I find myself so frustrated lately, and I do promise that I will concentrate on lighter things shortly, having all these worries floating through my head right now like:
Is my younger brother really moving backwards in acceptance in my transition? Will my mother continue sabotaging me, trying to make it harder so that I give up? Is my older brother really healthy for my trans and gay friends to be around will he accept me? Will my sister cut me off from my neice and nephews? How far will my step fathers rage go? Did I really screw up my schooling beyond any hope to fix it? How many years before my student loans debt is gone? How much longer after that will I ever have credit? Will I be fifty before I can ever hope to get a mortgage for a home? Will I be in the closet at work for the rest of my life? Will I still hate myself when I start visibly changing more? Will I be ugly? Can I trust anyone to talk to... Its been so long since I've hung around with any lgbt friends, I miss the acceptance and the use of gay in any positive sense of the word. The transgender day of remembrance was painful this year, I am stuck hiding and quiet. I keep trying to get things that I have always wanted, that I used to want, because it fit in my minds picture of what my cozy dream home would hold. As if one could collect enough pieces to complete the puzzle and solve life. I find myself having a hard time seeing into a future anymore though, I go by old pictures and old lists, pretending that they are still there. All I see when I try to look to my future is a short strip of the road left. I think of all the obstacles and how I can ever live with one of them continuing negatively and it feels like It is just a matter of time before the road runs out.
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Man.
Be proud you are the privileged who don’t have to worry about the problems that a woman faces. What do you think about what a boy goes through as he is raised? Boys. You live under the threat of being the sissy, pussy or wimp. You cant play with dolls, you cant like purple or pink. Upon mention, ensure that your disgust is believable. You cannot pretend to be or idolize a female character without being told you cant or receiving laughter even from the adults around. You must grow up fast, shake off the fall, ignore the scrapes and bruises, cant be hugged too much or you will grow up weak. You must not complain. You grin and bear it. Hope you grow up tall, too short and you will never find someone to date. Too thin and you will be considered a dork. Avoid your mothers and keep your distance or be branded a mommas boy and teased. Cant cry. Hair too long and your masculinity will be stripped from you as guys smirk and call you miss. Cant talk too much and share what’s on your mind for fear of being told how you are such a girl. Don’t ever let a girl stick up for you. Waiver and you get beat up. Suck it up. Pathetic, you cant even take a punch. Your life will be a fight to maintain enough masculinity for your parents to not give you a hard time. All you need now is to hear the worry in their voice as they start getting involved. All you need is for them to give you advice. You are pathetic. Too many fuck ups make you a girl or fag. If you cant party then you are lame, must be able to hold your alcohol, must keep drinking, hopefully you wont pass out and they draw dicks on your face with permanent marker. Hope an acceptable girl takes a fancy to you in high school so that you wont be called a cocksucker. Pray all class the teacher doesn’t ask you to come up and solve the equation. Hope no one realizes why you stayed in the classroom late. Hope no one noticed your boner. Hope no one realizes what and who you were thinking when you got it. Crap! This doesn’t happen to guys who get laid. You cant just be friends with a girl, you have to see them as an object, what are you? Gay!? Hope that you are not smaller than the guys in your class, hope your pubes have filled out as much as everyone else’s. Talk the talk walk the walk. Quickly loose the V-card before every loser in your class does before you. Don’t slip up. Don’t fuck up. The guys say its easy to please a girl, to make them moan, they are really hoes under it all. They bow to the cock. Don’t screw up. Cant you get it up? Not too soon……… not too late. Are you done yet? You are so awkward are you sure you have ever been with a girl those other times? Not yet! Think of trees, flowers, don’t be a minute man again she will think you are always like this. Now is where it gets easy, here is your life plan, high school-date girls, finish school, sleep around and figure out this sex thing, job, wife, house, kid, dog…got it? Its easy. <rant>
