woman shame

I think there's a misconception about trans women that we don't experience body shame as women, except in the sense that we fail to "measure up" to cissexual female phenotypes.   Whatever body shame we do have, the thinking goes, surely revolves around the fact that we simply aren't "woman enough" physically and so we spend every waking moment trying to obtain that "woman enough" body. Piece by piece.

It's practically unheard of that a trans woman could feel anything other than gratitude for the ways in which she actually "meets or exceeds" expectations for what women are "supposed" to look like.

In other words, we can't possibly experience plain old misogyny, sexist oppression, and the inevitable internalized shame issues that come with having a readably feminine body.

Well, we can. 

We do.

I do.

As far as "phenotypes" go, I have a fairly curvy figure.  I'm told this has everything to do with genetics.  Or  perhaps I was young enough for my body to  respond emphatically to estrogen therapy when I first started.  Or perhaps my body just had its own plans from the start.    People think that trans women exist in a perpetual state of transition, we are somehow never quite finished "acquiring" our physical womanhood, and we're always ALWAYS trying to obtain ever more feminine features, by any means necessary.  So obviously if I have a curvy body, it must be some kind of trophy for me, right?  Some kind of collector's item on the mantle of my um...gender 'hobby.'  My body couldn't possibly be real in the way a cis woman's body is real.. I couldn't possibly suffer the same consequences a cis woman with a similar body type might?  My life inside this body couldn't possibly be a real inner life.  Right?

Trans women do tend to spend alot of time fretting about the way their bodies measure up at the start of transition.  But what girl isn't preoccupied with the way her body is beginning to change into something that will eventually mark  her, forevermore, as --"Woman"--?
Because I'm trans, most people assume I've had plastic surgery to look the way I do.  False.  The only cosmetic surgery I've ever had was the one between my legs (which, as I have written about earlier, was a cosmetic and functional failure).  The rest of me... is all me.  Yes really.

I dont say this to make myself out to be superior to anyone who has had plastic surgery.  I hate it when I hear trans women bragging about how little surgery they need to pass, etc.  It's all transphobic bullshit.   Full disclosure tho, and this is very hard for me to admit, I most certainly did once think of myself as "more real" and "better" than other trans women who had had lots of cosmetic surgery in order to pass.  My body was "mostly real" theirs was "mostly constructed."  (There's a little Janice G. Raymond in us all, it would seem?)

This was during a time when my changing body was still young and callow, tho my mind was pre0colonized with cissexist standards of femaleness; In my desperate bid for survival as a woman on these terms, living in a world that clearly wanted me to fail at being a woman, I was more than willing to apply these standards to other trans girls like myself to see how I "ranked."  When I ranked "higher" I congratulated myself (if only inwardly) and tsk tsked at the misfortune of the poor girl being compared to me.   When I ranked "lower" I blamed myself and vowed to work harder on my appearance, to "improve" my presentation, my "realness."

Admitting your own privilege and fail is.. fucking hard.  I'm ashamed of the lateral transphobic oppression of others I engaged in over my lifetime.  I apologize with everything in me.  This is a post for another day.

Back to being in my body.  My body that for over two decades  has both flattered and embarrassed me with it overt femininity.  This body that came from a long proud line of full-figured, full bosomed, full buttocked black and brown women who all at different times in their lives, have worn their bodies bravely, resentfully, deliberately, cautiously. 

I wanted what I saw as that same strength, that mettle. I was eager to join the ranks of womanhood and become indestructible in the face of certain man-caused doom.  I couldn't understand why anyone would dream of discouraging me, let alone my own mother.  I didn't understand why she seemed to resent her womanhood.    As my body changed, I was soon rewarded with a too-fullness of thighs that begged apologies from my mama's lips: "It's a shame you inherited my legs. I'm sorry."   A growing bottom heaviness that furrowed her brow: "You're getting hip-py, miss piggy... better lay off the sweets."   

I was  even prepared for the ocasional bruises on my ass from being slapped and pinched by strange men in public, just ike my Auntie Lisa had all thru her teens.  I was prepared for every woman worry I had witnessed on my mother's face, my aunties face, my grandmothers' faces as they moved guardedly thru the world in their own unmistakeably brown and feminine bodies.

I was unprepared for that silent inner world of woman shame I couldn't yet know or see. The way my own body would one day leave me feeling sexually harassed just to look at myself, because it was.. just too much with the daaaayum! and the pow! sometimes.   

I was unprepared for the relentless self-consciousness about having curves, at having a "figure" that could be commented on at all....   utterly unprepared for the way "slut" would echo in my head everytime I got dressed in a mirror and I had the gall to admire me..."slut slut slut!!  who do you think you are??"



Soon, just the fact that my breasts were the size they were and my butt the size it was made me feel ...pornographic. Like I had turned into some kind of deliberate sex object. I felt silly, like somebody would think I had listened to a Sir Mix Alot album one day and thought, hey what a great idea!   I didn't think anybody could possibly take me seriously looking like this.  Because the only thing a body like this was any good for was looking at, right?

