24 article response

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.