My body is not selfish.

One thing that I face as both a fat person and a trans person is the accusation that I am "selfish."

Being fat, I am selfish because I allegedly consume more food than thinner people (FEAR my 2000-calorie-a-day diet.) Being trans, I am selfish because I allegedly would like other people to pay for my "cosmetic" surgeries. (This is what I am accused of if I want my surgery covered by my medical insurance, as are my trans brothers and sisters in any country where this kind of thing applies.)

I'm not going to be nice: That's bullshit. I'm not selfish.

Firstly, yes. Okay. I eat more than a thin person of my height. Not because I'm a glutton; my fat body is not a living testament to my greed, contrary to what the assholes say. Because I have more body mass and I need more calories to sustain it. We're not talking huge quantities more. We're talking a few hundred more per day, or the equivalent of a single Famous Star burger at Carl's Jr.

Secondly, I get why you think transsexual surgeries are cosmetic. Because they're not "life-saving," right? Just like going to the doctor and getting a cast for your leg isn't life-saving (c'mon, it'll eventually heal on its own). Just like taking medication for your chronic pain isn't life-saving. Surgery to correct a serious birth defect is sometimes life-saving, but sometimes not. Laser eye surgery? Puh-lease.

I ain't saying that being trans is like having a broken leg or chronic pain or even a medically accepted birth defect. I AM saying that living in a body that doesn't fit my identity has a very real, detrimental effect to my well-being. I am saying that for me, having breasts, and for other trans people, vaginas or penises or whathaveyou, is traumatic on a daily basis, and it ain't because I'm too fucking sensitive, it's because I have to actually look at/touch my body periodically to maintain my hygiene and health.

Okey?

Being fat doesn't make me selfish, either. Even if you account that being fat causes me to eat more. Nobody slams bodybuilders for their 6000-calorie-a-day diets (that's 3x my daily consumption, FYI) - in fact, they frequently get praised for their dedication to their bodies. Plus their bodies are bigger than non-bodybuilders, so they take up more space and require bigger clothes. In fact, any body operating on testosterone is going to be naturally bigger and have a faster metabolism than a comparable estrogen-fueled body. Oh my god, men are selfish! We must put them on estrogen treatments IMMEDIATELY to reduce their food consumption so that there will be more food available for the poor, starving wimminz!

RIGHT.

You get what I'm saying? It's not okay to say I'm selfish for needing more seating space that a thinner person could be using. It's not okay to say I'm selfish for eating more food.

But when it comes down to it, it's not my greed you're really against, is it? It's my nonconformity. It's my being fat or trans that really bugs at you and gets stuck in your craw. Otherwise there'd be a lot more hate (and I ain't saying there isn't hate, just that there's less of it) against people who get benign tumors removed and people who "bulk up" to unrealistic proportions for movie roles.

I do not understand this "two spirit" thing.

Please hear me out.

We began reading the writing of Native American two-spirit people with no other intent than to educate the self. The main one - we'll call him William - understands the importance of learning about the experiences of TLGB people who are not white, because how else could he be an effective ally? Even to himself, how can he protect himself if he cannot protect his brothers and sisters and brother-sisters and sister-brothers?

So we read with an open mind, and we do not understand.

This page outlines the basics of a two-spirit movement (you might call it Two-Spirit 101.) William would call it the Two-Spirit Movement, but it would be impractical and ridiculous to assume that every Two-Spirit person everywhere is united with all the others. But it explains the basics. The self grasps these. They are parts of a different culture, but they fit into the tapestry of human experience.

This is a post from one two-spirit person about something that happened in her day-to-day life. (William offers his apologies if he left out part of the pronoun.) We understand the need to talk about these things with someone like ourselves; no one else ever truly understands. It's not a hard concept to grasp.

But we've heard that a two-spirit person will often refer to themselves in the plural. As if they are truly two persons, male and female.

And we wonder if there really are two persons.

William is willing to believe this is so. It's his writing you've read on this blog. He is the social activist, the humanist. His fingers write this post. He refers to himself in the third person this time because Nicolas is speaking.

Nicolas does not understand this at all. Nicolas is furious that someone would try to appropriate the identity of someone who has two persons within them in this manner. Do you know what it's like for him? He's not even his own person. William is trapped in a life that does not fit his gender. Nicolas is trapped in a life that has no room for him. Most days he is completely silenced because there's nothing being done that needs his attention. Every day it's William this and William that. He sits there quietly, so quietly that it makes the self wonder if he even exists. He's less than half a person. And yet he is a person. He's a person with thoughts of his own and a will of his own and every day he takes backseat to someone who just happened to claim this life first and wastes it every day playing video games and doing crap that has a snowball's chance in Hell of taking their life anywhere. So I want to know - me, Nicolas, the other man in William's head who never comes out because it might UPSET PEOPLE if they knew there were more than one of us in here - I want to know if you know what that's like. Duality ain't nearly as fun as you kids seem to think it is.

I won't apologize for that.

But William would like to remind you that he doesn't know what it's like for you, and he's not going to assume that it's not the way you say it is. He's a good kid. Sees the best in people for as long as he can. So when he gets the opportunity he'll ask someone. I will. Because the only way to understand is to educate myself, the lesson I've learned time and time again.

And please remember that Nicolas is in here, too. He may not say much, but it hurts him to be ignored. It hurts him that I (William) would rather stay safe than admit to the world that he exists. That's not what he wants. It's not what either of us want, and since we are the same person I feel his pain almost as acutely as he does. But William can put it away after a while. I get to be the one out most of the time, so I can forget what it's like to be shut away. Nicolas never forgets, and the next time I hear from him he will remind me. I'm scared of Nicolas, scared of losing control of my life, but Nicolas is scared of only one thing in the world and that's being forgotten.