And of course feeling confused, because in some respects, I had deliberately turned myself into an object.  Not for the sake of male attention, but because I didn't know how else to survive in a world dominated by men who seemed to have one of two reactions to me:  abject hatred or confused lust.   Since the former too often resulted in my ass getting kicked or threatened,  I felt that the latter at least gave me a little bit of a chance to protect myself.  Maybe.  But oh what a price I paid for that protection. The price of having a body that so loudly called attention to itself.  Attention I both craved, simply to know I existed, and feared, knowing what it would bring.  

But this body shame went much deeper than mere intent could take me.  It was a shame that seemed to pre-exist me altogether.  An embarrassment in my physical predicament that came to greet me instead of my own image in the mirror. After a lifetime of avoiding mirrors because I didn't like the body I saw there...  I learned to avoid mirrors... all over again.  I had acclimated to the white noise of woman shame that surrounded me.

The shame worked its way deeper in to my psyche, and I began to slowly believe I was "asking for it" just because of the way I looked.  And of course, too many men responded to my body in kind, and I let them.  The attention they paid me left me feeling both flattered and utterly mortified at the same time.

Even today I still cringe when I look down at my 38G's (by my last count) and think "Gross!"  Then I stop and scold myself, but it's too late.  Somehow I always feel like I did something wrong, like I went too far, growing boobs this big...  As if I'd had any control over how my body would turn out. 

But that really isn't the point.. the point is being made to feel bad about your body no matter what; because you're a woman, your body is but an absurd distraction from the business of being ... what?  Human?   You feel a bit chastised, like you should have picked more wisely.. a body that was more discreet, more modest, more...   gender neutral?  Whatever it is you should have done, look at you now! You should feel ashamed of yourself, young lady. 

And so you do.

So.  If you haven't gathered already, I struggle with hella body issues. Not all of them trans related, or disability related, or size related. Some of them are just  female related  believe it or not.   And sometimes it's all of the above.


For instance I have major ambivalence with my wanting and possibly needing breast reduction one day.  The part of me that is exhuasted from the shoulder, neck and back pain from dragging around this damn shelf just wants it all over with, especially since I deal with chronic pain elsewhere.  Then the  part of me that fought tooth and nail to be able to have breasts at all thinks I'm a fool and should just count my blessings.   The part of me that is of this woman-hating, transphobic world thinks that it's all my own damn fault...  that that's what I get for being a woman... Cuz if you didn't want the womanheat you should have stayed out of the kitchen.

And then there's the part of me that just longs to feel comfortable in my own body... someday.  It  wants to look like what I think of myself looking like whenever I picture me in my mind.  This part of me  is always shocked everytime I look in the mirror, because yes indeed I look nothing like I think I do.   Oh sure i no longer look like the wrong damn gender... but after all these years you'd think I'd bear more than just a passing resemblance to the woman I am in my mind... yanno?

And then there is the society that feels the need to dogpile on, just because I'm a woman, and/or just because I have this body.   Patriarchy privileges men with the freedom to dissect and evaluate my body  piece by piece, perpetually appraising its/my worth as a potential receptacle for their unsolicited interest.  It's an outrage to go from feeling trapped in my body to trapped BY my body.  An outrage to feel, after a lifetime, that even after working so hard to get as far away from the "wrong body" as possible, my body still leaves me open to endless commentary, hateful critique and even physical attack from MEN i don't know and don't care to.

Then again, such is life as a woman in a society that hates women.  Yes, I know, I am in alot of company.  Bring me a choir and I'll preach to it, Sister.

Contempt For Trans Men, Much?

Okay

This effed up article is proof of why a reframing of mainstream perspectives on transsexuality as a phenomenon is CRUCIAL for the survival of trans people as a community.

Note their cissexist framework from the jump:   the characterization of "transmen" as biological females and cis women/girls as  "typical girls" , how young CAFAB children who are vocal about not being girls are presented as potentially having a condition in which they are unable to be socialized properly, like some form of autism maybe, (Disableist!).

Note the correlation of young CAFAB trans kids apparently higher incidences of autistic traits being routed into causation for their very certainty that they are indeed not girls: 

“If such girls do believe they have a boy’s mind in a girl’s body, their higher than average number of autistic traits may also mean they hold their beliefs very strongly, and pursue them to the logical conclusion: opting for sex reassignment surgery in adulthood.”


Because, yanno something's gotta be responsible for the crazy idea that these "atypical girls" feel so sure they aren't girls.  They are just confused autistic spectrum females who find that they socialize better with boys, who tend to be less socially advanced to begin with.  That's it!!  (Way to undermine the agency of autistic spec persons too, by the way!!)

More and more I'm becoming militant about the use of Cis when referring to the dominant majority, i.e. those who feel comfortable in the way their bodies were first assigned a gender (which was based on their genitals) and agree either explicitly (yes, my genitals make me a man/woman and that's how it should be!)  or implicitly (thru lack of questioning how they were assigned) to take on the societal implications of that assignment.

Without that framework it is very hard to see the insidiousness of studies like these for what it is.  It starts with the premise that questioning one's gender assignment and/or asserting another gender identity than the one you were given at birth is somehow the result of a neurological disorder.  And that disorder doesn't necessarily point to the gendered hardwiring of the brain so much as that brain's inability to learn social roles properly.

Autistic Spectrum "Disorders" therefore might explain the problematic notion of why any assigned female would grow up to "believe" she  could be anything else but a female (as defined by her reproductive bits).

