MONSTER GENDER WORDLE!

This is a fairly pointless post, but so cool! Such awesomeness!

I pasted this post on Monster Trans stuff into the generator, and got this prettiness!

And then I made this from another post about beautiful monsters!

Turning Queerness Invisible

Clearing out my drafts folder, I found this post… Originally written 17th May

So a few weeks ago I had a flip out about lesbians. I lost my temper, and wrote an angry blog post fisking a stupid article I was linked to.

At the end of that post I declared that I would never date another lesbian ever again. Now, I still see some problems with dating someone who’s political and sexual identity is centered around only loving other women. I am not so secure in my masculinity that I can date someone that doesn’t consider their sexuality at least a little fluid… same deal for straight men.

I also have difficulty with the kinds of lesbians that say they only date ‘pre-transition’ trans men. After all, thats like putting a time stamp on your relationship, and well, I don’t consider myself pre-transition, although I know that a lot of those women would consider me so. Which means, at what point do I become ‘too transitioned’ to be a suitable partner?

Anyway, this reassessment of lesbians was brought about by the realisation a few days ago that there is in fact a radfem lesbian I would date. I also realised that part of my attraction to her is because she would never date me, and more importantly, the reason she would never date me (I am man, *duh*). It made me wonder if I was too hasty in my judgement that I would never date a lesbian? I don’t know.

Current Thoughts:
Thats as much as I had written, and I got distracted or something. I am kinda over my little ‘ZOMG LESBIANZ ARE TEH EV0L’ thing. Its a bit stupid, and reactionary, and was essentially the result of some hurt feelings.
Lesbians are in fact pretty awesome, and it was silly of me to let my lifelong admiration for dykes get tarnished by one argument.

What I think that is at the core of issue here is the idea of visibility.
I want my masculinity to be visible. I also want my queerness to be visible. This means that sometimes I like to hook up with gay guys just because it reinforces both my masculinity and queerness all in one heady, intoxicating kiss.
A Lesbian dating a trans man wants her queerness to be visible, but unless the couple can negotiate an alternative kind of queerness, she risks erasing or undermining her partners identity in order to ensure hers remains visible. Sometimes trans men stop identifying as queer, and thats cool, but that can suck for his girlfriend, if she identifies as a lesbian, and doesn’t want to redefine as straight.

I tend to either be visibly male, or visibly queer. I am interpreted as one or the other, but rarely both simultaneously. Sometimes its more important to me to be seen as male, sometimes its more important to me to be seen as queer.

Most of the time I can define myself, and thats enough. However, if one is part of a relationship, one cannot define oneself with complete disregard to a partners feelings. If I am dating a man he cannot decide to redefine himself as straight, and expect me to be totally fine with that. (Especially if he starts screwing up my pronouns consistently after this ‘redefinition’ *frowns*)
Of course, if one appears to be in a heterosexual relationship, how does one go about ensuring they are still welcome in queer spaces, still welcome at queer events?
I think that its important for people who are primarily part of cissexual ’same-sex’ relationships to remain aware that bisexuals, and trans people often still define as queer, even if they are not always visibly so.

Any thoughts on this? My idea’s are still kinda fuzzy, so I hope what I am getting at is kinda clear. (Meanwhile, the second half of this post is totally different to the first half, cos I don’t really remember where I was going originally…)

Loving Your Soul

This post is about pansexuality.
A warning:
I have had people suggest that since ‘pan’ in this context means ‘everything’, that means that pansexuals are open to bestiality, and pedophilia. Therefore I shouldn’t label myself with that word.

The hetero- in heterosexual comes from the greek ‘heteros’ that means ‘different’. So clearly, heterosexuals must all want to fuck animals, cos animals are different from humans. Right?
*rolls eyes*

We understand that homosexual and heterosexual and bisexual refer to ’same gender’, ‘different gender’ and ‘two genders’ respectively, in regards to who someone falls in love with, and who someone fucks.
If you want to claim that ‘pansexual’ means something other than ‘every gender’ or ‘all genders’, then srsly, fuck off. I wont engage with you in this post.

Clearly, it is not Spam!

I am angry. I attempted to send an email to Jacky earlier, which contained an attachment, and some brief text. It bounced back twice, and I was really confused until I got an auto-generated email from Google.

Apparently my email had been flagged as spam. Apparently, even though it was only sent to one person, it was flagged as spam.

I am not free to express myself in an email to one friend, because sexual content is censored as SPAM.

(By sexual content, I mean the sentence “and now I have a semi-permanent boner”)

I am not happy about this. I don’t mind that Google protects people from bulk mail outs. They provide instructions for how to ensure you can still send bulk mail.
However, I should be able to write whatever I want in an email to one person. What right has google to censor my emails?

