Chronic Illness Problems

(Note: This is meant to be sort of funny, a way of blowing off steam. But these are actual problems I encounter. Not everyone with chronic illness/invisible disabilities experiences the same problems, but a lot of people will probably relate to at least some of this.)

Need to nap because fatigue. Can’t sleep because pain.

End up rolling around and looking for a comfortable position until the alarm goes off.

Or you can’t let yourself nap because it will ruin your sleep cycle.

Sleep cycle: In pain, can’t sleep at night until total exhaustion takes over. Fall asleep at 5am. Barely get up in time for noon doctor appointment. Either fail to nap as above, or fall asleep for 6 hours and wake up confused with a headache at 9pm. Can’t fall asleep *again* because slept too much + pain. Cycle continues.

Having to write down every thought because they will be forgotten within half an hour otherwise. Unfortunately, always get best ideas while driving.

Or in the shower. Or while trying to sleep at 3am.

Multiple doctors confirm that you cannot work. Social Security Administration contacts these doctors, determines that you can work.

This has happened to me repeatedly, and I still don’t understand it.

Need to use drivey-cart (I think there’s a better name for these?) at grocery store due to fatigue. Have to stand up to reach items on shelves.

Afraid people will see you standing up and think you’re not really disabled and you shouldn’t be using the drivey cart.

When the drivey cart runs out of battery halfway through the store.

It appeared fully charged when you got it. I’m lucky enough to usually have other people shopping with me, but I would imagine some people are just stuck until an employee wanders by.

Lying down = back pain. Standing up = hip and foot pain. Sitting = knee pain.

Only comfortable position is on the couch with back against the armrest and legs stretched out. Not an ideal position for work or crafting, but you can watch Netflix and play with your tablet like a champion.

Forgetting what you’re doing.

Starting to write a blog post, then getting up to wake up your roommate, making coffee to entice roommate to get up, then remembering you made a green smoothie last night and you want your partner to try it, but there are no clean cups, so you wash cups, then start thinking about how it’s weird that a glass cup is called a “glass” and a plastic cup is called a “cup” even though they are functionally the same item made from different materials. When roommate gets up, remember that you wanted to ask him if your DS is in his room, and he says no, so you start looking for it in your own room, then you find your AA battery recharger so of course you have to look for the rechargeable batteries. Then you go in the living room to announce that you found the things and get distracted playing with the cats. Finally remember you were writing a blog post.

This is on a good day. On a bad day you don’t get out of bed until 5pm.

Having to explain to roommates why you either shower only twice a week because of pain and fatigue, or why you take multiple hot baths a day to relieve muscle pain.

I don’t have this problem with my current family, but you’d be surprised how annoyed some roommates can get just because you bathe twice a day.

Carrying a cane even though you don’t have foot or leg problems, just so people will recognize you as disabled.

To get a seat on public transport, or to get out of a car legally parked in an accessible parking space without people yelling at you because you don’t “look disabled.”

Having to do a 24-hour urine sample, TWICE, because somehow the lab messed up and didn’t do the correct tests on the first one.

This involves keeping a jug of your own urine in your refrigerator. I’m glad I don’t live with random roommates anymore, because THAT would be a fun one to explain.

And a series of meds-related problems:

Constantly having your medication changed around by different doctors, so that you have no baseline state to compare with to know if the new medications are working.

Need to eat regularly because blood sugar problems. Meds to regulate blood sugar cause nausea.

Being on so many meds you can’t tell what symptom is a side effect of what drug.

Or maybe it’s a new symptom of one of your illnesses.

Needing to educate friends and roommates about life-threatening illnesses that might arise due to your medications (such as lactic acidosis or serotonin syndrome.)

The classic can’t function without pain meds because pain, can’t function with pain meds because doped up.

And there are more things, but of course I can’t remember them because brain fog.

There’s more fun experiences here: http://chronicillnesscat.tumblr.com

Today was weird.

"Today" actually started in the middle of the night, when I read this post.

Which inspired me to write this post.

When I got up again this morning, it was rainy and all I felt like doing was watching Netflix, so I watched the documentary Happy.

After that, I read a little bit in Flow.

Then I got on my computer, and read this post.

After that, I jotted down some quick plans for putting up pictures and posters in my room that would remind me of things I used to enjoy.

Then I read this post.

I don't really have much else to say, except too many feels.

The Difficult Post

This is going to be a post about the past two years of my life, and my struggle with suicidal thoughts during that time. Your first instinct may be that you don't want to read about that. And, while there are no graphic details, it is possible this post will be triggering for people who are, or once were, struggling in the same way. If that is the case, by all means, skip it. But if you don't think you'll be triggered and just don't want to hear about sad stuff, I urge you to try and read on. It will help give some insight into my behavior over the past couple of years, and more importantly, may give insight into how to best support other people with the same kinds of issues.

"I am better". If I say that, it is true and a lie at the same time, because of the way "better" can mean more than one thing. I am definitely better than I was in 2011 when I had to be hospitalized twice in the same summer for suicidal ideation. I'm stable, and thoughts of suicide are mostly in my past. I've found a chosen family who love me, my living situation is the most comfortable it has been in a long time, and I've learned a lot about self-care and what triggers I need to avoid to be safe.

But that word, "better", also implies that my illness is over. And while it is possible for depression, like cancer, to go into a sort of remission, I don't think it's ever safe to say depression is over. It's kind of like alcoholism. Members of AA generally refer to themselves as "recovering" rather than recovered, no matter how many sober years they've put behind them. This is because they know how easy it is to slip back into that dark place, and how for the rest of their lives they will have to be vigilant, how it is never safe to take "just one drink". Depression is like that, too. I have to be careful to avoid things that may trigger my thoughts of self-harm. I have to create something of a bubble of self-protection around me, and always consider the effect any action may have on my mental health. Much like a person with diabetes must be more careful than most people about what goes into their diet, I have to be more careful what goes into my mental "diet." This means surrounding myself with safe people, avoiding scary news articles and hateful internet comments, not watching violent or soul-crushing movies (the latter is how my partner describes Les Miserables, which is why I haven't seen it yet), etc. Just like a healthy food diet is a good idea for most people, this mental diet would probably be good for anyone. But for me, it is necessary for survival.

These days, most of my depressed thoughts have to do with what the worst part of my depression has cost me. I've lost a lot of friends. Most of these people didn't outright walk out of my life, they simply quietly slipped away while I was too preoccupied to do anything to mend the relationship. I know I hurt people, and I don't know how to fix it. For one thing, I'm not entirely sure what I did that made people so uncomfortable. My guess is that my behavior was simply too unpredictable for a lot of people to feel safe around me. I was never violent toward anyone other than myself, but I can see how my friends may have simply not known what to do. So I want to talk a little about what was going on.