Before I learned the word cis, stuff like this article would bug me but I was stymied as to how to explain exactly why it was so fucked up.  Cis makes visible that which was invisible and unquestioned.  It also helps me see the Disableism that would otherwise have been a minor issue for me.  But no... because I can understand things thru a trans vs cis lens, I can see the use of disableism to reinforce cissexism for what it is.

I'm so grossed out that a trans woman is apparently on board with this disableist and cissexist study.  But trans people certainly aren't immune to buying into the paradigms of the dominant classes. 

Anyway.. UGH. 

It's stuff like this that also makes me realize that maybe I really must have a much stronger trans identity than I thought...  Because whenever me or my people are under attack from the medical gatekeepers like this, I come out swinging!  >:|

You need to read this

This blog just changed my life today, I think.

This article at the wonderful Leaving Evidence, explains the concept of access intimacy .

I'm a bit shaken up because when I apply the concept to my own life, I clearly see how lacking my life is in ALL forms of intimacy, not just this one.  But access intimacy is something I've certainly experienced in many ways myself and never had a name for.  And I feel its a huge area of concern in my closest relationships today.

I am ashamed of the ways I fail to give the kind of access intimacy that author Mia describes.  I also am ashamed of even needing this kind of intimacy myself and the hard-heartedness I've come to have about ever having it in my life....  the ability to truly physically drop my guard with another human being and trust them not to harm me or shame me or make some kind of mistake that leaves me feeling ashamed in my own body on some level.  

I am ashamed to say I don't think I've ever done this in my life, not even once. Not even close.

I am ashamed of the way I've been acting out for the last 24 hours or so, because I am in so much pain, physically.  I am ashamed of the anger I feel that I should be able to say "I am in so much pain" and have that mean something in the way of "let me make it better."  I am ashamed that there is no way to make it better and there would be no point of anyone even saying that, and even if they did, I'm ashamed of the further rage I'd feel at their asking me because, alas, there is nothing anybody can do to make it go better any time soon, make the pain go away NOW, TODAY, TOMORROW, SOON, not maybe someday, not even me.

I am ashamed of the hostility I have towards anything that diverts my attention from the needs I can meet:  physical needs of having food, water, shelter.  Survival.   I am ashamed at the way I'm coming to see how completely I've invested in survival as a paradigm, rather than in  connection and sharing with others.

I am ashamed that I don't even know if I truly long for connection with others or not or if I just feel guilty for having people in my life who DO long for that and who I know can't get it from me but I continue to let them pine for the day I finally do give in... someday. 

I am ashamed.. but I know that this shame is only the first part.  It is the beginning of a journey I can choose to take so long as I push thru the shame to whatever it is I'm really afraid of feeling on the other side.

I am ashamed that as meaningful and as much of a breakthru this concept for access intimacy has already been for me.... I know that I'm probably not going to change the way I do things for a while, if at all.  If only because I don't see how.... and if it means taking a chance on doing things differently than the way I know for certain keeps me alive... I just don't take that chance.

But maybe.

Getting Real: Being Trans vs Having Trans Experiences

Lately I've been re-evaluating my concepts of "trans identity." 

I just read a post on the excellent blog Critique Of Popular Reason, about the use of trans and cis as adjectives rather than prefixes, which has sort of guilted me into cleaning up my use of the terms and being more meaningful in what I intend to convey when I use them. 

I admit I've been haphazard in writing  trans woman, transwoman, cis man, cis-man  and so on. I've always realized in the back of my mind that each way of writing trans or cis represents a slightly different understanding of the terms, but I didn't think it a big deal.  Well, I do now, so the inconsistency stops today.

Here is what I've come to realize:  As much as I talk about myself being a trans woman,  I don't honestly think of my being trans as an "identity"... so much as a description of my personal history. 

I do not experience being trans in the same way I experience being black, for instance.   For me, being black is very much an identity experience based on shared cultural experiences, shared language, and shared history having been born and raised in the United States among other black people.  I am black not just because I am readable as black, not just because I was "assigned" to be black by larger society based upon my readability as black, and not just because that is how I am expected to identify my race on government documents and other demographic tracking forms.   I am also black because my mama is black, because my family is black, because I am descended from the African Diaspora, and largely, perhaps ultimately, because I was "raised" black and because I am recognizable to other black people as black. 

I do not feel quite the same way about being trans.  For me, at least for right now, I am trans only because I was born into a society based on a truly shitty premise:  that one's reproductive organs predict and define the way in which you will experience yourself, that your genitals predict and define who and what you are, who and what you must grow up to be.  I am trans because I was born into society that refuses to acknowledge the obvious fact that for many many people there is no direct correlation between their reproductive organs and the gendered bodies and the identities in which they find their most valid form of self expression.

To put  it more simply... Society does not allow for being born with a penis and NOT feeling like that has anything to do with anything... other than having been born with a penis.  That existing with a penis between your legs does not MAKE you feel like, think like, act like or identify as male...  even when that same society makes every effort to force you to do exactly that,with its armada of rewards and punishments.  (Of course the same is true of being born with a vagina and not feeling that necessarily connected to one's being a woman). 