I brought this up with my colleagues, and they seem to think that I should avoid sending emails with inappropriate content. The thing is though, it wasn’t inappropriate. The sender, the reciever, and the context means that it was perfectly acceptable to send that email.

Who is GOOGLE to decide?

Beautiful Monster

I have been considering beauty myths recently. Since my post on Monstrous Gender actually.

As I said, I am not afraid of becoming monstrous, because my body will be closer to what it should be. My dysphoria is already decreasing, just from binding and a little practically invisible facial hair. What I was afraid of is that I might not be loved because everyone else is so repulsed by my monstrosity.

It started to occur to me a few days ago, that maybe I am looking at it all wrong. Maybe being monstrous is a beautiful thing, maybe someone will love me BECAUSE of who I am, not IN SPITE.
Maybe Belle was sad that the Beast turned into a man, and wished he’d stayed how he was for her? Maybe like Fiona, she wanted to live happily ever after with the monster she fell in love with, not some Prince Charming?
I always thought that the line at the end of Shrek, when he says ‘But you are beautiful’ was just a line… but maybe it was the point of the whole movie. Not that you can be happy and loved in spite of being ugly, but maybe that being a monster *is* beautiful!?

I thought about it, and I thought of what culture constructs as beautiful, and how my idea of beauty is vastly different to that.
I think that tattoos, and piercing, and fatness, and queerness, and hairiness and subversity are not only cool, but beautiful in and of themselves.
Sometimes when I say that I think fat women are hot, people react like I have announced that I have some kind of bizarre kink. I don’t understand that, at all.

Once I realised that the way I look at gender is largely determined by cultural factors that I have been able to transcend in other areas, I had to ask myself: what do I find disgusting about trans people? I have never thought that any of my trans friends are repulsive, so why do I assume that someone else will find me repulsive?

Blending the genders is not considered attractive. Effeminacy is a perversion, and even a sin, according to 1 Corinthians 6:9. A woman should be feminine, a man should be masculine, end of story. There is a little room for beautiful men, and no room at all for handsome masculine women.
Societies beauty is fair, and even featured, and thin. It is male or female, and not ambiguous or androgynous. It has large eyes, and shining hair, but a hairless body. Mainstream beauty relegates the blending of genders to subversity and fetish.
The extreme’s are trans people, and intersex people. Our monstrous bodies blend the binary genders into one horrifying whole. There are less extreme examples though. How many people believe that all butch dykes are ugly?

I have posted before on tranny chasers. I have some trouble with them. I get harassed online and off. I don’t label someone as chaser until they have ignored who I am, in favour of what they think a transsexual is. Usually they think that I am a sexual deviant of some kind, which I really am not. Usually they think that I have no right to privacy, and no capacity to say no.
I find them repulsive, on so many levels. I don’t like being fetishized for being transsexual, because it is not all that I am.

I like hooking up with trans people though. I like hooking up with creative, self aware, intelligent people, and it just so happens that many of the trans people I know fit these categories. I don’t mind making out with some random in a club, but when it comes to taking someone home with me, they have to be special.
I have to know that they are cool with who I am, but I don’t want them to only want to come with me out of curiosity regarding the contents of my jocks.

I have suddenly come to realise that my future wont be loveless. If I can think that these people are awesome, insightful, sexy, beautiful people, then fuck! Maybe they can think the same about me?

Call for papers: /Spilling Over:/ /A Fat, Queer Anthology/

Call for Submissions seen first at Nix’s.

Working Title: /Spilling Over:/ /A Fat, Queer Anthology/
Editor: Jessica Giusti, Feminist Studies Ph.D. Student, University of Minnesota
Contact: spillingover [at] gmail [dot] com
Submission Deadline: December 1, 2008

Shout out that pride!

Jacky linked to a post about being glad to be queer.

I like reading these sorts of things, because there’s a lot of self-hate floating around in the trans and queer communities. I think that often we are so quick to defend our selves with our helplessness, that we forget that it is more empowering to remember we always have a choice.

Its not healthy to repress one’s natural desires, this is true, but we still have a choice to do so, and sometimes it works out ok. I don’t think that ‘not having a choice’ is an effective argument for being any flavour of queer. We are who we are, but we still have a choice to act or not to act. I could *not transition* if I wanted to. (It would probably be easier) However, the alternatives aren’t that pretty.

I am proud to be queer, and to be trans. I don’t think I have anything to be ashamed of. It takes balls to step up and truly be ones self. I don’t want to hide behind a wimpy mumble of ‘but I don’t have a choice…’

Someone asked me why I thought I was trans, if I thought it was my mothers fault.
Maybe it was because my father ran off, or because of androgens in the womb, or because of genetics, or because my mother made me her best friend when I should have been her child, or because I was molested. Maybe its because I want my brother not to be the last man in the family. Maybe its because I am grasping at male privilege.