Some of the details are too painful to share, and some I can't responsibly share because they involve other people. What I can say is this: I spent most of 2011 living in a house where some of the people were emotionally abusive toward me and most of the people were heavily involved with drugs and/or alcohol. I also spent 2011 and 2012 going through the intense emotions that come with a gender transition (more on that in a bit). All this while still grieving my mother, who I never got a chance to fully grieve because I was too focused on surviving. And, like I said, I won't share details about things that involve other people, but I went through a really heartbreaking tug-of-war friendship with a person I thought I could trust, who ultimately shunned me. This person had their own issues to deal with and I'm not angry or trying to shame them, but I want people to understand the impact this situation had on my mental health. It was hurting me deeply, and I couldn't talk about it because I didn't want to hurt this person. I still can't. It was a mess.

More about that gender transition. That I can talk about, because it was an internal process. I never shared the details of what I was going through at the time because I was too busy going through it. I first realized I was not cisgender in the summer of 2010, which was part of the motivation for my move to Massachusetts. At the time, I thought I was genderqueer - neither fully male nor fully female - and didn't really feel any desire to live as male. But I was under a lot of cultural pressure. Western society is really heavily invested in the gender binary and really, really wants people to "pick a team". And this pressure doesn't come only from outside the trans community, but also from within. Even in the most "trans-friendly" of spaces, non-binary people are often overlooked. And some trans people - not any of the ones I know personally, but many of the people running trans support groups, websites, conferences, etc - are openly hostile to non-binary people. For example, on Tumblr there are a lot of binary trans guys who stalk the FTM tag, looking for unwitting non-binary people to attack, calling them "transtrenders" and accusing them of "appropriating trans identity". There are less openly hostile people who acknowledge that non-binary people are trans, but still believe some trans people to be "more trans" than others. And even well-meaning binary trans people are prone to simply forget that non-binary people exist. Plus, all the gatekeeping in the medical community leads many non-binary people to feel they should pretend to be binary-trans in order to have access to services.

So it was that pressure, combined with the fact that I did have some internal desire to be more masculine, that made me feel I must be FTM, a label I no longer use for myself. (I do still use male pronouns, for the record.) I don't regret the steps I took toward living as male (aside from the fact that testosterone left me with a bass singing voice that makes it a little hard to sing along with the radio, but that's a trivial matter). What I do regret is that I was so deep-down terrified that I might be a "fake" trans person, that I pushed down any desire to do anything remotely feminine. I did allow myself to wear very dark nail polish on occasion, but only while wearing a binder and otherwise trying very hard to "pass" as male. And you know, trans guys who really are deep-down male also try hard to pass, but they have a different motive. They want to be seen for who they really are. I was doing it because I was afraid who I really am wasn't good enough, that being non-binary wasn't "trans enough" and I had something to prove if I was going to call myself trans. I was afraid that the minute I let my guard down I'd suddenly be a woman - despite never feeling like one in my entire life - and have to go to all my friends and be like "J/K! I was actually cis the whole time!" That fear kept me from being able to relax and enjoy anything, and contributed a lot to my depression.

Last year, I did get out of the abusive-drug-house and into a safer house with a bunch of self-identified bronies. And yeah, bronies have gotten a bad reputation for being creepy and misogynist and all, but these particular people were nice and a big improvement over the previous housemates. They treated other people with basic respect and didn't attack me for things like decorating a jar, singing Beatles songs, or paying rent a single day late (all things I was scolded, insulted and even screamed at for doing in the previous house). And it happened that I actually do like My Little Pony, so it was nice to live in a house where I could watch that in the living room with friends, instead of in my room at a barely-audible volume to avoid being ridiculed.

That house, and the friends I made there, helped me heal. What helped even more was meeting my current partner, and his partner (we're a polyamorous family), who have been wonderfully accepting.
And they've seen me at my most distraught, because I did go through a brief relapse back in October, when I ran out of meds for a week and went through a falling out with a friend (this time most people agreed it wasn't my fault, but it still hurt) all at the same time. They chose to be my family after seeing me at my worst, and that is really huge. Even more, I know they love me no matter how I choose to express myself, so I've been feeling my creativity gradually become less stifled. I think stifled creativity was a big part of what was keeping me depressed.

But I'm still sad. I'm sad because even as my depression gets better, my fatigue is not, which has led me to believe it has a deeper medical cause. All my test results are normal, which means that cause isn't something easy to detect and treat like a vitamin deficiency, but is probably a more elusive, less treatable diagnosis like chronic fatigue. I've also had pretty bad back and joint pain, which, combined with the fatigue, have kept me out of work. (My partner is wonderful about this, but he doesn't make a lot of money, so finances are tight). I'm also sad because I don't know how to go about repairing the friendships I've damaged. I've accepted that the people who've completely left my life probably aren't coming back, but those are a small few and I'm not sure what to do about the rest.

I don't want to apologize for my mental illness. But I guess what I can say is, I'm sorry my illness scared people. I'm sorry it drained my emotional resources so I couldn't be a good friend. I'm sorry my behavior was so unpredictable. I'm not sorry for being suicidal, because I couldn't help it, but I am sorry my suicidal ideation sometimes came across as a threat. I don't recall consciously being mean to anyone, but I am sorry if I was mean by accident or during a time when I was too incoherent to be aware of my behavior. I'm sorry I broke people's trust.

My depression isn't "over" - I'm not sure it will ever be over - but I have reached a point where I am ready to begin making amends. I am not ready to deal with a bunch of people suddenly telling me everything I have ever done that bothered them, so please don't do that. But I am definitely ready to hear things like "In the future, when X happens, I would like it if you did Y." I am ready to have people tell me their boundaries and how they would prefer to be contacted, and what they find triggering and would prefer that I not share with them. So if I've hurt you in the past couple years and there are things I can do now that will help heal that, please let me know. And please know that if I did hurt you, it was because I was literally not able to take care of my own needs, let alone anyone else's. I'm sorry that happened. It was never, ever because I didn't care.

Neither, Am I

I used to write about my gender mostly on Tumblr. It felt like the safest place, since this blog was known to so many people who know me in “real life”. Over the last couple years, though, the tables have turned. Now it seems people who know me are the safest and strangers on the internet are the ones who judge me harshly.

I have never received any hate for being trans from people who weren’t trans themselves. I’ve been misgendered, sure. People have slipped on name and pronouns. They’ve given me curious looks. But the only people who have outright hated me are trans men who decided I couldn’t be trans if I wasn’t exactly like them. “You’re not a real man”, they say, “so you must be a woman.” The word “woman” is invariably said in a sneering manner, as if woman is the worst thing a person could be called.

