Transy Christmas arguments with the family

Last year around this time I wrote a mopey post titled Christmas in the closet. Since I'm no longer in the closet to my parents, this year's post is somewhat less mopey, though not exactly mope-free, as we shall see.

I spent the 24th and 25th at my parents' house, as did Carson and Jamey, my brother and sister-in-law. My parents live in a small basement suite, and with the five of us humans there, plus their two dogs and one cat, no one gets much personal space.

Every year mom and dad insist on making a huge deal out of the holiday. We have to have an elaborate family meal on Christmas eve, then a large traditional breakfast Christmas morning, and finally a traditional turkey dinner Christmas evening. The result is that, with the exception of the gift exchanging, we spend nearly all our time in the kitchen, frantically preparing food or washing dishes. By mid-afternoon on the 25th we're usually all a bit snippy and short-tempered.

It was during this mid-afternoon time of snippiness that I went to put some music on with my mom's laptop. "Play something by what's-its-name," she suggested.
"Mom," I said, "I think I know who you're talking about. And that's not cool."
"Well, using 'they' is too confusing," she countered. I was right about who she meant.

My mom's really into indie rock. Recently I'd introduced her to music of Rae Spoon, which she loves. Rae is an Alberta native (though now living in Quebec) who, in addition to making some really groovy tunes, happens to have a non-binary gender identity. They prefer the pronoun "they."

"Who are you talking about?" Carson asked.
"This person is a transgender person who doesn't belong to either gender," mom explained. "It wants to be called 'they', but I think that's too confusing,"
"But mom, you can't call a trans person 'it'," I said, "that's cruel!"
"Yeah," Jamey added, "that sounds really de-humanizing."
"Well, what am I supposed to say then?" asked mom. "I'm not saying 'they'."

I sighed.

"Look mom, I totally agree that it's confusing, but I'm willing to call them 'they' in spite of that, if that's what they want. That's just being respectful."

For the record I'm not a huge fan of singular 'they' and I'm personally hoping that 'ze' or one of its variations (zie, xe, etc.) catches on instead. Even so, I believe that respecting other peoples' pronouns is more important than my private linguistic pedantry. Amazingly, I managed to correctly use Rae's preferred pronouns throughout the entire argument without a single slip-up— I think I deserve some kind of tranny award for that. :)

"Fine!" mom decalared. "From now on the pronoun I want to be called by is 'dumbass'. Unless you're calling me by name, that's what you have to refer to me as."
"Oh god," I said, facepalming. "Mom, come on..."
"Well, see? Just because you tell people what to say doesn't mean they actually have to say it."

I guess what she was trying to do was to use humour to illustrate a point, or something? That's not what it felt like though: it felt like she was just mocking me for being trans. And mocking the enitre community I belong to. Stunned, I sat down on the couch and fought back a few tears.

When she noticed she'd hurt me she came over and apologized. I said "okay," but I still felt pretty awful for the rest of the evening. I suppose I sulked for a while, though I don't think I meant to— I'm just really bad at pretending to not be sad.

After dinner I left with my brother and sister-in-law and we went to hang out at their apartment. All three of us had found Christmas to be generally stressful and unpleasant this year, and it was really helpful to be able to talk about it with them afterwards.

While I was there my dad called me to make sure I hadn't driven home and hanged myself, (of course he didn't say so, but I could tell that's why he was calling)— my parents are certainly aware of the stats about trans people, even if they could stand to learn a little more about pronoun etiquette. I assured him I was fine, and he sounded very relieved when I told him I was with Carson and Jamey.

I spent a good chunk of Boxing Day relaxing and sipping coffee, and felt a lot better about everything after that.

On a lighter note, Carson and Jamey got me nail polish for Christmas! After I unwrapped it, my brother was careful to point out that the two of them had chosen the colours together— in other words, that it wasn't just his wife shopping for the "girly" stuff. He's so cool.

Yay! They obviously know me pretty well. ^_^

I love my family, and I like Christmas. But I'm sincerely hoping that next year my parents can be convinced to celebrate it on a smaller scale, for all our sakes.

A very gendery day

I somewhat outed myself as at least gender non-conforming on Facebook today. I posted a happy status update about "listening to Wintersun and painting my nails". And it felt good to simply express how I was feeling.

Now of course, my gender non-conformity isn't news to anyone who sees me on a regular basis, but there are a lot of people on Facebook that I haven't seen in quite a while. Most of these are friends from the conservative Christian community I was a part of in my "previous life," before I moved to Edmonton. I can't help but think that many among that group might be close-minded about all this gendery stuff.

Wintersun, the band I mentioned, is a heavy metal group from Finland. I listen to fairly wide variety of music genres, but metal is what first got me into music as a teenager, and it will probably always hold a special place in my heart. Lately I've come to appreciate a certain defiant attitude that pervades a lot of metal music: it's the same kind of defiant attitude it takes to go out into the world as a boy with a kick-ass shade of red on your nails.