That's what it's like for this person to have two spirits (if that's what you call them). Maybe someday I'll introduce the third, but he doesn't feel like coming out right now.

Transmisandry

There's been a discussion going on Tranifesto, a blog about trans-ness run by gay trans man Matt Kailey, about antagonism in the white trans community. Specifically, in some circles a rift has developed between the trans women and trans men, and the person who started the discussion was curious why. In the interest of sharing information, I disclosed my own experiences in one community, where such a rift exists, fueled by the misandry of certain trans women there.

Seemingly in partial response to my statements, one commenter left this message:

The other thing I want to say isn’t about race/ethnicity, but I did want to say it. I know that transmisandry happens. But I think that to treat transmisogyny and transmisandry as equal problems is as broken as treating sexism and “reverse sexism” as equal problems. As a trans man married to a trans woman, I see every day how much more privileged I am. The dynamic that exists is one that white trans men have the greatest duty to address.

Maybe this wasn't what xe meant, but what I took from this sentence was "Your problems aren't as important. You need to worry about what trans women are going through more." Well, thanks, dude, but I can't do that. I will be happy to think about male privilege and how that affects my relationship with trans women on both a personal and systemic level, but I will not shut up about transmisandry. As long as it happens to me and my fellow trans men, it has a place on the discussion table as a legitimate social problem that needs to be addressed.

The first point I would like to try and make understood is that the relationship between trans women and trans men is not equal to the relationship between cis women and cis men. Firstly, I will acknowledge that it is a problem when, upon transitioning, we forget what we have been through and what we have learned from our lives as female-bodied creatures and fall into the male role so well that we become oppressors ourselves. Secondly, I will acknowledge that the path of our transition does grant us several privileges (we can dress as our target sex without being looked upon as a pervert, for example - this would be great material for another post). However, trans women also have a few privileges over trans men. The biggest one is that, for better or worse, trans women are visible. When someone thinks of a transgender or transsexual person, they usually think of someone who is MTF. Web sites and books that advertise themselves as "for transgender/transsexual people" often cater to MTF people with little or nothing that is aimed at FTM people. They also have better surgeries than trans men - one can look at the thousands of trans men who go their whole lives without surgery, not because they don't want it or can't afford it but because the results are just not good enough yet, as evidence toward this - and better representation in political circles, at least within the United States.

In MTF-dominated circles, they also have the privilege of committing transmisandry without being called out/chastised for it.

What is transmisandry?

I won't lie on this one: it's a short list. Partially because we don't have the history of being portrayed as perverts and/or murderers. Partially because we often find it easier to pass after hormones (testosterone is powerful stuff.) But it exists, and in the spirit of Tobi Hill-Meyer's What Transmisogyny Looks Like, here are the specs:

Trans women going into trans-male-safe spaces and making comments like "I just can't understand why you would want to give up the body parts that I want so badly."

Trans women going into trans-male-safe spaces specifically to look for potential sex/relationship partners, assuming that we are (1) straight, (2) available, (3) potentially interested in starting a relationship with someone we know next to nothing about (out of trans solidarity, or what? I don't get this one) and (4) welcoming of this kind of intrusion, notwithstanding our other preferences.

In a discussion about gender privilege, trans women using the phrase "trans men" to refer only to trans men who pass fully, discounting my experience as a pre-treatment vagina owner and the experiences of trans men who are regularly mistaken for female. (Refusal to make the distinction = transmisandry.)

Cis women painting trans men as victims of the patriarchy who hate not our female selves, but the very concept and existence of womanhood, in flagrant denial of the many trans men who not only appreciate but celebrate womanhood in women.

The expectation that all trans men will wear baggy clothes, sit with their legs apart, speak in as low a register as possible, monitor their body language vigilantly to keep anything feminine from slipping through, and never express an appreciation of beauty - regardless of our sexual orientation. Not only the belief that we all learn to do this, but the expectation that we will - and should - go to these lengths to prove our masculinity.

The claim, when we do go to these lengths (or come about them naturally), that we are "trying too hard" or "overcompensating."

Conversely, the expectation that trans men will be exactly like cis men in every way that matters, but more empathetic, sensitive to women's problems, etc.

Trans women reverting to female pronouns to address a man whom they have just learned is trans. (When cis people do this, it's transphobia.)

The assumption that the existence of spaces exclusively for trans men is indicative of/caused by transmisogyny.


Transmisandry does not erase transmisogyny. It is not more important than transmisogyny. But it is not "reverse sexism" or some kind of trans male backlash against the concept of transmisogyny. It is something that trans men, including me, deal with on a regular basis. And it has a place in any discussion of trans gender interaction.

Ohio

Saw this on Queer Secrets:

http://queersecrets.tumblr.com/post/1699929687

I'm from one of the other two states.

Fuck. This. Shit.

So I'm reading a column on Halloween costumes (something I'm very interested in, since Halloween is rife with opportunities to appropriate and insult other peoples' lives and cultures, etc.) and this jumps out at me:

First of all, every gay (and girl who thinks she's a "gay man trapped in a woman's body") will be attempting this.

Right. So, option #1: Gawker thinks that gay-identified trans men are just delusional women. Option #2: there are enough straight women throwing their privilege around by claiming that they're "gay men trapped in women's bodies" that Gawker is annoyed at it. Either way I'm pissed off.

In Re: Jessica Davis

The third episode of Outlaw was very interesting. In between trying to pay off his gambling debt, Cyrus takes on the case of a white cis woman whose baby died when she accidentally left her in her car, revealing what circumstances could cause such a thing to happen. Meanwhile, his minion Eddie must defend a black trans woman who was wrongfully searched, found to have drugs on her person, and charged with drug use.