Following this point of view, If I am to accept being trans as my identity then I must accept an identity which is based upon society imposing upon me its definition of me, externally, an identity with seemingly no other defining criteria than this particular experience of imposition.   For me, an identity has to be based on much more than being in the same crappy boat as a lot of other people.  I could define being black that way if I wanted... but I do not experience being black that way.  For me, being black is a much fuller and more complex experience than a mere description of my racial phenotype and cultural history.   I feel the same way about being a woman, as well.  There is actually much more to my being a woman than other people's perception of me and treatment of me as a woman. Or even a black woman.  

But for being trans.. at this stage of my self-awareness journey anyways,  it feels like something that is entirely about other people's perception of me as trans, a mere description of my life trajectory  having been assigned to be one gender but I vetoed and invalidated that assignment in favor of my own contrary self-knowledge and need.

I'm sure there is a much fuller experience of trans than what I list above.  Certainly there is a unifying theme of the (apparently) uncommon drive to fly in the face of society's explicit demands for conformity in favor of one's own self-knowing.  Time and again, I have experienced firsthand  that instant bond of recognition and empathy between persons which is born of people living the same oppression.  Especially, when it comes to being trans.  I have definitely experienced community among my fellow trans people...  so why do I feel so keenly that while being trans identifies my life experiences, it is not my identity?

Is it due to internalized transphobia of some sort?   I know as I read this thru and come back to add this paragraph, what I'm saying sounds an awful lot like similar protestations I've heard:   "Being gay doesn't define meeee, I'm just someone who happens to experience homosexual attractions..."  etc.   No that is not what I mean at all, I hope.

What I think I mean is that ... so MUCH of my life, even to this day,  actually revolves around accomodating the social consequences of my being trans.... but is mere oppression enough reason to take it on as an identity?

Personally, I feel I experience MUCH more blatant oppression around my trans status than I do with race. As far as life challenges go, being trans has been many times more difficult than being black and I probably think about it way more than I do race or any other zone of marginalization I live within.   But is that due to my having a more multi-dimensional understanding of  my blackness (identity, culture)  than I do my transness (burden, stigma)?  Or is it because I am loathe to acknowledge areas of privilege in my other identities (do I not experience being black as terribly oppressive  simply because I am relatively privileged as far as my blackness goes, e.g. being light skinned, being middle-class, being from the U.S. etc...?)  and wish only to attach the grand title of "identity" to areas  in my life I feel I can be more "proud" of?

 Is it a lack of self-awareness or lack of  appreciation for the complexity and positive reward of trans experience?

I'm not sure.. but these are questions that consume me on the daily.  I am determined to sort this all out.

Throwing my hat in the ring on:

I've been following the latest story making the rounds about the trans woman who was severely beaten by two cis teenage girls at McDonald's.. 

I really ought to stay out of the commentary on this one.  For me the wounds are still raw when it comes to this particular form of violence.  I already regret my comments on one blog.. tho they may not even be approved.

But I didn't want to lose the conversation so I'll repost what I had said at Women Born Transsexual in response to the following quote:

The attack is a horrible Hate Crime. I hope the video leads to the capture and successful prosecution of the perpetrators of this horrible attack and I further hope they are sentenced to many years within the Prison Industrial Complex and get to spend the rest of their lives regretting having committed this hate crime.



And it is a hate crime on several levels. It is an anti-transsexual/transgender hate crime. There is a racist element to the attack. There is a gang element to it as well.

The “Thug Culture” promoted by so much of rap music and popular culture is almost like an indoctrination program that encourages black kids to commit violent acts that will result in long prison sentences. Pop culture aimed at the youth demographic encourages both violence and a psychopathic disregard for the well-being of others.

Here was my response:

How exactly is it that you can ascribe the actions of these two teenagers to 'hip hop' music and 'thug culture? As if just by virtue of them being black they obviously MUST have been influenced but all the “gangsta” rap music that “black” people listen to.



The only apparent and obvious motives for this attack are transphobia and cissexism. The fact that the victim is (apparently) white may or may not have influenced the attack.. but only in so much as the victim’s (apparent) trans status marked her as wide open for a beating to begin with.


Excuse me while I get graphic and very personal here:


Make no mistake…. in the very earliest days of my transition I too was attacked in public on several occasions and with varying degrees of injury. I am black by the way. And I began transition at 16-17 and wasn’t deemed “passable” until I was 20. During this period I suffered extreme levels of harassment and violence that I’m still trying to recover from to this day. And my harassers varied in age, race, and class, you name it.


The very first time I was attacked in public, I was chased out of a Denny’s at 3am by a group of 5 black men and women, all college aged. They managed to rip out a couple of dreds before I jumped in my car and drove to safety.


The second time I was attacked in a mall by a mixed group of 6 black, white and hispanic men also colleged aged. They had a disposable camera they had procured for the occasion while following me and took turns holding my arms while they posed me with in the pictures and forced me to simulate sex acts for said photos. Mall security did not intervene for 20 minutes.


The third time it happened I was pushed off of a moving metro bus by three black teenaged girls because I wouldn’t answer them as to whether I was a man, a woman or “some kind of dyke.”


In all three of the above instances, it was clear they were doing this because they thought I was a “man trying to be a woman” or because I refused to clarify my gender to their satisfaction. Transphobia. Cissexism.


In all three instances, bystanders stood by and watched it happen and even cheered my attack on.


The only constant in those three examples was the youth of my attackers and the fact that I was readable as trans to my attackers.


