Return of the Naval Gazer

I rode the bus home the long way tonight. I caught the 52, which meanders through Nicholls, Gold Creek, and Gunghalin on its way to the City. I like to look at the pretty houses in the affluent new suburbs.

I just wanted to sit and think for a bit, and reminisce a little. I’ve been riding that bus every few weeks for several years now. Maybe because I have never lived with it, but I find the idea of middle class security attractive, not boring.
I like the idea of being a middle class guy, with a wife, two kids and a Golden Retriever. Drinking beer in the pub with my mates on Friday nights, and watching my kids play soccer and netball on Sundays. Tinkering with a home network in the study, while the wife gossips with her best friend on the phone.
Thats the fantasy I indulge when I ride that bus. Its evolved over the years, from something hazy revolving around wanting to live in a place like that, to a detailed dream where I know what we eat for dinner, and the colour of the couch.

This post was going to be about how that lifes not really going to be for me though. About how I’m way too bent for such a straight life, that I know that as attractive as the dream is, my life will be something a bit different.
Now though, I am wondering, why do I think that? I’ve always yearned for it never believing I could have it. It occurs to me now though, that it could be mine, if I really do want it, and don’t just enjoy dreaming about it.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t actually enjoy the instability of turning my life upside down every few months. The fact that my current job is secure means the world to me.

I don’t know where my life is going at this point. I know that I have my career, and I am about to start physical transition, and in a few years I’ll be able to blend into society. What then?

The possibilities are endless! I can dance till dawn in gay night clubs, I can climb rocks, lift weights, go running, read books, program computers, draw pictures, write blog posts, kiss my boy… do everything that I do now, but without the anxiety, without the binder restricting my breathing and movement, without the fear of misgendering.

Life will just go on how it is now, the only difference will be how I am seen by the world.

Hackers and other Geekery

I work in IT, and love computers, though I have been somewhat distracted from them recently. Its odd, but now that my first shot of T is so close (IT COULD BE TOMORROW!!!!) I feel more inclined to throw myself back into my career, into the world, to pull my head out of my belly button, and stop with the naval gazing.

So anyway, I was reading an article on internet security, The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security, and this quote is part of the fourth idea, ‘Hacking is Cool’:

Around the time I was learning to walk, Donn Parker was researching the behavioral aspects of hacking and computer security. He says it better than I ever could:

“Remote computing freed criminals from the historic requirement of proximity to their crimes. Anonymity and freedom from personal victim confrontation increased the emotional ease of crime, i.e., the victim was only an inanimate computer, not a real person or enterprise. Timid people could become criminals. The proliferation of identical systems and means of use and the automation of business made possible and improved the economics of automating crimes and constructing powerful criminal tools and scripts with great leverage.”

Hidden in Parker’s observation is the awareness that hacking is a social problem. It’s not a technology problem, at all. “Timid people could become criminals.” The Internet has given a whole new form of elbow-room to the badly socialized borderline personality. The #4th dumbest thing information security practitioners can do is implicitly encourage hackers by lionizing them. The media plays directly into this, by portraying hackers, variously, as “whiz kids” and “brilliant technologists” - of course if you’re a reporter for CNN, anyone who can install Linux probably does qualify as a “brilliant technologist” to you. I find it interesting to compare societal reactions to hackers as “whiz kids” versus spammers as “sleazy con artists.” I’m actually heartened to see that the spammers, phishers, and other scammers are adopting the hackers and the techniques of the hackers - this will do more to reverse society’s view of hacking than any other thing we could do.

(bold emphasis his, italicized emphasis mine)

Mostly I wanted to post this here cos of the “Hurr, hurr, hurr… CNN reporters are dumb, I am 1337 linux h@x0R!” element, but I do have a point as well.

My mum was much more careful about the amount of access I had to the internet after I downloaded Princess Maker 2, with its original japanese graphics patch (read: hentai), and accidentally made the computer boot into that game instead of the operating system (win95 back then) every time the computer was turned on.
It was pretty amusing. I wasn’t as much of a geek after that, cos of lack of access, but I still managed to muddle my way around the schools network, and befriend the computer science teachers.