The main plot, that of the mother, was very interesting. Cyrus brings on a scientist who explains why such a thing could happen - the mother was exhausted, stressed out, and distracted by an untimely phone call, all of which caused her to forget that her husband had not taken the baby to daycare as he usually did. He explains - to the audience as much as the jury - that such an accident can happen to anyone, that "good parents" are not immune, and that for this reason a "zero tolerance" policy for the accidental death of a baby is simply unacceptable. The explanation made good sense, and I hope that more people will consider it when further cases crop up (as they invariably, sadly, will).

The emotional reaction on the part of the mother was also a factor. During most of the trial, Jessica Davis acted emotionless, preferring to comment on the details of her drive to work when the incident happened, an the quality of the bagel she ate after she arrived, making it seem like she had no grief for her lost child. Cyrus (being a magical attorney who could fix everything) managed to prove that she did grieve for the baby, and had dissociated herself from her emotions as a coping mechanism - which, he argued, was not proof that she had no love for the child.

This was especially poignant for me for the following reason: After I lost my faith, I dissociated myself and hard. I did it because I thought my strong emotions were the presence of their god - whom I no longer wanted anything to do with - and that atheists weren't supposed to feel like that - the result of my mother's brainwashing and my own naivete. So I cut myself off from those feelings. I spent the next two weeks in a miserable haze. It stopped me from feeling the pain of betrayal from learning that my god was not what I had been told, but it also stopped me from feeling happiness, or warmth, or really anything else. When my mother found out that I had left the faith, she came down on me hard for it. She accused me of putting on "fake happiness" (acting like I wasn't miserable so she couldn't use my emotions to "prove" that my choice was wrong) and of being hard and cold and other horrible things which proved that I had lost the light of God. She managed to break through to me a couple of days later, restoring my emotional status if not my faith, but neither of us really understood what had happened - until the therapist character explained the phenomenon. Whether Mum gets it, I can't say, but it was a relief for me to understand what had happened, and I hope that other people remember this episode when someone in their life acts the same way.

The major subplot of the episode featured Eddie and Lucinda taking on the case - as I mentioned above - of a black trans woman named Desdemona. She'd been getting sexual with a man in a car when a policeman had come up, searched her without provocation or warrant, found drugs on her person, and proceeded to claim that she had been smoking pot in the car and charge her with the same. The man she'd been with was the only one who could clear her name, but he was reluctant because he'd been seeing her behind his wife's back, and he didn't want their relationship to be known.

Eddie was very disrespectful of Desdemona at first. He treated her with barely-concealed disdain to her faced and referred to her with male pronouns behind her back. That is why I was pleased when - also behind her back - Lucinda took him to task, repeatedly correcting him on pronouns and such. Eventually he came around - especially when he saw the way she'd been treated during the night she spent in jail - and persuaded her lover to testify for her. In the end she hugged him, and while he was obviously uncomfortable, he seemed to recognize that it was a personal problem and handled the situation respectfully.

This, I felt, was an excellent example of how to treat a trans character in your show. She may have been in trouble for being trans - or for being black, or for the dual crime of being trans black - but it was not the focal issue. The focal issue was that she had been wrongfully accused, with appropriate coverage of her transgender status. Eddie expressed cissexist sentiments about her, and was forcefully and repeatedly shot down by Lucinda, making it very clear where the writers stood on the issue. My only complaint concern's Lucinda's ongoing comments about his "gender identity issues" - she seemed to think that his discomfort stemmed from him being a closet trans woman, possibly because he had been in a boy band and was hit on by the drummer. None of it made any sense, all of it was 100% Lucinda, and it just made me wish that someone would have been there to call her out on her nonsense. (In previous episodes, she has also accused him of being gay because he does not want to sleep with her - very irritating, and I hope this does not continue to be the only coverage of homosexuality.)

Garza continues to be misogynistic, flirting aggressively with his boss seemingly just because she has the nerve to be a hot woman. She takes it in stride, and in fact can tease him just as hard. Does that mean this is supposed to be okay? I'd love for them to explore that. But they probably won't because it's "funny."

Edit: In other news, Outlaw is on death watch. This cheeses me off on more levels than I can possibly express. I guess it's true: once you've alienated the Republicans and the liberals, you don't have much of an audience.

One Man, One Woman

Over at TeenInk, some clueless Christian kid is opining the Deep Divine Reasons why two guys should not be able to join in holy matrimony. Naturally, she's using the second weakest reason why gay marriage is Just Nasty:

God put one man and One woman on this earth. Not two men. or two women.

I am going to do every Christian who ever stumbles across this blog a HUGE favor and say: Please, please stop using this argument. You are making yourself look stupid.

I'm going to dredge out my dirty atheist knowledge of the Bible to explain why now.

1. God put one man and one woman on the earth... and then their kids banged each other. According to some traditions, when Cain was exiled from God's presence, he took his sister with him for a wife; his brothers likewise married their sisters. Yet incest is forbidden in the Old Testament (except when God says otherwise - see Abraham and Sarah), the New Testament, and every halfway sane Christian tradition on the face of the planet.
2. God put one man and one woman on the earth... and their descendants went on to have many wives. Adam is possibly THE only monogamous character in the Bible. Abraham only had one official wife, but his wife wasn't above loaning him a prostitute when she failed to conceive. The rest of them were more official about their bangage. See also: Solomon.
3. God put one man and one woman on the earth... when there was nobody else around to reproduce. Let's face it: when you're starting a species, it's kind of counterproductive if your first couple can't breed with each other. Now we have six billion humans on the planet, millions of married couples devoted to creating more, and plenty of people who are happily single, sterile, or using contraceptives. What's a few gay couples?

