polerin

Otep, I respect you, your music has given me strength when I was weak and hated myself... but I need you to know what you just did.

You just made me a joke.

You just took my transition, spat on it, ground it into the dirt, and laughed at it.

I'm not your satire. I'm not your polemic device to attack those who think gay people are sick. I'm just as much the target as you... Most of the looks I get are for being a lesbian, not for being a trans woman.

And yet you take me, the daily fight that I go through, the taunts of being called a he/she, shemale, chick with a dick, tranny slut, monster, despised one, mutilator... you just erase me.

because it's just SO MUCH EASIER to be trans right?

Except not. The Transgender day of remembrance is coming up. Did you know that?

Did you know that this last year has been the worst year on record for the murder of transgender people? 95 just for being trans or being thought to be trans. That's 19 a month. Dead.

I risk that every day, and you use me as a rhetorical trick.

And just that. You know why? Because your trick isn't real. Because the ability to marry is based off of your birth certificate in most places, and your birth certificate is in the control of the state where you were born.
Texas? HAH!
Tennessee? Good fucking luck!
California? You'd better live there, because Schwarzenegger vetoed the cost-nothing bill that would have let you change your certificate there.

Beyond that, What of those people like me that got married before transition? Is my marriage still valid? I don't know, and neither does anyone else until it's challenged, and guess what? It'll mean I have to go to court in Tennessee, in Nashville likely, home of the Southern Baptist Association, and their cronies, a state where gay marriage is not recognized because of a constitutional Amendment.

Even then, guess what? You might still not be married.. And guess what? You'll be viewed as even more of a freak. You'll be subject to even more hassle, you'll have to fight your way through a medical establishment that thinks your psycotic, or in the case of trans men, that you just don't exist get away so I can keep drooling over these "Autogynophiliacs".

I support gay marriage as strongly as you, I'm fighting to defend my own as well as everyone else's.... Don't throw me to the wayside like so much trash. HRC already fucks me over, there was nobody there to defend me at the recent ENDA hearing, and yet I stand strong and fight back.

Don't you turn your back on me too... please don't. This post hurts, it reaches it's hand deep inside my chest and rips my heart out. Put it back, please...

Oh. Wait I know why
( Behind cut for NSFW and potential trigger. )

I don't care if there is some attempt at a redeeming message in the show. I don't care if it is criticizing the culture it is portraying. This image is wrong and hurtful, especially as it is presented not as a critique, but as a draw from the front page of youtube.

This is awesome. I'm not exactly the best informed on issues of abilism, but it's awesome to see someone challenging the concept of wheelchairs as a constraint in such a dramatic way.

One of the more interesting and telling comments I've read about race and fiction writing was, "Why do white people never write about race from their own perspective."

I think I figured out part of MY reason. Other than being a shitty writer who hasn't finished a single story that is.

I don't feel hopeful for real change on race issues any time soon.

Accepting that, perhaps I can go on to talk about things that happened to me as a kid, and how they affect my view of the world, what being white in a predominantly white culture really means. So much of that is subconscious though... it's the construction of the white experience as "normal" and everything else as "weird". Even though I do my best to question and understand what I and the people around me do, it's still just... my life.

How do you explore the air you breath?

I don't generally post on Sex Worker rights here, simply because it's something I'm really just in the opening stages of learning about, but quotes out of context and guilt by association always pisses me off. Please give a read, and help call this shit out.

Glee.
Epic glee.
Life returns to me on Saturday.

But like all things viral, there are occasional mutations.

So, I'm presenting a mutated version of this meme.

The problem with Live Journal is that we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So tell me something about yourself that I probably don't know, and ask me something about myself that you are curious about. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don’t know about you.

One of the costs of being trans is that you sometimes loose those you love, or at least loose time with them. The only person in my world who doesn't know I transitioned is my grandfather, one of the men I respect the most in the world. One of the people with which I've had the least communication over the past two years.

I got my dry sense of humor from him, my love of backgammon, of stories. He was the grandparent that I was the closest too of all of them, and I found out today his doctors think he had a mini-stroke. He's still alive, but he wasn't doing too well even before this event. It's not going to be much longer even if he recovers directly from it.

Prior to this I've stayed away from him, as much as it hurts, because I thought that was the wishes of my family... not to add this stress to his life. I don't think he'd have that much of an issue with it.. he was an amazingly progressive person for his age. My dad told me today that he thinks that my granddad would want to see me before he goes regardless of any of it, but I don't have the money or time to do it because of a fucked up confluence of events.

I don't mean to blame my lack of writing or calling on my being trans. It's not just that, I suck pretty badly at communicating with people in long form, and because he's not exactly on instant message, that's the really only way of of talking with him unless I go up there.

I just miss my granddad. I miss the way he looks at you over his glasses with that too serious to be serious look, to tell you something. I miss his stories, even if I've heard some of them before. I miss the fact that you always look to the root causes, tried to understand the whys and the hows, not just the what's. I miss his absurd snow white handlebar mustache, and the wry grin that goes under it.

I'm sure you can tell there's no particular point to this entry, I just thought the world should know about the first liberal in my family. May I be as brave as he, may I seek out the voices of others as much as he, and may he live for many more years, long enough for me to see him again.

I know you miss Grandma something fierce, but we still love you and need you here.

Huge thanks to Questioning Transphobia.

For any of you who don't know what this is, please take a second to listen then take a look at some of the blogs out there about the DSM in relation to transsexualism. For feminists, try this one. If nothing else though, PLEASE understand that the manner in which trans* diagnosis's are included in the DSM will affect the legal and cultural status of trans people for decades. This document is used as the basis for any number of laws and rulings, and people will point to it and tell me I'm sick.

So, I'm pretty sure that all productivity or attention that I might have had is now gone forever. I have IRC on my phone now, and can post here from it as well. I doubt very highly that I'll use to do anything substantial, but who knows.