For those guys, what makes them not-women is that they are men. But I’m not a man, either. What makes me not-a-woman is simply that when someone tries to stick the label “woman” on me, it peels off and flutters to the ground like a band-aid with too much dirt on the back. I can’t explain what it is about me that makes “woman” not the right label. It isn’t man-ness. It’s simply a lack of woman-ness.

Truth is, I like having access to a certain kind of femininity. I like to cover myself with rainbows and sparkles. I like to play with babies and keep a cute house. And when it comes down to discussion of emotional and spiritual matters, I’m much more comfortable in a group of women than a group of men. I’m drawn to authors, bloggers and motivational speakers who focus on women as their audience. I enjoy hobbies that appeal to large numbers of women, like hula hooping and needle crafts.

So what does that make me? Where do I fit? And why do I have to fit anywhere, anyway? Why can’t I just be?

Why can’t we all just be?

About the lump.

So I haven't blogged regularly in a while and I know some people might find this blog and not have any idea what is going on. But I also know that most of you find my blog from my links on Facebook, and that means you're a friend, or at least a friendly acquaintance.

It is probably taboo to point this out, but guys, I know how many people view my posts. And I'm a little disturbed by the number of people who viewed my last post, in which I revealed I need to be tested for breast cancer, without commenting. I received no comments here, no comments on the Facebook post where I linked the blog post, and no private messages.

I know I posted a donation link. I don't care about that. I don't care if you can't donate. But like, talk to me. I'm going through some scary shit right now, and I need to know who is going to be there for me and who isn't. I realize talking to people about their breasts, especially talking to trans people about their breasts, is uncomfortable, but please say something to me. If I hear only silence, it feels pretty lonely.

With that out of the way, let me give you more info on what is going on.

I found this lump about three weeks ago, and was hoping I could wait until my MassHealth got straightened out before I saw anyone about it. 80% of lumps are benign, and lumps often come and go throughout the hormone cycle, so I figured it was something I could wait out. But after a few weeks, it hadn't changed. I could feel changes in the texture of the breast tissue around it - my breasts are lumpier now than they were a few weeks ago - but the lump itself persisted. I was finally pushed to go to the doctor when I had some unrelated but extremely uncomfortable medication side effects. At first they weren't going to let me see the doctor without paying $170 up front, which I didn't have. I started crying in the middle of the waiting room and said "I really need to see a doctor." The receptionist made some calls to the financial department, and they finally let me in. I am unclear on whether I will eventually receive a bill for the $170.

The doctor performed a breast exam and noted that my breasts are lumpy overall, but that this lump definitely felt different. She recommended I schedule an ultrasound right away - which I haven't done yet, because I'm still trying to figure out how to handle that financially. I plan to call MassHealth and tell them I need to be screened for cancer and see if that might speed the approval process or at least get me some temporary assistance. I also plan to contact the Women's Health Network and see if I can be evaluated for free.

The lump is hard, smooth, and oblong. It's a couple centimeters wide, and doesn't move. Based on the way it feels, I think it is either a benign fibroadenoma, which are common in my age group, or cancer. Obviously I'm hoping for the fibroadenoma. I don't have any other outward signs of cancer such as bleeding or skin changes.

What the ultrasound will determine is whether the lump is solid or fluid-filled. To me, it feels solid, which means there's a good chance I will need a biopsy to determine if it is cancer.

I was pretty calm about all this at first, but as time goes on and it doesn't go away or get any smaller, I'm getting pretty scared. I could use lots of emotional support right now.

I'll post updates here when I know more.

I need help.

I'm having some pretty horrible medication side effects and can't think clearly, so I'm just going to copy-paste from my Tumblr to tell you what's going on.

I’ve been really hesitant about asking for money, but I ultimately decided going without money will be more harmful to me than any backlash I may receive, so it can’t hurt to ask.
I am a disabled, queer trans person who is in the process of applying for food stamps and state health care. For the past few months I have been unable to work due to severe depression and anxiety. I also have a lump in my breast that needs to be evaluated and I strongly suspect that I have sleep apnea that needs treatment. I am planning to apply for disability to help me out in the long run, but that is a long process that often involves several appeals. My therapist would also like me to go into a DBT (type of therapy) day program for some period of time, which will also make it difficult to work.
So my current holistic treatment plan is as follows:

• continue with my weekly therapy and monthly psychiatry appointments, which costs gas and parking money + a fee
• continue with my currently prescribed medications, which cost $75 and $50 a month without insurance
• consult my doctor for referrals for a mammogram and sleep study
• attend at least three weeks of a DBT or other therapy day program
• continue on vitamins and omega-3s, which are not covered by insurance or food stamps

In the meantime, I need help affording my living expenses. My partner helps me somewhat, but he works retail and makes barely over minimum wage. Our lease runs out at the end of March and we need to afford rent and deposits for a new place in April, and a Uhaul. I also have to pay a small amount to keep my phone on, and pay other expenses related to having a car, such as insurance.
All of this adds up very quickly. I have set my GoFundMe goal at $800 for now, because I think that will at least get me over the hump until I have health insurance and food stamps in place. But what I’m really concerned about is helping my partner to pay rent. He cannot afford rent for himself, me, and his other partner all by himself (his other partner is also unable to work). These people are the only family I have, as all of the people who raised me have died and I have no siblings. I don’t want to burden my partner, and so I’m reaching out to people who might have some extra money they can throw my way. Any contributions would be greatly appreciated.

Update as of today, Feb 22: I went to the doctor without insurance because I was experiencing really unpleasant neurological side effects from one of my medications. I also got the breast lump examined. The doctor ordered an ultrasound, blood tests, said to follow up in a week and see my psychiatrist next week also. I don't suppose I'll have insurance by next week, but I don't want to let this wait if it could be cancer. I feel like I'm having a nervous breakdown right now. My body has so many things wrong with it and I just want to be okay.

Please help if you can, and please pass this along.

http://www.gofundme.com/22de3w

7 Ableist Arguments I'm Tired of Hearing (from "Progressive" People)

Ableism is the view that people who don't have a disability or illness are somehow better than people who do, or the refusal to acknowledge that disabilities even exist. You would think I'd encounter less of this in progressive communities, but I actually find ableism running rampant among people who think they're being compassionate and inclusive. I know most of these people mean well, so I want to shed light on some particularly problematic arguments I've seen. Please consider the impact on people with disabilities and chronic illness before you make any of the following claims.