So not only are there multiple precedents for later couples breaking "the rules," but the practical motive is no longer an issue. You simply can't argue that since it was ONE MAN and ONE WOMAN then, that's how it should always be.

By the way, I know this is going to blow your minds, but God put one Jewish man and one Jewish woman on the Earth. They had brown skin, black hair, yadda. Somehow nobody thinks that it's a good idea to argue that blondes shouldn't exist using this logic.

Now, I'm not harpin' on your right to argue against teh gayz (though since I'm a gay dude in a woman's body, that's okay, right?) That's your prerogative. But if you're going to do it, stick to the Leviticus/Paul combo. That one at least makes sense internally, though you'll want to keep it from us atheists who frankly couldn't give a rip what your god thinks. Especially since a lot of us quit BECAUSE he was a douche.

By the way, the worst argument of all time against same-sex relations?

The plumbing doesn't fit! It doesn't even make sense!

Let me blow your mind with a few alternatives to straight-on vaginal intercourse:

1. Oral sex
2. Anal sex
3. Manual sex
4. Mutual masturbation (though this one barely qualifies, in my book)
   
5. The almighty dildo

All of these can be performed very effectively by same-sex couples (though the dildo works best for lesbians). If you don't know what any of those are, feel free to search. As for me, I'm done.

I Am Invisible

I am invisible.

I usually don't realize that because I spend a lot of time hanging around transgender-safe message boards, but the fact is: I am invisible. When people talk about atheists, even though they don't specify, they are thinking of cisgendered atheists. When people talk about gays and lesbians, even though they don't specify, they are thinking of cisgendered atheists. Men means cisgendered men. LGBT means L, G, sometimes B, and those other weirdoes we heard were out there. Transgendered people are invisible.

Obviously there are some people out there who know we exist - shows such as Family Guy, The L Word, Coronation Street, and Degrassi have had transgendered characters. The film The World According To Garp has an excellent portrayal of a trans woman, and there are other movies that are just about us. But to the majority of people, we do not exist - or exist only in a theory so abstract that we may not exist at all.

I know. I used to be one of those people.

For the first eighteen years of life, I either didn't know about transgendered/transsexual people, or what I knew was very abstract: sometimes there were boys that felt like they should be girls, and underwent treatments to become girls, and often their parents kicked them out of their homes and they ended up homeless and/or addicted to drugs but sometimes they turned out okay. I'd heard somewhere about FTM's (courtesy of my mum, actually) but it never sunk in for me. Why? Because I didn't know anyone who is transgendered. I didn't know anyone who knew anyone who was transgendered. I'd never bumped into a transgendered person on the Internet, and when I did, I didn't spend a lot of time with him. My mother was on the site, watching my every move, and she didn't approve of his "lesbianism." Plus I think I was afraid that if I told the forumites that I felt similarly I'd be laughed at. You can't be a "gay man in a woman's body," after all. You can only be a straight woman. But I digress. Naturally, I never thought to include trans people in any of my writing or correspondence or anything.

This is the mindset that prevents trans people from getting their rights. Someone introduces a piece of legislation that covers trans people (or gays, or POC, or atheists, or whatever), and you think that since you don't know (or like) anyone who will be affected, it isn't important. So you let it slide.

People can't live like this. You can't go on holding in your minds that transsexual people don't exist, or there are too few of us to count. There are never too few of us to count. This is something that I didn't truly understand until I became a member of two of the least regarded minorities in the United States of America, and looking back I am ashamed to think that I once thought differently. Here is what I didn't realize: The majority, or the average if you will, does not equal the default. There is no default for the human condition. I am not a cisgendered white male unless I specify otherwise. It's not easy to remember this, with our parents, teachers, peers, and the media convincing us that diversity equals deviance. Society is not a dichotomy between white males and everyone else. It is a complex mosaic of people. Some of them are descended from Europeans, some from Africans, some from Asians, some from Eurasians, some from Americans, some from European-Asians, some from African-Caribbeans, some from people of many different continents. Some of us are Christian, some are Hindu, some are Jewish, some are Muslim, some are Jedi. Some used to be religious but aren't anymore. Some were never religious at all. Some are close to six feet tall and others are closer to three. Some are HIV-positive, some have cancer, some have diabetes or syphilis or angina or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or missing organs and some have no outstanding health problems at all. Some are organ donors; some aren't. Some are female, some are male, some are intersexed. Some are cis, some are trans, some are genderqueer. Some are bisexual, some are straight, some are gay, some are pansexual, and some are one or the other but willing to experiment. Some of us have very little money, some of us have a lot; some of us just have what we need to get by comfortably. Some of us live in the cities. Many of us live outside of them. Some of us love only one person at the same time, but some love more. Some of us masturbate. Some of us don't. Some of us do and lie about it. Some of us promise our parents that we'll never have sexual intercourse until we find the one we'll be with for the rest of our lives. Some of us wouldn't have found the one we'll be with for the rest of our lives unless we had sexual intercourse first. Some of us love feet. Some of us hate feet. Some of us couldn't care less about feet. Everything about you is part of your identity, and it is no less diverse, beautiful, and strange than that of someone whose traits are less common than yours. And here's the thing: every trait about that person, to the extent that it does not harm another person, deserves to exist and be respected and protected by human law. If your identities are protected, and you can't find the time to make sure others have the same courtesy, then you don't deserve the protection you have.

Skip This One: It's A Boy Girl Thing

Being a trans guy, I'm into genderflip movies. It's just one of those things, like gay men being into gay male movies, kids being into movies about teenagers, and the entire film industry being obsessed with movies about white people. (One of these is not okay, but that's been covered by much more qualified writers than I.) Basically, I like these movies because some small part of them reflects the kind of things I go through, or would like to go through. I also watch them just for a laugh, because hey - nobody's serious all the time, not even the super serious trans man.

