Things Not To Do, A Personal List

I haven’t updated in a long time. Not because I haven’t been writing, but because I haven’t managed to finish anything. So instead of finishing a nice good post for this blog, please enjoy this list.

Things I learned not to do in relationships:

• On the first mixed CD one makes a new partner (especially a female identified partner) don’t put Queen’s “Fat Bottom Girls” on the mix. Yes, it might be a good song, but as new partners, people are less likely to know where their partners’ body image issues come up, and said partners are less likely to know when something isn’t filled with meaning.
• People are not mind readers, if I want a person to know something, don’t keep thinking about it and getting upset that they don’t know anything about it.
• People make mistakes, but repetitive mistakes are patterns, and don’t do patterns that are unhealthy. Like breaking up and getting back together over and over again.
• Don’t cheat.
• Don’t lie about cheating.
• Don’t put up with a partner who abuses consent.
• Don’t believe anyone who makes excuses about the abuse of consent.
• Don’t be so careful around consent that nothing is ever initiated.
• I learned to not talk the way I think. Now, I’m not saying that I don’t speak my mind, I’m saying that people think differently from each other, and myself, well I definitely think differently than a lot of people. I had to learn not to talk like I think, because the way I think makes absolutely no sense to anyone else. Mostly because I think in abstractions, more than three dimensions, and on the rare occasions it is in words, it is not in complete sentences.
• Don’t forget to talk.
• Don’t be afraid of labels.
• Don’t be afraid of not having labels.
• Don’t accept terrible sex. If I want my partner to do something different ASK for it.
• Don’t assume worst intentions. This goes for everything from off-hand comments to serious conversations.
• Don’t stay with someone who doesn’t care if they are triggering. Especially if they repeat this behavior after having told them that it is triggering.
• Don’t judge their taste in movies, music, or books.
• Don’t hesitate to kiss someone after dating them for over a month, let alone after six.
• Don’t be afraid to make a move. And no, I’m not even referring to first moves here.
• Don’t sugar coat personality traits. I’m a snarky ass individual. Many exes of mine found this out 1-3 months after the break up, instead of when we were getting to know each other. Not a good thing.
• Don’t settle for something that’s completely unwanted. Example, don’t do monogamy when all I want is a poly relationship.
• Don’t be a doormat.
• Don’t let gender-slips slide.
• Don’t let partners shame me for being in pain. Be it migraine, knees, or any other of my potential problems, no one has a right to make me feel like crap because of my health. Don’t put up with it.
• Just because it’s hormonally based, doesn’t mean the emotion isn’t real. Don’t discount it, be it mine or a partner’s. Especially if I’ve managed to mess up my shots.
• Don’t stay with someone who thinks I’m a psychopath.
• If triggered and distant as a result, don’t forget to mention to a partner that something’s going on, even if it’s just to tell them that really, it isn’t their fault and I’m not about to break up with them.
• Don’t try to make out while rolling r’s. It really is just a terrible plan.
• Don’t bite down too hard. Don’t believe people when they claim they can take it if they haven’t had a bite from me before.
• Don’t ignore my instincts. When my inner red flag bullshit alarms go off, they’re right. Listen to them dammit.
• Don’t ignore friends saying “this is a terrible idea.” They’re right. They always are.
• Don’t tell partners they’re being immature, no matter how true it is. Really, there just isn’t a way that word is going to be heard well.
• Don’t put up with passive aggressive manipulation.
• People have to be their own autonomous individuals (barring M/s type agreements.) So, if they say something is okay to do, believe them even if you doubt it. Even if that means the day after having a long conversation about how it wasn’t actually okay, even though they thought it was ahead of time, I have to treat people I date as emotionally responsible adults.
• Don’t date people who aren’t emotionally responsible adults.
• Don’t date people back to back for 5-6 months each on a continuing basis. No, really, not a good idea.
• Don’t forget to laugh at the awkward, because there will always be awkward. And it’s damn funny.
• Don’t date someone who can’t tell I have a sense of humor.
• Don’t be afraid to be a baby dinosaur/puppy/dragon/cat/creature.
• When making/buying or otherwise planning on giving a partner a gift for a holiday/birthday, don’t forget to actually give it to them. Preferably that year.

Not all of these I learned the hard way, but many of the ones that seem obvious or ridiculous are probably on the list because of experience.

Some of the things I’ve said may not apply to you… but I thought y’all could appreciate them anyways. And now maybe that I’ve broken my lack of blogging streak again, I’ll manage to finish one of the damned myriad of other entries I’ve started.

