From A Womyn’s Ecdysis:

There is no current US Women’s Movement. There is no US Feminist Movement. What is it that we face? The face of the US movementS change with community and by geography. It changes with all the things that make up the intersection of intersectionality. It is no wonder so much argument and fighting occurs - so many women believe their agenda is the most important. Intersectionality is the tool to help you clarify the dynamic of your own kyriarchal oppression and ALSO to equip yourself to ultimately CHOOSE how to resist. Understanding intersectionality has become the limbo for US media-driven feminists. We wait there until we “get it.”

The danger of intersectionality is that it is often mixed in as an objective of US feminism, not a tool of alliance work or consciousness-raising. It’s a method, not a goal. The perception is that we can’t move forward until we understand the condition of Asian Americans, or disabled womyn, or Black lesbian and queer activists. That is not intersectionality, that is stupidity. There is and should not be One Movement for US womyn because we are as diverse in need as we are in faith, values, and life exposure. Intersectionality is a TOOL, nothing more. We are to first understand ourselves in the context of a kyriarchal system before we can critically understand the condition of other womyn. It’s not oppression olympics, it’s humbling self-decentering. My own story is significant. It is sacred. In studying my own life’s meaning, I uncover the stories of others whose own lives are also significant and sacred. Holding both is not giving up my own power or agenda. Recognizing other lives and individuals and populations does not negate or change the course of my struggle. It enriches it with the power of knowledge, alliance, and shared hope.

I’ve learned that I can carefully be an advocate for womyn’s liberation, but I must fight and live with chosen direction and purpose to truly impact my own community.

There must be action. There must be a statement

Yes.
We don’t all have to fight for the same thing. There doesn’t need to be One Cause that we all fight for. We should all be fighting for what is important to us in our little corner of the world, with other people that think that is important too.

For example, I don’t give a fig about Michfest. OMG, yes I said it!
I don’t care that women aren’t being allowed into Michfest just cos they aren’t ‘womyn-born-womyn’.
You see, Michfest happens in another country. A country to which I have never been, will hopefully never have to go. It is a music festival, to which I have never been, and will never go to. I don’t know anyone who has been, or will go, or would even want to go there.

What I care about is HREOC’s Gender Diversity Project. My t-boy groups BBQ’s, lunches, and dinners. Making a float for Mardi Gras. Hanging out with the local trans community. Making sure people aren’t giving me and my friends shit for being who we are. Making sure that those lesbians I know at Uni can get married some day, and have a honeymoon like they’ve been dreaming of.
These are causes that are important to me. I only have so much energy, so much time, so much to give. If anyone comes to me and asks for a concrete instance of help… a donation, a signature, help them paint a banner, write a letter to a member. I will help if I have the smallest sympathy for their cause.
However, my schedule is full. I learn, I try to understand, I try to be aware. I try to tread lightly, and I ensure that fighting for my rights does not lead to the degradation of another minorities rights… however, there are some things that I just don’t care about.
Michfest is one of them.
Solidarity does not mean that I have to lay down my interests and causes and fight only for the One True Cause. It means that we should do our best to ensure our battles aren’t railroading the battles of other groups will less power than us.

Cheerful Megalomaniac has always been about Feminism. Since the moment I started blogging last October, until today, Cheerful Megalomaniac has been a “Feminist Blog”. Today though, I have decided to change my focus from the patriarchy to the kyriarchy, from feminism to queer theory.

I have been told, vehemently, and repeatedly that I am not a feminist, and in fact, that I cannot be a feminist. There’s a variety of reasons for this. I am a man, and therefore cannot be oppressed. I am a transsexual, and so have betrayed the sisterhood. Bla bla bla. Whatever, most of them are bull shit reasons, that don’t really mean anything.

The thing is, I am not interested in being a part of a movement that does not want me around, that will not listen to my voice, that discounts my oppression as non-existent.

Feminism informs my world view, and will continue to do so. I still hate sexism as much as ever, and I am still determined to check my privilege, and make the world a better place. Its just occurred to me, that labeling myself a feminist is rather pointless.
After all, how can real change be implemented if people are too busy discussing whether or not I am allowed to call myself a feminist to actually talk about anything else?
Drawing lines in the sand around my identity is so pointless. Setting up oppression hierarchies and debating whether or not I have a right to claim to be oppressed or marginalised because of my trans status, cos I am transmasculine not transfeminine is completely off the planet!