This one, though, can be skipped.

It's A Boy Girl Thing is a (SPOILERS!) romantic comedy about two white teenagers of opposite sexes. Nell, the girl, is fairly well-off. She's educated, well-mannered, nicely dressed, and hoping to get into Yale University. Woody, the boy (nice name, eh?), comes from a working-class family. His clothes are worn out, his manners are lacking, and his mom can't cook very well. He'll be lucky if he gets into any university.

Nell and Woody hate each other with a passion. So much that they get into a fight in a museum, which awakens the statue of an ancient god (for serious), who does some magical mist-fu that causes them to switch bodies. I will admit, this part of the movie is actually pretty entertaining. Aside from a couple of blunders, the two actors playing the roles do so very well, and the jokes are mostly funny. (Very raunchy, but funny.) The film does an average job of subverting gender roles, in that the characters do learn to appreciate each others' hobbies, but the male is still such a dunce that he can only learn to appreciate something that he already appreciates. Long story. The movie also comes down a little bit on classism, and has a bit in support of rap music, which is nice.

Those are the redeeming qualities. Now for the bad stuff.

First of all, the film just misses its mark. It's supposed to be about the differences between boys and girls (or so one would assume, based on the title), but it's as much, if not more, about the differences between class levels. It's entertaining, but it doesn't fit the title. Another gripe of mine - minor, I will admit - is that the setting of the film is a little too reminiscent of The Fantasticks. The two live right next to each other, she in a nice house with a neat lawn, he in a shabby house with a filthy yard, and while the families are presumably locked into feud, secretly their fathers would like nothing better than to see them together.

Those are just infractions - things that are a little annoying, but don't really ruin the movie for me. No, what really gets me is the bigotry. While the film fights gender roles and class divides with one hand, with the other it dispenses racism, homophobia, and slut shaming in the traditional "I'm not really bigoted" way that white cinema tends to do.

First of all, let's look at the racism. There are exactly two characters of color in this film (neither of which are the protagonists, naturally). One of them is a randy, apelike, teenaged black boy who is obsessed with sex to the point that he cheats on his white girlfriend regularly. The other one has very little character, but is a motorcycle-driving Latino who will have sex with any girl on campus at the drop of a hat, and comes dangerously close to destroying Nell's virginity (except he doesn't - more on that later). Of course the filmmakers didn't intend the film to be racist, but when the only lesson we learn is that teenaged boys of color are all sex machines who will cheat on/destroy the innocence of your white daughters, guess what I call it. Yup.

Also, it is implied throughout the film that the black character is extremely well-endowed, which never fails to catch the attention of the characters who get an eyeful of his junk. 'Cause all black guys have big penises, get it?

Now the homophobia. This is mostly character-driven, in a scene where Woody (in Nell's body) attempts to have sex with the aforementioned Latino, only to realize at the last minute that it's a terrible idea because he's not into guys. That's not bad. In fact, it was a great idea. But then he starts going on: "This is so gay! He's gonna make me his bitch!" He's more worried about having a "gay" experience - which he is certain will be demeaning and disgusting - than he is about having sex with someone that he's not into.

Just in case you thought this was just a character thing and had no bearing on the writers' views: first, no effort is made to contradict Woody's opinions, and secondly, it happens again, at the end of the movie. The aforementioned black character, having been dumped and thoroughly humiliated by his girlfriend, finds himself naked at a party, in front of a gay man who is obviously impressed with his super-sized black junk. Lesson #2: Don't cheat on your girlfriend, or else the gays will come after you. And while you might not think that's a bad thing, the filmmakers obviously believe that it would be gross and embarrassing.

After those two whoppers, this one is more of a footnote. See, there isn't actual slut shaming in this movie per se, but its effects are quite visible. Nell, trapped in Woody's body, is thoroughly convinced that her hymen is her virginity, and that if Woody in Nell's body has sex, that means that Nell is no longer a virgin. This would be horrible, because she was saving her first time for someone special. While there's nothing wrong with Nell's desire to wait for her first sexual experience, there is something hugely wrong with her assumption. Regardless of whose hymen is abused, if Woody had gone through with his plan, all it would mean is that Woody had sex that night. Nell wasn't there, she didn't have sex, she's still a virgin, end of discussion. And again, the movie does nothing to counteract this idea.

So, that's it in a nutshell. You might think that these things are minor - after all, nobody is going to watch one movie and think "Well, gee, I guess all boys of color are bad and gay sex is disgusting!" Can't I just forget the bad parts and enjoy the movie?

Well, no. Because the bad parts are in the movie. And people are going to watch this film and come away with a niggling subconscious idea that white boys, like the eventually honorable Woody, are better potential mates than boys of color, just because this movie showed it. A conscious knowledge to the contrary cannot completely overcome a subconscious suspicion. And this movie offers way too many of them for comfort.

FTM, daughter

Here are a few statements that fairly well sum up my experience with being transgendered. The only reason I post this is to provide an alternative to the stereotypical "I'm a man/woman who is trapped in a woman/man's body."

I'm a guy in a gender-neutral body. I had girl parts installed in my formative stages, which borked up my body with feminine traits, but that can be repaired.

Nature did not intend me to be a boy. Nature intended me to be a girl. It fucked up royally. I am done listening to nature.

I was a girl until I was about four years old, when I started turning into a boy. I'll never know why that happened, but that doesn't mean it didn't.

I have a female side, and I'm not afraid of it. But I end up having to hide it, because...

Some people believe that having a female side makes me female by default. This is not because they're right. This is because they do not understand what it feels like to be transgendered.

