DON'T WANT A DR. LAMONT SMILE." I warded it off for 2 years, and then my eye teeth grew in approximately an inch above my gum line and the pain impeded my ability to eat. I had teeth growing into my lips. I finally gave in, had the molds done. I made my way out of class for 2 years as they week by week pulled my eye teeth down into line with the rest. When finally the whole procedure had given a satisfactory result, the ortho removed the wires and handed me my plastic retainer. He warned me that if I didn't wear it my front teeth would overlap again, and my teeth could go back to the way they were 2 years of pain ago. I knew that there was no way my teeth were going to cut an inch back up into my gums, so I never wore that retainer. The reversible effects didn't bother me, because the primary concern was that with permanent effects. The reversible effects of testosterone are

body fat and muscle may take on a more typically estrogen inspired configuration on the body- less muscle mass, fat moving from the the belly back into the tits and ass.
may re-start menstruation.
body and facial hair may become more fine, but will not disappear.
moods will probably shift.
energy levels may change.
voice will not change back- once the vocal chords have stretched, it sticks.

I haven't had an oophectomy (ovarian removal) so monitoring hormone levels that could put me at a risk of osteoporosis is not a huge concern. (If you have be sure to keep in touch with your docs and on top of your levels.)

An androgynous gender is something that I have lived with my entire life, up until recently. And I realize, that although technically living within the binary of gender of male is possible and feels pretty great most of the time, these days gender queers are taking back choices in their lives all over the place. Gender neutral bathrooms are on the rise, an awareness of folks who are neither M or F is getting recognized. In some countries they have created an O (other category for gender designation on legal identification.) I am inspired by the gender queers and androgynes around me who are forging the roads through gender in a way that works for them. I am also renewing my thoughts on passing, transitioning, living in the space in between and making male what I need it to be for me.

Lessons from the Locker Room

2008-01-23T18:49:00.001-08:00

Male only spaces where a transman is unquestionably welcome are unquestionably uncommon. Many transpeople avoid places like public pools, team sports, gyms, bath houses and other gendered spaces, especially ones that involve getting naked in front of other people. Our bodies are marked, some with scars and others with parts that stand out in their difference. I know I am one of very few who feels that I can access the gendered space within the public swimming pool and gym, and I have a very specific way of going about that. I take risks many people trans or cysgendered (being of a sex and gender that match, and always have- someone who isn't trans or intersexed. I use this term instead of "normative" because there doesn't need to be anything "non-normative" about being trans) folks living in marked bodies never would. I recognize that for many people the thought of entering such a potentially judgmental, vulnerable space is the trigger to large amounts of anxiety. I also venture into these spaces with the awareness that I could find myself there at the wrong time, with the wrong person, and be in a very dangerous position. I play through the scenario almost every time I take the right turn into the mens space.

It's a quiet night at the pool, one man rinses the chlorine off of his hairy body and another ties his shoes and tucks his towel into his bag to leave. I tuck my shoes into a locker, and take my board shorts and neoprene binding tank top into the bathroom stall to change. I find it interesting that in any womens changing area I have ever been in there are accommodations for self conscious individuals who'd rather change out of the judging eyes; but here in the mens changing room I slip into the disabled bathroom stall setting my clothes on the toilet paper dispenser as they come off. The man from the shower strolls over to the sink stand and starts his evening ritual, brushing his teeth, cleaning his ears, whatever else men do at the sink of the pool changing room- he's standing there naked, if it was morning he'd shave. He sings to him self and happens to look over just as my lulu lemon super tight sports bra binder top falls from the toilet paper dispenser to the floor, visible below the stall door. He stops singing and stares in my direction, waiting for the door to open. I sense the tension and tuck my tits neatly into the neoprene top and tuck all my clothes together to stash in the locker. As I try and slip past me he throws out some comment, maybe it's "shame your bra fell on the floor faggot", or maybe something more in my face, "you're in the wrong place lady." Or just something silent, a comment played out with a fist or a foot slipped in my way. Maybe it isn't one guy, maybe its a group of them, younger than me and outsizing me and outnumbering me, with a point they need to prove.

This hasn't happened and hopefully; being that this is the west coast and that I have yet to see the changing room anything but bustling at anytime of day my luck may hold. I don't say too much, rarely strike up conversations, because despite the passability of my voice, I am new to this. I don't know the social code of the mens room. I try to not look at anyone's cock, or make eye contact. But I do listen. I learned a lot about body image, growing up, what my body may some day look like from the shower room time I had as a young girl. I never had that experience of learning how to be a man, until now. I am becoming familiar with a number of reoccurring characters, and their lives and interests.
The men who bathe in the mornings always seem to be talking about the poor markets, the troubles in the world, politics and economics. These men have watched CNN and had their coffee before I have finished my last dream and are on their way out of the pool by the time I am hauling my sorry ass across the street and into the cold water for the rude awakening to brake the hangover. There's one older Irishman who always enters the changing room like its a party at the seniors center with all his best naked buddies, "Hello, hello, how are you all today? I'm great, it's the rest of the world that seems to be having problems!" I once heard him recount the story of returning from war, and becoming a man. He had been serving in the force and when he returned home, still at the tender age of 18 he got off the train and started the walk home. He was stopped on his way and asked where he was headed.
"I'm going home to see me mum."
"No sir, if you are man enough to serve your country you are man enough to come out to drink to it."
He reckoned that first sip marked the beginning of his life as an alcoholic, and he didn't make it home to see his mum that day.
I hear about the stock market and I hear languages I don't understand, I hear men asking each other about their wives, their kids and early retirement. I hear war stories and see fathers helping a son tie his shoes. This men only, let's get naked and chat space is my incubator for the male experience. I study it like the eggs we hatched in my kitchen when I was 14. Watching, listening, and keeping my eyes down and being very nonchalant yet cautious about everything.
I study. I learn.