 

1. Everyone can breastfeed

No, they can't. There are a lot of things wrong with this argument, because it implies that every baby is raised by the person who gave birth to it, which isn't the case. But even birth mothers can't always breastfeed. My mother couldn't, because she was on powerful medication that wouldn't have been safe for me to ingest, plus she had a skin condition she was worried about passing on. There are lots of reasons a person might be physically unable to breastfeed. I do think breastfeeding is the best option when it's possible, but it isn't always an option. Not being able to breastfeed doesn't make someone a bad parent, and they shouldn't be shamed for it.

2. You can decide to be happy

Boy, if this were true, my life would be a lot different. I've poured tons of time, energy and money into anything that might ease my depression symptoms, from antidepressants and therapy to self-help books and vitamins. If happiness were the result of personal effort, I'd be the happiest person in the world. Unfortunately, for people with mental illness, it just doesn't seem to work that way. I understand the basic sentiment behind this statement - that you have control over your priorities, you can choose gratitude over self-pity, and so on. But there are people who, by reason of brain chemistry, trauma history or insurmountable life circumstances, simply cannot wish our pain away. Telling us "you can choose to be happy" sounds a lot like blaming the suffering person for not making that choice.

3. Abortion is okay no matter the reason

I know I'm going to take a lot of shit for this one, but it's important to me, so here goes. I don't think every reason for having an abortion is equally valid. I am a feminist, and I believe safe, legal abortion should be available to people who don't feel equipped to become parents. But there are eugenic reasons for having an abortion, and I think eugenics are disgusting. The fact that up to 98% of fetuses with Down syndrome are terminated makes me want to cry. I understand choosing to abort a child with an illness that will lead to a very short, painful life, but Down syndrome is not such a condition. People with DS are able to live fulfilling lives, often holding jobs, getting married, even attending college. To suggest that a person's life is not worth living because they have a disability is unacceptable. And not every disability makes itself apparent before birth, so if you're not prepared to have a child with a disability, you aren't prepared to have a child, period. I still believe abortion should be the pregnant person's choice, but I also think people have a responsibility to consider ALL the possibilities before deciding to start a family. Once you've committed to have a child, you don't get to choose what kind of child you have.

4. Vaccines cause autism

No they don't. It's been proven that they don't. But even before it was proven, I had a problem with this argument, because it rests on the idea that it's better for a child to be potentially dead than potentially disabled. Polio, measles, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough are deadly. Autism is not. To suggest that it's better to risk subjecting a child to a deadly illness than risk them being autistic is deeply insulting to autistic people, not to mention trivializing the suffering of people who've survived those illnesses. Now, while I myself am vehemently pro-vax, I do know some thoughtful, intelligent people who are anti-vax, so I know that there are other reasons a parent may choose not to vaccinate. But if any part of your reason for making that choice involves fear of autism, you need to seriously re-evaluate your thoughts on the matter.

5. ADD/ADHD isn't real

I agree that ADD is probably way overdiagnosed. I also agree that the environment of modern public schools sets children up to be diagnosed with ADD, and subsequently medicated, simply for behaving like children. But the argument I frequently encounter is that ADD was invented by schools and that there is no such thing. As a person who has ADD and was NOT diagnosed in school, I can confirm that this isn't the case. For a person who truly has ADD, it's not simply a matter of not being able to focus when something is boring. I can't focus on things I want to focus on. I don't watch movies because 90 minutes is just too long - I have to stop halfway through even if the movie is really good, because my attention span is spent. I can't read a book for more than about half an hour at a time, and my mind often wanders when listening to a friend speak, even if what they're saying is interesting to me. On top of that, I have a lot of trouble with executive function and organizational tasks. The way my life is currently structured I seem to function well enough, but if I were to take on a mentally strenuous goal - say, graduate school - I would probably need a lot of extra support, and possibly medication, to function on the same level as my peers. 

6. You don't need allopathic medicine

I don't talk about this a lot, but my mother had schizophrenia. She had to take powerful antipsychotics in order to have any semblance of a normal life. I had relatives who would suggest that she didn't need to be medicated, and that in fact it was the medication itself that had caused her mental illness! But I've seen her off her meds, and she was simply not the same person. Haloperidol allowed her to connect with people and freed her from terrifying hallucinations and delusions. It allowed her to be my mother. 

I've known people who needed allopathic medication to keep their hearts going, to manage their diabetes, even to digest food. There are people who can only stay alive because of CPAP machines, colostomies, or shunts. I'll try an herbal remedy if I have a cold or a headache, sure. But when I couldn't keep liquids down and was running a 104F fever that turned out to be caused by a kidney infection complicated by sepsis, you better believe I went to an ER for some antibiotics and a saline drip. I've seen people actively discourage friends from going to the hospital to get checked out when they had symptoms that could point to something life-threatening. That's dangerous and irresponsible.

7. You wouldn't be ill if you went on x diet

If a person asks for suggestions on how to manage their illness, it's perfectly fine to mention that you've heard a specific diet might help. But I've seen people claim that if a person refuses to go on a raw-vegan or gluten-free diet, they are to blame for being sick and deserve no sympathy. As heartless and rude as this is, it's also factually questionable. If anyone had found a 100% effective, works-for-everyone cure for diabetes or cancer, they'd have a Nobel Prize. I know not every treatment option has been empirically studied and that "big pharma" exerts some influence over this, and I'm willing to accept that there are "alternative" treatments out there that could bring people some needed relief. But when people start blaming the victim for being sick in the first place, I stop listening. 

Seven Years Ago

A few minutes ago, I was reading a book that challenged me to think about who I was exactly seven years ago. “Are you exactly the same person you were then?”

In January of 2006, I was 20, and in a relationship with someone a bit younger than myself. That relationship was emotionally abusive, and would end a few months later. I can't clearly remember the last few months of that relationship, but January might have been the time my boyfriend was growing pot plants, against my strong protests, in the rundown trailer by my mom's house. I think it was around the time we started hanging around my friend Sarah again. It was a couple months before we saw Queen + Paul Rodgers live in Jacksonville, and a couple months before I first met my friend Val. I didn't yet have either of my two current cats, but I had several others, and a dog, and my boyfriend had a dachshund he mostly ignored and a cat named Kasey. I was still chatting regularly with my friend Spiffy and had just recently gotten back in contact with my friend Terry; the two of them weren't dating then, but would be later that year and still are.

I had never heard of unschooling then. I was in community college, working on my AA with an eye toward a BA in special education. I have no clear memory of what classes I took that semester, although a quick glance at my transcript tells me it was a boring term, with history and English and earth science. The only thing that stands out in my memory is that my history teacher was Nigerian, and told American history from a strongly black angle, which I found refreshing.