So, easy to solve the problem. I don’t claim to be feminist. Other people don’t have to discuss whether I am allowed to be feminist, and we can get back to the work of changing the world?

Sounds like a plan to me.

From the Times of India, via TransGriot.

17 Aug 2008, 0407 hrs IST,
T S SREENIVASA RAGHAVAN,TNN
from The Times Of India

It was a quiescent Sunday evening. The sky was alight in hues of red and purple, and an energetic breeze from the seashore whirred into the bus I had boarded from Cuddallore. I was back from an interview, an unusual one but, more importantly, one that had answered one of the nagging questions of my life.

The meeting with Kalki a transgender friend of mine had answered the question: ‘Who is a real mother?’ Through my life, I had never got an answer perhaps because the mental illness my mother has been suffering from for the last 43 years had created a chasm in our relationship. I grew up in my grandmother’s custody. I didn’t expect the question to be answered. But a phone call from the 30-plus Kalki started it all: “I’ve something to share if you could make it to Cuddallore…”

The stunningly beautiful trans-gender, whose father was a senior DMK leader in Tamil Nadu, is based in Pollachi, some 450 kilometres from Chennai. An arts graduate, she later did her post-graduation in journalism and mass communication. Till recently she worked for an IT giant as web designer before she decided to pursue the career of an independent media specialist.

As I reached the orphanage in Cuddallore, Kalki came running out. “It’s been so long since we met,” she said warmly. “I’m so happy you came. Meet my daughter, Selvi.” It was then that I noticed a child who was playing with toys scattered around her.

I was fazed at first. Suddenly, I recalled a news report I’d read recently in The Guardian: ‘Pregnant man gives birth to baby girl.’ But I still couldn’t believe Kalki.

“Don’t tell me. I know you’re beautiful. But, I also know…” I hesitated.

It was then that Kalki unfolded her story. In 2006, she and her friends had gone to Cuddallore to hold an HIV awareness camp. It was there that she met Selvi and her biological parents begging at the entrance to a temple.

“The parents were pitch-drunk. They were physically tormenting the child to beg,” Kalki recalls. Unable to stand the sight, she approached the mother: “I’m a childless mother. Can I have your baby?”

It was a lie. But Kalki had no hesitation in mouthing it.

“Give me Rs 1,000 and take her. And don’t ever bring her back,” the mother replied.

Finally as she walked away nonchalantly pocketing a paltry sum of Rs 500, Kalki and her friends were shocked.I learnt from Kalki later that the mother had, in fact, sold the same girl for Rs 2,000 earlier. But the buyer returned the baby soon afterwards when a doctor told him that apart from being malnourished, she had a hole in her heart and would not survive.

But that didn’t stop Kalki from doing what she felt right. “Selvi anyway would have died,” she avers. “But I said to myself ‘First let me make an attempt…’”

Fortunately, Selvi survived and the doctor now says that there’s no room for worry, though the child is slightly retarded. “Normal or retarded, I love her…she’s my daughter,” Kalki told me, holding the baby to her closely. What will Kalki do if the biological mother turns up? “I won’t give Selvi up. I may not have given birth to her but isn’t there a motherhood that’s beyond biology?” she asked.

As I took leave of Kalki and later waited for the bus, I realised to my infinite emotion that the question that had been troubling me for so long had just been answered.

sreenivasa.srinivasa@gmail.com

I haven’t been posting to CM much lately. I’ve been busy with moving house, battling gatekeepers, getting involved in flame wars on LiveJournal, and nurturing a new relationship. Today though, I saw this FANTASTIC blog post which is just so amusing that I couldn’t bear to leave it unposted.

Are Blue Jeans a Feminist and Lesbian Uniform?

My favourite part:

Men, if you’re tempted by such a woman, her jeans signal that you may have to deal with her “GID” – “gender identity disorder.” Her jeans are saying: “I don’t want to be a woman. I don’t want to look good for men. I fear and distrust men. I want male prerogatives.”

You know, I refused to wear jeans for YEARS. I would wear corduroy, or canvas, but nothing denim. It chafed my legs, and so I refused to wear it. I only started wearing denim in 2004. Maybe I don’t have GID after all!?

And here’s a word of advice for us men:

Men should politely voice approval and support of women they see who are dressed in a feminine way.

There is nothing more beautiful than a women wearing a summer dress. I can still remember a young woman I saw five years ago wearing a frock. This is how powerful femininity is. Let’s not let pious highly-paid feminists and lesbians destroy it. It’s time for real women to relegate jeans to garden work.

