Are you talking to me?

[sacredchao]

Hmmm, a good solid week and a half of argh is not a promising thing. It does prompt thinking though because it's that or just curl into a ball and cry. I've done a bit of that as well but it has very little to recommend it. I think the mental map was a success. I identified some key focii of stress, found one that was susceptible to actually doing something and had a useful conversation. It has also given me a more explicit topology of what bugs me. I've come to realise that one of the key emotions I've been feeling lately is anger and that's a weird one for me. I'm not by nature an angry person and I've been angry a lot lately, sometimes unreasonably so. I poked through some of those moments and realised where that comes from, at least partly. I am pushing and struggling and exerting every fibre of my being to redefine and recontextualise myself. There's a lot of angst and poking through my own mind and the occasional sudden metacognitive epiphany which relieves and pleases me no end. It's a process which is difficult and rewarding and which produces results of which I'm frankly proud. So I bundle it up and make it as neat and tidy as possible and present it to the world saying "This is me." and the world responds in a thousand tiny ways saying "No it's not, it can't be. You're full of shit." I update my details through poorly fitting processes in which I painstakingly tick boxes marked "Ms" and in a couple of cases even explicitly state that the reason for name change is that it's part of a gender change process and in return I get correspondence addressed to "Mr F S...". I have conversations specifically about people using appropriately gendered modes of address during which the person I'm talking to refers to me with "he" or "him" or "his. Computer systems can't parse my identity. It's the mockery of a thousand cuts.

I thought back and realised that from the very beginning, my greatest fear in this process has been that I won't be taken seriously. That people will think I don't really mean it or that it's some kind of trick or deception or that there's some nefarious ulterior motive or that they simply think that they know as much if not more about who I am than I do. I've had instances of "are you sure" and "maybe it's really..." and encountered trottings out of received wisdom about gender identity which are essentially rehashed kneejerk reactions and stereotypes repeated so often that they've acquired the varnish of truth. After a year of desperately trying to tell myself it wasn't real and close to another two years of tearing my life to pieces and reading everything I can lay my hands on and following the process of therapy and experiencing the shift of hormones and presentation and self image and thinking about it literally every single fucking day I feel entitled to claim a degree of expertise in the subject matter. So each little unthinking "are you sure" and "it's not really" and "you're not really" even or perhaps especially when they're not explicitly voiced and even or perhaps especially when it's not the voice of a single person but the response ingrained and acculturated and enshrined in our laws and traditions and customs and mores and simple basic assumptions about how the world works makes make want to throw things and assert that actually yes I DO know who I am and this isn't as simple as it appears if you never bother actually to think about it. Each little iteration of this sort of crap says again and again, "You have no real place here. You're not real, you're not credible and for God's sake man take a look at yourself."

So yeah, I get angry and I inflate each little insult, real or imagined, until I'm ready to take a bite out of someone and I'm starting to worry that it'll be someone I really really don't want to take a bite out of. So this is me making this explicit and poking myself and trying to sort out which anger is reasonable and what I should really just suck up and deal with. I can live with a certain amount of transactivist GRAAR in my soul; I dare say it's pretty much essential just so I can assert myself enough to be able to say "No, this really is me." when I have to. Balance though. Oh god I need balance and perspective in this or I'm going to do some spectacularly dumb shit.

Comments

[hometime.livejournal.com]

You don't have to change the world single-handed. Is there an activist/ trans rights group where you could go and rant in company?

[sjkasabi.livejournal.com]

Not sure what to say, I certainly don't feel like I have any advice or insight to offer.

*Hugs*?

[villana.livejournal.com]

I agree that it sucks royally that the world just isn't geared to making gender transitions easy. Why do people need to be legally recognised as any gender anyway?

On the other hand, your over analysing, bottled frustration and hormone fuelled rage make me think "Welcome to womanhood". (just have a look at the blogs of your female friends if you don't believe me!!)

[ms-kilian.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more.

[assassinus.livejournal.com]

May be hang out with the people that are more accepting and less troublesome, and avoid the ones that aren't..for a while at least?.

I know I'm probably stating the obvious, but to a certain degree, only time passing is going to help some elements of your experience methinks.

[taleya.livejournal.com]

This. Maybe get away as much as possible from the affirmation of the arsetastic side of the world and nestle happily in th nice, affirming side for a while. Anger is good - and very, very fucking valid, but living in a constant state of rage will get all ulcery

[sacred-chao.livejournal.com]

A lot of the arsetastic side of the world is the bureaucratic side with which I have no choice but to interact. I am going to get more assertive there though. I noted that the change of details form for the AEC actually says "gender" rather than "sex" for the box I marked as "male". Now I'm guessing that they're probably after "legal" gender rather than what the word gender actually means, but I'm not going to interpret for them anymore. I resubmitted another one of those forms today with precisely what they asked for; my gender, not my sex.

[crazyjane13.livejournal.com]

You probably know about most of these groups anyway, but this is via the Zoe Belle Gender Centre:

http://gendercentre.com/?page_id=376

There are a lot of wonderful people like Sally Goldner out there who understand only too well that fear and rage.

*hugs*

On pronouns

[ms-kilian.livejournal.com]

After the KG Invest event I realised that I mix pronouns when I'm talking about your past - I will refer to "him" in the past tense if I'm talking about things that happened, say, before Circa Nocturna this year since for me that's the watershed moment, and "her" in the current and future tense. I also sometimes refer to you in the masculine when I am talking about your ongoing relationship with D'smum. I will try to modify that, but please do bear with me.

Re: On pronouns

[sacred-chao.livejournal.com]

Actually, most of that (with the possible exception of the last bit) wouldn't cause me to twitch at all. Hearing myself referred to as "he" in the context of things that happened more than a year ago is a context driven thing and so not a big deal. Regardless, you are definitely one of the people who I know is paying attention and not denying me anything with regards to identity. Indeed, I've referred to you as the friend who "seems to be determined to build a woman out of the available material". So relax :)

Re: On pronouns

[hometime.livejournal.com]

I find that I do the same thing, using the masculine terms for past tense.