Mentioning the earth science class brings back a memory of visiting my boyfriend's soon-to-be workplace, trying to study my textbook in a small room with construction going on all around. He was doing electrical apprentice work, and had to be there very early in the morning. He claimed to be unable to rouse himself from sleep unassisted, so I would have to wake up at 4am to see him off to work. I watched a lot of Neon Genesis Evangelion on those mornings, and I think this was around the same time my boyfriend got obsessed with Rammstein, so I was in a weird headspace in those days.

I can't remember if this was before my cat Betty Boop ran away. I think it was. That was one of my favorite pets I've ever had, and it was my boyfriend's fault she got outside. I'm still pissed off about it, but it was because that cat ran away that I got my cat Jake, who I like even better.

I was still living as female, and using my birth name. I had long hair because my boyfriend preferred that, and I wore flare jeans and low-cut shirts. I wasn't a feminist yet, and was proud of being “different” from “other girls”. I hadn't yet considered that feeling so different might be because I wasn't so much of a girl.

Notable events from later in 2006 include breaking up with that boyfriend (who I still have nightmares about, all these years later, and wake up in a panic because there's a man in my bed, and have to remind myself that it's my current partner), coming out as bisexual and then as a lesbian, getting my first job in the biology lab at college, going to my first gay pride, taking ASL II and III, smoking pot for the first time (I never touched the stuff while my boyfriend was growing it), meeting Terry in person for the first time, turning 21, becoming a Unitarian, getting Jake as a kitten and getting a brand new computer around the same time. I got obsessed with the book And the Band Played On and the band Scissor Sisters. My dad showed up in my life, briefly, around Christmas, after not contacting me for something like a year. Overall the second half of the year was a lot better than the first half.

I don't have any clear memories of my mom that I can pin directly to that year, but she was there. I don't think anybody in my life died in 2006.

Who were you seven years ago?

Unschooling and Conscience

One argument for unschooling is that people - or at least, children - are inherently good. I won't tell people not to believe this, but what about people who can't? Is it possible to be realistic about all the hatred, violence, and injustice in the world and still unschool? I believe it is.

Just tonight, I've grown up a little bit, because I realized I'm in mourning for my naive childhood belief in inherent human goodness. First came denial, in which I grabbed tightly onto the belief that goodness comes naturally to people, and held on for dear life. Then came bargaining - believing I had the power to force people to be good, as if this would somehow prove they had been good all along. A long period of depression and anger followed, which simply resulted in trying to shut out the noise of other people's hate. And finally, now, I seem to be reaching acceptance: people simply are not as naturally good and kind as I once believed them to be.

Before I go on, I want to clarify what I mean when I say that I have lost this belief. I'm not saying that I believe people are inherently bad, or that they lack inherent worth. I believe all life is worthwhile and exists for a reason. I'm not even saying that I believe people don't mean well. I think most people do.

But I do not believe people are born naturally inclined to do the right thing, or even to know what the right thing is. To do that, a person needs to develop a strong conscience and continue working on it throughout life. Conscience is like a muscle that needs to be exercised, and the way to exercise it is by making decisions. Deciding what to wear, what to eat, what to say and how to say it are all actions that exercise conscience. It follows, then, that a weak conscience comes from not making decisions. How can a person who is told what to do and where to go at every moment ever exercise conscience? How can a person who has external rewards and punishments dangled in front of them ever learn what their own inner voice says to do?

I believe in unschooling for two big reasons that have nothing to do with its ability to result in academic knowledge. First, my own conscience tells me it is immoral to take ownership and control of another human being in the way that schools and most parents try to do with children. Second, I believe that people learn to be accountable for their decisions by learning early on that their decisions affect other people and things in the world. But they can only learn that by being allowed to make decisions. I don't believe people are inherently kind all the time, but I do believe unschooling produces people who are more kind and think more about their decisions, because they've had more practice. I want people to have that practice a lot more than I want them to have practice at spelling and math.

On Gift-Giving, Technology, and “First World Problems”

With the winter holidays approaching rapidly, many people feel compelled to re-evaluate their values with regard to materialism and capitalism. Now, I’m firmly on the side of those who feel that the main point of the holidays should be about love, sharing and generosity, not about rampant consumerism.

That being said, I want to remind people that consumerism vs. anti-consumerism isn’t the only value at play in holiday gift-giving. Many people don’t get nice things all year, and the holidays – particularly the rewards reaped from shopping Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales – are their only chance to own the same things as their peers. Some people also cannot afford to shop anywhere other than Walmart and other discount chains, and for some people that may even be the only store they can get to. So while I think buying local and handmade is a worthy goal, I also hope that people will be compassionate toward those for whom those are not viable options for holiday shopping.

Another important value at play is honoring who people truly are and respecting their needs. I hear far too many lectures this time of year about how people, especially children, should be happy with whatever they get. But if someone has given them a gift that clearly says “I don’t really know or care who you are or what you want”, it makes sense to be disappointed and hurt. Try to put yourself in the shoes of a child or a teenager too young to have a job. In most cases, they have no real income of their own, except maybe a modest allowance. Most parents only give big gifts to kids around birthdays and holidays, and if that deeply desired XBOX or iPad doesn’t come at Christmas, to most kids, this means it isn’t coming at all. That’s a big disappointment. Even if the parents truly couldn’t afford the coveted item, it’s still only fair to be gentle and compassionate toward the kids and respect their feelings on the matter. For some kids, it might be a good idea to let them know ahead of time that the desired gift isn’t coming, to avoid an unhappy surprise in the middle of the holiday celebrations.

And because I know it’s going to come up, I want to speak a little to anti-technology sentiment and the related idea of “first world problems”. I hear this phrase thrown around a lot with regard to people not being able to afford iGadgets and other popular forms of technology. First of all, the term “first world problems” is rooted in the idea that so-called “third world” countries don’t have technology and that their citizens spend all their time in agony and strife. This notion, in addition to being rooted in classism, racism and Eurocentrism, is also just plain false. People in Africa do know it’s Christmastime, and some of them are wishing for – and receiving -  iPads right along with their American peers.

The other problem I have with this phrase is the idea that if your basic needs are met, you should be ashamed to want anything else. To dispel this notion, let’s take a look at one of my favorite psychological model’s, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

When most people use the word “need”, they’re referring to the bottom two tiers of the pyramid – the ones dealing with immediate physical and safety needs. But according to Maslow, humans actually have many other needs: for emotional bonding, achievement, respect, creativity, learning, and equality. So before you shame a person for wanting more than they “need”, consider whether their desire is a way of meeting a higher-level need. The fact that humans are not generally satisfied by just having their most basic needs met is a good thing! It reflects the natural human tendency to want to ascend beyond meeting those needs and really make life meaningful. All human progress toward being healthier, happier and more compassionate has been based in the quest to meet the top three levels on Maslow’s hierarchy.

