After some soul searching I've come to realize that this space needs an overhaul. Not just the layout, (Which OMFG please make it stop, Jane!) but an overhaul of purpose and format.
I've had to answer questions that should have been alot easier to answer if one intends to start a blog. Namely: Why do I want to do this? What do I hope to accomplish? Is this blog even necessary?
The last thing the internet needs is another vanity or confessional type blog. I want to do something that helps people and informs people, including myself. But I'm too lazy to do major research. Too lazy to keep up with the latest news to do a news blog. I'm too undereducated to do any major acadamic theory or heavy political discourse. Too green to fighting oppression to do detailed analysis of the flawed arguments and sundry political machinations of the people who oppose my very existence. And I'm much too busy holding down a 9 to 5 (and a 6 to 10) to do significant offline outreach and/or grassroots organizing and then later blog and photojournal about it.
What in the world is there to blog about then?
I've been thinking about the kinds of forums I DON'T see very often. Sites that focus on the individual persons who DO do all of the above. People who devote either all or even just a portion of their lives to actively opposing racism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism and class supremacy. Everyone one of those oppressions impacts my day to day life in a big way, and yet, save for simply surviving them, I have done precious little to oppose them. I rely on the kindness of unseen strangers to write the books, webmaster the blogs, publish the research, lobby the congress, compose the public policy etc. all which have supplied me the tools to survive, and to occasionally stick up for myself.
Needless to say, I'm curious.
Personally, I wish to know who these people are and what they are made of. What motiviates them? What keeps them going? Those who share my struggles and those who don't but fight anyway. Who ARE my allies and where do I find more like them? What can I do to help?
I don't see very many "behind the scenes" resources like that on the web. Then again I'm a lousy netsearcher too! Maybe I just never ran across them. But at any rate, it will be a healing project for me to speak individually with some of these folks about their struggles, both personal and political, against systems of oppression.
Plus it won't hurt to learn a thing or two about fighting oppression on my own behalf and on others.
In the meantime we'll see, we'll see. I will continue doing personal posts from time to time as well, all relevant to the anti-oppression theme of this blog. And yes I will continue to experiment with the layout. It hurts my eyes too, I know I know. Shut up.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
C.O.P.S. vs C.A.S.H.
This post is in response to all of the apologists for the Seattle Police Dept of late.
I live in Seattle and have some experience with the intersection featured above. There is no argument about whether or not the girls were afoul of the law here. Yes, they jaywalked. Yes they assaulted a police officer. Yes they resisted arrest. None of that was ever up for debate. And while I'd love to chime in about the racial dynamics of the altercation, and how likely it is that these girls were being manhandled the way they were because they were young BLACK females, I won't.
The real story here is that the spot in question, located solidly in a predominantly POC area, functions as a racist ticket trap. A trap designed to lure this particular POC community afoul of the SPD.
This intersection is near the Franklin Highschool campus. The HS issues bus passes to its students either free or very cheap, so it is the most common mode of transport for the student body. The intersection is constructed in such a way that the bus stop (and now the light rail) is directly across the street from the Franklin High side, across four lanes of traffic and a median. There is no crosswalk, but there is a pedestrian overpass. Even so, Franklin kids (and quite honestly, everybody else emerging from that side) darting into traffic to catch the bus has historically been a problem, causing some accidents and injuries.
The nearest crosswalks to this intersection take on average 3 minutes to navigate from one side to the other at a hurry up and wait pace. The pedestrian overpass takes you up and over and around to the bus stop side, which is exactly what its supposed to do, of course. It only takes 30 seconds to cross the street by jaywalking, however. (That's why its called jaywalking, duh!)
If traffic is bad you get as far as the median, wait, then dart the rest of the way to the bus stop. It's not legal, it's not safe, but it is quick and easy, and 99 times out of 100, consequence free. If you're in a hurry to catch the bus, if you're a teenager naturally full of hurry and stupid, or even if you have trouble ascending stairs and walking longer distances, guess which option you're gonna pick?
An extra, closer crosswalk would greatly improve safety and compliance with existing traffic laws. From what I've heard, Franklin High asked the city for the pedestrian overpass because the kids were jaywalking even before then. But the overpass has not solved the problem, and ironically, may prevent the implementation of a new crosswalk at this point. Why? There is a silly municipal code that if a pedestrian overpass is present, then pedestrians lose right of way, even if there is a crosswalk.
Another solution: Have Seattle Metro move the bus stop a bit so as to not present pedestrians, many of them KIDS from Franklin, such a tantalizing target. Again, denied. Why? Because the new light rail stop has to be near connecting bus lines, and its even more expensive to move a light rail stop than a bus stop.
So Franklin High requested that there at least be more police coverage to monitor jaywalkers at this spot, in hopes of PROTECTING these silly kids... NOT, mind you, in hopes that police would lie in wait for them, confront them angrily and end up having to bust their heads open.
What happened above is the exact opposite of the intent of this community. A community that has repeatedly requested something be done about the danger of this intersection at the city level. This community's safety concerns have been repeatedly ignored and mismanaged at the city level.
A predominantly POC community. Hrmmmm.
Let me add that the City of Seattle is in no way averse to moving bus stops or creating crosswalks at the request of a particular community. It just depends on WHICH community is doing the asking.
Take MY neighborhood for instance. Right across the street from my building is a brand spanking new Retirement Complex. They built this over the course of two years and its a beauty. I am mad jealous of the building and the view... which obliterated my once pristine view of capital hill and eastlake but oh well. It's a NICE building. Full of nice old folks with more money than melanin if you know what I mean.
The main bus line along the street I live on had a stop that was directly across the street from this new retirement building. Not far... just on the other side of the intersection. When the building was complete, Seattle Metro promptly moved this stop to directly in front of the new building. Now the seniors living there have front door access to this busline should they need it.
Am I complaining? No. I don't have any problem with the city of Seattle anticipating the needs of these people. Old folks shouldn't have to toddle across a busy intersecton everytime they wish to hop the bus. Why that's very considerate of you, Seattle. Thanks!
BUT. Why is City of Seattle so easily able to accomodate safety needs in the above example, yet they have steadfastly refused to reconfigure the pedestrian "speedtrap" by Franklin High? Even after frequent complaints, documented accidents, a failed (or perhaps incomplete) overpass solution, and now escalating violence with the police? This intersection is MUCH MUCH busier than the one near the senior home. It actively endangers kids, traffic AND police officers (apparently), and the simplest solution of all would be to just move the damn bus stop to where a crosswalk is, or put a new crosswalk in.. but No Can Do.