I'm a guy trapped in a woman's life.

If you told me when I was eight years old that I might be a boy, I would have laughed at you. I did not know such a thing was possible.

I'd rather be a man married to a woman than a woman married to a man. And I really like men.

Brush that hair!

I've been reading about hair lately. Mainly black hair (and other types of curly hair), and the ways which white society declares it to be inferior to straighter hair because it cannot be "tamed" (read: made to lie flat). Some good posts on this subject include Nappy Hair in the Jolie-Pitt World at Womanist Musings (focuses on black hair) and Hair Stories Redux at Justine Larbalestier (a broader look at "other" hair in general). Anyway, it got me thinking about what I've been through with my own hair.

I don't have black hair, or even curly hair, so I can't say whether or not any of my experiences are comparable to people with other kinds of hair - though I can say with certainty that some of them aren't. But here goes.

As far as hair goes, I actually scored pretty high in the hierarchy. My hair is long, wavy, and golden-blonde. From the time I was three years old I heard nothing but good things from my mother about how beautiful my hair was, even prettier than my sister's because it had "body." Mother was incredibly protective of my hair (both mine and my sister's, actually). Most of the time it was locked into a braid, protected from the hair-mussing activities of a couple of young kids. Once a week she would let it down and brush it out.

Before I go on, I need to explain one thing about my mother: she is incredibly ignorant, clueless, and self-centered. She cannot comprehend the existence of any experience that is not basically identical to what she has gone through, and she thinks that she can fix anyone's problems by giving them the solution that worked for her. Have I mentioned my mother is pink-skinned?

After a while she stopped braiding, and my hair would get tangled rather worse. Well, okay, no biggie. It was harder to brush and yadda, but she was oh-so-careful and tried to be as gentle as possible, so if either my sister or I complained, then we were obviously overreacting. She couldn't seem to comprehend that the results of her actions might be different from her intent - but then, she never was good at being "gentle." (There's another post in that.) She'd sink the brush into a tangle and pull down, and most of the pressure would go straight to my scalp. As soon as I complained I'd be reassured that "it's not that bad," which she obviously knew because I was the one being brushed.

Anyway.

Later on she turned hair care over to me, and that's when the problems started. See, my mother's a flat-head. Her hair is straight and lies down perfectly, so she thinks that all straight hair should do that and if it doesn't then it's a failure on the owner's part. Well, my hair is poofy (the aforementioned "body"). When it's properly clean, it floats around my head and will not lie flat unless I really put the effort (read: abuse and/or water) into it. Which I don't want to do, because my fluffy hair has personality, and I like it that way. But my mother is convinced that it denotes a lack of hygiene, and unless it's perfectly flat, she accuses me of not brushing my hair.

The only way I can get it to do what she wants is to let a day or so of oil build up in it, and then it's time for a shower, you scumbag. (She has something of a hygiene obsession, which could make another post.)

The flip side of the coin is that when you have "perfect" hair (luscious, full, wavy, blonde hair - see also mine), you're expected to love it. You should count it as one of your assets, and treat it like your most prized possession. You should brush it obsessively, condition it, put pretty things in it, and otherwise make it into a showpiece for everyone else because it's just so nice to look at. Obviously this isn't on the same level as telling someone they should hate/change their hair because it's "bad," but it's damaging in its own right - especially for a FTM who couldn't care less if he has traditionally attractive female locks.

Becoming Your Label

As I've said, people have a lot of labels. Some of them they wear for life, like their skin color; others fade with time, such as age and class; others come upon them suddenly and in a life-changing event.

I can name the labels that came upon me that way: atheist, transgendered, anti-racist.

When a label comes upon you, it often comes as something of a surprise. Sometimes you've purged a label that already covered that aspect of yourself, but sometimes the other label comes in and forcibly removes the old one. And sometimes you're surprised by a label that's always been there, because something you've just seen or done has made you deeply, acutely, aware of it.

I've had all of this happen to me at one point. Releasing my "Christian" label was an intensely painful process; taking on the "atheist" label took several months. When I took on "transgendered," I had already discarded "cisgendered" as a label that had never applied and adopted "girlfag." When I discovered "white," it was more a realization that it was more than just a skin color - that there was an identity that went along with it and that it was something worth mentioning about myself.

In each case, I had to figure out what the label meant for me. And in each case I went through roughly the same process: reading, learning, trying to understand the societal nuances that made this label, comparing myself to other people who had this label. And I made the same mistake each time: trying to become as similar as possible to other people who had the same label.

It started out when I became an atheist. Even though I use that label to describe myself, I'm not an atheist by the popular definition. I believe that there may be gods out there (not an overarching God, but smaller gods), and perhaps some kind of ghosts, and while I will not outright believe a claim without any evidence I will not immediately disclaim it for lack thereof if it is not actually possible for me to acquire evidence. (You might call me a "somewhat credulous skeptic.")

But when I got out on the Internet and started reading the writings of other atheists, I found that our beliefs didn't really match up. Most atheists prefer a "nonexistent until proven otherwise" approach; a demand for hard evidence before they believe in the proffered spirit. I see nothing wrong with that; they haven't have the same upbringing I had, regaled with tales and the occasional witnessing to miracles that, if they happened as reported, could not reasonably be explained scientifically. I would also not expect them to take these stories as evidence, since most of them were related to me through parties and their veracity is greatly suspect. But I cannot discount them.

And yet, I tried to. Not intentionally, of course. But the more I read of other atheists and their rather stricter worldview, the more I began to feel the subtle societal pressure to conform to the same standards. After all, if so many of them believe this way and I don't, it must be because I've got something messed up. And after a while I found myself parroting the things they were saying, repeating the "pics or it didn't happen"-style phrases, and insisting that gods were all in people's heads.