On Identity (Mostly Mine)

It is insulting to use my birth name. It is insulting to use female pronouns for me. These are really obvious (at least for most people who find their way to my blog or exist anywhere in my life.)

Plenty of CAFAB  (coercively assigned female at birth) people identify as female. Some identify as male. Some who use male pronouns, go through transition, change their names, etc. don’t identify as trans, but as male, as a guy. Calling them anything but what they identify as is insulting, derogatory, and all around shitty.

I am not one of those guys.

One of the hardest things I struggled with throughout high school was the thought that I couldn’t be trans because I had no desire to become a man. I wanted T. I wanted chest surgery. I wanted to change my name, but I never wanted to become male. It took me a while to get my mind beyond the gender binary. Once I did realize I could be me without having to become a guy, I was immensely relieved. Reading Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw was a relief. Being surrounded by people for whom gender and sexuality weren’t either or options, or even a spectrum, but instead a giant twisted knot of confusion was a huge relief. My identity as a person evolved drastically in that space, mostly because I acquired and developed language for what was already there. Language like queer and trans.

Trans to me means both across and beyond. Trans is something I’ve written about a good deal, because it’s on my mind a lot. But when asked more specifically about my gender, I falter. I end up going into explanations of the universe, and occasionally hyperbolic space, because physics is the only way I can conjure up images of both the complexity and vastness of my view of gender. My gender isn’t static. I live with a series of dynamic identities that flow into each other, mixing, swirling, splitting, growing, and dying. Gender has gone through all of those. I am not a man. Sometimes people think I am a boy, because that is what it sounds like I say. On rare occasions I am, but more often, I am a boi. I am a person, though sometimes I am a creature named Creature. On occasions that creature is a baby dragon, though not always. Something that many people find surprising is that I don’t identify as genderqueer, and never have. For some reason, I have a gut reaction against identifying with that particular word. Gender variant, trans, transgender, hell even “other” feels more appropriate to my identity than genderqueer.

Queer I’ve written about less, because queer means different things to everyone. To me, it is a lot of things. It is the beyond bisexual label. It is the gender variance I live. It is my choice in partners, my approach to sex. It means creating space where no is appreciated, and touch can be request, question, demand, and desire all wrapped into one. It means being poly, in that I can (and do) fall in love with multiple people at a time, as well as sleeping with a variety of people who I like. It means I am kinky, and a switch, taking joy in things others do not with others who likewise take joy in such things. In part, queer means to me queer theory (though not necessarily gained through typical academic means.) Approaching the world with a common dialect and background with a mindfulness that is sometimes hard to find other places. It is bridging the gaps between all those things, and the world beyond these frequently “othered” borders.

Except trans, queer, all of it aren’t statements to me. They are conversations. Constant conversations with myself, and with other people. Yet, I surprisingly rarely talk about it with my friends. We talk around identity, but rarely actually ever have the conversation of “what does queer mean to you? how do you see yourself? how do you see me?” A litany of questions that are rarely asked, and it seems that is true among many of the queers I know.

In fact, I have so rarely been asked such questions that last summer when a friend asked me about my gender I completely blanked on an answer. My rather drunk ass couldn’t think of a coherent answer, despite being something I think about quite often.

At the same time, I don’t ask either. I don’t assume I have any clue what queer means to other people, but I don’t ask. In part, it isn’t really my business. In part, I’m a quiet, shy, awkward individual who tends towards silence anyways. Except those are just parts, and I’m still filling in much of the other blanks.

Beyond Bisexual

I love the word queer, on many levels. From the fact that it encompasses more than just my sexuality, into my gender, and certain aspects of politics and community, to that it means odd. I’m more than a little odd, and I’m more than a little queer. I say queer, and people ask me what I mean.

Except in so many instances I dislike the word queer. It’s incredibly frustrating that those not familiar with queer communities don’t ask. It’s unfamiliar, confusing, and not helpful in connecting with different groups of people. More than that, I have huge issues with many parts of various queer communities. They can be self-isolating, unrealistic, judgemental, and occasionally vicious. That is true of most communities at one point or another. But as I’ve heard from strangers and friends recently, so often it is those in the queer (or kink, or other such) community that judges and turn in on each other. No one has come up with a way to keep out the assholes and douchebag.

