Sunday, April 15, 2012

Calgon! Took me away!!

Well it's been an obnoxiously long time since my last update.  Much has transpired in the interim.  For starters, I was forced to quit my cushy new job due to sudden and very scary health reasons.  These reasons have stabilized and am only now beginning to fathom getting my life back on track. 

But I'm starting to think that that track is no longer an option.  I've been frantically trying to find work in the last couple of months, even before I was physically ready to go back because, yanno, dwindling savings, threat of poverty and fear of homelessness and all that.  But so far my effots have been to no avail.  It's like my resume is radioactive or something.  I email it, hand deliver it, social network it, fax it and upload it to every job opportunity I find in my field online and off, to no avail. Just deafening silence.  Not even rejection letters come.  I find this... discouraging.

In the meantime, Mr. Laplain has stepped up and he may be starting a new job with someone he knows very soon.  We're crossing our fingers on that.

You would think I'd be writing up a storm, with little else to do these days. But I've been unable to put anything into words since January.  This year has been so inexplicably and unnecessarily harsh in most every respect.  Even my mother and I have started falling back on our old pattern of barely-polite hostility, which i thought we'd finally overcome years ago.  *sigh*.

So in the spirit of joining them because I couldn't beat them, I decided to just sit back and let things happen around me and say nothing much.  I'm a willow in a windstorm, i will bend and never break. The mighty oak is overrated.

But wait.  There is one little thing I long to say about the recent media nonsense.  I might as well get it out of my system now.

George Zimmerman FINALLY arrested for Trayvon Martin's death.  That's ALL we ever wanted, yo!!!    I don't claim to know exactly what happened that night, but it is indisputable that if you initiate an armed confrontation and the person you confronted ends up dead... an ARREST is non-negotiable.   Now GZ is in custody and the chips will fall where they may... but the fact that this very nearly almost went nowhere and he would have gone on to live happily ever after without any authority ever having questioned why he was patrolling the neighborhood with a gun following people.... um... NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Jenna Tackalova.  I refuse to follow the media on her story. At first I couldn't help respond to a couple of online comments here and there, but honestly I just don't care what cis people have to say about trans people anymore.  It's NEVER going to be any good, is it??   I mean, their conversation will ALWAYS follow one of three paths:

  • Trans people should not exist and we shouldn't let them do anything ever.

  • Hey everybody we just realized suddenly (again)  that trans people exist, and isn't that weird??? But but but why do they want to do the weird things they do?  I mean when we do it it's not weird, but it's weird of them to want to do it too, right?  Let's ask them (over and over again while not listening).

  • Trans people exist but we should never allow them to do anything until AFTER they've had "The Surgery" and then only if they are goodlooking.
It doesn't matter what the topic is.  Pageants or Public Restrooms.  It's all about cis people and their comfort with the reality of trans people.  No thanks.

These two media phenomena, however, have caused me to do a great deal of thinking about my own life and the intersection of my blackness and transness and how surprisingly similar I am starting to find the two experiences and the so called identities they have manifested within me.  I am hoping to have enough mojo to blog my thoughts on this later this week. 

Let's see.