By the time I left home though, I considered myself computer literate, but not much more. I bought DELL LAPTOP for gods sake. $2K on a piece of crap. *head desk*
Now days I am one of the more computer literate of my friends, and work in IT Desktop Support (You’re printer is jammed? I’ll be right there). One day I would like to get into network security and system administration.

Anyway, I have always maintained that certain personalities are attracted to computers for different reasons. I mentioned that to an academic here that studies communications, and she thought it was an interesting idea, and asked if I thought I could predict a persons personality based on the OS, software, and kind of computer user they are. I asked for her to try me.
Her son uses linux mostly, is a software engineer, and has no patience with her computer illiteracy. She added a few more details about his jobs specifics. I correctly predicted that he was arrogant about his own intelligence in spite of low social and emotional intelligence, and likes to use his knowledge of computer technology to make the people around him admire him and/or feel inferior.

(I don’t think that all linux geeks are like that… but there are certainly some out there. I sit next to a total unix geek at work, and he’s awesome. Just like not all Apple Geeks are evangelical dickwads, or all Windows users are dumb mainstream-culture consuming gamers.)

I don’t think that it takes a genius to observe that certain personalities are attracted to various careers. I think that it follows that certain people have different uses for computers, and so approach them in different ways.
I think that computers are primarily a social problem. Windows Vista, and Mac OS X are both fabulously secure computer systems… UNTIL YOU ADD AN END USER.

Its the bouncing bunny rule. The end user will do anything to get to the bouncing bunny. Click on anything, install anything, type in any password. Offer the user a bouncing bunny, and the system is yours.

You’re bias is showing…

I don’t usually post on global affairs, or even local affairs. I am tremendously self-absorbed, and don’t read the news. I decided yesterday to start reading the news, but I don’t know how long I will keep it up, given the SHITE that goes on in the world. It is just plain depressing.

News.com.au has this fabulous headline running today:

Four children ‘killed’ at Breakfast Table

Nice use of scare quotes in that headline huh?
My immediate thought was that the children must not really be dead, it must be some kind of ruse or something. If you click through to the article though, it becomes clear that no, the children are in fact dead. Four of them. They have names, and ages, and stuff.

Four children were KILLED at the breakfast table. Not ‘killed’, actually KILLED.

Altogether, 6 people were killed, and 9 wounded from that household, and a 15 year old kid that was walking by on his way to school was also killed.

They were killed by an ISRAELI BOMB that hit their HOUSE.

Of course, the Israeli military is looking into the ‘claims’. The article reads goes on to say:

Defence analysts fear Hamas will use the ceasefire to regroup and re-arm following months of heavy clashes that have drained ammunition and taken a toll on key personnel.

Because you know, its not like the Israeli’s didn’t just use the cease fire to ‘kill’ a family in Gaza or anything.

And people wonder why I ignore the media.

Age and Autonomy

I am 22 years old. I am an adult, have been for four years. I think that this fact hasn’t sunk in for some people around me.

I was packed and ready to leave home months before I was actually able to leave. Once I left I visited home as little as possible. I don’t even return home for traditional holidays such as Christmas, Easter or birthdays. Sometimes I see my family on those days, but usually not. I tried to remember to call my mum on this Easter, but got my holidays muddled and wished her a Merry Christmas in a confused voice message.

I’ve seen the people that were cornerstones of my childhood maybe a dozen times in the last four years. I walked out of that town, and I am never going back.

These people who were once so important to me abandoned me over and over, at times in my life when their support, help and input would have been valuable. I emailed only three people about my transition. Once I thought about it, they were all that I thought needed to know, and two of them were more for my mothers sake, than because I wanted them in my life.
The rumour mill of course has been at work, and I have received many emails now.