Finally, let’s talk about technology as a valid interest. Technology gets a lot of unfair hate these days, because the desire for various gadgets is viewed as a symptom of consumerist greed. But some people just genuinely love technology. I’m personally a big fan of it, because I think it improves lives, and makes many kinds of information and skills more widely accessible to people who might not be able to access it otherwise. Take the internet as an example: having access to even the simplest information, such as newspapers and religious texts, used to be possible only for the richest of people. Now, almost anyone can get online and read information from all over the world. Technology is also particularly beneficial to people with disabilities, and has allowed people to speak, read, and write when they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. I have personally always been drawn to things like video games and computers, and was always the person who was asked to hook up the TV or program the VCR. It’s taken a long time for me to get over the cultural pressure to feel ashamed of my love of technology. But now I realize it’s a legitimate interest. Some people are into books, some into nature, some into computers. Loving technology is not about consumerism or a compulsive addiction to screens, it’s just another interest. So if someone’s wish list this year is full of expensive hard drives, gaming consoles and i-Things, please realize they might not be just greedy. They might just be being honest with you about what it is they love.

Against a Classical Education

While browsing the homeschooling section of my local library, I stumbled across The Well-Trained Mind. Having heard traditional homeschoolers refer to this book many times, I was curious about its contents, so I checked it out. 

The book's first chapter argues that modern education has become too focused on self-expression, without giving children any tools with which to express themselves. It puts forth the idea that childhood should be a time of building skills and knowledge so that a child can better express herself later in life. While I don't think there's any such thing as "too much" self-expression, they do raise a good point. Self-expression is easier once you've learned the skills to do it. I find there is a certain appeal to the book's focus on teaching skills like logic and rhetoric, skills that I find the population at large to be sorely lacking. And I can understand their position that exposure to lots of good art and literature helps "fill the well" of creative inspiration.

So while I find the idea of a classical education intriguing, I still have many objections to it. Primary among them is its treatment of children as empty vessels to be filled, as non-persons whose time and energy can and should be controlled by those who "know better". I find the very idea of "training" children to be dehumanizing. But there is another problem with classical education that I'd like to focus on here, and that is the pedagogy itself. 

Classical education is based on the idea that there is a highly specific set of knowledge that all people should have. On the surface, this isn't a terrible idea; it's not hard to argue that reading, writing, math, logic, history, and science are important things to know. So my problem isn't with the idea that everyone should have this set of knowledge. My problem is with the idea that everyone should have this set of knowledge to the exclusion of everything else.

There are worlds and worlds of knowledge out there, and I personally think all of it is equally valuable. A classical education seems to be focused on the idea that Greco-Roman and Western European history are essential for everyone, but African, Middle Eastern, Asian, Eastern European, and Native American history are not. I find this notion to be rooted in Eurocentricism, colonialism, and its accompanying racism. On the subject of religion, The Well-Trained Mind makes brief mention of "explaining" religions like Buddhism and Islam, but ultimately treats Christianity as truth. As a person of faith myself, I understand their position that faith should be part of education. But even if your family happens to be Christian, my own belief is that children should be offered a buffet of possible ideas about God and allowed to work with those which make the most sense to them. It is possible to teach "our family believes this about God" without teaching that everyone else's beliefs don't matter.

A classical education does seem to include lots of exposure to art, music, and literature - but again, this is the art, song and story mainly of dead white men. Why is it more important to study Mozart than to study aboriginal tribal music or watch a Bollywood dance scene? Why is the Bible to be studied at length but the Koran only glossed over and the Tao Te Ching left out entirely? Classical education seems, again, to be rooted in the idea that the elements of Western civilization are the only ones worth studying, and by extension, that (mostly white) Westerners are the only ones whose ideas are worth caring about. This is fundamentally racist in nature.

And that's my ultimate objection to The Well-Trained Mind and its accompanying philosophy: it teaches that some people's lives and perspectives matter more than others. It offers children the same restricted, whitewashed world that was offered to me in school - and even more regrettably, to my non-white peers, who continued to see their own histories and people devalued and ignored, sometimes even having their destruction glorified in the name of justifying white imperialism. This kind of treatment of the world of knowledge is not okay. Children should be taught to see the world whole, to see all people as equally beautiful. They need to learn to live in a world that contains all kinds of people, and to treat all those people with respect. When I am interacting with an adult, whether as a friend, a coworker, a consumer or a voter, this is the knowledge I am most interested in seeing them have. If they can do that, I really don't care if they need to use spellcheck to send a good email or a calculator to do simple math. Seeing everyone as equally human matters more.

Changing Identity, Changing Goals

The last time I wrote about my goals and plans, I was planning on buying an RV to travel around the country. For various reasons – not the least of which being that I love Massachusetts – I have decided to stay put instead.

I was also planning on getting chest surgery. Again, for various reasons, I decided against that. When I looked closely at my motivation for getting the surgery, I realized I was mostly just doing what I thought a female-assigned trans person was “supposed to do” as part of transition. But the further along I’ve gotten in my transition, the less strictly male-identified I feel. My gender is much more non-binary, and I’m trying to allow myself to explore that more. The fear of being misgendered as female used to keep me doing 100% typically “male” things, but now I’m starting to allow myself to play with things like nail polish again. If I was ever going to be a boy, I wanted to be a damn queer-ass boy anyway.

As for my long-term goals, they’ve gotten a bit more abstract. I still want to go to Goddard College, and I know I want to focus my study on disability rights. I think ultimately I’d like to write books on the subject, and maybe on gender as well. I think I’d enjoy being some kind of counselor for teens, assuming I can get my own mental health in order.

One more thing that’s changing for me is that I’ve admitted to myself that I need a spiritual side to my life. I don’t care what anyone else believes, I don’t even care if my own beliefs are right. I just know that I need to pray and to believe that someone/something hears those prayers. It’s essential for my sanity. If that makes me ignorant or stupid in someone’s eyes, that’s their own narrow-minded problem. I need to take care of me.

My housing situation is also in flux right now. Three of the original four people I moved into this house with have moved out, and the fourth is leaving soon. One person has moved in who I get along with really well, but we still have to replace the other two, which is stressful. I’ve had some trouble making everyone involved understand the safety concerns I have as a trans person. I can’t feel safe living with just anyone.

So that’s pretty much where things are for me right now. I’ll end this by saying I have a lot of spare time these days, so please feel free to talk to me! I miss lots of people right now.