But you know what? IT DOESN’T MATTER. I’m not that concerned about the WHY of things. I am more concerned with my life as it is right now.
Why I’m trans doesn’t matter. Whether or not its a product of nature, or nurture, or just a particularly convincing delusion I am under, it really doesn’t matter.
My choice is all that matters.

There’s nothing wrong with being queer… so why does it matter if I choose this path?

Sex and Gender Diversity Project

The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) is seeking the views of the sex and gender diverse community about the most pressing human rights issues facing their community. HREOC also seeks input into how it might assist in promoting and protecting the human rights of people who are transgender, transsexual or intersex.

HREOC has prepared a short paper analysing some sex and gender diversity issues and their human rights implications. The paper has been sent to some organisations representing the sex and gender diverse community.

If you would like to be involved in HREOC’s sex and gender diversity human rights project, please refer to the following documents:

* invitation for comment from the Human Rights Commissioner
* sex and gender diversity issues paper

Initial feedback is required by 30 May 2008.

Responses can be sent by:

* email to sarah.winter@humanrights.gov.au or
* post to Sex and Gender Diversity Project, HREOC at GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001.

For more information, please contact Sarah Winter, Policy Officer on 02 9284 9650

Civil Partnerships Bill Passes at 3am

I am pretty heavily involved in the local battle for same-sex marrriage, with the past five months being dedicated to the battle for Civil Unions with Ceremonies. Last night a much watered down version of the Civil Partnerships Bill we’ve been fighting for was passed. A bill that doesn’t include ceremonies.

My housemate and I headed out to the legislative assembly at about 8.30pm and ran into a couple of local Queers. We spent the next 5 hours popping in and out of the assembly, chatting to MLA’s, drinking beer, and waiting. At about 1am the debate on the Civil Partnerships Bill started. I am, in spite of my recent involvement in Politics, very new at this, and so didn’t know any of the speakers other than Deb Fosky (Greens), Andrew Barr (Labor) and Simon Corbell (the Attorney General, Labor), and I only knew them because of their involvement in the protest movement. I spent most of the night not knowing the rules, and didn’t even bow the first couple of times we went in and out of the Assembly.

I was pleased to see that the members were eager to put their opinions of the Federal Governments push to have the bill watered down on the record. The bill doesn’t allow for legal ceremonies for same-sex marriage and requires that one member of the couple be resident in the ACT (ie you move across the state border to Queanbeyan, and your Civil Partnership isn’t valid anymore). Those are the two amendments we were most opposed to, however there were 15 homophobic amendments forced upon us by the Federal Government all together.

Some of my colleagues and friends from the CCU are extremely disappointed in the results from last night. However, I think that even if the bill is not the bill we hoped for, we should keep in mind the position that places the Tasmanian and Victorian lobby groups in to fight for inclusion of various rights we were granted, that they still do not have. We can fight for amendments, the battle is not over, neither here in the ACT or around the country in other states and territories.

I fought hard for this bill, and it is a step in the right direction. I was one of the queers in the gallery that stood and clapped when the bill was passed. I do not agree that the Bill is a ‘skull fucked corpse‘ of its former self, and find that phrasing deliberately inflammatory. Yes, the territory could, and SHOULD have done things better. Yes, its not the bill we hoped for. Yes, its been amended into a registration scheme by another name. However, it is still a step in the direction of legal equality for LGBT people in the ACT, and around the country.

Trans Rights Disaster

First a little background:

The controversy surrounding gender identity disorder is no news to most transsexuals, but for the rest of you, heresDented Blue Mercedes on Destigmatization versus access to medical cover.

So the news has broken that there is a new panel who are to discuss GID’s inclusion in the DSM-V.

More info from people who know more about it and say it better than I do:
Dented Blue Mercedes
Burning Words

There is a strong chance that the people that have been selected to run this investigation of Gender will find that transition is a negative outcome, and that ‘raparative therapy’ (that is transsexualities equivalent of ex-gay brainwashing) is a better approach for treating us.

Now, the DSM-V effects every gender variant person in the western world… INCLUDING cissexual gays and lesbians. No matter where you are in the west, our medical model of transsexuality is underpinned with the APA’s diagnosis of GID. Our legal rights, access to hormones, and surgery all rely on this document.

Please, please link to this post, or link to Bec or Mercedes’ posts on the matter. Pass along the word to trans people, and allies. Post it to e-lists. Phone people.
This is cause for an international protest movement. I am willing to put up my hand to organise the Canberra branch, but this needs to go global. There needs to be out rage.

We cannot take this lying down.