I suspect the reasoning is, if a bunch of colored kids are getting in trouble with the law cuz they cant resist temptation, TOUGH. If brown ppl in a certain area are at DOCUMENTABLY greater risk of being injured, orarrested or worse becuz of the way the intersection just HAPPENS to be laid out... SO BE IT. That's not worth wasting any of the taxpayer's dollars.
But White Seniors with CASH??? OMG they might SUE or something. We had better make the area as safe as possible right???
It's these sort of institutional "gotchas" that wear me down honestly. Not just that they exist, but that they exist, and nobody who has the power to change anything will do so. I've written this long ass post just to be ignored. Ignored just like the community surrounding Franklin High. Fact is, anybody who's ever been to that intersection can see how easy, how LOGICAL even, it is to choose to jaywalk rather than use that clunky, junky overpass which takes you several blocks out of your way of the bus stop. From what little birdies have told me, Jaywalking in this area has always been common, and until the structure changes, will continue to be feasible. It's the City's responsibility not to put its citizens in this position in the first place. But only certain citizens seem to matter in the first place.
Gag.
I live in Seattle and have some experience with the intersection featured above. There is no argument about whether or not the girls were afoul of the law here. Yes, they jaywalked. Yes they assaulted a police officer. Yes they resisted arrest. None of that was ever up for debate. And while I'd love to chime in about the racial dynamics of the altercation, and how likely it is that these girls were being manhandled the way they were because they were young BLACK females, I won't.
The real story here is that the spot in question, located solidly in a predominantly POC area, functions as a racist ticket trap. A trap designed to lure this particular POC community afoul of the SPD.
This intersection is near the Franklin Highschool campus. The HS issues bus passes to its students either free or very cheap, so it is the most common mode of transport for the student body. The intersection is constructed in such a way that the bus stop (and now the light rail) is directly across the street from the Franklin High side, across four lanes of traffic and a median. There is no crosswalk, but there is a pedestrian overpass. Even so, Franklin kids (and quite honestly, everybody else emerging from that side) darting into traffic to catch the bus has historically been a problem, causing some accidents and injuries.
The nearest crosswalks to this intersection take on average 3 minutes to navigate from one side to the other at a hurry up and wait pace. The pedestrian overpass takes you up and over and around to the bus stop side, which is exactly what its supposed to do, of course. It only takes 30 seconds to cross the street by jaywalking, however. (That's why its called jaywalking, duh!)
If traffic is bad you get as far as the median, wait, then dart the rest of the way to the bus stop. It's not legal, it's not safe, but it is quick and easy, and 99 times out of 100, consequence free. If you're in a hurry to catch the bus, if you're a teenager naturally full of hurry and stupid, or even if you have trouble ascending stairs and walking longer distances, guess which option you're gonna pick?
An extra, closer crosswalk would greatly improve safety and compliance with existing traffic laws. From what I've heard, Franklin High asked the city for the pedestrian overpass because the kids were jaywalking even before then. But the overpass has not solved the problem, and ironically, may prevent the implementation of a new crosswalk at this point. Why? There is a silly municipal code that if a pedestrian overpass is present, then pedestrians lose right of way, even if there is a crosswalk.
Another solution: Have Seattle Metro move the bus stop a bit so as to not present pedestrians, many of them KIDS from Franklin, such a tantalizing target. Again, denied. Why? Because the new light rail stop has to be near connecting bus lines, and its even more expensive to move a light rail stop than a bus stop.
So Franklin High requested that there at least be more police coverage to monitor jaywalkers at this spot, in hopes of PROTECTING these silly kids... NOT, mind you, in hopes that police would lie in wait for them, confront them angrily and end up having to bust their heads open.
What happened above is the exact opposite of the intent of this community. A community that has repeatedly requested something be done about the danger of this intersection at the city level. This community's safety concerns have been repeatedly ignored and mismanaged at the city level.
A predominantly POC community. Hrmmmm.
Let me add that the City of Seattle is in no way averse to moving bus stops or creating crosswalks at the request of a particular community. It just depends on WHICH community is doing the asking.
Take MY neighborhood for instance. Right across the street from my building is a brand spanking new Retirement Complex. They built this over the course of two years and its a beauty. I am mad jealous of the building and the view... which obliterated my once pristine view of capital hill and eastlake but oh well. It's a NICE building. Full of nice old folks with more money than melanin if you know what I mean.
The main bus line along the street I live on had a stop that was directly across the street from this new retirement building. Not far... just on the other side of the intersection. When the building was complete, Seattle Metro promptly moved this stop to directly in front of the new building. Now the seniors living there have front door access to this busline should they need it.
Am I complaining? No. I don't have any problem with the city of Seattle anticipating the needs of these people. Old folks shouldn't have to toddle across a busy intersecton everytime they wish to hop the bus. Why that's very considerate of you, Seattle. Thanks!
BUT. Why is City of Seattle so easily able to accomodate safety needs in the above example, yet they have steadfastly refused to reconfigure the pedestrian "speedtrap" by Franklin High? Even after frequent complaints, documented accidents, a failed (or perhaps incomplete) overpass solution, and now escalating violence with the police? This intersection is MUCH MUCH busier than the one near the senior home. It actively endangers kids, traffic AND police officers (apparently), and the simplest solution of all would be to just move the damn bus stop to where a crosswalk is, or put a new crosswalk in.. but No Can Do.
I suspect the reasoning is, if a bunch of colored kids are getting in trouble with the law cuz they cant resist temptation, TOUGH. If brown ppl in a certain area are at DOCUMENTABLY greater risk of being injured, orarrested or worse becuz of the way the intersection just HAPPENS to be laid out... SO BE IT. That's not worth wasting any of the taxpayer's dollars.
But White Seniors with CASH??? OMG they might SUE or something. We had better make the area as safe as possible right???
It's these sort of institutional "gotchas" that wear me down honestly. Not just that they exist, but that they exist, and nobody who has the power to change anything will do so. I've written this long ass post just to be ignored. Ignored just like the community surrounding Franklin High. Fact is, anybody who's ever been to that intersection can see how easy, how LOGICAL even, it is to choose to jaywalk rather than use that clunky, junky overpass which takes you several blocks out of your way of the bus stop. From what little birdies have told me, Jaywalking in this area has always been common, and until the structure changes, will continue to be feasible. It's the City's responsibility not to put its citizens in this position in the first place. But only certain citizens seem to matter in the first place.
