A Lucid Moment

I've stated a lot that I have a seething sense of resentment over the fact that I feel that I've missed out on a great deal of what my 20s and 30s should have been. Lately I've been reading more about harassment and gendered assault and general sexual discrimination that exists within our culture. (and others, but given that I am in fact talking about me here, our culture is the one that's relevant. The westernisation of that discussion and how that pisses me off is another topic entirely.) I don't seriously think that I *want* to be discriminated against or harassed like that; nobody sane would. What I do get a sense of is that I have missed out on several decades of gendered acculturation that allows me to understand exactly how it is that women are contextualised in our culture and that badly skews my own personal social positioning and understanding of myself. The basic wariness and disenfranchisement that so many women describe remains as invisible to me now as it did when I was living as a man.

There's a real cognitive dissonance here...as I said before - obviously nobody wants to be demeaned, harassed, assaulted, talked down to, or otherwise treated as a second class citizen. I start to feel like a clueless tourist who yammers on about wanting an "authentic" experience while having no clue what that actually means. That's where the bit that chafes me hits though. I am not a tourist in this gender. I'm not just checking it out with plans to go home later with a few snapshots, souvenirs and party stories. I have turned my life upside down and fucked it and myself up in a variety of ways to make this happen. So there's all sorts of facets to this. There's the petulant desire to be a real and proper member and a sort of whininess that I'm still not being recognised as such. (yeah, that's a fucked up badge of membership that no sane person really wants but it's still a form of recognition) There's the growing sense of disillusionment and anger as I get a more and more vivid picture of how screwed up gendered interactions are simply because of how I'm now positioned. It should not be underestimated how profoundly revealing it can be simply to recontextualise yourself that way. My relationships with my peers, especially those who have come to know me since I started transitioning has been profoundly informed by that shift and *that* has provided me with a whole new viewpoint. Men don't get that level of "girl talk" because it's a conversation that happens entirely within a group of women and one that does treat men as "other" which would inevitably produce all sorts of defensive reactions. So I'm suddenly getting that discussion without being treated as that "other".

This is something that's happened really quite suddenly as well. I didn't get quietly inducted through childhood, through puberty, and then through young adulthood with the deep understanding that comes with having lived that experience. I *do* still carry a messy and partially relevant tangle of male privilege around with me although I'm finding it difficult these days to work out which parts of those still inform how I'm treated. This comes back to the fact that I never was, nor will I ever get to be a young woman. So I'm getting slapped in the face with this all at once and at this point it's somewhat overwhelming and my brain is shrieking "THIS IS IMPORTANT!" in ways that to anyone who grew up with it in the ways that I haven't are going to seem ridiculously self-evident. There's also the usual guilty "Oh this is important now that it's about you, is it?" reaction which is entirely warranted. It's tricky to start discussing this without the sense that I'm cluelessly, oblivously and embarrassingly stating the blindingly obvious. I'm *trying* to think things through before I blurt them out but I'm well behind everyone else.

I have a new set of peers who are providing me with both feminist and trans-feminist material and ideas. This is interesting and useful and probably damn near essential if I'm to properly make sense of who I am once the context of who I am reaches outside of my own head. Working it out is going to take a lot of time and a lot of rambling blog entries, I'm sure. It's probably going to take a lot of extended conversations with some very patient and understanding women to whom I'm going to wind up owing a real debt.

Today marks two years on hormones. A quiet day, just a dinner and chat with a friend to mark its passing. It's now rather less than five months until surgery. I know I've said that surgery isn't transition, but it will mark something of an end point as far as the big stuff goes. The rest is just tidying up and settling into myself properly.

Hopefully from this point my relationship with my body moves back into reclaiming it. I have my MRI this Sunday and once I have the results, I can move forward with what exercise I can do without damaging myself further and whatever treatment is needed to get it properly healed. I can get my fitness back, drop this excess weight and have that kinesthetic part of my life back. If I can get some proper derby training back in before I go to surgery I might even start to properly reconnect with my league. They've been lovely but being on the periphery isn't the same as skating with them. Hell, I might even see some scrimmage. I don't think getting back up to yellow star is too crazy a goal. Summer is coming along as well. Cycling commuting in the early morning in summer is a simple but profound joy on some days. Everything is warm and you can smell so much more than car exhaust. It's all cut grass and warm bitumen and garden beds and wooden fences and the city gently exhaling - there's a *smell* to summer.