Yes, and the dude that wrote this post has a PhD!

I went to see a doctor yesterday, for an issue entirely unrelated to my transition. I signed up for the University health service, because I felt it was quite urgent. They don’t bulk bill staff, only students, so I was forced to pay $50 for the appointment, which sucks arse, but what can you do?

Anyway, I go in, and explain to the doctor what happened, that I’m not too concerned but that I would like to rule out any serious issues, cos I wouldn’t want it to happen again. She took my medical history, and asked what ‘FTM’ means (cos I had crossed out ‘M’ and ‘F’ on my form, and written ‘FTM’ since I figure its about as medically accurate as it gets). So then she checked my temperature, my ears and throat while bombarding me with questions. I told her I was on testosterone treatments, and the medication is called ‘Sustanon’.
While she was looking up Sustanon 100 to see if there is any connection between it and my problem, she was nattering on about how men that want to be women are so much more common than… what did I call myself again? FTM’s, thats right.

I was like ‘Thats just what people THINK, there are about the same number of each.’ However, she is clearly one of the few medical professionals in Canberra who has read True Selves, and she clearly, being a medical professional, is much better informed than me, a lowly trannie, and so she told me that FTM’s are extremely rare compared to MTF’s.

She checked my heart then, and noted that it was going extremely fast, (which its done for my entire life), so she took my blood pressure, which was high (which it has been since I was 17), and so she took it again. (Doctors always do that, apparently I am too young for hypertension… HA). While she was taking it again, she started asking me about my breasts, and then when I said I would be having top surgery, she asked me why I would bother having a mastectomy, cos don’t the androgens make my breasts disappear?
Then she was like ‘Oh my your blood pressure is through the roof now! Does talking about *your condition* make you anxious?’

Which made me grit my teeth and say ‘Not generally.’
At the end of the appointment I had quite a heated argument with her about gatekeeperism, and she was clearly unimpressed by my concept of autonomy, and other such high falootin’ ideas, that are so unbecoming of a trans person.

Anyway, she ordered me a bunch of blood tests, which I get the results for next week. I suspect that she tested my hormone levels as well as other things relevant to the issue I had.

No impressed. Also, sick of educating every doctor I see. Its not like I can just leave out my transition unless the issue is a head cold, or something similar.

So last week the HREOC Forum to discuss their Gender Diversity Issues Paper was held in the ACT. I went along, and was really pleased that I did. I didn’t contribute much to the discussion during the forum, but I chatted to the HREOC peeps both before and after the forum, and plan on getting involved in their blog project.

I also had the opportunity to meet more of the local trans community. I had a chat to Zoe, and met a bunch of new t-boys, and was amazed at the number of people that came out of the woodwork for the event.

I found much of the discussion very enlightening. I am always interested to hear a bunch of different perspectives on the same issues that I struggle with day to day. There were trans people and intersex people, and intersex people who are also trans… there was a few people that identify as genderqueer, or third gender, as well as people who identified strongly with the gender binary.

I was pleased that although some of the people present appeared to be quite ignorant of non-traditional perspectives on gender and transition, at least no one pulled out the Genderqueer VS Traditional binary and tried to exclude anyone or nit pick about what defines ‘trans enough’.

When the discussion about trans as a choice came up, one very impassioned woman declared that its transition or death for *all* trans people. I found that very frustrating, and myself and Robbie let out twin sighs of annoyance (which I suppose the Commissioner heard, given he was sitting right next to us). There was also the discussion of whether trans is a kind of intersex condition, which it might well be.
The thing is, I have no objection to people declaring that for themselves there was no choice but transition or death. I know that before I knew I could transition that was how I felt… now I know a lot more about queer theory, and I think I could make do without transitioning, but its not an optimal choice, hence my decision to transition. I also have no objection to the idea that transsexuality may be a kind of intersex condition. I don’t think it matters whether it is or not, but the idea has merit.
You see, I consider my freedom to make choices my most sacred human right. I don’t want to be boxed in by these ideas of coercion, or feel like I’m making excuses for my identity…
“Oh, I’m trans, but only cos i have a medical condition… I wouldn’t *choose* to be like this.”
Logically if I wasn’t trans, I wouldn’t be transitioning. However, I am trans, and it does not matter *why* I am trans. What ever the cause of my transsexuality is, I am proud of it, it is part of who I am, and I do not need a medical condition to justify my identity.

