I went on estrogen almost four months ago. I don’t really pay attention to it much –I had to check to see if that was even right. As someone who is on HRT I think there is a serious gap in the discussion.
Who am I? Is my body expressing who I am?
After writing my paper on the argument of the body being a medium, it got me thinking about the question, ‘who am I?’. In most cases, in order for the body to function as a medium of self-expression one need to know who they are in order to know what they are trying to express to others. So in order to express yourself, it is assumed that you know yourself. And of course this got me thinking about how would I answer the question “who am I”?
In my case the question ‘who are you?’ has to be one of the most difficult question for me to answer. Have you ever really looked at yourself and don’t know
really who you are? Like you know who you should be, what people (family, friends, etc,) expects you to be but apart from those expectations, you don’t know who you are? Continue reading
The monster who lives in the corner of my eye
I see you, who comes to me and says:
“Why are you here? You are so pretty
Beautiful
Wise
Funny
Handsome
Creative
Why are you here, so far away?”
And I will give a smile, give you a bold-faced lie, say
“Oh, I am not feeling so well.
I am but an introvert.”
Or something else that glibs my mind.
And when you are away, I will frown, and I will remember
The monster in the corner of my eye.
My dearest friend, the one who has lived with me longer than I have
Who has seen me through my trials with but a smile on its face
The one who I hid away.
Endless Pain
There’s a quote by John Green from one of his books that says, “That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.” I have yet to find another quote that so accurately describes my life. No matter what I’m doing, my pain demands to be acknowledged and throughly felt.
Continue reading
Monsters in America
As I was reading “My Words to Victor Frankenstein”, by Susan Stryker. A lot of transgender related issues started to occur in my head. From equal rights to murders, transgender people deal with these issues on a daily basis. I never thought about it in too much depth, but now looking at it, they may be dealing with these issues on a daily basis because they are viewed as “monsters”. Continue reading
Heartbreak and Lazy Bodies
I guess we all know the feeling of being heartbroken. The nonstop crying, the headache, the baggy eyes, the hate, the loneliness and the list goes on. Most of us associate heartbreak with only the psychological effects, and forget how much of a tool this can have to our body. See, being heartbroken has so much more to do then just going into depression. Continue reading
Hair Removal: Only $25 and a Few Years of Shame!
As someone who spends $25 on threading her eyebrows, among other things, every month, Matthew Immergut’s Manscaping: The Tangle of Nature, Culture, and Male Body Hair struck a chord with me. Body hair removal is connected to capitalism – I could have told you that a long time ago, while shelling out money for shaving cream, razors, and those monthly threading sessions. I could have also told you that hair, and lack thereof, for women is policed by nearly everyone, from boys on the playground making fun of your “unibrow” or “moustache”, aunties telling you that you should wax your legs every six weeks instead of using a harsh razor, by friends telling you that the extra hour spent straightening your hair every morning is “totally worth it! You look SO much better!” Even today, there are countless memes all over social media about how vital it is to get a perfect eyebrow arch and brows that look perfect, but not too perfect. However, reading Immergut’s Manscaping helped me continue the process of fitting together all those fragments into one larger picture that reflects not only my experiences, but the way that Western society treats body hair on brown women as a whole.
How Everything Seems to be Racialized…
In modern day America tattooing isn’t much of a taboo thing to do anymore nor is piercings but there seems to be a favor for taboo actions being more excepted on the white body. This also includes white bodied asians, latinos, and any white passing body. When race plays a part in our everyday actions it can create conflicts when whiteness is favored. Tattooing on the black body tends to have more negative remarks then it being on a white body (and when i mean white body i don’t mean only white people). Tattooing on the black body completing washes away what could be the artistic value, freedom of expression, and any other means of having the choice to do what you want.
So what does that mean for the way people of color (brown, black people, actual colored people) express themselves? It means that this fixed lens that we are living, this white lens only allows us to favor artistic expression of the self on the white body because of conditioned thinking like “white is right”. We may not do it in a conscience state but sub consciencely we are still perceiving what the black body in an undermining way, in a way that prevents black bodied people to feel unconformable expressing themselves fully. Being in a black body and in a world that views life through a white lens does fog up what people of color have to offer to this world. We are living in an under world that tries to seek for constant freedoms and liberation, having control over ones body is a huge sign of control of the self but then thats being disturbed by other beings that are conflicted with fear they don’t know how to oversee.
Bears and Their Community
The reading about manscaping got me thinking about the role that bodies play in the gay community, specifically fat and hairy bodies. They completely determine where you are and who you associate with. This especially apparent in gay dating apps, which, for better or for worse, have become a very important part of gay culture. Continue reading
On the ‘trans race’ argument people use to try to invalidate transgender identities
Before anything I’m going to start of by pointing out that I’m trans but I’m white. So my space in talking about this will come largely from the fact that I’ve had many people including my father try to invalidate transgender identities by saying “well if trans race identities aren’t a thing then I’m sorry transgender identities can’t be either.” So this is mostly coming from a place of defending my own identity but also calling out racism. But since I don’t actually experience racism or understand all of the complexities of this topic I invite this to be a discussion and something people can add to via comments.
So often I hear this argument that tries to invalidate transgender people, and a large response in retort to this attitude is “well you just can’t compare them because they’re different things.” I totally agree with this and it is in fact the reason. Unfortunately, for some, it’s not enough to understand. So in order to justify my identity and also keep people from muddling race and gender, I’ve thought about it a lot and decided to share my reasoning so far in explaining why we can’t simply equate the two. Continue reading
Unruly Bodies 