The racism that IS driving this Baltimore story is the racist public backlash against black youth who OBVIOUSLY must be brainwashed by all their rap music to the point that they DARE to do violence to a white person.


Nevermind the fact that cissexist infrastructures will strip even the whitest body of all its privilege when that white body can be read as trans. No, let’s look to tired stereotypes about black culture and rap music to explain this horrible event.. let’s look everywhere but society’s accountability to the hierarchy of bodies that it has created.


As you can see... this incident hits really really close for me.   I wish I hadn't descended into personal anecdote in trying to make my point.. but for me I can't seem to talk about transphobic public attacks without including my own experiences. 

I just wanted to repost my comment here at my own blog because I think the issue of how Race intersects with this incident IS an important element to discuss.  But its only being discussed as if blackness itself is at fault for the attack on this woman.  The  REAL culprit... society's cissexist brainwashing of people to defend the arbitrary boundaries of assigned gender at all costs, up to and including homicide... is mostly being ignored.

If anyone is up for a sensible conversation about racism, cissexism and THIS incident, please comment here.   I wanted to create a space for  what I already saw lacking.... 

If nobody takes me up on it that's fine too.  But as a black trans woman, I just didn't feel comfortable letting white people and cis people control the discourse on this incident unchallenged.

ETA:  The victim of the beating speaks to the media.  Apparently her use of the restroom had little to nothing to do with the incident, and indeed the employees and patrons sat and watched and did nothing to intervene. 

Wherein I make excuses for my participation in dreadful things

WARNING:  Purely personal ranting and purging ahead.

This isn't really a continuation of my post on privilege, but it does have alot to do with my actual privilege.  And alot to do with being lucky as hell with no small amount of skill at manipulating others.

At the beginning of this year I was in a dead panic about my employment situation. I had just found out that my company was about to sign a client who'd require extensive background checks on everyone in my dept.   Being that I'm not out as queer at my job, let alone trans, I felt this was really bad news.   It wasn't that I felt that my work environment was especially transphobic or hateful... I just know how things inevitably change with cis people once they know for sure that you're trans.  They may have suspected all along.  They may have had no clue.  They may have known for sure in their hearts but were just being respectful of your privacy.  But once "yep, I'm trans" is on the table, suddenly cis attitudes and behaviors shift, and not for the more accepting.  Suddenly,  cis people start slipping up on pronouns where they never did before.  Suddenly cis people are reluctant to go to the restroom at the same time as you.  Suddenly cis people have all sorts of wildly inappropriate comments and questions about surgeries and body parts they never would have dared saying before....    It's exhuasting.  It's death by a thousand personal questions. Death by awkward silences when you enter the room, by catching unstealthy coworkers darting their  eyes away from you as soon as you glance their way... over and over again ....until you finally go away becuz you're so damned tired of being stared at and never seen.

No I didn't want to go thru any of that, not again... not with me only now getting  life back on track financially, not with me finally feeling like I could live life as a human person and not a moral fugitive with a terrible secret.   But I didn't see any reasonable way to hide my assigned past during a federal background check.  So I started to hunt for another gig.

Ever practical, I also kept my ear to the ground at the workplace for other opportunties.  It was a long shot but I thought, maybe if there wasn't an easy way out, there might be a way ... up?

Well, there was, apparently.

To make a very long story short, I am still at the same place of employment I was before, but  promoted to a position of some authority, and with HR clearance.  Not to mention a huge raise to boot, the largest raise I've ever personally heard of anyone getting for the kind of work I do.     All of that and control over my own employee documentation too.  =|

And oh....  To get this position I was forced to challenge the person who hired me for HER job and I won.  (To be fair, she really wasn't very good at key parts of the job... like not being an openly racist snob.  I mean she SUPPORTED the idea of the AZ "Papers Please" Bill, so that should tell you a few things.... ).   She was demoted. I was promoted.  My gain, her loss.

But  yeah even if somebody wanted to do a background check on my entire dept, it is actually now MY responsibility to carry out and report the details to the HR manager.  I am much more confident that I would be able to keep any "troubling" personal info confined to one or two sets of eyes in upper management only. 

If you know anything at all about the way trans people are routinely undone by background checks, Social Security no-match letters, and accusations of insurance fraud, you'll know that I'm lucky as hell.   To have that kind of harm reduction built into my job is a privilege I can't afford to take for granted.

I wasn't only worried about being "outed" tho.   For the last two years I've been in a precarious financial way all around, being the sole income source for two adults, living entire paycheck to entire paycheck, with zero savings and zero ability to save.    This coming on the heels of WA State Disability declaring war against all its enrollees making Mr. Laplain's situation even more dire than just my own.  But thanks to this new job, I am doubly confident that if he were to lose his benefits altogether, we'd still be able to get by... maybe even better than that.

Oh and here's the funny thing.  I've since come to the conclusion that I actually DON'T care about being outed at this job anymore.  Yes, part of it is security in my new position...  maybe even most of it.. considering that I only came to this conclusion AFTER i realized my chances of being outed were much reduced.  Still that  initial scare set me on a period of reflection, wherein I began processing a few unhealed wounds.