This perspective is something that I think needs more attention in the HREOC report, because it is my right as a human being to express myself however I choose without justification to the Government, the Medical Establishment, the Trans or Queer communities, or anyone else for that matter.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to having more involvement in this project, and agitating for gender to be removed from birth certificates and other forms of identity documents altogether.

I got a haircut on Monday night. I was charged half way between the mens price, and the ladies price. I presume that this is because the hairdresser was unable to determine my gender, and was too shy to ask.
It had been over two months since my last hair cut, and my hair had been getting unruly and my fringe was acting to feminize my face more than strictly necessary in my opinion. I was very impressed by the results of the haircut, and I’ve just taken a new picture of myself in photo booth.

Here are two pictures of me… one taken today, and one taken exactly one month ago.

A picture of Ryan, taken on the 23rd of June 2008

A picture of Ryan taken today, 23rd of July, 2008

Ignore for a moment how sick I look, and check out how much the shape of my face has changed in one month! Isn’t that remarkable?
I’m quite shocked to tell the truth, about how much I have changed in a single month.

The only place that I consistently don’t pass is at work. I’ve been around, people have seen me around, my email address ‘outs me’, my domain admin access rights are still in my girl name… its a recipe for major stealth-angst if I wanted to make it so.
As it is, I am not too stressed about it. I gently correct people if I’m in the mood, ignore it the rest of the time, unless its someone I’ve already ‘come out’ to. (Like my boss. Grr.)
That said, I’m used to being referred to with female pronouns at work, its just how it is.

However, this afternoon I went across to building 22, which is rather removed from the rest of the university. I was helping a gentleman with a software installation, and then consulted with the cute admin girl about the scanner problem he’s been having. I thanked her for her time, and said a cheerful goodbye.
As I was going, I heard one of the other girls come to her desk and say “Ooh, what was that about?” and the cute girl say “Oh, he just had some questions about how the scanner’s set up over here.”

*OMG! GENDER WIN*

I feel like it was a rather momentous incident. Especially cos I don’t even TRY to pass at work. I just kinda show up, do my thing, leave. Fag it up a little if I’m hanging with my queer academic types. So fab. Totally love it.

The internet has made it easier than ever before to form and maintain long distance relationships. Social Networking sites like LiveJournal and Facebook make it easy to meet new friends, and quantify our real life friends into lists, networks, communities and numbers.

Relationships are fragile things, and the internet can harm them quite easily. I am not the only person to fly off the handle in response to a careless blog post or email from a friend. Its easy to be an arsehole to text on a screen.

When you’re Facebook friendslist is simply a list of every person you have ever met, even if it was just for a day, or an hour… unfriending your best friend is gonna gut them. They aren’t going to take it well, trust me. When your LiveJournal is one of your few tangible connections to someone, unfriending them is going to be noticed, and its going to hurt them.

Think a little about it. Don’t unfriend someone just for a fight. If you don’t want them to have access to your LJ while you cool down from a fight, create a custom group, but for gods sake, don’t unfriend too easily.
If someone is an arsehole online, and you’ve never met them, block block block! But if there is a real life relationship that is being maintained in large part through social networks, for gods sake, be careful when you are blocking someone. Don’t do it out of anger.

To be frank, I have had enough of being unfriended. Of being rejected, hurt, blocked, ignored. Its happened to me too many times this year. I’ve not always been in the right, but I’ve usually thought ‘Its ok, we’ll both cool down, I’ll contact them, we’ll talk and then everything will be ok.’
Its upsetting when I realise they’ve blocked my IM, unfriended my LJ, unfriended me on Facebook, and spring cleaned me right on out of their virtual (and by extension real) life.

Since I started coming out as Ryan… every step, not just as trans, but right from the beginning, at the end of 2006, when I decided to be me instead of someone else, I’ve been rejected left right and centre.
I know I’ve had growing pains. I’ve said, and done stupid things. I’ve hurt peoples feelings. I’ve been going through the emotional growth and maturing process that most people get 5 years in highschool to experience, in less than 2 years.

I’m hurting. I am hurting because so many of my good, close, friends… friends who I honestly thought would always be there for me no matter what, think I have gone too far this time. That they can’t be my friend anymore. I don’t know their motives. I don’t know if I’m too queer, too radical, too trans, too political, too argumentative, too arrogant… could be any of those, or something else entirely. I didn’t call often enough. I’m too busy, their feelings are hurt cos I didn’t visit them when I said I would.
I don’t know.
All I know is that when I reached for them, they weren’t their anymore. They said we moved too far apart. We have nothing in common anymore.