Carol Queen used a term that I am coming to really enjoy. “Beyond Bisexual.” I don’t identify as bisexual, because I am interested in so many more people than just two of the variety of sexes or genders out there. Except, that is a word that a lot of people understand. There is a lot of meaning there, of biphobia from within straight and GL communities alike. Hell, even I’ve gotten the “so you’re greedy” comments many bisexuals get, and that was without even mentioning being poly.

I’m not exempt from the biphobia found within queer communities. In high school, I was very angry at this one group of girls who would get drunk and make out with other girls and call themselves bi. I dealt with so much shit. I was the school dyke, and anyone could take one look at me and tell. I got asked “are you a boy or a girl” walking down the halls. They got attention, positive attention. They got boyfriends from  those makeouts. It pissed me off. I had gone through confusion, harassment, etc., and they got none of it… and they weren’t “really” even bi! Yeah. I judged. I was one of those policing douchebags. I also grew up and got over myself. A lot about the situation in high school was fucked up, but getting angry because I thought of them as “supposedly bi” only contributed.

Once out of that situation, I chilled a lot. Many friends of mine in college did similar things, making out with their female friends while drunk… while having boyfriends. I didn’t get angry, hell I probably encouraged. A good number of them don’t identify as straight either. I didn’t even think about the connection until recently, at the 5 College Queer Sexuality and Gender Conference during the wonderful keynote by Michelle Tea. She brought up the drunken make-outs, how so many queers police those who partake in them, and that she herself started out that way. Between that, and something I do not recall that my friend next to me said, I started thinking about my role of policing queer identities in high school.

I’ve been on multiple sides of biphobia. I don’t want to discount it, but I also don’t want to discount my much broader sexuality, or risk obfuscating my own non-binary, non-spectrum, and very fluid gender identity. Beyond bisexual takes a word with a history, uses it as a launch pad, so I can go soaring towards the stars. Mainstream people can understand it enough to ask “what?” because it is grounded in a term they understand (whether or not they believe it exists.) Moreover, it’s a term that is specifically sexuality focused. I can use it, expand on it, without having to deal with my explaining my gender. Which is something that degenerates into fluid dynamics and 4 dimensional images of the universe.

Beyond is part of the title of this blog for a reason. It is an expansive word. Beyond bisexual can mean anything from attraction to more than two sexes/genders to going beyond attraction based on gender and into sexualities based more around specific kinks, personalities, etc.

One of the great things I learned about the word (prefix really) trans is that it doesn’t just mean across or on the opposite side… it means beyond. Trans lunar means beyond the orbit of the moon around the earth. Transcendent, transhumanism…

Yes, I’m a word nerd.

A Lack of Words

I came across a poem recently, “How to Make Love to a Trans Person” and holy shit I decided to blog.

Because here’s the thing, from the first lines I got stuck on something I realized very deeply last summer at Floating World, and have not been able to get my head around since. I am incredibly disassociated from words describing my body.

I’m doing good at not dissociating from my body in general. Considering that it was my specialty in high school, that for years the main reason I self-injured was to simply be present, not dissociating is damn impressive. Going on T got me to be able to be present in my body in whole new ways. There are still plenty of things I hate about my body, there are still plenty of things that aren’t mine, but as I wrote before that this is my body is a huge step. But there are few words surrounding my body that I feel connect to my body.

Mostly, it is that I don’t think in words. Very few things relate directly to words in my head. The more complex, the more intricate, the more emotionally difficult the thought process is the more likely I am to think outside words. Needless to say, thoughts about my body fall into all three categories. When they are thoughts about the societally gendered parts of my body, it becomes a tangled mess leaving my throat to close up.

Last year at Floating World, I went to a class on FtM cock and ball torture. Suddenly, I was mentally thrust into a world completely disconnected from my thought process– the language of queer bodies. I was unprepared for being unprepared because hell, I spend my of my time in queer spaces. In high school, I went to a queer youth group, a gender youth group, and ran my school’s GSA. In college, I got even more involved. By the time floating world hit, I was a queer sex blogger. Suddenly facing my complete lack of connection to the words other people with similar identities was really difficult for me. To them, the words dick and cock was their own. In my head, it was just as separate from me as clit.

There is only one word I have ever really connected with a gendered part of my body: chest. Not breasts, tits, boobs, or man-boobs, none of them have ever felt like they were actually describing me. Certain expartners of mine might find this surprising because I never corrected their use of that language. No reason why they should know when I never told them. Except whenever referring to myself, it’s just my chest.