Perceptions of Masculinity

2008-01-21T10:31:00.000-08:00

Growing up in western North America in the 1990's has left many imprints of time and place on my character. I remember the conversations of my conservative family members, generations rooted in resource based industry, loggers, ranchers, farmers, and trades peoples, around the dinner table as a child. I remember the attitudes of anti-francophone, western Canadians during the Quebec referendum. I remember the internal conflicts created between my own budding activist and conservationist politics, with the familiarity with irresponsible forest management. My young vegetarian tendencies clashing with the meat and potatoes of a working family. I have grown and despite how much of a head-spin it may have caused me at 17 to be told that within ten years I wouldn't be as "left" as I was then, I can see my extremism settling into attitudes built up from a whole different set of influences, a queer feminist politic that considers the environment, but also critically analyzes class and privilege and doesn't necessarily make all of the most "socially-responsible" decisions, but does help me do whats right for me. Self care. I was also raised with an idea of self care that has evolved, and is no longer so centered around fear. Other childhood dinner table memories I have include the kidnapping of Michael Dunahee, and the constant awareness that a young girl like myself shouldn't be out alone, especially at night, if I didn't want to get raped. Rape was a constant threat, I think I was afraid of being raped long before I understood what rape was or had any idea about sex, sexuality, consent, abuse, etc. As my appearance to the world has changed, and rather rapidly, my role within the Rape victim/potential rapist street theater has reversed. I started noticing the different attitudes of women around me long before I started medically transitioning, but the reactions that now remind me of how much I have changed are those of the men. I was walking down the street the other night, amped from derby practice and going over to a friends house when the man I was following on the street, an older guy, maybe 35-40, suit and briefcase, turned and asked over his shoulder, "you aren't going to mug me are you?"
I was shocked, I suppose I was larger and younger than him, dressed in a lower income bracket's uniform of a plaid loggers jacket and jeans, but I was so surprised. I just sort of laughed and said, "well no, are you gonna mug me?".
I can't seem to shake some of the lessons that I absorbed as a child, and even the ones I never fully adopted, but heard, took into consideration, criticized and lived with in the back of my mind. My grandfathers racism, my uncles belligerence to environmentalists, and the word of every woman around me; that women are too often victims, and that we'd best live with fear. A fear that keeps my grandmother in her apartment, even in fear there, that some young punks will break in and steal her belongings and beat her up. A fear of young, rough looking men, especially in groups, or if they are wandering, smoking, lurking, looking, running, wearing working clothes, people of colour, listening to music, carrying anything, looking stoked, looking suspicious, looking alternative, among scores of other profiles that we learn as children. The villain has a moustache. The villain has broad shoulders. The villain is wearing black. The villain is out to get you, beat you up, rape you, violate you and make the night a time to sit in front of the television or carry mace. I am the villain. I have learned to fear him, I have feared him for years. And now all of sudden, despite my kind caring compassionate character and soft inside, and biologically female body, I have become HIM. The one that carries your fear through the night. And I recognize that we all have a lot to un-learn.

Hogtied- adventures in surgery.