Gag.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Whatever happened to the Classics?
I am what they used to call a "True" or "Classic Transsexual." These terms are bordering on the archaic now, but the narrative has never gone away. What is it like to be the kind of text book transsexual the "experts" used to write about it , anyway?
I can only speak for myself here. So here goes.
I knew I was a girl when I was 3 years old. THREE. Whenever anyone asked if I was a boy or a girl, I said girl. My mother was mortified. She was always apologizing for me for some reason. I couldn't understand why. Was it wrong to answer the question? I was a bit young to pick up on the fact that they weren't really asking me, they were trying gently and sometimes not so gently to CORRECT my behavior. Subtlety tends to be lost on 3 year olds, if you haven't heard.
One of my earliest most vivid memories is of arguing with my Mother that I was going to grow up to be WonderWoman. I was about 3 or 4 years old, the age when most people start making life plans. But noooo she kept correcting me, saying "You mean you are going to grow up to MARRY Wonder Woman!"
I thought she was... insane. Maybe she had gone deaf or something? As far as I knew, "being" and "marrying" were NOT the same word!! And why on earth would a girl marry another girl?? Absurd! (Remember my fellow Same-Sex Marriage advocates, I was only 3 or 4!)
The exchange got pretty heated and my mother turned in exasperation to my father, who had up until that point been stubbornly refusing to look away from the television or get involved in our
"conversation" and she said "WILL YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN TO YOUR SON THAT HE IS A BOY!!" My father looked up, looked at me a long pace, opened his mouth as if to say something profound.... then grunted and threw up his hands as he trudged out of the living room into the bedroom to be left alone.
HA! BUSTED!! She had no witnesses to back up this RIDICULOUS claim that I was a boy!! Case closed! I flounced off triumphantly to my room, leaving my mother to stew in her defeat!
I always kept that unwaivering certainty about being a girl with me. Even as the "truth" became painfully clear that the rest of the world did not agree, I was still certain that I was right and that somehow, everybody else was WRONG. They just had to be... the way they saw me just didnt make any sense. And no amount of explaining that boys have penises and girls have vaginas made a dent with me. I was an only child (then) so I had never even seen anybody's penis or vagina anyway. I'm supposed to base my whole life on something nobody else but me gets to see?? Even then that didn't make any sense to me.
Starting kindergarten and realizing that boys and girls went to different bathrooms and that I HAD to go to the boy's bathroom, I recall this as one of the truly most devastating revelations of my life. The revelation wasn't "Oh my god its TRUE! I AM a boy!" It was very specifically, "Oh My God. They're serious! They really intend to make me do this Boy thing!"
It was the most deeply terrifying and despairing feeling I have ever felt before or since. The feeling that I was being held hostage,being erased, and forced to play a cruel game all at the same time. Sadly it's a feeling that has never completely gone away to this day, some 30 years later.
And just like the classic transsexual narrative, I never went thru a period of denial or confusion or "figuring out" about my being a girl. I was adamant from day one. I learned eventually that I had to identify myself as a boy or people would get VERY upset with me, and that I definitely had to pee where I was "supposed" to go or things would end badly for me... but I made a conscious decision to only comply with people's boyish expectations of me to the bare minimum I had to and absolutely no more. I caught hell for this. I became the classic "effeminate" male child, a target of constant ridicule and commentary, oddly enough not so much from my child peers in class but from Grown Ass Adults in my neighborhood and in stores who felt perfectly entitled to approach me and my mother (or whichever adult I was with at the time) and demand to know if I was a little boy or a little girl.
The attention I seemed to demand everywhere I went deeply humiliated my parents... but for me it was validating. My attitude was that you can make me pretend like I'm a boy, but you can't make me do a good job of it! No matter what they were making me say or do I made sure that they could still SEE me, and thus their mistake. I endured this scrutiny by thinking to myself that surely, somehow, some way everything was going to be okay in the longrun. One day I would grow up to be a woman and they would see how wrong they were, I WOULD SHOW THEM!
I had no idea how this would happen, mind you, but I just KNEW that it would. There simply was no other way. I was going to be a woman when I grew up. Maybe not Wonder Woman (she was a white lady after all!), but a grown woman and NOT NO GODDAMN MAN. Not a gay man. Not a feminine man. Not a man in a dress! But a W-O-M-A-N.
And then puberty. Oh puberty... The ultimate betrayal. My body... my very fucking BODY began to mutiny, to ruin my "plans." Getting taller I didn't mind so much. By the time I was 12 I was taller than both my parents. But they were little taller than smurfs and everybody knew that and commented on it. My father capped out at 5'4 after all. At least I wouldn't have THAT stigma to deal with. But I knew of plenty of tall girls at my school and in my world, and tall beautiful women were always in the magazines and on videos, so maybe I would end up being one of them??
Then 13 came and I noticed something about my voice. It was sounding... weird... it had been deepening for a while but not in an unfeminine way... in fact I sounded exactly like my mother on the phone (and exploited this advantage frequently, which I should blog about another time). But one day while leaning out of the backdoor shouting, to get my Aunt's attention in the backyard to come inside "Ainnee You have a PHOOOONE CAAAALLL!!" my voice did this horrible thing. It cracked and fell!!! I sounded like a moose just then!! FUCK THAT!!!
By then I could no longer deny that something was going terribly wrong. I wasn't becoming a woman after all. I was becoming a DUDE just like the other dudes in my class with their funky body odors and their ridiculous cracked baritones and their pubes.. OH GOD THE PUBES.
I became obsessed with hair. I remember my first arm pit hair, and ripping it out with tweezers. Then the next and the next, until I started shaving under my arms everyday. I remember the hair on my crotch coming in too fast to even try to keep up with. I remember the hair on my legs changing,darkening, and shaving that. But so far.. No hair on my face. No hair on my chest. (For the record the males in my family are fairly naturally hairless, so at least I dodged that bullet *sigh*)... So far... so good.
By the time I was 14 i was shaving my legs and armpits everyday and practising my voice by talking and singing to myself nonstop. Yes I was a total freak. But more than that I had shut down in a sort of mental autopilot of despair. I began to notice that more and more often whenever I'd go out in public people were likely to stare even more than ever before, stare openly at me, but there was more than bewilderment in their eyes now. There was naked hostility. Rage even? Why?? What had I done? Why was everybody so mad at me?? The former refrain "What is that? Is that a boy or a girl?" Had evolved into "Is that fag?" FAG FAG FAG! FAGGOT, OMG LOOK AT THAT FAG MAMA HE MUST THINK HES A GURRRRL!!