Defiantly pretty

I was at the mall today— the very big one that Edmonton is sort of famous for. (As a side note, it's kind of weird being from a town whose greatest claim to fame is having a very big mall. Two years ago, when I was in Japan, I found myself chatting chatting with a local fellow who spoke English. When I told him where I was from he said, "Oh, Edmonton! I've been to your mall. It's... very big." What else is there to say?) Even with my red nails, my cute flats, my purse and the quick dash of mascara and I'd applied, I was in boy mode. I wasn't wearing any foundation to cover my beard shadow, and I was flat-chested (as in no bra, just a t-shirt over my ordinary male torso).

When I had to pee I opted for the men's room. I figure that if I'm presenting somewhat ambiguously, the fact that I'm standing at a urinal should tip the scale toward male for anyone present who might be confused. It's always stressful though. I was glad there were lots of people around so I didn't have to worry about getting beat up. When I washed my hands the guy at the sink next to me stared at me the whole time. I was very, very glad to finish up and get out of that gendered space.

Immediately after this I went to buy some souvlaki at the food court. The cashier called me "ma'am." Like three times.

Holy shit, are you serious?

I remembered many years ago, when I was doing a very good job of suppressing my gender, that I used to get taken for female now and then because of my long hippie hair. At the time this bothered me (because, like I said, suppressing my gender), so as soon as I could I grew a hippie beard to go with it. That seemed to convince everyone I was a man. Heck, I nearly convinced myself.

Nowadays, of course, I am generally very happy to be seen as female, because I'm beginning to accept that that's who I am. But in this case it kind of freaked me out. It's stressful when you don't know whether the next person to look at you will see a man or a woman. Or at least it is to me.

What I gained today is an even deeper respect for genderqueer and other non-binary people who present androgynously on a regular basis. Navigating a binary world that doesn't have a category for you is just plain hard sometimes.

(And in case you're wondering, I spent like five minutes taking pictures of my fist and another ten messing around in GIMP to produce the illustration for this post. I am far too easily side-tracked, it seems.)

Ungendering Facebook

I use Facebook quite a bit. I'm on there at least once a day, and for a number of people in my life, it's my primary means of keeping in touch. (Whether or not this is beneficial is debatable, but that's a different topic.) Like anyone, I want the persona I project online to reflect the person I feel I am. I recently made two small changes in Facebook-world that I feel very happy about.

I'm now they instead of he. This was surprisingly complicated. Facebook, ostensibly, does not allow users to unspecify their gender, nor does it provide any non-binary options. You have to choose a gender, and it has to be male or female. At best you can choose not to display your gender on your profile, but it will still refer to you with gendered pronouns based on your choice. However, it used to allow gender to be unspecified, and still retains the functionality to use neutral pronouns. With a bit of screwing around and some help from this thread, I was able to outwit Facebook and force it to stop gendering me: take that, Zuckerberg! :) I'm honestly surprised by how much better this makes me feel.

"themself"

(For the record, I'm not a huge fan of singular they either, though that has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with linguistic pedantry. Even so, I'd much rather be mispluralized than misgendered.)

The other thing I did was to change my profile picture. My last one had been up there for nearly three years, largely because I'm never really happy with pictures of boy-me (for obvious reasons) and I'm still mostly closeted about girl-me. My new picture is, in fact, a photo of girl-me— I was fully crossdressed when I took it— that's been carefully edited. It's cropped so that my boobs are out of the frame, and desaturated so that my blush and lipstick are nearly invisible. The result is that it doesn't scream "crossdresser," but looks much more feminine than its predecessor, replete with beard and bushy eyebrows as it was. And I feel so much better, knowing that the face I'm presenting is that of the real me.

Boy? Girl? Who knows!

A quick feminist rage post

Apologies in advance. I probably shouldn't be rage-posting on this blog, but... I'm going to anyways.

So, there's this online crossdressing forum that I'm registered on. I don't visit there very often, but every now and then I'll pop in and see what's going on, read a few threads, leave some comments, that sort of thing.

Today a lady had posted saying she was going on her first date with a man, and her first date as a woman, and was asking for advice. (She added that she'd never been into men before but had a crush on this one and was through with trying to categorize her sexuality: a good attitude to have, I think). As you can imagine there was lots of excitement, thoughts on what to wear, what style of wig to go with, tips on staying safe... all the typical stuff you'd expect from a gaggle of crossdressers.

Several people, however, said things like "let him do most of the talking," and "make sure he pays the bill." Someone actually said "be passive; don't talk, listen."

Cue feminist rage moment.

Seriously? Be passive? Don't talk? What kind of 1950s bullcrap sexism is that? You would think crossdressers, whose very existence challenges binary gender norms, would be the last people in the world to appeal to and reinforce the traditional male\female roles. Gender binarism is precisely the reason why so many of us are forced into the closet, why so many of us can't be ourselves around our friends and families, and why so many of us can't dress the way we want to on a day-to-day basis. It's also part of the reason why trans people in general are stigmatized, mocked, and occasionally killed. And yet here we are, propping up that system ourselves. Way to go, gals.

I was a tad nettled.

"Don't talk, sweetheart. Every man loves a woman with no personality!"

Of course, if she wants to be passive and listen, that's fine. If she wants to clean his house and do his laundry afterward, that's fine too, I don't care. What bothered me is that people were recommending passivity solely because she's going to be a woman on a date with a man.

Anyways, I didn't comment there because I'm not a regular and didn't want to take the thread off topic. But typing this out here has felt good.

That is all :)