The fact is, I can't and won't go back to living with that level of paranoia anymore.  During my first marriage,  I lived stealth for about 5 years.  5 years of hell.  I was married (or so i thought), to a closeted, wannabe social climber type.  I was his exotic arm candy for office parties, republican fundraisers and political rallies.  I was his "inside joke" on his ultra conservative circle of friends and frenemies, whom he simultaneously despised and longed to be like.  It was the most confusing, demoralizing, confidence draining period of my life.  I gave up everything I thought mattered to me for the security of my husband's racist/classist/cissexist facade.   This would be a long post for another day.  The point is, the thought of going back to a life where I'm worried who knows about me and who merely suspects and what harm they can do me....   well I can't and I won't do that ever again.

So.  Hooray for phases of spiritual growth.

Let me be real tho.   Nothing is guaranteed in this world, and with this particular gig, all these shiny new hopes will disappear overnight if my company doesn't survive this first stage of rapid growth with the new client we signed (not the creepy background searchers... they got paranoid and backed out at the last minute, go figure!)  I  may be out of the poorhouse, but I ain't out of the woods yet.

So why do I feel so damned proud of myself then?  Why do I feel like I really accomplished something to be crowed about?  What did I do exactly?    I brought two adults who were living right on the poverty line and dangerously close to homelessness ... well into lower middle class, YEAH!   I jumped the gates of the poorhouse and landed in a Honda Accord.

What I did accomplish was what I always seem to in the end... I survived.  In this case survival meant I successfully took advantage of my various educational privileges, schmoozed the right execs, then gambled and won on a longshot promotion.  I "played the game," as it were. 

 I do feel guilty for surviving where others have perished.  I mean even literally in the here and now.. I am now my boss's boss! What the hell???   But mostly I feel guilty for not feeling more guilty.  I feel like I deserve to do whatever it takes at whoever's expense to survive if I have to.  I feel like the world I live in has made it very clear it would rather see me die, fail,  disappear.  I know that this is because the world is built on many interlacing systems of oppression and that it is nigh impossible to experience advantage without causing someone else somewhere to experience disadvantage.    I want to feel something when I sit down and take stock of my complicity in  these systems of oppression and inequality.  Yes, I now line my pocketbook while my peers do without.  But I feel like I've "paid my dues"...   I feel like ME  benefiting from unfair systems in any way can't really be so bad.. because look at all I had to go thru to get to here.

I try not to think about all the people who went thru all I had to go thru and more and didn't make it. I don't want to think about the basic unfairness of this world. I just want to survive it.  I want to stop the suffering.  MY suffering.

I know it is this attitude that keeps otherwise good people from making meaningful changes in their social environments.

But even so, I am angry because I feel the need to apologize for having survived, for having known ANY pleasure or advantages in life.  It's like... so you wanted my life to be nothing but hardship and lack??  Like my friend Carmen's or Shandra's or Alexa's??  Well they're all dead now.    And now what?  What does their being dead mean other than they are no longer suffering in a world that never wanted them?  What does my being alive matter in a world that never wanted me?  And if it doesn't matter, how does it matter if I'm suffering or I'm complacent or blissfully unaware?

I have no idea what this post is about.  Forgive me.

mr laplain

i asked u 2 shave ur beard becuz i was on youtube all day
and daydreaming i was sarah and ella and
then i saw mel torme and thought how much
he reminded me of u when u shave
when he was a tiny young man
not at all  a handsome man
but he was
"the velvet fog"
and beloved

i know u say ur eyes are green
but they aren't and i'm sorry
but how many hours
have u spent staring into ur own eyes
none/never?
unfortunately our eyes are more like the backs of our heads
than the back of our own  hands
more like the nape of our necks or our rear ends
the parts of the body others see more often than we
as much as it galls

ur eyes are gray without gloom they are
a seattle sky that tries to be blue and sunny
but fails
does not count how often it fails
is beloved for trying
the gray of a cloud smothered daylight
even grubworms and vampires do not fear dying
the gray of my reason for moving here

sorry

Drat!

I totally missed an opportunity to be interviewed for an international feminist project.  All because I've been forgetting to check one of my eleventythousand email addys.

Back in January, apparently, Jessica Yee of  Feminists With Disabilities tried to contact me!

An excerpt:
....

"I am currently writing a book called "Feminism FOR REAL - Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism" (I have attached the guidelines for your reference) and am looking to interview someone who identifies as queer or Two Spirit person of color who identifies with a disability or has their own identity for "disability" to interview for the book. I'd like to chat about your thoughts about the "feminist" movement - the isolationism and sea of white that exists in feminism, the gender and sexuality policing that happens because of "women", and the silence about dis/abilities.


Would you be interested in being interviewed for the book?" ....
.......................

Shoot!  I am totally interested.  I'm not sure  if the window has closed yet, so if it hasn't please contact me Jessica Yee! 

Although I've already replied to your email and you know this.  Just thought it couldn't hurt to re-post here.

It's time I started re-evaluating my ideas about having a disability, which I've been putting off (one of many soulsearch projects).

What ARE my ideas?  I know that my queerness, for lack of a better term (i don't love queer as an identity for myself,  but I don't know of any other that really describes my experience either), is very intimately connected to the way I experience my disability and I know specifically that my being a woman of color and trans further informs how I experience my disability issues.