After a while - and with the help of my sister - I realized that there was a problem. There was no good reason for me to be acting that way. I had reasons to believe the things that I did, and denying them wasn't making me more skeptical, just conformist. In essence, I was trying to be the most atheisty atheist I could be.

I had the same problem when explaining my atheism. I originally abandoned my faith not because of evolution, or science, or the many horrible deeds committed by Yahweh throughout the Bible, but because I had been shown that Jesus was not the Jewish messiah. But when people started asking me why I wasn't a Christian, I started abandoning that story - in favor of the much more commonplace (and rather overdone) explanations I had heard from other atheists. Again, I was trading in my identity for the group identity.

It was harder to do that when I realized myself as transgendered. Right away I realized I didn't fit the "standard" (see also: stereotype): I wasn't male-to-female, I wasn't attracted to the same sex, I hadn't pervasively felt from the time I was young that I must belong to the opposite gender. It didn't take me long to realize that my limited grasp on the subject was... well, limited - in fact, that's what led me to taking on the label in the end. But even after I had learned the subject extensively, even after I knew that people could manifest at different times and be attracted to different sexes and identify as androgynous or two-gendered and everything else, I was always trying to discount my own experiences. I would compare myself to others, and since I never fit the common story - I didn't identify as male as a child, I was never uncomfortable with my lower genitalia, I wasn't attracted to the same sex - I was convinced on some level that I wasn't really trans, or that I wasn't trans "enough" to count. I think in a way I was still trying to convince myself that I didn't have to be trans. But in a bigger way I was making myself feel inadequate because, after failing to fit in with the larger world around me, I had found a world that I actually might belong to - and I still didn't fit in. I felt like I was the freak among freaks.

The third event deals not so much with a label I like to use, but in a label that due to my upbringing I am saddled with, and bear the results thereof: "white."

In an earlier post, I mentioned the blog Stuff White People Do, an educational resource on "the ways of white folks - I mean, some white folks..." I followed a link from one post to another post (readable here), and in the comments section there was a discussion that had become rather heated.

The post, you see, was on the way some white people treat black women. They see them not as vulnerable human beings, but as people of steel, capable of taking whatever flak the world throws their way. This stereotype, the black ladies explain, is perpetuated by modern media, which has portrayed every black woman ever as that type of character (which they refer to as the "sapphire" stereotype), or as an older, takes-no-guff, fiercely-protective and overweight woman (the better-known "mammy.")

White people read this, and understood this, and knew that the black women were right and they needed to do better. So they asked (and I wondered) a seemingly innocuous question: "How do we treat you like people?"

The reaction was swift, completely unenlightening, and deeply revealing of the problem at hand: "You know already."

And I (though I did not participate in the conversation), and several other white people in the thread, said "No, I don't."

It was all nonsense, of course. I already knew what had to be done. In fact, I'd already written about it in my Peach People post. But I'd fallen prey to that quintessential white fallacy: getting hooked on labels.

One of the black ladies had mentioned that white people tend to be bad at socializing with black women. I (and, I expect, the other white persons who asked the same question), remembering that I was a white person, hastily made the conclusion that I had made a mistake in my line of thinking and that I had somehow missed some crucial piece of information that would teach me how to treat black women like people.

What I, and seemingly a number of other white people, had failed to realize was that I was completely overthinking the situation. And it was the black ladies - one very patient and frustrated black woman, in particular - who finally put us in our place and made at least one white person (that'd be me) feel very, very silly - and very, very white.

See, once again I had conflated a label with an identity. First I assumed that because the label "white" applied to me, I must be vulnerable to the same fallacies as the other white people that had been described. Then I assumed that the label "black" entailed some kind of enormous cultural gap - something that made the fact that they were also human and women rather trivial when deciding how to treat them. If I really wanted to know how to treat a black woman as a human, all I needed to do was see her as - well, a human.

Each of these stories belies the same problem in the use of labels. There is no doubt that labels have a purpose - they enable one person to get a loose grasp on another person's identity at a quick glance. But labels are not an instant guide to an individual's personality. Each label is a facet of a person, not the whole person - and yet their entire being is affected by that facet. Labels are further divided into sublabels, which in turn are shaped by quirks and nuances that make the overall label nearly meaningless. Labels are not useless - it is true that all persons with a particular label have something in common, whether a little or a lot. But it is important not to overvalue their meaning, not to assume any specific meanings for a label, and not to get so hooked on one label that you ignore the other facets of a person's being.

And yet I managed to do it three times before I ever figured out what I was doing wrong. Sounds like I've got some work ahead of me.

Trans Man: The Teenage Years

Midway through puberty, my voice started cracking.

I wasn't sure what happened at first. I'd be in the middle of a sentence and suddenly the sound wouldn't come out right. My voice would switch tones abruptly, or refuse to make a sound at all, usually in the space of a second or so. I'd try to clear my throat, but it never really worked.

And then my voice dropped. I mean, seriously dropped. I'd gotten used to speaking in a nice, feminine child's tone, and suddenly I didn't recognize the sound that was coming out of my mouth. It never dropped below an acceptable female level, and nobody else noticed, but you can bet I was self-conscious about it. See, my mum had told me about puberty; she'd told me that girls' voices changed but that they didn't crack like boys' did. There were so many ways to interpret that statement that I was sure that I had violated a rule of girls' puberty somewhere.

The main problem with this story is that there are three different ways that it can end, all of which are pertinent to my life story, so I feel that I should include them all.

1: Deeply embarrassed by my lower voice, and not wanting to be seen as any more unfeminine than I already was, I started forcing my voice into a higher register - especially when talking to my parents. It wasn't hard or miserable or anything, but it still hasn't become natural for me.