Depression and Fatigue

Obviously, I bailed on NaBloPoMo, in which I planned to write a blog post every day. I’d almost say that this is harder than NaNoWriMo, where you can take a day off here and there if you’re sick or something, and catch up on a better day. In any case, the reason I bailed is mostly because the last few weeks have involved a sudden increase in my level of fatigue.

I usually have fatigue, because I have depression. But it’s gotten worse lately. Now, for those who haven’t experienced fatigue, I need to make it clear that this means more than just “feeling tired.” It’s more like feeling exhausted, both physically and mentally, for no discernable reason. (If you haven’t read The Spoon Theory, now is a good time to go do that.) Going to the grocery store can be enough to sap my energy to such a degree that I cannot read a book, let alone do anything physical. It’s like moving through molasses when everyone else is on rollerblades. The worst part is I can be exhausted and still be unable to fall asleep and get some relief.

I don’t know if the cause of my increased fatigue is due to the changing seasons and decreased light, something physical, or what. I’m currently on a hiatus from working, planning to live on savings until the holiday season is done. I’m also on two antidepressants and just recently started a regimen of vitamins that will hopefully boost my energy somewhat. I’m also trying to eat more protein and vegetables. My therapist has recommended exercise but I’m not convinced she fully understands the degree to which I am fatigued. I don’t feel like I have the capacity to exercise right now.

I do plan on trying to start blogging more, if only because I would like to feel productive in some way. But there are so many days when my brain just won’t do it. It’s really, really frustrating.

Why I’m A Fighter, Not A Lover

Today is Election Day in the United States. It’s a stressful time, and many people just want it to hurry up and be over. I’m seeing lots of posts on my Facebook feed by people who are tired of both sides slinging mud at each other.

I do understand that feeling, believe me. I will also be glad for the election to be over. But I also have very strong feelings on a lot of issues, and I think it’s important to speak my mind and stand up for what I believe in. That’s supposed to be the point of voting and the point of free speech.

What I want people to remember, this election day, is that many of us do not have the luxury of turning politics “off”. As a queer, transgender person with disabilities, politics for me are not merely a matter of getting things the way I would like them to be. They are a matter of life and death. Let me be very clear: I’m not voting based on things like the right to get married. Marriage equality is nice, but there are much more fundamental rights at stake. I’m voting based on things like the right to receive health care, the right to be employed, the right to access food when I am not employed, and the right to walk down the street without being murdered. These are matters of life and death for me and many other people.

I am a sensitive person too, and I don’t enjoy fighting. I wish I could put away the politics and just relax now and then. I wish I could just be friends with whoever I enjoy being around, and not worry about their political views. I don’t enjoy constantly being the person to point out when people have done something hurtful. It is exhausting, it’s not fun, and it doesn’t exactly get me invited to a lot of parties.

But fighting is what I must do in order to survive. The world fights against me from many angles, and if I am to get through life with any shred of self-respect and dignity, I must fight back with all the strength I have. In the areas of life in which I am oppressed, I cannot afford to be silent.

And in the areas of life where I am not oppressed, it is also not okay for me to be silent. As a white, able-bodied, male-presenting person, who is living in a state with marriage equality and universal healthcare, and is able to afford safe housing, I have many privileges. Having privileges means that whether I like it or not, I profit from the oppression of others. And the only way to begin to resolve that inequality is for me to recognize those privileges and work to help raise the voices of those who do not have them. Here, too, I am obligated to fight.

I will not play nice with bigots, bullies, abusers, or people who defend them. I will not play nice with people who want me dead. I will not play nice with people who care more about protecting their privileges than protecting my right to exist.

I tried being a lover. I tried speaking softly without carrying a big stick. Ultimately, the result was that I was either abused or became complicit in the abuse of others. I’d like to be gentle, but I can’t. The cost is too great.

This is why I fight.

NaBloPoMo Day 1: Queerer Than One Can Suppose

I have a sticker on my laptop that says "God made me queer", and a rainbow tattoo on my arm that says "It's something that I'm supposed to be". Being queer is an intrinsic part of who I am, and by extension, you might think this means queerness comes as easily to me as breathing. You'd be wrong. I actually find that being queer takes up a sizeable portion of my time and energy. I realize this sounds a bit like I'm expending all my energy on hot gay sex, but believe me, that's not what's going on. Rather, I find myself spending a lot of time exploring, explaining, and defending my identity. In the interest of making that simpler, I am going to list and define some of the terms I use in describing my queer identity.

• gay
• queer
• transgender
• transmasculine
• genderqueer
• nonbinary
• FAAB/AFAB/DFAB
• asexual
• gray-asexual
• demisexual
• homoromantic
• demiromantic
• androromantic

Gay and Queer:

Contrary to popular belief, these are not synonyms. "Queer" is a broad term for "defying cultural norms of gender and/or sexuality". I identify as queer because I'm not straight. I identify as "gay" because I am a masculine-identified person who is primarily attracted to other masculine-identified people.

Transgender, Transmasculine:

"Transgender" is a broad term meaning that my gender identity does not match the sex I was assigned at birth. "Transmasculine" is a term that can mean different things for different people; for me, it means that I am a transgender person who does many things associated with being male, such as using male pronouns, using the men's restroom, and wearing masculine clothing. 

Genderqueer, nonbinary:

These are both terms which mean "having a gender identity other than strictly male or strictly female". There are lots of ways to be genderqueer/nonbinary, but in my case, it means that a) my gender feels mostly neutral most of the time, and b) my behavior defies many cultural norms associated with both binary genders. Some people prefer one term or the other for various reasons; for myself, I use whichever makes the most sense in context. 

FAAB, AFAB, DFAB:

These stand for, respectively: female-assigned at birth, assigned female at birth, designated female at birth. These are all ways of referring to a person's assigned birth sex while avoiding problematic terms like "female bodied" or "born female". 

Asexual, gray-asexual, demisexual:

"Asexual" is a spectrum of identities that involve not experiencing sexual attraction, not being interested in sex, or not having a strongly-felt sexual orientation identity. In my case, I have no aversion to sex, but I experience sexual attraction so rarely that it is not a significant part of my life. "Gray-asexual" means having an identity somewhere between completely asexual and normatively-sexual; I often use this because I feel my interest in sex is slightly greater than what most asexuals experience. "Demisexual" is a type of gray-asexual identity where a person only experiences sexual attraction to people they have an emotional bond with. When I experience sexual attraction, it is almost exclusively for people I already have a romantic attraction toward. Note that this is about attraction, not behavior. When I say that I am demisexual, I'm not just saying that I only choose to have sex with people I love. It means I literally am not capable of sexual attraction to people I don't already have a bond with.