I've been contemplating getting ink lately. This is again partly an exercise in reclaiming my body and of all the times in my life, this may well be the perfect time to do it. I have several ideas about what I want, very few of which relate to actual content. This is fine. There is no timetable to this, if it happens at all but I'm enjoying the process of turning it over in my mind. Perhaps that will be my post-surgery present to myself to enjoy until I can get on skates again at which point I think an upgrade is indicated. I shall try on boots and peer at plates and get myself some properly stompin' wheels.

Muscle and ink. Girl parts and skates. That's an interesting combination and I think I like the sound of it. Never mind this summer, next summer should be amazing.

So today was the initial consultation with the surgeon. No particular surprises although it appears that recovery times may be shorter and costs may be lower than expected. This is most pleasing. Talking about surgery isn't confronting per se but it was the conversation about the risks and potential adverse outcomes and some of them, while exceedingly rare, are not pleasant. That's so not putting me off though.

I went straight from the doctor's office to meet a friend and debrief. Only a reletively new friend but someone with whom I feel immediately comfy and who is also trans (albeit FTM) so he was easy to talk to. We both had life ventings and I'm awfully glad he was able to be there because even after that I still felt adrenal and like I wanted to burst into tears despite actually being quite happy about things. It's simply one of those steps that makes this process suddenly very much less abstract. I went home and twitched online for a bit before falling asleep on the couch with the cat for an hour or so.

Awoke to find that my flatmate have cooked mashed potato and greenbeans and reheated what was left of last night's lamb shanks, conveniently one each. A good thing and possibly improved by being leftovers as these things often are. I have an RDO tomorrow so I can relax a bit. I have vague plans to meet another friend for lunch. I suspect I'll sleep deeply tonight.

I got the second psychiatric referral to the surgeon today. This essentially means all systems are go so once I see the surgeon I can confirm a date, hopefully in April next year. Beyond that it's just about putting the financial ducks in a row. This is the only part where I'm reliant on someone else but the time frame there is well before the surgery date so I'm confident there.

Addendum that has nothing to do with the last bit:

I got back on both the bike and skates for the first time in about three weeks. No notable achiness has ensued but by the same token my knee still exhibits the same level of crankiness it did before. I'm comfy with gentle skating and cycling but I'm still going to dodge commuting by bike and training involving contact for a while. I might spend some time helping out with fresh/white training sessions though.

A pleasing day today. I drove most of the way to the second place I planned to be today (derby training), left my derby gear in the car and caught the train from Regent station to the city. I bought a small but rather nice box of chocolates from Koko Black in Royal Arcade for She Who Gets Things Done™ at derby by way of thanks for going above and beyond to make things happen with regards to supplementary star testing. She's vegan so that was a slightly more involved process than usual. I then killed time tramping around the CBD, pausing for a coffee and walnut/fig cake that was small but decadently sticky.

I actually felt that I looked good today. I wound up feeling confident and attractive which is an awfully empowering thing whether it was warranted or not. I had a somewhat briefer time meeting with GQA peeps at 1000£ Bend than I would have liked but it was time to head off for my first scrimmage session!

Scrimmage is actually playing roller derby. The only difference is that this is played within our own team as a training exercise but it still comes down to us essentially running a full bout (and this after an hour of drills!) It was utter confusion. There's an awful lot going on all at once and you're trying to keep track of nine other people on the track at once and the interdependent roles that they play. It made my brain implode and I've rarely had so much fun in my whole life. So ludicrous multitasking while skating hard in close proximity to several other women while in turn hitting and being hit by them over and over again for an hour. At the end of it I felt marvelous. Yet again, I very much like this being fit thing. There's still plenty of room for improvement but I can ask my body to do really rather a lot before it tells me to fuck off and fetch a lemon, lime and bitter please. So this is yet another instance of being well pleased with my body. Athletic femininity is a very pleasing fit for me and I think I want to pursue it further. The intensity level of today's training was definitely up a few notches and I felt really challenged. Moving into that learning and development curve promises to be a very satisfying thing indeed.

After that I headed to Chadstone for dinner with a few friends. Quiet but pleasing and I chatted with someone I'd not actually had any sort of conversation with for some considerable time.

This is really an extension of my last post I suppose. I like my new transport option and the fact that I can successfully integrate it into my usual multi-modal transport regime rather than simply using it as a standalone thing and I like the fact that it is already opening up extra options to me. I'm pleased with moving up to the next level of derby and the fact that it really *has* brought a whole new dimension to the exercise.