Honestly?  Brutally?  I experience disability as this burdensome condition that makes me feel incredibly vulnerable to attack on all other fronts. That's why I know I have alot of work ahead of me.  I, literally, can no longer run from trouble the way I used to, I can no longer do certain kinds of work to support myself (no i don't mean sex work, I mean any kind of work that requires standing or walking for long periods), which limits the types of work I can do that can accomodate my chronic pain issues.  And then there is the PTSD... which is a whole 'nother bag of worms.

I have sooooo much to work out, and I'm sort of slacking on doing it.  Okay, not even sort of.  But people reaching out to me to talk about it like this inspires me to start taking this work seriously. 

Off to do some feminist blogreading!

To tweet or not to tweet... what was the question?

This week I've been dragged kicking and screaming into 21st century social networking. I now have a twitter account.

http://twitter.com/#!/janelaplain

If I can ever figure out how to add that button to the layout to take you there automatically, I will.

I can't promise to twitter all that often or ever. But I do understand it's become quite a formidable news source, so I plan to use it for that.  This is really just an FYI under duress. I'm so not interested in gathering a following I can't begin to tell you.  When I was young we didn't have no twitter.  We used local teenagers to spread our vicious gossip.  And we LIKED it.  We loved it I tell you...  kids these days...

My Body, My Privilege (part 1)

  


This is an extremely difficult post for me.

It's a post I've been meaning to do since I began the blog and have been putting off.  A post wherein I acknowledge the privileges that have been attached to my body, as well as the stigmas. 

MY BODY is such a complicated topic for me.  Thru out what seems the entirety of my life, I've felt detached from it and burdened by it and privileged by it and stigmatized by it and resentful of it and undeserving of it on so many levels at different times, and often, all at the same time.

As a trans person, as a black person, and finally as a person who is coming to terms with no longer being able bodied, there has been much to cause me to feel that my body is a source of constant danger or handicap.

Thus, coming to terms with the fact that it is this society that is the source of constant danger and handicap has been a very long journey.

When I first started learning about the concept of privilege I was of the opinion that I could possibly not have ever experienced any privilege myself.  Not with so many axes of oppression in my life!  Wasn't I black?  Wasn't I  transsexual?  Wasn't I a survivor of domestic abuse, an alcoholic family, of homelessness, rape, homophobic and transphobic street harassment, sexual harassment, you name it??   I could NEVER have possibly benefited from any systems of oppression with such a long pedigree of suffering...

But other folks?  My  oppressors??  Oh how I've revelled in learning about the evils of those who definitely DO exist with privilege and don't have the guts to admit it!  As a result I came to anti-oppression awareness for selfish reasons, as understandable as those reasons may be.

I want this post to be about acceptance.  Acceptance of what my body means to me, and what it means to others.  Acceptance of its boundaries and my own power to be an agent in its healing, in my own healing, as well as an arbiter of my own suffering. 

That means doing myself what I constantly ask my oppressors to do:  Acknowledge the privileges at work in our lives, to take responsibility for the consequences of that privilege. To confess.

Unsurprisingly, admitting the problem is always the first and hardest step.  This will be the first in a series of posts (I hope), where I analyze the privileges I've had in my life and the harm they have caused as well as the help they have been.  This means making myself a little more vulnerable than I've been before.

OH, THE PRIVILEGES I HAVE KNOWN

CLASS PRIVILEGE: 

I was raised solidly and emphatically middle class, by middle class parents who had been raised the same way.  By the time of my birth, my mother was taking maternity leave from her then budding career as a hospital administrator. My father was a spoiled "Cosby" type kid who had never had to keep a job for longer than it held his interest.  I was raised as the beloved only child for 11 years, not even understanding the concept of having to wait until christmas for a toy I wanted, let alone do without.   I attended expensive private schools for the entirety of my education (my mother never lets me forget this).  I had most of the same material  advantages my school peers had, but true to American Middle Class culture, I never felt that I had enough and felt inadequate in the presence of those who had more.  And also true to American Middle Class culture,  I grew up believing that poor people were just terribly unlucky for the most part, and that some (most?) of them were just too lazy or too unintelligent to better their own lot in life. 

Oddly enough, I haven't personally qualified as anything more than "working poor"  for over ten years now, but that "boozhie" upbringing is still there.  I've never experienced the full weight of my poverty because I have always known, in the back of my mind, that I can always ask my mommy for money, or go back home to her  and take a "break" from having bills to pay.  I have done this several times in my adult life.  During critical times when I needed a "break" from the tedium of supporting myself, a place to stay after being kicked out of wherever, a place to recuperate from catastrophic health issues, it's always back to my Mommy and her 5 bedroom house I go.  Knowing you have that "soft place" to land makes ALL the difference in the world when it comes to the choices you make and the chances you take.

At 30 something, I am only now learning how much this privilege has informed how I relate to others.   Especially as it exists in my relationship with Mr. Laplain.  He grew up quite the opposite.  Often going without, often not knowing if his most basic needs would be met, he has an intimate understanding of poverty and its rigors that alternately make me feel guilty (for my own excess), embarrassed (of his lack of "taste" according to my American Middle Class values), and desperate (to rescue him from a "poor person's" fate). 

