My mom wrote a letter

Driving home from work last Wednesday I heard the familiar ping of an incoming text message. I checked it when I got home. It was my mom, saying she needed to talk to me, and asking if now was a good time to call. I texted back "sure" and my phone promptly rang.

"I think we should tell your grandparents about your being transgender," she said, after the initial hellos.
"Uh, okay. You mean like, soon-ish?"
"Yeah. I think they should know. And I'm sure they'll accept you."

She explained that her parents and my dad's parents had both specifically enquired as to how I was doing recently. Both of my grandmothers are active on Facebook— (that tells you something about my age, eh)— and she figured that some of what I'd been posting recently might have made them wonder about me.

Personally I thought that she might just be reading into things, making connections between phenomena the way our brains tend to do. But regardless, my grandparents have to learn at some point. So I said okay.

As we talked about it it became apparent to me that she had, in fact, already written out an email to her parents and my dad's parents explaining the situation. She was phoning to get my permission to hit the send button. So I asked her what she'd written.

"Like, it explains that you feel like a woman trapped in a man's body, and that..."
"Uh, well,"  I interrupted her, "that's not the terminology I would use."

(Of course, the old "x trapped in a y's body" is a reasonably good answer to the what is trans? question if you're talking to someone who's completely unfamiliar with the concept and have at most one second to explain it. But otherwise it's pretty inadequate.)

"Oh," she replied, "what would you say?"

And if I had had the presence of mind to do so, I might have come up with something like, "I feel internally that I am mostly female, despite the fact that my body appears male, and this incongruity causes me a significant amount of discomfort."

But instead I said, "Oh, I don't know. I guess that's close enough." (Not a great answer on my part, I know.)

At this point I asked her to just read me the whole thing, which she did. And for the most part it was pretty good: explaining and clarifying some aspects of what trans is and isn't, as well as stating that I'd always been this way and that my parents' relationship with me was still good.

Unfortunately it also included some theologizing that I found a little unpleasant. There was something along the lines of: "We don't know why God allowed our child to be born with this condition, but we believe all things happen for a reason." She actually felt the need to clarify that they believe God intended me to be born with a male body.

That stung a bit, to be honest. Personally I think that "a thing happened, therefore God wills it" is a pretty horrifying way to look at the world. But I didn't argue with it being in the letter: she was writing from their perspective and if that's what they believe, it might as well say so.

After reading the whole thing she asked, "does that sound good?" I said "Yeah, I guess so" and she sent it.

And then she started talking about Minecraft and how monsters had recently blown up her house. (She and I play on the same server, along with my brother, which is pretty cool). And I realized that I am a lot more comfortable talking about video games with my mom than about my gender.

This was over a week ago now. I haven't heard anything from her about how or if my grandparents responded, but I'm not too worried about it. They're good people.

Mom's letter may not have been the exact words I would have chosen. But I am certainly glad I didn't have to be the one to write it, coming out being pretty low on my list of favourite things to do. So... thanks ma! :)

Sad songs

Gender isn't always at the forefront of my mind, contrary to what you might think from reading this blog. There are times when it matters less. Sometimes, especially if I'm focused on a particular task, I can forget about it altogether. This happened the other day at work. Which, of course, was nice.

It didn't last very long, though. Without really thinking about it, I started humming a tune, as I often do when I'm working. Then I started singing the words to it, again without really thinking about what they were.

The problem is, the song happened to be For Today I am a Boy, by Antony and the Johnsons. And the words I started singing were:

One day I'll grow up, and I'll be a beautiful woman
One day I'll grow up, and I'll be a beautiful girl
But for today I am a child
For today I am a boy

Well... crap. So much for not thinking about it. I was pretty bummed out the rest of the day.

I've got to hand it to Antony Hegarty, though. He* is very good at capturing a certain mournful feeling that can come with living in not-quite-the-right gender.

Oh gosh. Now I just listened to this song again and I'm actually crying.

So... just to balance things out a bit, I'll add that I had a great weekend hanging out with friends and with my brother and sister-in-law. It's not all bad! :)

*He prefers male pronouns, even though he doesn't identify as male.

Facebook and bigotry

Yesterday on Facebook I posted a link to this darling photo and blurb about two Iowa women finally getting married after more than 70 years together. It's pretty darn heart-warming stuff.

I did so knowing that some of the people I'm friends with on Facebook aren't exactly open-minded. I knew it was entirely possible that the comments could devolve into a stupid religious debate about whether or not homosexuality is immoral. But even if that happened I assumed everyone would at least be charitable about it.

But nope. That didn't happen. The charitable part, I mean...

To be honest I was pretty upset about this last night. Remember, this isn't just some random person on the internet; this is someone I know personally.

The tricky thing is, I'm ultimately a recovering bigot myself. So I know that people can change and I know that simply returning insults does nothing to help that process.

And that makes it very hard to know how to reply, or if I even should.

Lovely Blog Award

Okay, before I get to anything else I first have to mention that it actually snowed here this week. The only consolation is that Calgary got more than us. (hehe)

That aside, I am the recipient of a Lovely Blog Award, thanks to Because I'm Fabulous. Thanks, Michelle! :)

I'm supposed to write seven things about myself. So... here goes:

1.
I am very interested in space travel. Okay, actually like, kind of weirdly obsessed with it. For some reason the idea of visiting other worlds has completely captured my imagination. I’ve spent a lot of time reading all about the history of space age, and the great scientists (Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, Oberth, etc.) who helped to bring it in. And I’ve spent a lot of time reading about what its future might look like, too.