2008-01-17T11:41:00.000-08:00

Looking back on the past couple weeks a big punctuating event was the Hogtied Outlaw Variety show that happened on Tuesday night. It was organized by a group to pull money together for a friends chest surgery, which was happening faster than the funding organizations their hoops and paper trails are built for. He is one of many people for which the system of applying for surgery, and funding and waiting on lists for whoever is available wasn't going to work for. So thinking back to the best way that we know how to bring in some cash legally we gathered a group of people to spread the tasks of throwing a big party out amongst us, and rake in the cash for the cause. Everything went amazingly well because we had an awesome group of people, all with different strengths, some with experience planning events, and others with very valuable logistical abilities or bomb network connections. Being a part of a radical community of queer artists, activists, cyclists and freaks feels so right and I can't imagine what my life would look like without this type of people in it. I feel incredibly priveleged to know and share with other people who are transitioning, or just fucking gender, and even those that actively "live so unapologetically outside the confines of domesticated femininity" (taken from off the map- microcosm pub. portland ore.) Nothing makes me more happy than to be given the job as the cowboy who is hogtying young drag kings and their cowboyed up butchy fuck buddies, boys you'd only think were boys because you saw them at the urinal, leather pant wearing keytar playing artists, along side straight laced straight folks who are getting their first taste of queer culture and perhaps the taste test of kink that will change their lives forever all for polaroid photos that are being sold so a buddy can have a surgery that will change his life.
Another young feller at the show was able to collect a list of email addresses to help him bolster support for his surgery, which was scheduled to happen yesterday, but was called off because the catholic hospital trawled his chart to find out he was trans (the surgery was not a SRS surgery, but a breast reduction that had been in the works for 2 years), and played their catholic card saying that no SRS surgeries and apparently any surgeries on trans patients would not be allowed. His surgeon is trying to find an avenue to get him back on the table and under the knife and he is trying to to raise awareness of the discrimination of this facility, without slapping himself in the face and loosing the surgery all together by saying the wrong thing to the wrong people.
Yet one more friend, who wasn't at the show and doesn't live in town any more was recently advised by his knee surgeon that he didn't feel that he was making smart choices in his life and that surgery was a very serious and dangerous endeavour, completely unprovoked considering that this patient said NOTHING to this doctor about any plans or intentions to have any surgeries what so ever. This doctor made an assumption that since his patient was medically transitioning, taking testosterone, that he must be "going all the way". A misconception that I would hope more people in the medical profession could get over already.
Some of the kids I work with, without knowing my history or official gender or sex status, seem to have an affinity towards me and connect on a sort of "I know you understand ways that I am different cause we're sort of different in the same sorts of ways". I am the boy who will proudly wear pink and not permit any sort of gender stereotyping or homophobic behaiviour whatsoever. The 7 and 8 year olds that are figuring themselves out, recognizing how important they feel having an adult who breaks the mold in their life is, have a special bond with me. They appreciate having an ally with whom they can share things like the fact that their favourite characters in guess who are Chris and Kyle because you can't really tell if they are girls or boys, and get the point when I explain why I never ask the question, "is your person a boy? or is your person a girl?" They get it when I say that sometimes it isn't clear. That you don't know someone is a boy or girl from how they look, if the have a mustache or earrings. They get it when I draw pictures of my favourite things from vacation, including me and 2 friends in a canoe; and that when they ask if the people in the picture are boys or girls I can just say they are my friends, and not everyone is a girl or a boy. Its not always as simple as the binary. Now I just wish that these kids could explain it to the doctors.

Looking back on the first months of medical transition

2008-01-10T00:23:00.001-08:00

I remember crying to my aunt on this day as I showed her photos of transguys online, and explaining that I needed to find a way to start transitioning asap. I needed to find a doctor desperately, and was at the point where I think a lot of us realize it's do or die, when the "choice" to transition stops seeming realistic, because it's become impossible to "choose" to continue living a lie.

A couple months later and I had started taking T, found a community of transmen who I lived with and around. For the first couple months we did our shots together, getting together for "shot night", a sort of boys night celebration, with intramuscualr injections thrown in for good measure.
Summer continued and with each month passed my voice got a bit deeper, and all the hair on my body began the slow creep to meet up and become a continuous manrug. I was starting to really confuse folks in queer circles, which didn't seem too weird, since I had been turning heads for years as a queer, butch, strong, tall woman working in jobs such as bike messenger and greasy spoon diner cook where folks like me were not as common as we may be in womens studies department or radical organizing circles. I think one of the things that threw off a lot of queers was my openness and upfront attitude to do with everything. I have always been comfortable voicing what I felt was important, and my transition and trans politics were not going to be an exception.
By fall I was working for the first time in jobs with people who had no idea about this huge part of what makes up who I am. It created a strange feeling for me as I had been answering questions and explaining myself constantly for the past 3 years. I find ways to balance sharing my values of gender diversity and transpolitics in a very general sense without always feeling like I am explaining myself. I have discussions on gender in which sometimes my own gender is not brought up at all. For the most part I can't keep secrets and the only personal relationships that I maintain without that disclosure are those with the children that I work with, not because I don't think that they would understand, like I said, I had 3 years of explanation period, where I didn't live with the luxury of non-disclosure. I have met and discussed gender (generally and personally) with many very understanding kids, but I know that sometimes they have questions that they bring to other trusted adults (parents), and I honestly don't want to have to explain myself, or have my employer stand up for their right to employ me if some parents' homophobic/transphobic prejudices get in the way of a peaceful day to day.

Reading the experience

2008-01-08T21:08:00.000-08:00

I find myself often checking out books and scanning websites of transgender politics and experience. I find the stories of the other men living with the same "condition" of myself and sit down to reading them. I can rarely read too far in without my mind wandering, and my feet following, over to the bookshelf, where I reach to pull an album of childhood photos, pre-transition photos, teen girl photos, anything where I might be able to remember if I knew, and how I felt, and how I feel now about feeling that way in that time. What clothes and haircuts I can recall feeling good about, the activities I thrived in, the early experiences of being "misgendered" and how that made me feel. Now when I say "Mis-gendered" I do see the dual potential meanings, and looking back through these photo albums I see both. The times I remember being "misread" as male and the feelings it spurred, and the social conditioning which "misgendered" me into dresses and long blonde french braids. The adult male I am today searches those photos for me, I remember being on the other side of the camera, but it is sometimes hard to correlate Me and Her.