I'm not sure I have any more purpose in my life but I have a great deal more *life* in my life.

A busy day yesterday. I got up bright and early to borrow a car from the lovely sjkasabi so that I could go shopping for my own. It turned out that the model that showed itself to be value for money at the price range was the late 90ish Holden Astra. I was looking at other things as well but in the end, party due to time constraints, test drove only two cars. The first was rather nice at first glance. A pleasing green and with a few extra bells and whistles. Once I started driving it though I immediately had a bad feeling about it - it really didn't quite feel right. I said non-committal things and continued on my way. At another car yard I found another Astra that was very nearly identical, albeit with few extra features. The main difference though was that it drove so very differently that I realised just how decrepit the first one had been and how mechanically good this second one felt. I did the usual round of driving tests and checked carefully for rust and accident damage (also remarkably clean in that regard) and promptly decided that this one was mine.

So I'm now very nearly the happy owner of a 1999 dark blue Holden Astra. I couldn't quite get a bank cheque on the day so my current plan is to get one tomorrow and then take that out to Mum's place (she lives just around the corner from the car yard) and see if she can't pick up the car on Tuesday. I can then drop by on the Tuesday evening and pick it up and still be on time for derby training as that doesn't start until 9pm.

It's been a long time since I've been car shopping, either for myself or anyone else. I don't think there's been anything that's come close to pointing up the differences in how I get treated these days. Secondhand car salesmen are generally not the most sophisticated of beasties and I was thoroughly bemused by just how remarkably different the experience was. It was occasionally hilarious...the first car didn't want to start and he tried to excuse it by saying that he'd accidentally flooded it. I pointed out that this was unlikely given that it's fuel injected and so has no throttle pump and delivers no fuel when the engine isn't running. The mixture of confusion and slight panic on his face was remarkable and I had to try awfully hard not to smirk at him. So there was a strange blend of solicitousness and condescension threaded through the whole experience. I realise that this is par for the course but there's still a great deal of novelty and validation in this for me so fascination still usually wins out over annoyance. I'm sure this will change and there were a couple of points when I didn't look half as closely at the contents of a car yard as I might have because the salesman seriously put me off.

Pleased with myself I headed off to derby. We didn't have training as such as it was fresh meat induction. 23 women turned up to have a go and I saw some real promise there, both amongst those who clearly already had some skating skills and the utter novices. A couple of them picked up suggestions that I made and integrated them really well despite being very uncertain on skates. I had some good chats with a few of them during the afternoon as well so I think Northside is going to gain some fantastic new members out of this group. After a couple of drinks at the Raccoon Club I headed home in a thoroughly good mood.

Today was spent servicing my sleep debt (which sounds so much better than "sleeping in" and does actually have an element of truth in it) and doing laundry. I have cooked very little lately so I went shopping and now have a bubbling pot of noms on the stove that I'm just about to have a bowlful of. I had an odd moment at the supermarket when the woman behind me at the checkout starting physically picking through my shopping on the conveyer belt at the checkout making comments about imported produce. Weird but in the end not worth getting invested in so I paid for my shopping and just left.

This week marks the end of my secondment at work. I have Monday and Tuesday as my final days in that department and then back down to the contact centre on Wednesday. I really don't want to go back to the phones. The couple of short stints i did last week have reinforced this. Still, I get the impression that it's only a matter of time until I go back to business support. There was a departmental meeting on Friday and several people said really nice things about me and my work so if there's another opening up there I suspect that any expression of interest from me will be viewed favourably. Also, if things go to usual form, I'm also likely to get a degree of priority for other alternative duties. I may not like the work in the contact centre overmuch but I like the people and the company so for now I think it's time to suck it up and bide my time. The security and stability that this employer provides means that I'd have to be offered something an great deal better even to consider changing.

I had skates on for nine hours today. I met up with a few people from Northside and a couple not from Northside at the museum today. We weren't there to actually go into the museum but because of the marvelously smooth paving they have out the front. We thumped about there for a while, a few of those there went home and the four of us who remained went down to Southbank for more skating and coffee. Somehow, three of the four of us were trans so it was a gloriously gender diverse derbygirl outing which was spectacularly good fun and very comfy indeed.