Like any person I have my own personal weaknesses. I have opinions, I have passions. Its obvious that all of them don’t meld with popular opinion. I would be a feminist with my respect for women, sexism and inequality. Once I hit puberty it was like the world lost its interest in helping me fulfil my interests. I still don’t understand why I couldn’t live my dream and become a knight. Everyone kept trying to straighten me out and push me to become someone I was uncomfortable with being. I was yelled at for not wanting to dress like someone I wasn’t. Women are bodies, they are on display to be looked at and evoke interest. I can barely see any women around my age without seeing them in categories. I don’t mind hoes, at least they are honest and aware of being looked at. I just don’t like it when some go on about drama or feminism. Feminists around here get into the habit of complaining too much and not listening to themselves or others. I would have continued my interest in woodwork if I had had the chance back in high school, pressure pressure pressure.. I have watched my mother be treated like some idiot wife. I have faced living with a guy who expected me to stay at home and not socialize but to try to study quietly at home while the boyfriend ate at his computer every night. A guy who couldn’t manage to keep up with chores or cleaning. I have watched girls treat good guys like shit because they are guys without ever knowing much about them. I have heard their rants about which abortion clinic was really great and didn’t make them feel guilty at all, at the amount that they knew it was like this was their main form of birth control. I suppose the pill makes you gain some weight, so its useful to go the abortion path, I mean you would likely loose some weight after something like that…uh.. I mean like beyond the baby pounds. I was tempted on numerous occasions to start leaving coat hangers on the door of the women’s group on campus. A bunch of middle class white chicks talking about how big the ring their guy just gave them, how they bought this great $200 tea dress to celebrate, how its awful that people still aren’t supportive of abortions and how men are terrible sexist things. I like kids but despise how many men cant grasp the mommy things like diapers, socks, snacks and a jacket. I also think that girls are real twats about raising their children. Its been within women’s ability to start changing opinions through their child rearing but they still treat their children differently based on sex. They start helping their girls get a grasp on everything, even getting them to start with child rearing, becoming attuned to others emotions, cooking, cleaning, and multitasking. The boys still young find themselves segregated and expected to figure things out on their own or idolize their father who tends to not be present. So of course they end up different. What else do they have left than to end up filling up their time with either ideas of masculinity or other boys off tying to find their places as well. Should I be sorry for blaming the mother of a 17 year old boy who cannot do laundry or cook his own food? In some cases it feels like it should be known cases of neglect. I know many guys who have deep insecurities surrounding things that if ever discussed would never have been issues. Have watched them turn out aggression and passive aggression because they could not release the emotions or talk about it. Once again a new generation moulded to fit old stereotypes with little wiggle space. I have fought with my gender and women’s professor for a lengthily time over a list of what checks would need to be fine for a community to be gender equal. There were no checks for males. My father fought for partial custody of his three kids. My stepmother an alcoholic. He paid everything for her and for the kids while the kids remained with him anyway. He was a workaholic and ill prepared to suddenly be faced with having to help them get through a divorce while he still held a broken heart. In his eyes he had failed at life. For his marriage was done. We weren’t the easiest to understand and take care of. I never had a conversation with my father until I was nearly 18 my siblings at least connected much before that. Work doesn’t give any freedom, why would men have to worry about kids or their family, expectations are that if you have kids you have a wife that takes care of them. Time expectations are high. </rant> One day in high school my class finally experienced our first information coming from the teachers on homosexuality. My teacher pointed to the class, as if accusing, and told them that one in ten of them shall be gay. The class started looking around at each other. Searching faces, picking out the queers. I became the token dyke, and another very unfortunate soul became the token gay. Dyke, butch and lesbo became constant names for me. Being scrawled on my binder and its papers when I got up to use the bathroom, my stuff being thrown out, being harassed by everyone, being pushed, endless spit balls, being threatened to be cut up and beaten, and being called beast constantly. I dressed and acted like a man. It was my comfort zone. I changed inside the shower stall in the change rooms, always facing away from everyone. I just couldnt manage to be comfortable being who everyone else wanted me to be.