Nothing had changed about me except my body but suddenly my world was upside down. I felt powerless to stop my body from masculinizing and powerless to stop the escalating harassment from strangers I now faced whenever I stepped outside of my house. I had no idea what to do.
I began starving myself. I had read somewhere that starving yourself could stunt your growth, and I thought maybe it could stunt your puberty as well. I had no idea about hormones. I had heard of transsexuals on shows like Donahue and Sally Jessy Raphael, but the only thing I knew about them is that they had had "the surgery." I had no idea how to go about getting "The Surgery" and I had no money to get it even if I did know. It seemed like a distant far away solution to a very here and now problem I was facing so I did the only things I knew how to do. I trained my voice to stay put. And I starved myself like hell to try and stunt my growth and development.
By the time I was 16 I was an automaton. I had no emotion. No expressions. I just existed and barely. I had been hospitalized a couple of times for passing out from hunger, so my mother was forcing me to go to a string of doctors and psychiatrists to find out what the hell was wrong with me and why I seemed hellbent on starving myself to death. I had no idea how to explain myself to any of them. And honestly, no desire to do so either. I knew they wouldnt help me even if I did explain, so why give them the satisfaction of knowing? Why give anyone yet another chance to say "You may THINK you wanna be a girl, you might even ACT like a girl, but you're really a guy and you're going to have to accept that."
In fact if it hadn't been for being fed up with shrink number eleventy three trying to get all up in my head and me shouting out "Because I would rather DIE than become a MAN, alright??" I probably wouldn't have found out about transition, or hormones or any of the steps that led up to the Holy Grail of "The Surgery" for perhaps for many years later.
But this guy surprised me. He was somewhat sympathetic and knowledgeable. He said, "Well what you're talking about is called transsexuallity. And there is a process for it."
I was floored. There was a whole process? Like steps to take in order to change your body from one thing into another?? How do I sign up??
And then the brickwall. "Oh well you're only 16 and that's too young to take such a drastic step. No doctor would even think of treating you until you were AT LEAST 18 or older."
18?? Two more years of this? Two more years of shaving my chin and upper lip? Two more years of struggling to keep my voice right where it is? Two more years of my shoulders getting bigger and my hands and feet and my JAW??? Why do you think i've been doing all this anorexia bullshit anyway? You think I'm indifferent to what's been happening with my body??? And here you're telling me that there is a cure for whats happening to me, a way OUT of this hell my body is becoming... and you're saying to wait TWO MORE YEARS before I even start??
Fuck that.
See, he already made the mistake of telling me about where transsexuals hang out. He had told me how they gather in the gay neighborhoods, that alot were drag performers and female illusionists, and that there were whole communities of "irresponsible" transsexuals who gathered in big cities who used "black market illegal" hormones and received treatment from "shady" doctors under the table.
He didn't tell me much but he had told me everything I needed to know.
That summer I took off for the biggest and nearest Big city I could get to (Oklahoma City) in search of "irresponsible" transsexuals. I was not disappointed.
I would like to blog about my early experiences with the"transsexual underground" I found another time. That is a period of my life where I have so much unpacking to do, so much trauma to work thru and regrets to overcome, but ultimately starting transition when and where and how I started it is something I was and am very much grateful for, no matter how "irresponsible" it was of me.
As much as I've come to abhor the requisite "transsexual autobiography"... I wanted to put my story out here because my story as far as I knew wasn't at all uncommon among the transwomen I met during early transition. And yet this narrative is all but unheard of in trans discourse today.
For the life of me I keep wondering why? Most of my Trans friends today are white, and most of the trans feminine spectrum friends are late transitioners. In fact, every single one of them is a late transitioner. But the majority of my trans friends of color, whether I met them in the "underground" or not, were early transitioners such as myself.
And I keep asking.. why ?? How can that be? What dynamic could be at play to motivate one group of trans folk to delay transition well into adulthood, and another to get started with transition as soon as humanly possible?
I'm not interested in answering these questions in order to create a hierarchy of trans experience. I don't feel "more transsexual" than other transfolk who have had different narratives, tho some would claim exactly that. But I do have trouble finding myself represented in the current trans narratives... and I find that awfully odd considering how many people I met who were startlingly similar to ME... but who are now all but silent or invisible today?
Did they all die? Did they not make it? Did they just crawl into the woodwork? I did that myself for a long while... maybe they just stayed? Or maybe they stayed on the margins, never really leaving the "underground"? I'm not sure... I have so much looking backwards to do... and its some intimidating shit.
I can only speak for myself here. So here goes.
I knew I was a girl when I was 3 years old. THREE. Whenever anyone asked if I was a boy or a girl, I said girl. My mother was mortified. She was always apologizing for me for some reason. I couldn't understand why. Was it wrong to answer the question? I was a bit young to pick up on the fact that they weren't really asking me, they were trying gently and sometimes not so gently to CORRECT my behavior. Subtlety tends to be lost on 3 year olds, if you haven't heard.
One of my earliest most vivid memories is of arguing with my Mother that I was going to grow up to be WonderWoman. I was about 3 or 4 years old, the age when most people start making life plans. But noooo she kept correcting me, saying "You mean you are going to grow up to MARRY Wonder Woman!"
I thought she was... insane. Maybe she had gone deaf or something? As far as I knew, "being" and "marrying" were NOT the same word!! And why on earth would a girl marry another girl?? Absurd! (Remember my fellow Same-Sex Marriage advocates, I was only 3 or 4!)
The exchange got pretty heated and my mother turned in exasperation to my father, who had up until that point been stubbornly refusing to look away from the television or get involved in our
"conversation" and she said "WILL YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN TO YOUR SON THAT HE IS A BOY!!" My father looked up, looked at me a long pace, opened his mouth as if to say something profound.... then grunted and threw up his hands as he trudged out of the living room into the bedroom to be left alone.
HA! BUSTED!! She had no witnesses to back up this RIDICULOUS claim that I was a boy!! Case closed! I flounced off triumphantly to my room, leaving my mother to stew in her defeat!
I always kept that unwaivering certainty about being a girl with me. Even as the "truth" became painfully clear that the rest of the world did not agree, I was still certain that I was right and that somehow, everybody else was WRONG. They just had to be... the way they saw me just didnt make any sense. And no amount of explaining that boys have penises and girls have vaginas made a dent with me. I was an only child (then) so I had never even seen anybody's penis or vagina anyway. I'm supposed to base my whole life on something nobody else but me gets to see?? Even then that didn't make any sense to me.