The thing that really stands out, is the amount of control and influence these people expect to have over my life. People that haven’t even seen me in over a year expecting me to not only listen to them, but admit that they are right, and I am wrong, about something as personal as my gender and sexuality.

At first I wondered. I thought that maybe its cos they are old (median age in the 60’s), or conservative (Christians, every last one of them). Then I came to realise, that its not that. Its that they see me as a child. Last time I saw them I was a mousey little girl who couldn’t say boo to a goose, did whatever she was told, went to church and bible study every week, sang in church, etc etc I was completely compliant. You didn’t even have to tell me to do something, you just had to suggest it might be good if someone did something, and I would do it. I was a praise junky, and terrified of conflict.

That I have ‘rebelled’ so completely since I left home has come as a great surprise to most people, none more so than my poor mother. I am the Black Sheep. On my middle class income, with caring friends, and a secure career, and most of a university degree (even if its on hold at the moment), I am The Shame. (My brother is a criminal. CONVICTED criminal, and yet I am still the black sheep. Go figure.)

So, many of these people seem to view this as simply the next step in my rebellion. If only they could see how far that is from the truth. How much it hurts me to have to fight, to go against the flow.

My mother spoke to me on the phone last night about a friend of hers, who ‘lived the bisexual lifestyle’ from her late teens until she was 29, when she met and fell in love with a Wonderful Man, and got Married. She went on to live Happily Ever After and have lots of Babies.

At 22, she said, everything seems urgent, but you really don’t know what you want.

Don’t I?

How long must I want it to know for certain? If I said that I wanted to get married, and have a baby, would anyone contest my wishes? Would anyone say ‘Wait until you are 30, then you can KNOW for sure’?

At 17 I knew for sure I was masculine identified. That hasn’t changed, not once in the 5 years since then. The only thing that changed is what I thought I could do about it.

I WANT MY LIFE! It begins NOW, but its paused, its moving in slow motion, as I make arrangements. This section of my life is dedicated to planning for the future. Its counting the years, its figuring out my career, and transition, and love life, and making sure that I can do this.

I want to live as a man, more than anything else in the world. I feel like shit every time I am misgendered. I hate it when my mother calls me by my birth name. I will transition. When I am given my script for T, I will buy it, and inject it. This is my life, my future. Don’t ask me to stay here in the fringes, being misgendered and misinterpreted.

I am an adult, and I will say it again… I don’t need anyone. I can turn my back on anyone, at any time. Don’t push me away by treating me like a child.

Am I cool with being gay?

So my boyfriend asked me what I thought was an odd question last night:
“How come you are so cool with being gay?”
My response wasn’t that helpful, it was along the lines of “With so much else to worry about, how can I worry about that too!”

I’ve been thinking about it a bit since then.

I spent most of my life thinking that I was a lesbian, and that explained me. Of course that fell flat the moment I investigated the lesbian scene, but that was an important learning experience for me. (Lesbians are women! Shock! Who knew. Even Butch Dykes are still women!)

When I heard the term Pansexual last year I adopted that sexual identity. Really pansexuality is a kind of bisexuality, but ignores the gender binary. I don’t identify as third gender, or outside the gender binary, but there are people that do, and I do find that attractive, as well as finding both men and women attractive.

I went back to identifying as lesbian for a while because I found out about physical transition, and somehow felt like I needed to make absolutely certain that I wasn’t a lesbian instead of a man. I also realised that all the relationships I had with men up until that point had been deeply unhealthy, and for very broken reasons, and assumed that any attraction I felt to men would be for similarly faulty reasons in the future.

Now I identify as ‘pansexual’, ‘queer’, ‘male’, ‘trans’, and ‘gay’. I am cool with being gay, just because it fits me. I like applying the term ‘fag’ to myself.
I’ve realised that yeah, my relationships with men in the past have been kinda fucked up, and I’ve entered them for fucked up reasons, but that doesn’t mean I am completely not attracted to men. I also acknowledge that part of my attraction to men is a fascination with the male body. I love watching men shower, and shave, and do other manly things that I just never saw in my house. (By the time my brother hit puberty I’d disconnected from my family).
I also know that there have been men that I have loved deeply, and passionately, and that they have made me feel hot around the ears when they’ve kissed me. (My ears get hot when I am turned on, is that normal?)