This had all happened before I developed a sexuality. It was almost a year in this before I had my first fantasies, my first interest in sex. I dreamt of women. I fantasized about breasts, curves, and thighs. Dreamt of making them moan. People continued to call me names, I continued to get frustrated with it all. I didn’t know what a Dyke or butch really was, but I knew I shouldn’t like it. I told no one about any of it. Eventually my interest in women was joined with an interest in men too. For women it was detached from comparison or interest in girls my age, the most of which I was worried to be near. I fantasized much about older girls, about nice big breasted next door neighbour types, and sexy women in the media. For men, my first interest came attached to a person. It surprised and embarrassed me. I knew a bit more of what opposite gender stuff was about. It was a confusing addition to an already confusing picture. Eventually I found out my interest in women had ties to the lesbo title. The whole matter was still confusing though and remained confusing for the first few years of high school. Then it was like I got a glimpse of the sorrow that was to come. My grandmother was dying. I had many unfinished fights with the woman, and this was the first death of anyone close to me. But it was nothing to the bomb that hit next. My uncle JR died. He was young, I am getting to his age quickly. He was so much to me. So much time spent with him and it was all loving and magical. He was teaching me to play guitar, about the stars, how to dive, snorkel, and clam diving, all about animals, about life, and how to live it right, about people, about university, my future and showed me how to love and want to protect people. He sang with me, we played board games for days, searched for perfect rocks on the beach, stayed up watching for shooting stars, watched the bats swooping for bugs up close, and had picnics with me. A short while after that my uncle Jack died too. By then I was already numb though. Already empty. I saw the world and all its shadows. All its darkness. And it beckoned me. I cried myself to sleep every night for many months. My eyes were always burning. The first time I went back to B.C after what had happened I started crying every time I was in the shower too, to block the weeping from this alien ‘family‘. I wanted death. I wanted to join him. I was obsessed with it. I spent almost all of my next few years in complete silence. I fought with my parents and any family I had left. They couldn’t understand me. There was more pushing to finally be a woman, but I held onto my comforts the best that I could. After a few years I finally talked to my biological father. I never remembered talking to him before. Though there was an argument or two first. Its not that he didn’t call. I spent every summer out there in B.C with him and his family. I just didn’t quite understand it. I had a real connection with my Nanas cabin and my uncle. I never had any memories with my actual father. Today is the day that I am recognizing Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day that makes my heart ache every second from the time I get up to when I finally fall asleep. I curl up to my blankets and pillow so tightly that it is as if it were me holding on to my friends and keeping them with me. Sometimes I see them go through so much pain and I feel useless for not being able to stop any of it. Life can be a torture. It was years ago when Ian and I first decided to start publicly mourning on the Trans day of Remembrance at the university. Something we had to do to raise more awareness of the losses. We usually spent hours ahead of time going through all the names. All the stories. The graphic beatings, the severe hate. We tried to remember all of those people that we could. So many beautiful people lost to this rigid and intolerant world. All ages, attacked with such passion and hate. People don’t understand how much this effects everyone. Transphobia can lead to the end of any life who breaks these rigid gender stereotypes. It has led to the deaths of children who knew nothing of these words and definitions. This last year a baby was killed because their step father felt the infant was not masculine enough. Every year the numbers are underestimated. Every year this continues. I get told that I am too passionate about breaking down all of the rules surrounding gender. I try to encourage my family to take a stance of acceptance and encouragement to express themselves. It never feels like the changes are happening fast enough. I watch my nieces and nephews get railroaded to hate opposite gender things, most answering back so quickly now their disgust in the others toys. Fast enough that you can tell they get taunted, quizzed about it from the adults in their lives. It will be another generation of people having to fit in these categories. You ask why I feel so strongly about kids toys.. Because it leads to showing your children how much gender matters. It shows them the rules. They grow up feeling that that is the way it has to be. That gender cant cross any lines. The people who murdered felt it was so important to stick to these categories, so important that people follow them, that they killed. They made the decision that because of this the life of that individual lacked worth. These murderers were children, they learned these rules in their youth. Become aware of this. Acknowledge it. I want to move forward into a generation of accepting people who will accept the beauty that comes with diversity. Who will never teach children such ridiculous rules. Where the hate is ended and people get to live without the fear. Please start taking the steps needed to create this world. Ending this hate is a cause worth standing up for. Let knowing these losses and remembering their stories give you the strength to help end the loss of life. When a parent is placed in the care of a child, gender is evaluated and gendered toys are picked. At baby showers, everything is defined by whether it is a girl or boy or getting gender neutral toys and clothing. Kids are given freedom to choose whichever toys they want, but generally within their gender category, or given that they are in the neutral area. Personally I have two nephews who are drawn to at least one of the girly interests: dolls, princess toys, makeup, or girly clothes. Don’t get me wrong, they are perfectly normal about it, only getting chances to enjoy these things without their parents or strict adults around. Given the chance to explore these with a parent who tells them it is okay to play with them, they find great interest and love with playing with these girly toys. As the new generation we are exposed to more open ideas than the conservative ideas of our parents before us. We can be more open-minded about what is interest appropriate instead of just gender appropriate. Remember that the odds are against kids getting the opposite gender gift, but within your grasp to do so. So think, is there something your niece or nephew wants badly that no one else is likely to get them? In a time where the suicides are finally visible, and when boys can still get pressured and harassed for wearing a 'girls' costume on halloween by parents, realizing how damaging gender restrictions can be for a person is vital. Remember that changes dont just start at the school against bullying, we have to change our views and others to ensure hate not to continue. So, why do I bring this up now? Christmas and gift buying is here, therefore, it is within your control to ignore barriers surrounding gender. I do this not only for my nieces and nephews but my own shattered dreams of getting that chemistry set, or pet snake that I wanted when young.
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Kris
I am a Bi+Trans geeky student who is all about Gaming, Music, Drawing, Writing, Anime, Comic books, and Web comics. Categories
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April 2016
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