It's been a source of tension for us in our life together..  So many times I feel we are experiencing our relationship as polar opposites , divided along class lines.  Where I feel like we just "happen" to be living in subsidized housing and that we are "lucky" to be "getting over" with such cheap rent, he notices and feels the indignities of living in "poor people's housing" in a way I just don't (and don't want to... because then that would make ME poor too). 

Also because I am the sole source of income for us right now, I do not experience the fear and forced dependence he does within our relationship.  For me, I provide for the both of us  simply because NOT providing for the both of us isn't even an option in my mind.  I would no sooner allow him to "do without" than I would allow ME to do without... and I've never allowed myself to do without for too long.   For him, no matter how sincere my intentions, I still retain the "power" to choose not to provide for him and that infuses our relationship with a dynamic that leaves him at a distinct disadvantage. 

But I never have to think about that if I don't want to.  I know that when it comes down to it, I'ma be a'ight.  I got my mommy.  I'm in her will. I got an  upbringing that makes me accessible to others with similar backgrounds who in turn are willing to offer me opportunities they probably wouldn't if I didn't.  But I don't have to think of my financial opportunities like that if I don't want to. 

The result is privilege. My privilege.

LIGHT SKINNED PRIVILEGE:  

Like many light-skinned blacks in the USA it was very hard for me to cop to this one.  My favorite excuse was to say  being light-skinned didn't matter because white people don't notice the difference among Black people anyway.  And I should know because I've grown up around them my whole life and they never once let me forget I was black, and besides I'm one of the darker skinned ones on my Daddy's side of the family so I'm not really all that light-skinned anyway , end of conversation.

The truth is, documentably, different.  While white people in this culture certainly don't tend to treat light skinned blacks as their social equals, it is understood that Whites are far more comfortable with fairer skinned blacks and tend to offer them more opportunities than they do the darker skinned.  This is obviously true just considering the media alone. 

It's not just all about how Whites behave tho.  Black people tend to respond more favorably to lighter skinned blacks as well, tend to associate light-skinnedness with better treatment, better education, and just being "better" in general. 

I know this.  I've lived this.  I have never once had anyone black or white, ever make fun of my skin tone or comment unfavorably.  Whenever my skin tone HAS come up it's invariably "wow, you really ARE fair for a black person."  When white people have commented on my skin, it's usually something nauseating and half-insincere,"Wow it's like you have the PERFECT TAN all the time.  I'M SO JEALOUS!"   These are things that are often said to light skinned black people.   Much much more rarely said to dark skinned people of ANY ethnicity or race.  Thus the light-skinned experience of white people"complimenting" us on being black, no matter how preposterous or insincere the praise, it is a far cry from the common experience of people "recoiling" in reflexive fear at the sight of a dark skinned face entering the room. 

Among black folks, I found from a very early age that my skin tone was a source of fascination, community envy, and community pride.  I have been referred to as "pretty" "redboned"  and "black but mixed with..." since I can first remember.    I remember during childhood, the tense but oh-so-subtle ways my mother and grandmother would inspect my skin after coming indoors from playing in the sun for a few hours... sighing with relief  that I hadn't gotten "too dark"... I remember more than one conversation I overheard about how lucky I was to have inherited my "daddy's good looks" rather than my mother's hershey bar complexion.

I remember my own feelings of confusion and relief around my skin tone growing up.  I remember being about 5 years old, sitting next to my mother on the couch,  comparing my hand in hers and noticing the contrast in colors.  I remember thinking, almost instinctively, "how sad for mommy" without even understanding why I would think that.  I also remember feeling angry at the way our difference in skin tone marked me as different from my own mother, my mother who I so longed to be just like, how it divided me from her,, and at the same time inwardly being glad that I ended up on THIS side of the divide. 

These are all painful things to admit out loud. 

These are just two privileges, huge ones, that have informed my life.  I've willfully and sometimes genuinely cluelessly remained unaware of whenever they were in play, but they have always informed how I move thru this world.

The hardest part to admit is that I'd be lying if I said I didn't still retain a certain sense of entitlement due to these two privileges in particular.   These privileges caused me to experience the world in such a way as if I were "special" and also as if I were "typical"....  as if I had better treatment coming to me simply because my body/my background was more easily accepted by others. 

My privileges have allowed me to feel indignant whenever I 've received less than I thought I should, and to project an air of confidence,  of "transcending" my lowly circumstances whenever I've been caught flatfooted by one of my oppressions.  These privileges, or rather, the ego benefits of having been raised with these privileges, have born me through many  genuinely desperate situations.  I can't exactly say I'm sorry about having these privileges when I know, for instance when I was homeless,  being able to use "pass" for a recent college graduate who was just having a bit of bad luck after moving to a new city, influenced potential benefactors to take me much more seriously than they otherwise would have .. how it made my homelessness more sympathetic and ultimately alot shorter lived than it would have been otherwise.

The hardest part of learning to do this anti-oppression awareness stuff is figuring out how to feel about things like this.  The truth is, when I really really needed it, I DON'T feel guilty for having had privilege.  I DON'T feel guilty for being able to use whatever resources were at my disposal to survive until the next day.  But it's hard to know that and also know so many of my FRIENDS in similar circumstances perished because they didn't have what I had.  I DO feel guilty about that. 

Guilty may not be a very useful way to feel... but everybody's gotta start somewhere I guess.

I think that's enough for now.  Next post I'll tackle other privileges.