I’m currently in a relationship with another guy, and frankly, the only thing that matters to me is that he digs me as much as I dig him. What people think doesn’t factor much… except for one thing!
There’s only one thing I hate more than being perceived as a lesbian, and that is being perceived as a straight woman. I am misgendered less often when I am physically with him though.

I think that I can be rather blase about being gay, because my life contains two categories of people. People who’s opinion doesn’t matter to me, and people who don’t care that I am queer.
Others aren’t always that lucky.

In Your Dreams

One of the guys on FTM was asking about Lucid Dreaming as an alternative to transition. I found that a really interesting idea.

I have many many dreams, most of them lucid, and usually some kind of reflection of my emotional life. I have posted retellings of my dreams here before, including one of the scariest dreams I have had for a while, which involved being castrated by a priest.

My dreams fall into a few different categories, and although I am lucid… that is aware that I am dreaming, often I do not have particulary good control over the events of the dream. That is becoming less of a problem as my feelings of powerlessness in waking life fade.

Acceptance Never Gets Old

In the post responding to Saint being a douche on my blog, Gender Outlaw left this comment:

I hope Saint gains some understanding from your thoughts in this post.

I try to remember that non-trans people simply haven’t explored these issues as much as trans people have, so it’s up to us sometimes to share the light.

I would disagree with your assertion that your transition impacts no one but yourself though. In writing an email to a friend the other day who doesn’t seemed convinced that I’ve “thought this through,” I explained to her that I have in fact been extremely thorough in my self-exploration and that one of the reasons for this is that I feel my transition affects my partner, family, friends and co-workers. Very few of the people in my life have any experience with trans people and despite their best intentions, there are going to be some awkward moments. I cannot expect people to seamless shift their view of me; it’s going to take time for people to see me as male and to start using male pronouns. I’m not responsible for their feelings about my trans nature, but I think that recognizing the impact I am having on people is going to make the adjustments smoother for everyone. This is an opportunity to positively impact the lives of the people I know.

I came across this quote last night reading Transgender Warriors:

“We have a right to live openly and proudly. When we are denied those rights, we are the ones who suffer that oppression. But when our lives are suppressed, everyone is denied an understanding of the rich diversity of sex and gender expression and experience that exists in human society.”

Being a unique and rare gift to the world as an individual soul, you WILL make an impact on the people in your life, and that’s a great opportunity to share your gifts.

Something about it bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out what, cos after all what he says makes perfect sense. Last night though, I had an epiphany.

Net Nanny

Also, according to this Cafe, my blog is ‘harmful to young public’.

ROFLMAO

GAH! $1 for every 10 minutes?

In a really really expensive internet cafe, and oh god I never realised how much time it takes to check my email, and my facebook, and my LJ, and moderate comments, and anyway…………..

I HAVE THE LETTER!

Thankyou for your concern… *really*

So, I got a lovely comment from a charming fellow who calls himself Saint. I moderated the comment cos it isn’t in line with my comments policy. However, I am going to dedicate a post to ‘educating’ Saint because a friend thinks maybe he can be taught. I don’t.
I think that Saint has his head so far up his arse, and thinks that he knows so much better than me, that this is a worthless exercise for educating him. It may however send a wake up call to some of the people from my past who have said similar things to me.

Ryan… [edit - he stated my girl name here]…
I doubt that I would be welcome to comment here, so let me cut to the chase.

Don’t do it.
Don’t condemn yourself to a life of misery.
You won’t find the freedom and acceptance you are looking for. You’ll be happy for a while and then still find something missing.
Don’t surround yourself with people who are egging you on down this path or else are just doctors and shrinks blithely doing their job with no concern for you as a person.
Find those who love you enough to tell you the truth.