Cock is a specific term in my head, and it usually refers to a delightful strapped-on cock with colors ranging from flesh tones to violet. Ideally, green, but green cocks are annoyingly hard to find. Dick, not something related to my body. Clit, a semi-useful term in that technically accurate and not actually connected to me sort of way. And for that reason one I’ve used in this blog more than a few times. Describing other people’s bodies is fine. Describing my own… there aren’t words in my head.

My body is on my mind more these days than it used to be. Particularly, my hesitance to show my body to others. While I have various groups of my friends that have been in more than one orgy (you know who you are) and while I’ve now been involved in some manner with the public kink scene for over a year, in the last year I’ve had a total of one person outside of a relationship see me naked. Two counting relationships (which is actually rather amusing considering my history.) Romping around in my binder and boxers at play parties is pushing my limits, and some parties I don’t even do that much.

One on one, I can deal. I can deal with my own body, the juxtaposition created from spending a decade with estrogen coursing through my veins, and a bit over a year on testosterone. I can not think about it, just think about whatever activity I am so inclined to do. One on one, I can deal. Getting my mind to adapt to one new person at a time being allowed to see my body…

I’ve never really had the opportunity to play with multiple people I’m with whom already comfortable. Adjusting to someone new is entertaining, and rather scary when that idea is multiplied from person to people. It was hard enough pre-T, when someone would first touch my hip and they’d stiffen. They didn’t have to say anything for me to know, they were readjusting how they thought of me. Guys don’t have hips like I do. I’ve seen many incarnations, from nervous hesitation, to afraid, to simple curiosity about what makes me most comfortable. One on one, I can engage with whatever reaction happens. Confusion, nervousness, attraction, amusement… if it’s just one other person, there isn’t a problem. I can have that conversation. I don’t know if I could manage it with two people, and definitely not without fear.

The one time someone tried to make up a new word I rather violently reacted in a negative manner. Admittedly, the discussion was humiliation play, so it wasn’t supposed to be something I liked. The problem was it would have been a total turn off if the person had ever actually used it in play. As in, if they had said it, I would have ended the scene there. No aftercare, complete seperation from whatever happened. They didn’t take my lack of interest in this very well, which was their perogative but had me rolling my eyes. My body is not someone else’s to name. I have granted no one that power over me, and thus any naming of my body, my parts, is entirely mine.

So, things are named without words for the moment. It works for me, and until there are words that suit the names, people can continue using words that don’t offend me. I just have to stop expecting a connection to any word that isn’t a name I’ve granted to that part myself.

 

Internal and External Discussions

Years ago, while wandering a college bookstore during a summer camp, I came across Dykes to Watch Out For, which really helped me deal with things like “that girl is hot” or the more terrifying version “my roommate is hot.”

In the second book, before it gets into the storyline involving the recurring character that are delightful even in their stereotypes, there are a few ‘random’ strips. One is about internalized homophobia, a lesbian haunted by anti-feminist/misogynistic/sexist thoughts in the form of a “total woman with a pitchfork.”

I don’t have a total woman with a pitchfork in my head, but I understand the sentiment.

And it is damn tiring to wake up every morning and have a 50% chance of a glance in the mirror focusing in on my hips with the thought “why won’t they go away?” It is tiring to glance down at my chest and know that though everyone else sees me bound so well, to me my chest sticks out. Internalized oppressions suck. Probably an obvious statement, but somehow I’m usually seen as not having any. I have opened up to a few friends about those incessant thoughts, like that being trans makes me completely undesirable to other people. I don’t very often, because in part I don’t like to complain but also when I know what it is, for me it ends up perpetuating the internalization by speaking it out loud and giving it that voice, that power. And it is damn tiring to have that constant drone of internalization.

But what is worse is that I’m so tired from arguing with my own issues that I don’t call people out nearly as much as I should. Like last weekend, sitting at a gathering at my friend’s place, some guys (who I just met that night) started saying some unfortunate things about mental illness. They had zero clue they were being offensive, but suddenly the light hearted party had me very guarded. My friend looked at me and quietly asked if I wanted her to say something, and I shook my head. Maybe I wasn’t the only person there who had an issue with what was said, and maybe if I hadn’t been there to shake my head, my friend would have said something. But I was just too tired to engage in that conversation at that time, or even be around it. Too tired of fighting my own personal demons to try to educate another person.

It isn’t always like this. Some days I’m soap boxing and nuking like the best of them. I’ll correct the friends who try asking me my birth name, and explain why it is insensitive, and call people out for their misuse of language. But after a while, explaining for the umpteenth time that I don’t ID as a man, I do not want to be a man, and my taking testosterone does not make me a man, and that my experience is only mine not no one else’s so for the last time stop placing another identity on me… all that, just isn’t worth it quite often.