Homoromantic, demiromantic, androromantic:

These words describe my romantic orientation. While I only experience sexual attraction very rarely, I experience romantic attraction with relative frequency. "Homoromantic" means, loosely, I am a boy who is romantically attracted to boys. "Androromantic" also means I'm attracted to masculine-identified people, but it doesn't have any connotations related to my gender. This can be an important distinction, because I don't feel that all masculine-identified or masculine-presenting people have the same precise gender identity as me. "Demiromantic" is an identity I've only recently begun exploring, but it essentially means I only become romantically attracted to people I already know pretty well.

Also, because it's useful, here's a list of terms I do NOT identify with:

FTM

Female-bodied

Transsexual

Tranny

Homosexual (unless you're being tongue-in-cheek)

Crossdresser

Transman or man (Boy, guy, and dude are okay, but I really prefer "person")

Finally, you may occasionally hear me refer to myself as a "fag". A discussion of reclamatory speech and who gets to use it is beyond the scope of this post, but basically: Don't call me a fag unless you know with absolute, 100% certainty that it is okay for you to do so. If you're one of the people who can say it, you probably know who you are. Otherwise, don't. The same rule applies to other people who self-identify as a fag or any other reclaimed slur.

I hope this list gives you a better understanding of my identity and which words to choose when talking about me! Again, I want to emphasize that not every term listed here applies universally in the same way it applies to me. When in doubt, describe people using the terms you hear them use to describe themselves (however: see note above re: reclamatory speech). And don't be afraid to ask me if you need a definition clarified!

Confession Time

I’ve been part of the unschooling/uncollege community for years now, and I’ve tried hard to practice what I preach. I treat kids with dignity and respect, I recognize other people’s interests and passions as legitimate, and I do my best to accept other people for who they are. But I’m having one major problem: when it comes to my own education, I’m not feeling so good at this whole self-directed learning thing.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy learning! I love to learn new things, at least in theory. But in practice, I’ll sit down to read a book or watch a lecture, even one whose content I’m really interested in, and I get distracted almost immediately. I’d rather play a video game, I’d rather talk to a friend. I can’t get myself to create art or practice a musical instrument. Even writing doesn’t come naturally to me anymore. Anything that takes focus I just can’t seem to do. Sometimes I’ll decide I need more structure in my life, and start creating lists and schedules. But I stick to those for maybe a day and then I can’t stand it anymore.

And I’m not sure what it is, exactly, that I need. I worry that I might have undiagnosed ADD and need medication, but my psychiatrist seems doubtful. I wonder if I just lack self-discipline, but that conflicts with my belief that discipline shouldn’t be necessary for motivation. Is it just that I lack external motivation? Maybe I do need to be in school. Maybe I’ve been wrong all along and some people really do need formal education to get anything done. But that would fly in the face of the lived experience of so many terrific unschoolers I know, and it would mean the entire philosophy I’ve been living by is wrong. Maybe I’m just in a place in my life where I need other things more than I need education. But there’s still that looming fear that I’m doing everything wrong, especially when my other “self-directed” friends seem to be doing amazing things and I’m not.

And anyway, if I did go to college, what would I be going for? Not the right reasons, I can tell you that. The right reason to go to college, in my view, is because you’re passionate about the academics of a particular subject or you know you want a career that requires a particular degree. If I go back to college right now, it will be out of fear. Fear that I can’t do it on my own, fear of ending up poor forever. But then I know so many people with degrees who can barely find even a minimum-wage job, and they’ve got student loan debt to pay back.

I’ve talked before about going to a low-residency program, like Goddard, and that option is still on the table. But I worry that I’m going for the wrong reasons, and I worry more that there’s something wrong with me that would make the workload impossible.

I feel like I’m running out of time. I’m 27 years old and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I’ve got to figure something out soon.

Zen and the Art of Gender Maintenance

I’m contemplating gender today.

I didn’t make up the title of this post. I stole it from a chapter of My Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein, or as many young trans people know her, “Auntie Kate”. She’s well qualified to write books about gender, having lived as a man, then a woman, then neither, then back to woman again.

I like to read in the bath, and I happened to grab My Gender Workbook on the way to the tub this afternoon. Flipping through it, I had the thought to take an inventory of all the things about me that can be classified as male or female. The first thing on my list was that I’d just watched My Little Pony, which is a cartoon for little girls but most of the MLP fans I know are male. According to Auntie Kate, “transgender” means “transgressing gender”. My Little Pony, by that definition, is a transgender show.

Is it an accident that half the people in my house identify as transgender and the other half identify as bronies? We’re all transgressing gender, one way or another.

I wanted to give up on my list after that, feeling the exercise to be a bit futile. But I couldn’t help thinking about it. When you’re transgender, the gender of everything you do is scrutinized. If you’re transitioning to male, you better make sure everything you do is sufficiently masculine lest your authenticity be doubted; the converse is true for those transitioning to female. But what gender can be assigned to Ocean Breeze body wash? Is it feminine because I lather it up with a purple bath pouf? What happens if I put on Old Spice deodorant after? What gender are Spongebob toothpaste, a Star Trek t-shirt and Homer Simpson boxers?

My mind drifts back to childhood. I loved my Barbies. I had dozens of them. But I also loved toy cars and swingsets and baseball, not softball, and Warner Bros. cartoons and the Beatles. What gender is all of that?

What gender is my black and white Ikea desk, or a bright yellow ukulele, or a can of black cherry seltzer, or a Prince CD? What gender is Prince, a person who changed his name to a symbol combining male and female?

Now my iTunes switches over to an early Genesis song called “The Cinema Show”. What gender was Peter Gabriel in his fox head and red cocktail dress? What about these lyrics:

I have crossed between the poles

Once a man, like the sea I raged

Once a woman, like the Earth I gave

But there is in fact more earth than sea

I love those lyrics. I love the idea of feminine energy and the idea that there is more giving than raging, more earth than sea. But in geology we learn that the earth rages more than the sea and the sea’s rage comes from the earth and moon. If we cannot neatly sort the movements of earth and sea, how can we neatly sort woman from man, members of the same species? We begin, in the womb, with the same genital configuration and we end in the grave with only bones. Some religions try to assign a gender to God, but how could a God of only one gender breathe both masculine and feminine life into the world?

These are the thoughts going through my head this afternoon, as I wonder what gender I am. Am I a man because I don’t want to be a woman? Am I a woman because I don’t want to be a man? I find the idea of maleness far too constricting, but the same is true of many cisgender men I know.

I think the thing I miss most about being a kid is that I could just identify as a kid. I don’t think my gender has changed since then, but I’ve outgrown kid as an identity. So what am I now?