Starting kindergarten and realizing that boys and girls went to different bathrooms and that I HAD to go to the boy's bathroom, I recall this as one of the truly most devastating revelations of my life. The revelation wasn't "Oh my god its TRUE! I AM a boy!" It was very specifically, "Oh My God. They're serious! They really intend to make me do this Boy thing!"
It was the most deeply terrifying and despairing feeling I have ever felt before or since. The feeling that I was being held hostage,being erased, and forced to play a cruel game all at the same time. Sadly it's a feeling that has never completely gone away to this day, some 30 years later.
And just like the classic transsexual narrative, I never went thru a period of denial or confusion or "figuring out" about my being a girl. I was adamant from day one. I learned eventually that I had to identify myself as a boy or people would get VERY upset with me, and that I definitely had to pee where I was "supposed" to go or things would end badly for me... but I made a conscious decision to only comply with people's boyish expectations of me to the bare minimum I had to and absolutely no more. I caught hell for this. I became the classic "effeminate" male child, a target of constant ridicule and commentary, oddly enough not so much from my child peers in class but from Grown Ass Adults in my neighborhood and in stores who felt perfectly entitled to approach me and my mother (or whichever adult I was with at the time) and demand to know if I was a little boy or a little girl.
The attention I seemed to demand everywhere I went deeply humiliated my parents... but for me it was validating. My attitude was that you can make me pretend like I'm a boy, but you can't make me do a good job of it! No matter what they were making me say or do I made sure that they could still SEE me, and thus their mistake. I endured this scrutiny by thinking to myself that surely, somehow, some way everything was going to be okay in the longrun. One day I would grow up to be a woman and they would see how wrong they were, I WOULD SHOW THEM!
I had no idea how this would happen, mind you, but I just KNEW that it would. There simply was no other way. I was going to be a woman when I grew up. Maybe not Wonder Woman (she was a white lady after all!), but a grown woman and NOT NO GODDAMN MAN. Not a gay man. Not a feminine man. Not a man in a dress! But a W-O-M-A-N.
And then puberty. Oh puberty... The ultimate betrayal. My body... my very fucking BODY began to mutiny, to ruin my "plans." Getting taller I didn't mind so much. By the time I was 12 I was taller than both my parents. But they were little taller than smurfs and everybody knew that and commented on it. My father capped out at 5'4 after all. At least I wouldn't have THAT stigma to deal with. But I knew of plenty of tall girls at my school and in my world, and tall beautiful women were always in the magazines and on videos, so maybe I would end up being one of them??
Then 13 came and I noticed something about my voice. It was sounding... weird... it had been deepening for a while but not in an unfeminine way... in fact I sounded exactly like my mother on the phone (and exploited this advantage frequently, which I should blog about another time). But one day while leaning out of the backdoor shouting, to get my Aunt's attention in the backyard to come inside "Ainnee You have a PHOOOONE CAAAALLL!!" my voice did this horrible thing. It cracked and fell!!! I sounded like a moose just then!! FUCK THAT!!!
By then I could no longer deny that something was going terribly wrong. I wasn't becoming a woman after all. I was becoming a DUDE just like the other dudes in my class with their funky body odors and their ridiculous cracked baritones and their pubes.. OH GOD THE PUBES.
I became obsessed with hair. I remember my first arm pit hair, and ripping it out with tweezers. Then the next and the next, until I started shaving under my arms everyday. I remember the hair on my crotch coming in too fast to even try to keep up with. I remember the hair on my legs changing,darkening, and shaving that. But so far.. No hair on my face. No hair on my chest. (For the record the males in my family are fairly naturally hairless, so at least I dodged that bullet *sigh*)... So far... so good.
By the time I was 14 i was shaving my legs and armpits everyday and practising my voice by talking and singing to myself nonstop. Yes I was a total freak. But more than that I had shut down in a sort of mental autopilot of despair. I began to notice that more and more often whenever I'd go out in public people were likely to stare even more than ever before, stare openly at me, but there was more than bewilderment in their eyes now. There was naked hostility. Rage even? Why?? What had I done? Why was everybody so mad at me?? The former refrain "What is that? Is that a boy or a girl?" Had evolved into "Is that fag?" FAG FAG FAG! FAGGOT, OMG LOOK AT THAT FAG MAMA HE MUST THINK HES A GURRRRL!!
Nothing had changed about me except my body but suddenly my world was upside down. I felt powerless to stop my body from masculinizing and powerless to stop the escalating harassment from strangers I now faced whenever I stepped outside of my house. I had no idea what to do.
I began starving myself. I had read somewhere that starving yourself could stunt your growth, and I thought maybe it could stunt your puberty as well. I had no idea about hormones. I had heard of transsexuals on shows like Donahue and Sally Jessy Raphael, but the only thing I knew about them is that they had had "the surgery." I had no idea how to go about getting "The Surgery" and I had no money to get it even if I did know. It seemed like a distant far away solution to a very here and now problem I was facing so I did the only things I knew how to do. I trained my voice to stay put. And I starved myself like hell to try and stunt my growth and development.
By the time I was 16 I was an automaton. I had no emotion. No expressions. I just existed and barely. I had been hospitalized a couple of times for passing out from hunger, so my mother was forcing me to go to a string of doctors and psychiatrists to find out what the hell was wrong with me and why I seemed hellbent on starving myself to death. I had no idea how to explain myself to any of them. And honestly, no desire to do so either. I knew they wouldnt help me even if I did explain, so why give them the satisfaction of knowing? Why give anyone yet another chance to say "You may THINK you wanna be a girl, you might even ACT like a girl, but you're really a guy and you're going to have to accept that."
In fact if it hadn't been for being fed up with shrink number eleventy three trying to get all up in my head and me shouting out "Because I would rather DIE than become a MAN, alright??" I probably wouldn't have found out about transition, or hormones or any of the steps that led up to the Holy Grail of "The Surgery" for perhaps for many years later.
But this guy surprised me. He was somewhat sympathetic and knowledgeable. He said, "Well what you're talking about is called transsexuallity. And there is a process for it."
I was floored. There was a whole process? Like steps to take in order to change your body from one thing into another?? How do I sign up??