Its not just my friends. Its my family too. My biological family and my church family.

And I can’t take it anymore. I can’t sit around and let the rejection come, over and over and over.

A charmer called ‘Rachel’ posted a comment on my post about the DSM-V.

It doesn’t show up on the post, its been sitting in moderation for a while as I have considered what to do with it. I thought that perhaps I would post again about my comments policy. This comment was in flagrant violation of my comments policy. In the past I have fisked comments from my moderation queue, just for educational purposes.

Here I am only going to post part of the comment… the nice little signature. You see, most of it was just “OMG! BAD TRANNIES!!! DON’T PROTEST ANYTHING!!! SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, AND LET THE GOOD DR ZUCKER LOOK AFTER YOU!” and similar drivel. That didn’t violate my comments policy, I probably would have posted it, and fisked it just for interests sake.

THIS is what violated the comments policy:

xox,
~rachel
Peace be with the LGBT
[no longer a lesbian--Thank heaven]

That last line? That would be HOMOPHOBIA. Its not allowed here.

Besides, ex-gays are yucky. EW.

Anyway, I shall reiterate… this is MY BLOG, what I say goes. There’s no point in commenting again and again if you’re comments keep a disappearin’ into the ether cos you are a homophobic, transphobic, DOUCHEBAG.
Give up, go away, go play with the other trolls, or comment on a big site where they enjoy troll baiting.

Its been suggested to me many times in the last 12 months, that if I would just keep my head down, and not make such a fuss, then my life would be much easier. I have been told that my life is more difficult than the average, and that is my fault. That things could be easier if I would just learn to flow with the status quo.

I don’t buy it. I spent years trying to go with the status quo.
I was submissive, gentle, spoke when spoken too, didn’t argue, didn’t contradict my elders or betters, prayed, fasted, read the bible, cooked, cleaned, was complimented on my femininity and told I’d ‘make a good wife’. I even applied for Bible College as well as University.
My life was still non-stop drama. Child abuse, domestic violence, bullying at school, harmful relationships, self harm, depression, eating disorders, emotional abuse, rape… Yeah, that was all so easy, and the bits that ‘weren’t so easy’ were my fault.

My life is actually pretty cool now. I mean, I have friends, no one yells at me, or hits me, I don’t have to walk on eggshells, I don’t have to do what other people tell me, I am not afraid in my own home. I have my own personal strength. I can assert myself, and I can fight back, and sure I spend a lot of my time fighting, but at least I have some fight in me… and I’m starting to get my way more and more.
The future is bright. I am starting to feel comfortable with how I look, I am starting to see changes in myself. The sound of my own voice doesn’t annoy me.

I am also confident that as time goes on I will be making a positive change to the world.
Sure, if I put my head down, and melted silently into the background then people around me wouldn’t have to feel so uncomfortable about the issues that largely go ignored in our society, but that I bring to the surface.

What I find most remarkable is the vested interest other people seem to have in convincing me to conform to societies norms. Its that fake concern that annoys me so much.
“Oh dear, but you are making your life so hard! Why don’t you just chill and conform? It makes stuff easier… trust me….”

If they are so sad about my life being tough, why don’t they step up to the plate and make an effort to change things so that my life… and the lives of thousands like me a bit easier?
Don’t give me some bull shit about how we all have ‘our own race to run’, our own ’struggles’. If you are so busy with your struggles, you can stop wasting your time trying to convince me to conform.
Besides, it doesn’t take that much. You can do something simple… like request your employer make a toilet in your building/floor unisex, even if you don’t need to use it! Not use sexist insults, and pull other people up on them when they use them. If you’re a med student ask your course convener why trans and intersex issues aren’t on the curriculum. If your Christian ask your pastor what they think of queer issues, and if they are homophobic challenge them, or change Churches. Use the correct pronouns to refer to trans people that come up in the media, like Thomas Beatie, even if others are using the wrong ones.
Most of all… educate yourself! Even if you don’t think that this shit applies to you, every thing that you find out on your own is one less embarrassing faux pas you will make in the future.

You don’t have to become a full time activist to challenge peoples ideas.
Just think ‘Whats respectful?’ because respect is respect, no matter who you are talking to.