2: The sudden drop in my voice got me wondering if there was something off with my body. I already had a few of the other classic symptoms - male tendencies, mainly - but this was my first real clue. Though I later found out that it wasn't unheard of for girls' voices to crack (though it was unusual), the beard hairs that came in later confirmed a hormone imbalance.

2a: I had very mixed feelings about the whole thing. I was feeling a lot of pressure to be feminine, both overt (my mother telling me how to attract boys) and subtle (my mother constantly criticizing my aunt and her lesbian lover for being unfeminine). On the other hand, there was a feeling - more a primal urge than a voice - that latched on to every masculine aspect of my puberty as "correct." Ergo, not only did I have to wonder why my body was doing this, but I had to deal with the feelings that came with it - that strange feeling of bitter gratitude, of disbelief that this could actually be happening and a deep desire, against all reason, to embrace it.

2b: Equally as confusing was the pattern that I was starting to see in myself. I'd always known myself to be a nonconformist, sure, but suddenly I realized there was a pattern to my nonconformity. I liked boys - and not just in a romantic sense; I wanted to spend time with them, talk with them, do the things they did and just generally hang out like guys would. I liked boys' clothes, and had always favored them over girls'. (When I watched Smallville, I spent a large part of my time ogling Tom Welling's wardrobe.) I sat like a guy, which had always irritated my mother (who wanted me to be ladylike, and didn't understand the need to accommodate imaginary genitals or large thighs). There was no ignoring it - I consistently leaned toward the masculine.

As all of this stuff hit me at once, I had exactly one question: Why the hell wasn't I a lesbian?

Introduction

Hello, my name is William, and I am here to talk about labels. I know I bear a ton of them: human, white, blonde, European-descended, fair-skinned, able-bodied, female, daughter, sister, low-class, obese, transgendered, FTM, male, brother, pansexual, part-time crossdresser, in the closet, blogger (as of now), writer, English language persnicketor, caveman, environmentally conscious, animal welfare supporter, meat-eater, atheist, agnostic, panmaterialist, pacifist, activist, homeschooled, country boy, unemployed, self-taught, slacker, single, Zac Efron fangirl, single, cat person, dog owner, racist, anti-kyriarchal, food lover, adrenaline lover, American. (I'm sure I've missed a few.) All of these apply to me in some way, even though I don't necessarily agree with or want to use all of them. No doubt all of them have colored your perception of me, making you less or more likely to take me seriously, less or more likely to view me as shallow or immoral or worthless or potentially annoying. Some of them seem like outright contradictions - humans are good at that.

So here's a breakdown of my favorite and least favorite labels - the ones that I identify with and the ones I'd rather leave behind.

White, European-descended, fair-skinned

I don't like to call myself "white." First of all, it's simply medically untrue (I'm also a persnicketor). Secondly, the term "white" brings up so many associations of Anglo-Saxon superiority, Aryanism, and other stuff that I just do not subscribe to. If you have to lump me, I'd rather be called "White" than "Caucasian" (my ancestors just are not from Georgia and that term is SO flippin' racisto), but for common usage I prefer to be referred to as "fair-skinned," "European-descended," "North European-American," "light pink," or even "unfairly privileged peach-toned bastard."

Female, male, transgendered, FTM, gay, bisexual, transvestite

I am female-to-male transgendered, which means that I am biologically female and perceived as female in the outside world, but as far as I am concerned I am male. Here on the Internet, I prefer to use male pronouns and a male name. I enjoy wearing women's clothes very rarely, and only on my terms.

White, obese, slacker, American

This particular set of labels will get me pegged pretty quickly as yet another water-buffalo American, shuffling down the sidewalks in singleminded pursuit of my next Big Mac. Well, I'm here to tell you that I don't eat Big Macs (or fast food, if I can help it), I don't shuffle, and unlike some people I actually take responsibility for my own obesity and am trying to repair it.

Caveman, meat-eater

With all respect to the American Heart Association, American Diabetics' Association, etc.: sorry, but you're wrong. The anti-meat, pro-carb guidelines currently in place are based on faulty data, half-baked assumptions, insufficient studies and a whole lot of hyperbole. That's why I won't eat hot dogs or processed hamburgers and sausages if I can help it, but I will happily sink my teeth into a whole, chemically-minimal piece of beefy goodness. (I also work out. That's the other side of being a caveman. And to soothe any further concerns about my health, I also eat plenty of green vegetables and fruit, and my blood sugar has been almost completely under control ever since I started eating this way.)

Atheist, agnostic, panmaterialist

Again, all of these are true. I am an atheist in that I do not worship any gods. I am agnostic because I do not know for sure (and not because I'm "between religions" at the moment - I'm just not interested in that kind of a relationship right now). I call myself a panmaterialist because I appreciate the fact that everything that exists in the universe now came from the same place, has existed forever, and can never be destroyed, only configured into new shapes. Even human minds will live on in the minds of others, sometimes for generations after the original has passed. Everything that exists is part of a living, ongoing network that cannot truly be destroyed.

Zac Efron fangirl

It's true. I can't help it. Looking at Zac Efron makes me so happy that I just want to squee, because he is that pretty. You could say that Zac Efron is my one weakness.

Country boy

I'm not a cowboy, just so you know. I've lived in the country my whole life, yet I've still grown up into a middle-class type of young adult. I don't even like cows that much. But I like to live out here, I like to take long walks and photographs, and the fresh air is to die for.

I'll extrapolate more on these and other labels in other posts. These are just the ones that stand out to me as the kind that I identify with the most or the least, or that other people are most likely to consider when they decide what kind of person I am. That's what labels are for, after all.