And then the brickwall. "Oh well you're only 16 and that's too young to take such a drastic step. No doctor would even think of treating you until you were AT LEAST 18 or older."
18?? Two more years of this? Two more years of shaving my chin and upper lip? Two more years of struggling to keep my voice right where it is? Two more years of my shoulders getting bigger and my hands and feet and my JAW??? Why do you think i've been doing all this anorexia bullshit anyway? You think I'm indifferent to what's been happening with my body??? And here you're telling me that there is a cure for whats happening to me, a way OUT of this hell my body is becoming... and you're saying to wait TWO MORE YEARS before I even start??
Fuck that.
See, he already made the mistake of telling me about where transsexuals hang out. He had told me how they gather in the gay neighborhoods, that alot were drag performers and female illusionists, and that there were whole communities of "irresponsible" transsexuals who gathered in big cities who used "black market illegal" hormones and received treatment from "shady" doctors under the table.
He didn't tell me much but he had told me everything I needed to know.
That summer I took off for the biggest and nearest Big city I could get to (Oklahoma City) in search of "irresponsible" transsexuals. I was not disappointed.
I would like to blog about my early experiences with the"transsexual underground" I found another time. That is a period of my life where I have so much unpacking to do, so much trauma to work thru and regrets to overcome, but ultimately starting transition when and where and how I started it is something I was and am very much grateful for, no matter how "irresponsible" it was of me.
As much as I've come to abhor the requisite "transsexual autobiography"... I wanted to put my story out here because my story as far as I knew wasn't at all uncommon among the transwomen I met during early transition. And yet this narrative is all but unheard of in trans discourse today.
For the life of me I keep wondering why? Most of my Trans friends today are white, and most of the trans feminine spectrum friends are late transitioners. In fact, every single one of them is a late transitioner. But the majority of my trans friends of color, whether I met them in the "underground" or not, were early transitioners such as myself.
And I keep asking.. why ?? How can that be? What dynamic could be at play to motivate one group of trans folk to delay transition well into adulthood, and another to get started with transition as soon as humanly possible?
I'm not interested in answering these questions in order to create a hierarchy of trans experience. I don't feel "more transsexual" than other transfolk who have had different narratives, tho some would claim exactly that. But I do have trouble finding myself represented in the current trans narratives... and I find that awfully odd considering how many people I met who were startlingly similar to ME... but who are now all but silent or invisible today?
Did they all die? Did they not make it? Did they just crawl into the woodwork? I did that myself for a long while... maybe they just stayed? Or maybe they stayed on the margins, never really leaving the "underground"? I'm not sure... I have so much looking backwards to do... and its some intimidating shit.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
How Cisgender Saved My Sanity.
Cisgender. Cissexual. Cis.
It's as though before I knew these terms, I was wandering in a thick fog of SOMETHING... a perpetual feeling of unease, of being alone on stage reciting a monologue I wasn't prepared to give. I, the trannie, am the actor. Everybody else, the audience. No, to be honest with you it was much more like I was auditioning for the part of woman... ALL THE FUCKING TIME. In my mind, there were women at the judge's panel. And there was me that Transsexual performing the part of woman on stage. In the world there were the natural born males females who own the rights to manhood/womanhood. And there were us Transsexuals who must apply to get into the club.
This feeling of 'otherness' wasn't exactly unfamiliar to me. After all I'm also black. So in this society there are women. And then there are Black Women. Always presented in unspoken italics. In this society it's normal to be white, it's normal to be NOT trans.... anything else is an adjustment to the norm. Just plain different than one would expect. "Not that there's anything wrong with that!!" Always seems to follow. Ugh.
Over the years I developed a habit of avoiding talking about myself at all costs. I began to hide. I began to devote all my time to passing, to detaching from any and everyone who had known me before transition. In my mind, it was getting to be too much work to explain how I could have been born the way I was born and still consider myself to be a "real" woman(???!!?) It was too much energy to deal with people treating me like I was a counterfeit 100 dollar bill. I was tired of getting caught in that infinite loop of justifying, explaining, defending my transgender life in relation to everybody else's 'normal' lives. Knowing there was an elephant in the room but somehow unable to see it or touch it. I could smell the elephant every time someone said "wow so how long have you been living as a woman???", or even, Gawd forbid, if I used that damnable phrase myself. I could hear that elephant braying at me whenever I tried to explain to friends how calling me a transsexual woman in one breath but calling my sister a "genetic" woman in the next was deeply, intolerably offensive. Trying to explain this disconnect but failing miserably to break through. I knew I was getting made out to be less than, a "woman but not really," but how else did I go about describing my experiences in relation to others without doing just that?
Without Cis, the vocabulary for these discussions is dismal. "Normal" vs "transsexual"? Genetic vs. Surgically constructed? "Standard Issue" vs. "Hand made?" Of course there was always "trans" vs. "non-trans." I am a trans woman, my sister is a non-trans woman, etc. A definition in negative seems a bit forced, like a concession to political correctness rather than a useful description of lived differences... but I couldn't think of any other way to say what I was trying to say that didn't come off as a grave insult against me.
Enter "Cisgender" and my enlightenment.
Cisgender isn't yet a universal term, but it has been gaining ground in the last couple of years. If the rumors are true that it's been around since 1995 I don't understand what the hell has been taking it so long! Where were you when I need you then, Cis??? Most people who do use the term regularly currently define cisgender to mean, simply 'not transgender," period. In my arrogant opinion, this is incorrect. I do understand it as a useful shorthand, but I also believe its much too important a concept to leave the definition at that.
Saying that somebody is cisgender simply means they are "not transgender," is no more accurate than saying somebody is White simply means they are "Not Black." This kind of shorthand enforces the very binary thinking it should serve to critique. Moreover, it implies that trans is already universally understood. Ha! Is it that the people using cis this way would rather center discussion around trans identity rather than on the oppressive dynamic that generates cis and trans identities in the first place? Perhaps.
There is a basic social phenomenon that unites each and every person in a society, cis and trans alike: Upon every live birth, society assigns each new person his or her very own gender identity. And with the force of government law, the society documents and polices this assigned identity at every phase of the individual's life.
You too, whoever you are, were assigned an identity shortly after your birth. This identity is legally and socially binding. It directly informs what happens to you from that point onward, how you will be treated, how you will dress, how you will be allowed to behave, how you will be rewarded for performing up to cultural expectations for your assigned gender, and how you will be punished for failing to perform up to specs.
