I am in a classroom, or perhaps at a party, but it doesn’t actually matter. What matters is that I am speaking, and maybe what I’m saying is funny or profound but even meaningless words will bring eyes and thoughts around to the body producing them. After I am done speaking, another voice starts. “As HE said…” The “HE” rings loudly in only my ears though, and to everyone else in the room my passing and my failing go by so quietly as to be unnoticed.
Continue readingThe concept of “biological sex” is bullshit. When talking about trans people and the sex they were assigned at birth, the terms “biologically female” and “biologically male” are often thrown around without any critical interrogation into their meaning. They’re a fallback for a lot of people who are aware that saying “born female/male” is reductionist, but who haven’t yet done the work to find more accurate terminology. (The terminology I use and recommend is “assigned male/female at birth”). For a variety of reasons, “biological sex” is a faulty concept, rife with scientific inaccuracies, that subtly undermines and invalidates trans identity. Like a pointillist painting, the closer you examine the concept, the more you realize it’s just a cluster of meaningless points of observation, designed to trick you into seeing a complete picture that was never really there in the first place.
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Names, everyone has one (or several), and a name is used in everyday occurrences. You see your friend walking down the hall, you excitedly yell their name and embarrass or startle them, you see your pet eating something they shouldn’t, you shout their name and chase after them, you get the idea. A lot of people never really think much about their name, it’s their name, their parents gave it to them, case closed, but the issue of names comes up when one’s gender identity is brought to the forefront of their thoughts. As I try to untangle my own understanding of my gender identity, my name becomes an issue.
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Image Source: https://medium.com/@queerquill/what-its-like-living-with-gender-dysphoria-as-a-non-binary-person-81054795a2bd
As a non-binary person, I am locked in a constant and overwhelming struggle of feeling comfortable in my own body. Embodiment theories tell us that our physical body impacts our emotional well-being, and I feel the effects of this phenomenon daily. One tangible representation of this struggle is my experience with binding.
Continue readingTW: transphobia, homophobia, biphobia, dysphoria
“I fell in love with a woman,” I distinctly remember my (then) fiancé saying. That was back in early 2019 when I told him I was beginning to question my gender identity. I mentioned that I might consider taking testosterone someday in the distant future, and that’s when he blew up. If I wasn’t going to be a woman, then he didn’t want to be with me, he said. Soon after having that unpleasant interaction, I received a package I had ordered, which sounded like they could be pills. “Is this testosterone?!” he accused angerly. The exceptional fury took me by surprise. I told him that, no, it was not in fact testosterone pills (do such things even exist?), and opened the package to show him.
Continue readingTW: transphobia, homophobia, biphobia
To put my queer experience in a nutshell: I came out as bisexual in 2018, and trans in 2019/2020. In my family, my mom is the only one who knows either. Since coming out and being out to most people, I have felt like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I can finally be true to myself and stop living a lie around close people in my life. That does not extend to my father or any part of my extended family. When I say family, I am referring to birth/biological family, but as I say: blood, genetics, nor genes mean shit about who is really family.
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TW: dysphoria
I am trans… or am I??? Part of me knows that I undeniably am. I have had dysphoria for years, although I did not know what dysphoria was or even what being transgender meant. But even still, that tiny voice in the back of my mind likes to sow seeds of doubt in my thoughts. Maybe it’s denial, internalized transphobia, fear, or some other mix of emotions.
Continue readingMy mind was wandering the other day, as it usually does, about what the difference is between why a hero is accepted for their differences and why a freak/monster/alien/other is not. It came from reading a research article by Susan Stryker titled “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above The Village of Chamounix.” Stryker raises points about the negative social implications expressed toward people who have a different gender identity that is not their assigned-at-birth identity. Stryker likens society’s feelings about it to how the Frankenstein “monster” was treated. Continue reading
Image Source: http://trauma.blog.yorku.ca/2015/12/south-asian-queer-community-lacks-visibility/ (Artist – Jinesh Patel)
(Content and Trigger Warning: Self Harm, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Intimate Partner Violence, Bullying)
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I often find that mental illness and queerness aren’t addressed properly or constructively when talked about together. So often the public at large would have us believe that queerness is a result of mental illness or that mental illness is the result of queerness exclusively. With this in mind, the queer community will often push back on society’s behavior by talking about the two exclusively from each other, frequently ignoring all the ways mental illness intersect. That’s does not go to say that queerness is the result of mental illness or vice versa at all, but rather it shouldn’t be ignored that many people in the queer community go through both because of the way society has constructed and reacted towards queerness. For example, queerness has often been perceived as a deviant thing, it has historically been punished and worked against in a variety of ways. Continue reading
Having been around various forms of sex work I have become quite used to cosmetic surgery. I spent a lot of time drawing parallels while reading Susan Stryker’s “Frankenstein” piece. I think about the times in which we allow ‘unnatural’ bodies to coexist peacefully and when we view them as threats. Continue reading
Unruly Bodies 