Showing posts with label gender. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gender. Show all posts

Monday, April 2, 2007

digression

Accepted norms and gender roles in dating

Popular culture sets up a game in which there are rewards and punishments (mostly, the illusion of them, though with younger teens, the punishments and rewards often become very real.)The game also contains the illusion of winning, but in truth, the game can't be won, and for good reason. To have it all (to be perfect) would mean the end of consuming. Thus, the game requires a constant stream of products to simply maintain one's position; in addition, there is the looming specter of age.

"A Slightly Chubby Woman on a Diet"

In certain pop culture contexts, thinness just looks like a lack of something--a cutting away, a type of violence. There isn't anything wrong with being skinny, but it is much more beautiful to just Be.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Tsuris: Trouble, Aggravation

I am sick of replaying your comments to me in my head, and sick of hearing my therapist's derisive voice. I am sick of finding out after the fact that little has been like it should have been. I am sick of wondering when I am going to have a lover who really loves me, who can understand and want me for who I am. I know I'm complicated.














"I don't understand. Why can't you just be a girl who prefers a certain kind of sexuality with men?" -My therapist, with disdain
"Can't you--aren't there men out there--who would want to play the role of the woman, and you play the role of the man...you know?" -My father
"Are you touching your pussy?" -Brian, during sex
"You actually like that?" -Brian, while I'm touching his bum
"I feel like holding you down and forcibly [having intercourse] with you," -N., drunk
"You're not that hairy." -N.

I am not a girl who needs to be brought out of her shell or shown the tender passion of your lovemaking. I don't cover my chest because I am insecure as a woman. I cover my chest because I want me and you and the universe to understand who I am. You want me to be comfortable? Try accepting me as I am. I'll show you everything.

Image from trannypunk.com

Friday, March 23, 2007

The last couple of days have felt brutal. I have arrived in Portland and my friend Zoe is at Broadway Crossings [the crisis unit of Ingraham].

If I am to have a lover, ze needs to be queer-not straight, not gay, not bisexual. I'm not sure I want to hold out any hope or expend any effort towards love whatsoever. Having sex usually means being compromised in some way or compromising someone else. An extended relationship with someone often means being eventually seen as female as the person sees more of my body, sees me in moments of weakness or emotion. This is especially confusing for me right now as I am in so much of a state of transition with my psyche, my gender, my life in general. But dating people who are very queer (usually genderqueer or trans themselves, involved in trans issues, interested in radical sexuality) has always been successful for me; everything else has not been. I want to be seen as human being who lives in a female body. This is even not correct, for I don't feel I live in a female body. How do you know I do? How do I know I do? My body exists in potentia when it is not known. If it happens to manifest as female at every recordable opportunity (ei. when undressing) that does not definitively prove its femaleness. I REALLY FUCKING HATE GENDER.

I feel very much in my body--very much female--today, and last night, and the sensation has been very negative and extraordinarily alien. I felt so male upon waking yesterday morning and this resulted in one of those hopeless sexual situations where each partner wants distinctly separate things and often have very different sexualities. I also-likely without reason- felt laughed at and not taken seriously in my masculinity/sexuality by Norm, and had a loss of self confidence. I feel awful, actually, and have since then. Everywhere I go, I do not want to interact with anyone, because I know I will only be seen as a woman. My body is so small and thin. If I have to be taken for a woman and told I am a woman and treated like a woman, can I at least feel like a woman? Could I at least appreciate things that I'm told come with being a woman? Could I at least understand womanhood? I want to go in the woods and make my campfire and cook my food and be around things that are sentient and green. I want the world to go fuck itself. Call me anything you want, I don't want to be a part of this anymore. I can't handle it.

Someone stole almost all of my food. Since it was stolen from Zoe's locked house inhabited by passively negative sentience, am I wrong in thinking that it may have been stolen by spirits? Or did I just put it somewhere and forget about it?