Think about this for a second. I mean really think about this. One could say that Gender is arguably the single most personal and far-reaching aspect of human self-awareness, and it was decided for you. Nobody asked you. Nobody allowed you to figure it out for yourself first. And now the rest of your life will be spent exploring and negotiating the limits of this legally and socially binding gender identity you've been assigned!
If during the course of your life you have no major quibbles with your gender assignment, if you remain more or less comfortable in the gender identity you were given and you make no moves to alter this social and/or legal assignment, THATS Cisgender. And your response to all of the above is probably a big "Yeah but so what? What else is society supposed to do?"
If instead, you come one day to take MAJOR issue with your gender assignment....if eventually you feel so uncomfortable as to maneuver partially or altogether outside of the strictly enforced boundaries of your original gender assignment... then THATS transgender.
All this internet bickering about the validity of "cisgender" as a concept, certain groups feeling that they are being forced to identify as cis against their will.... OMG SHUT UP! You don't have to identify as cis if you don't want to (a cis privilege in and of itself, *ahem*)! Cis , for you, simply describes what happened to your life after you were born and everybody but you decided what your gender was and you said, either thru your action or inaction, "Yes, I agree. I am this thing called a woman/man."
Trans describes what happened to your life after you were born and everybody but you decided who you were already but at some point you said NO THANKS i'd rather be over HERE .... Cis and trans are not descriptors of some inner truth; They expose the external imposition of an alleged truth.
This rethinking of "normal" gender identies as cisgender life trajectory has had a profound effect on me personally. I've finally been able to stop comparing apples to pineapples, ie my life, my body as it compares to those of my mother, sisters, etc. I've been able to see that their lives are no more natural or correct than mine, and no less artificial, no less constructed or arbitrarily defined than mine. I do NOT have to adhere to a cisgender standard in order to find value in my own transgender life. That's HUGE. This has even widened my perception of other aspects of my identity, particularly of race and ability. It has given me a much needed context to frame my "non-standard" experiences, and clearly names the oppressive subtext I've been drowning in all along.
Now that I have a WORD for the elephant I'd been seeing smelling and hearing all along, I can finally clearly see how the terms I was using beforehand normalized a cisgender life trajectory and pathologized everything that deviated from it. Only cisgender bodies were "real" bodies. Only cisgender women were "real" women. Being assigned male or female at birth and staying within the legal and social confines of that assignment was "natural." Moving out of the legal and social confines of your original assignment is "deviant." See how much easier it is to identify biases this way??
Pretty sneaky, Cis!!!
It's as though before I knew these terms, I was wandering in a thick fog of SOMETHING... a perpetual feeling of unease, of being alone on stage reciting a monologue I wasn't prepared to give. I, the trannie, am the actor. Everybody else, the audience. No, to be honest with you it was much more like I was auditioning for the part of woman... ALL THE FUCKING TIME. In my mind, there were women at the judge's panel. And there was me that Transsexual performing the part of woman on stage. In the world there were the natural born males females who own the rights to manhood/womanhood. And there were us Transsexuals who must apply to get into the club.
This feeling of 'otherness' wasn't exactly unfamiliar to me. After all I'm also black. So in this society there are women. And then there are Black Women. Always presented in unspoken italics. In this society it's normal to be white, it's normal to be NOT trans.... anything else is an adjustment to the norm. Just plain different than one would expect. "Not that there's anything wrong with that!!" Always seems to follow. Ugh.
Over the years I developed a habit of avoiding talking about myself at all costs. I began to hide. I began to devote all my time to passing, to detaching from any and everyone who had known me before transition. In my mind, it was getting to be too much work to explain how I could have been born the way I was born and still consider myself to be a "real" woman(???!!?) It was too much energy to deal with people treating me like I was a counterfeit 100 dollar bill. I was tired of getting caught in that infinite loop of justifying, explaining, defending my transgender life in relation to everybody else's 'normal' lives. Knowing there was an elephant in the room but somehow unable to see it or touch it. I could smell the elephant every time someone said "wow so how long have you been living as a woman???", or even, Gawd forbid, if I used that damnable phrase myself. I could hear that elephant braying at me whenever I tried to explain to friends how calling me a transsexual woman in one breath but calling my sister a "genetic" woman in the next was deeply, intolerably offensive. Trying to explain this disconnect but failing miserably to break through. I knew I was getting made out to be less than, a "woman but not really," but how else did I go about describing my experiences in relation to others without doing just that?
Without Cis, the vocabulary for these discussions is dismal. "Normal" vs "transsexual"? Genetic vs. Surgically constructed? "Standard Issue" vs. "Hand made?" Of course there was always "trans" vs. "non-trans." I am a trans woman, my sister is a non-trans woman, etc. A definition in negative seems a bit forced, like a concession to political correctness rather than a useful description of lived differences... but I couldn't think of any other way to say what I was trying to say that didn't come off as a grave insult against me.
Enter "Cisgender" and my enlightenment.
Cisgender isn't yet a universal term, but it has been gaining ground in the last couple of years. If the rumors are true that it's been around since 1995 I don't understand what the hell has been taking it so long! Where were you when I need you then, Cis??? Most people who do use the term regularly currently define cisgender to mean, simply 'not transgender," period. In my arrogant opinion, this is incorrect. I do understand it as a useful shorthand, but I also believe its much too important a concept to leave the definition at that.
Saying that somebody is cisgender simply means they are "not transgender," is no more accurate than saying somebody is White simply means they are "Not Black." This kind of shorthand enforces the very binary thinking it should serve to critique. Moreover, it implies that trans is already universally understood. Ha! Is it that the people using cis this way would rather center discussion around trans identity rather than on the oppressive dynamic that generates cis and trans identities in the first place? Perhaps.
There is a basic social phenomenon that unites each and every person in a society, cis and trans alike: Upon every live birth, society assigns each new person his or her very own gender identity. And with the force of government law, the society documents and polices this assigned identity at every phase of the individual's life.
You too, whoever you are, were assigned an identity shortly after your birth. This identity is legally and socially binding. It directly informs what happens to you from that point onward, how you will be treated, how you will dress, how you will be allowed to behave, how you will be rewarded for performing up to cultural expectations for your assigned gender, and how you will be punished for failing to perform up to specs.
Think about this for a second. I mean really think about this. One could say that Gender is arguably the single most personal and far-reaching aspect of human self-awareness, and it was decided for you. Nobody asked you. Nobody allowed you to figure it out for yourself first. And now the rest of your life will be spent exploring and negotiating the limits of this legally and socially binding gender identity you've been assigned!