From there it was out to Eltham for a showing of Derby Baby at the Skaterz rink and they'd agreed to open up the rink afterwards. Having skated to the car and then going straight to a rink it seemed silly to change out of my skates and so I just kept them on until the rink closed at 11pm. That was an awful lot of skating goodness but I really don't feel skated out, even if the 88 duro (soft) wheels I'd put on for outside skating were waaaay too soft for a prepared rink surface and made me work extra hard, especially during the speed skating. Fortunately, this chest infection appears to be just about on its last legs so I should survive training tomorrow nicely.

So yet again I'm feeling the derby love and adoring the people I meet through it. It's an amazingly positive thing in my life and that doesn't seem to be unusual. More if this for me, I think. I'm just not seeing a downside to it.

My brain has been a bit froth and bubble today. It's revolved around accountability for violence, particularly violence against marginalised and disempowered groups. I'm going to thrash it out a bit here and see if I can't find some order in my thoughts. It's all going to be a bit ad hoc though.

Before I even start to address this, I'm going to say that this is a monstrously divisive issue and provokes immediate, vehement and defensive reactions from both men and women. I think that's partly because it's invariably framed as being a topic where men and women are on opposite sides in an intractible war of the sexes and I suspect that this is at least partly the problem.

Many of you are going to have immediate and distinctly visceral reactions to this topic. Please please let the churning bile settle a bit before you comment and please have a go at reading and genuinely trying to understand the parts that make you step firmly into your tribal territory and want to throw things. Also understand that that last bit wasn't just directed at you, is was also directed at him *points* and her *points again* and them clustered together in the corner *gestures vaguely*. Ok? Deep breaths.

( Rambling discourse on rape and other unprovoked violence typed all in one sitting and so probably with gaping holes here and there. )

I've had health insurance in place for nigh on a month now and that means that hopefully within the year I'll be in a startling amount of discomfort and very happy indeed about it. This will mean of course that there will be no cycling for me for some time. There will also be no skating and that will make me sad and impact on my fitness. I'm really very dischuffed about this and it will drive me nuts but that simply can't be avoided. Losing skating for a while won't make a dent in my transport regime though. Losing cycling very much will.

I've resisted the idea of getting a car for a while. In many ways I *like* having a carless existence but some training sessions would be much easier with a car and finding my place within things like the SCA will be much easier with my own transportation. I've also been increasingly bailing out on stuff because getting there was all too hard. I think I've just about hit tipping point so I will do some sums, work out what I can afford as far as a loan goes and look at cars. So far something like a 2004 Corolla looks appealing. 1.8l motor, will cart stuff, not stupidly big, not stupidly thirsty, unlikely to break often. I might go with something smaller and my inclination in many ways is to do so and this might also save me a couple of thousand dollars or mean I can have something slightly nicer.

Thinking about transport arrangements and sleeping arrangements *eyes loft bed dubiously* and other things that will need to be dealt with does make surgery suddenly more real. It's exciting and scary and all sorts of things. I'm going to be in more pain than I've ever experienced before which is an unnerving concept but I'm going into it willingly and even happily. I want it at a level which is difficult to articulate but seriously fundamental and I suspect that the closer it gets the weirder it will be. God I can't wait.

I was in such a good mood too...

Yesterday worked out well. I found out rather later than ideal that I couldn't afford to miss another derby training session if I wanted to be eligible for membership. I really really DO want to be eligible for membership because it's on that that my eligiblility to test for white star next month hinges and if I miss that I have to wait until god knows when, most likely July. Still, a frantic round of email saw commitments successfully juggled thanks to lovely understanding friends and I went out and skated my arse off. An hour and a half of training hard on the heels of a 17-18km bike ride to get there may have been pushing things but I felt marvellous at the end of it, albeit a little stiff today. I am so so SO loving derby. Every time I go I end the evening in a fantastic mood and feeling fit and relaxed and thoroughly satisfied.

Today, less good. I filled out a form online to apply for health insurance in which they asked what my gender is. Fine, that'd be female. Then they used that data to pre-populate another form only this time asking what my sex was. Without providing provision to change the details. and a stern note warning about penalties for providing false or misleading statements. So I called them. Lots of awkward pauses as people brainfarted while trying to deal with my question and work out who to pass me on to. Someone finally advised me that I'd be fine to submit it as it is. If they subsequently try to tell me that I've provided them with false information I will staple their scrotums to their cheekbones. I thought I was fine with that series of conversations but within half an hour I was filling up fast with hormones and adrenaline and feeling nauseous and distracted. I thought I was over feeling embarrassed about stupid crap like that but it seems I'm not. How is it that I *still* feel some sort of shame about all this? Grrr.