Sometimes there is a small amount of sadness that accompanies this interest— I mean, there hasn’t even been a moon landing in my lifetime, it feels like we’re going nowhere! But I can always indulge in hard sci-fi to make up for it.

Suffice it to say, if humans haven’t landed on Mars before the end of my life, I will probably be very disappointed.

Sunset over Gusev crater on Mars. This is another world. And we can go there! I find that thought exhilarating.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell

2.

I loooooove sushi. If I head ten different lifetimes I could devote to mastering different skills, in one of them I would be a sushi chef. For this lifetime, though, it’s just a hobby. And I still don’t make it nearly as often as I would like.

3.
Music is a hugely important part of my life. Not just listening to it, but playing it, too. I play drums and flute, but what I'm best at is piano. I’ve never had any music lessons (other than voice), I just started mashing keys until it sounded good.

Eb2 to A5

I can sing a bit, too. I hope it doesn’t sound braggy, but one thing I’m quite proud of is my range: I can hit notes as low as Eb2 and as high as A5. I’ve decided that if I do transition, I will continue to use that entire range, even the low notes. I refuse to pretend to be less capable than I actually am just for the sake of passing.

Oh, and I like writing songs. I started doing it when I was 12 and have never really stopped. That adds up to a lot of songs. A small handful of them might even be worth listening to. (And yes, an embarrassingly high number are about space travel).

I don't know of any experience I enjoy more, or find more rewarding, than performing music in front of people.

4.
I don’t play a lot of video games but when I do it’s usually Minecraft. I main Kirby in Super Smash Bros. (deal with it). I tried Dwarf Fortress once but gave up in hopelessness and despair.

Dwarf Fortress: I don't know what the hell's going on, but I'm pretty sure I'm losing.
Image credit: Casey Johnston

5.
I have an intolerance to citric acid. This means that my body doesn’t produce enough of the enzyme it needs to digest it; (this differs from a true allergy, which is an immunological response). Apparently this is a pretty rare condition— yay, I’m special!

So, I can eat small amounts of citric acid (which is good because it's in everything and you need it to live), but I do have to watch how much. Citrus fruits (oranges, lemons, etc.) are completely out of the question. Things like cherries and grapes are okay in very small amounts. Anything with tomato sauce is a bad idea. I definitely can’t drink wine.  :(

6.

I used to be a bad-ass anarchist. This was an extension of the religious views I held at the time. Basically, I saw Jesus’ teachings as requiring absolute non-violence, and I saw the state, the military, and capitalism as inherently violent and therefore needing to be opposed. (I wasn't the only person to get that from Jesus, by the way, Christianity has a long tradition of anarchist thought).

Since then, as I've changed from a believer to a skeptic, I’ve had to move away from the kind of moral absolutism that underlies anarchism. It’s very easy to be an absolutist when you’re basing your beliefs on “the infallible word of God”— much harder when you’re basing them on the entirely falsifiable findings of science.

To be clear, I still care about social justice, I’ve simply de-mythologized it. I now think violence is wrong not because God says so, but simply because it hurts people. (This is an improvement, because, like, there were a lot of things the God I believed in said were wrong that didn't actually hurt anyone.)

7.

I'm not originally from Alberta: I was born and raised in British Columbia, (Canada’s western-most province). It’s been eight years since my family moved here but in a way I still feel like an ex-pat. I am, it seems, a child of the Fraser River, and the forests of Cascadia will always be my home. Oh yeah, and go Canucks!! :)

Okay, I'm sure that was way more than I needed to write. Ayways, the actual rules for the award are as follows:
1. Thank and link back to the person who nominated you.
2. List the rules and display the award.
3. Include seven facts about yourself.
4. Nominate 15 10 some other bloggers and let them know about the award.

Since it's a chain-letter-y type thing, I will add that I'm passing it on obligation free: if you want to take part, go for it. If not, that's totally okay too. :) And so, I hereby nominate:

• A Part Time Girl

• An Unexpected Queerdom (although clicking over there her blog seems to be down at the moment...)

• Two Spirits - One Halle

• Cassidy's Quest

• Transfinite Love

Casual misogyny

I was walking down the street last Sunday. It was getting dark. I was in a sort of androgynous mode, by which I mean I wasn't making any attempt to pass as any particular gender. Like, I was carrying a purse, for example, but only because it's what I keep my wallet and phone in.

A very drunk man stumbled toward me and grumbled out, "Heeey, gorgeous! How are you??"

Okay, casual misogyny. That's a new experience. I looked down and kept walking. As I went past he said, suddenly and loudly, "Hey, wha—? Maaaaaaaan! You're a man!!"

I continued to ignore him, and he wandered off. The whole experience was kind of icky, though— certainly a "transition milestone" I could've done without.

The world's a different place when it sees you, even if only for a moment, as a woman.

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.)

Wibbly-wobbly

That's just something I came across on the interwebs recently and wanted to share. I thought Michelle (who reads this blog) and Jeremy might appreciate it, among others.

For those of you who don't watch Doctor Who, or at least haven't seen season 3 yet, it's referencing the Doctor's wonderfully unhelpful explanation of how time works. The episode in question, Blink, also just happens to be my favourite Who episode of all time. (Though I still have a couple seasons of Matt Smith to watch before I'm all caught up.)

The original line is clearly the writers' way of telling the fans "don't bother trying to figure out how time works in this show; you just have to trust us when we tell you the Doctor can't cross his own timeline and stuff." And of course, that's often how gender is, too. Ultimately, we kind of just have to take people's word for it that they experience it the way they do.