If during the course of your life you have no major quibbles with your gender assignment, if you remain more or less comfortable in the gender identity you were given and you make no moves to alter this social and/or legal assignment, THATS Cisgender. And your response to all of the above is probably a big "Yeah but so what? What else is society supposed to do?"
If instead, you come one day to take MAJOR issue with your gender assignment....if eventually you feel so uncomfortable as to maneuver partially or altogether outside of the strictly enforced boundaries of your original gender assignment... then THATS transgender.
Cis and Trans imply MOVEMENT first and foremost. Movement either within or away from the sex/gender identity you've been assigned at birth.
In the context of gender identity, all of us are who we are because somebody else decided what our bodies meant and who we would turn out to be.
Please don't get me wrong. I am NOT saying that all gender is socially constructed or that the only reason we feel about our gendered selves the way we do is because of our having been assigned to live a certain way. I am not taking sides here in any nature vs nurture debate.
What I am saying is that any discussion about gender, particularly gender rights, gender variance and gender-based discrimination HAS to be understood in the context of the compulsory aspect of gender identity. That is to say the question of what makes us who we are is inextricable from the question of who we are compelled (by society, by government law) to be.
All this internet bickering about the validity of "cisgender" as a concept, certain groups feeling that they are being forced to identify as cis against their will.... OMG SHUT UP! You don't have to identify as cis if you don't want to (a cis privilege in and of itself, *ahem*)! Cis , for you, simply describes what happened to your life after you were born and everybody but you decided what your gender was and you said, either thru your action or inaction, "Yes, I agree. I am this thing called a woman/man."
Trans describes what happened to your life after you were born and everybody but you decided who you were already but at some point you said NO THANKS i'd rather be over HERE .... Cis and trans are not descriptors of some inner truth; They expose the external imposition of an alleged truth.
This rethinking of "normal" gender identies as cisgender life trajectory has had a profound effect on me personally. I've finally been able to stop comparing apples to pineapples, ie my life, my body as it compares to those of my mother, sisters, etc. I've been able to see that their lives are no more natural or correct than mine, and no less artificial, no less constructed or arbitrarily defined than mine. I do NOT have to adhere to a cisgender standard in order to find value in my own transgender life. That's HUGE. This has even widened my perception of other aspects of my identity, particularly of race and ability. It has given me a much needed context to frame my "non-standard" experiences, and clearly names the oppressive subtext I've been drowning in all along.
Now that I have a WORD for the elephant I'd been seeing smelling and hearing all along, I can finally clearly see how the terms I was using beforehand normalized a cisgender life trajectory and pathologized everything that deviated from it. Only cisgender bodies were "real" bodies. Only cisgender women were "real" women. Being assigned male or female at birth and staying within the legal and social confines of that assignment was "natural." Moving out of the legal and social confines of your original assignment is "deviant." See how much easier it is to identify biases this way??
Pretty sneaky, Cis!!!
Monday, April 26, 2010
Well um, Shit. Hello.
-I've spent a good six weeks or so drumming up the courage to create this blog and now that I have, I'm realizing I'm not sure I have much to say.
No, that's not true at all. I'm realizing that I may not know how to say very much at all. To hear me tell it, I've lived my entire life in a series of carefully edited anecdotes (did I tell you how my mom almost died while giving birth to me?? She was dead for like three minutes! True Story!)..... At least, that's what it seems my life has become in retrospect. I think, like every modern day blogger who suffers from the delusion that her or his life story simply MUST be told... I may have lost the ability to speak plainly about the past. And the present? Well that would require a certain level of self-awareness, that is if you ever want to do more than Tweet your breakfast. But in-depth self analysis, now who has time for that? I'd rather tell a good story. A story that makes me LOOK good... like a hero. Or a victim. Or a guru or a Leader or Rebel. Tell you anything that places me center stage in the Jane Laplain Show. So, I find myself slipping into story teller mode whenever sharing information about myself. I grew up a poor black child, wah wah waaaah..
Except I didn't grow up that way at all. I grew up a very quiet, very angry, very curious, and despite my best revisionist history, very average human child. My average life was perhaps complicated by a number of nonstandard deviations from the great American Novel. My race (black). My ethnicity (haitian creole, but culturally black american, but passing for Latino). My gender noncomformity (assigned male, conspicuously feminine and vocal about it). My class (Attending rich private schools, while living in poor black neighborhoods). My poor eyesight (I'm thisclose to legally blind... which is still a world apart in my opinion). My latchkey kid upbringing. I could go on and on... but in truth, I'm no more wounded or special or intelligent or honest than anyone else. So it's not my life story I need to tell you.
But there's something I have to say... and it scares the shit out of me that I might actually go and say it... especially since I have no idea what it might be.
Stay tuned. (<--- Note to self).
No, that's not true at all. I'm realizing that I may not know how to say very much at all. To hear me tell it, I've lived my entire life in a series of carefully edited anecdotes (did I tell you how my mom almost died while giving birth to me?? She was dead for like three minutes! True Story!)..... At least, that's what it seems my life has become in retrospect. I think, like every modern day blogger who suffers from the delusion that her or his life story simply MUST be told... I may have lost the ability to speak plainly about the past. And the present? Well that would require a certain level of self-awareness, that is if you ever want to do more than Tweet your breakfast. But in-depth self analysis, now who has time for that? I'd rather tell a good story. A story that makes me LOOK good... like a hero. Or a victim. Or a guru or a Leader or Rebel. Tell you anything that places me center stage in the Jane Laplain Show. So, I find myself slipping into story teller mode whenever sharing information about myself. I grew up a poor black child, wah wah waaaah..
Except I didn't grow up that way at all. I grew up a very quiet, very angry, very curious, and despite my best revisionist history, very average human child. My average life was perhaps complicated by a number of nonstandard deviations from the great American Novel. My race (black). My ethnicity (haitian creole, but culturally black american, but passing for Latino). My gender noncomformity (assigned male, conspicuously feminine and vocal about it). My class (Attending rich private schools, while living in poor black neighborhoods). My poor eyesight (I'm thisclose to legally blind... which is still a world apart in my opinion). My latchkey kid upbringing. I could go on and on... but in truth, I'm no more wounded or special or intelligent or honest than anyone else. So it's not my life story I need to tell you.
But there's something I have to say... and it scares the shit out of me that I might actually go and say it... especially since I have no idea what it might be.
Stay tuned. (<--- Note to self).
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