A friend once said of me, “Don’t know how he identifies, but pronouns as a dude.” I always liked that, pronouns as a dude. No terminology like male or man in there. Just dude, and not declaring me one, but saying pronouns as a dude. Simile rather than equaling.

I just can’t figure out how to convey an existence of greys and colors to a black and white world without always calling others out, without always correcting people and talking about it all the time. Because I’ve got battles to fight in my own head too.

Theoretical Definitions 2: To “Trans” And Beyond

First of all, I am a total geek. I really like astronomy and astrophysics. More importantly, I like to look into roots of words, especially words that I use to identify myself. One of the more common and important words for my identification, for explaining my identification, is the prefix (and for me, a stand-alone word) trans. Also, this entry was inspired by tonight’s KinkOnTap discussion.

Trans- Across; on the other side; beyond. (prefix)

Now I’m going to go through these a bit out of order, but each one has a place in the word trans with how I use it. So, as a brief outline, “on the other side” to “across” and ending with “beyond.”

Trans, as it is commonly used with as the words transgender or transsexual, is some kind of “on the other side.” There is a binary opposition created, male and female, and the commonly understood concept of transgender/sexual means that a person’s body is one on side, and their gender is on the other side. This version is a problem with a solution, align the body to the mind. The binary opposition implied in this meaning has had many people I know/have known very up in arms, refusing “trans” as a self-identity, because they did not agree with the binary implied within it.

Another common interpretation of the word/prefix trans is the definition of “across.” This version could imply a binary, from one location to another, but it is less about a binary than about a journey. For me, this makes some sense, especially for those individuals who chose transition, and are in that process. I am moving, I am journeying, experiencing puberty, and investigating other methods of altering my physical body. I am moving across conventional notions of gender, and I am doing it fabulously.

Yet, one of the linguistically more common uses of the prefix trans happens to be my favorite definition and use of it as a word. Trans meaning “beyond.” An example of this version is the word translunar, meaning beyond the orbit of the moon. (Yes, I like astronomical photos and analogies.)

If we are looking at the word trans as meaning beyond, that opens up a whole new set of possibilities. Transgender means beyond gender, which to me is a fabulous statement of my own identity. It can become a word that no longer implies an inherent dualism of moving from point A to point B, of the division between point A and B, but rather with beyond it can incorporate nondual ideas concurrent with the already present dualistic interpretation. It can actually be a word that encompasses the varied parts of this community.

But looking at the word trans by itself, and applying the definition of “beyond” to it leaves a very good question open. Beyond what? It is an open ended question; beyond convention, beyond gender, beyond assumption, beyond definition, my definition becomes a journey to move beyond. I love this, the idea of constant improvement, striving for something better, that is the most intrinsic part of my own self. So, yes. I love the word trans. I identify with the word trans, because I have never found another word quite as adept at challenging myself to forever grow, strive, improve, and generally work on myself as a human being.

Beyond what? My answer is this: Beyond the status quo. Beyond now, beyond current, beyond stagnation, beyond labels, beyond words, beyond failure, beyond intolerance, beyond money, beyond authority, beyond limitation, beyond breaks, beyond insecurity…

It isn’t a word with a final destination to me. I don’t want a destination, I’ll stick with the journey.

Even if it is my definition, that does not mean it is anyone else’s. Once, I got very angry at a person for whole heartedly rejecting the word “transgender” on the grounds that it was too binary, and therefore offensive to hirself… but ze used that argument not just to say do not use the term transgender for hir, but for anyone. That made me very angry. I am happy to use the language people prefer in identifying theirselves. I am not okay with someone potentially preventing other people from using personally identifying language because that one person would take offense. Identify how you will, but do not use your identity to police how other people identify.

Using one’s own identity to police how other people identify… why does that sound familiar? Oh wait, because it happens all the time. People use their own identity and the privilege it affords them to declare what is and is not acceptable from others. I expect this, after years of being told how offensive I am, how incorrect, how wrong my processes, interests, and gender are I have grown to expect policing. But identity policing, gender policing in fact, from someone withing a supposedly radical gender community? It shocked me. Hopefully, it shocked me awake to the realization that the self label of radical or open minded mean nothing next to the reality of imposition of privilege and policing. I felt betrayed, but I learned.

So I should add another word onto that list of “Beyond what?” Beyond policing.

No offensive intended to any police officer by the image of this post.