![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"You can say to those you love, 'You've hurt me and I understand why.' You can make the space inside yourself to realize that reality is big enough to contain simultaneously both the love you feel for them and an honest accounting of the hurt they've done you. Love is not about never having to say you're sorry. The opposite is true: genuine love makes it possible to say I'm sorry and to know that together you'll move on from that place.
"When I am victimizing Becky, she can still empathize, understanding that I have been victimized. When I recognize that I am victimizing, I need to realize that I should be a little more careful. When she recognize that I have been victimized, she needs to be a little gentler. Instead, we usually run for cover with a good excuse. We assume that because our behavior can be explained, it is acceptable. Meanwhile the person on the receiving end of our impatience, insensitivity, or downright cruelty focuses only on his or her own hurt, afraid that understanding will facilitate repetition.
"Abnegating guilt and reneging on personal responsibility is always dangerous. So, too, is the fear that forgiveness will lead to forgetfulness or moral insensitivity. But that is what we do when we divide the world into victims and victimizers. We move quickly to identify the bad guys and the good guys, laying all blame at the feet of the first and assuming perfect innocence for the second. It's hard to imagine we can be both, but n almost every circumstance we are. Joseph and Esther are heroic figures, but the Bible doesn't whitewash their story. They are both victims and victimizers, and it's up to us to evaluate whether their balancing act is successful. That complexity is the stuff of real spiritual growth, of religious wisdom that endures and is worth preserving and learning from."
-- Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, You Don't Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanatacism (pp. 69-70, paperback ed.), 2007, Crown Publishing Group (Random House), New York, NY; LC: BL624.H53 ; Dewey: 201'.5-dc22 ; ISBN: 978-0-307-38298-6 (I've got like thirty four more bookmarks stuck in this book)
Tonight is the start of Yom Kippur. I wish my friends who observe it an easy fast. G'mar hatimah tovah.
Today is also National Coming Out Day. Everyone who can afford to be out and is so, affects the world a little bit by their visibility, demystifies us a bit in the eyes of those who might otherwise not know they know a BTLGQ person, and makes it a little safer for the next person who comes out -- brings the day when they can (and feel they can) afford to be out too a little closer. Being out as LGTBQ is less of a big deal now than it was a few decades ago, and visibility is a big part of that. The flip side of that is that although being out is less fraught now than a few decades ago, not everyone is physically or emotionally safe being out yet, and those who judge the risks still too great for their own circumstances must be protected, not pushed. It's National Coming Out Day, not National Out Everyone Day.
(If you're not GBTLQ and feel the need to "come out" as something jokey or ordinary that has no closet attached, well you do have the right to be an ass, but a lot of your queer friends will be happier if you just realize not every holiday has to be about you, and count your blessings at not having had to weigh fear against authenticity in that way.)
In the spirit of out-ness...
I don't think anyone reading this is unaware that I'm transgender. Many but far from all of you are aware that my gender identity (or which parts of it I've been able to admit to myself) has shifted over the years and a few years ago shifted again: I no longer see myself as being close to the middle of the gender graph, I prefer the pronoun she/her for myself[*], I am tryng to choose a new name, I have started taking steps to alter my body and am planning to take additional steps (no, I haven't already decided exactly which steps yet, and yes, insurance coverage is a factor), and sooner or later I'll work up my nerve to lose the beard. (As for my orientation, it appears to be unchanged by HRT ... labels for my orientation are another matter, and probably a topic for another post. I also appear to still be a switch, FWIW, but haven't exactly had many opportunities to play in a while.)
[*] I currently say I "prefer" feminine pronouns (and have for a long time, but more people ask nowadays). Once I make my gender-presentation more consistent (not "ifwhen I 'pass'"; just when I stop sending mixed signals by having a beard), that language will change from "I prefer..." to simply "the correct pronoun for me is she/her". My calling it a preference now reflects how I see my particular current situation, not that any other trans person's pronoun is 'a mere preference'.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
I am tryng to choose a new name.
Do you know the name your mother would have given you had she known she was having a daughter?
(no subject)
Losing the beard will be a big step (have you ever not had a beard in the last 30 years?), but when you get to that point it'll probably do wonders for clarity to those not already in the know.
(no subject)
But, yeah, no surprise at all -- particularly at my taking advantage of a way to make some smart-ass joke -- in that I remember meeting you however many years ago, when you were introduced as the human vibrator! (And I am so SO hoping that writing that here isn't a problem. Deleting this comment would be understandable.)
Hey, though, I really hope you get what you need, and not just on one day per year.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
My 'Ow!' doesn't mean "You're evil", it means "I hurt." And I'll write up the rest of that myself, rather than impose on *your* journal for that space.
I regret that I will have problems using your preferred pronouns. My problem, not yours, and I ask your forebearance as I learn to deal with it.
Even though our interaction is and will likely remain by text-over-IP, my thought-patterns remain largely kinesthetic, and at our last F2F meeting you moved like someone who has male-grown hips. I find it unlikely that this is ever going to change, as rebuilding pelvises is not a standard part of sex-reassignment surgery, even for people who are interested in that (which is something I don't know about you, whether or not you have that interest).
I am confused as to why pronoun-choice should be so deeply "wired." I observe this to be so, but don't know why, or what is involved in the mechanics of the process of changing it. Or, separately, the art of implementing that change. I assume you to have more thoughts than I do about this subject, since you're on the *receiving* end of the problem; would you care to share them?
best,
Joel. Who's dealing more with feet than genitalia recently, and would much prefer to reverse that.
(no subject)
Good way of putting that.
As for the rest ... it's a little complicated. Or figuring out how to talk about it concisely is. We kinda pick up on who gets pronouns wrong out of disrespect and who is just finding adapting way harder than it should be (and the occasional slip by someone who mostly has it worked out). There is slack, if it's clear someone is sincerely trying. As for my hips, all too often these days I move like someone whose legs hurt. (Even though it's a shape-change instead of a motion-change, I wonder whether my having breasts now will help the next time we see each other in person.)
I don't know what will work or you, but compare it to other verbal changes that reflect a change in identity, status, or circumstance: a friend changing from Ms. to Dr. or from Mr. to Fr. or Rev., a friend taking on their spouse's surname, a politician changing from Sen. to Sec. or from Mayor to Gov., a friend dropping a childhood nickname, someone entering a religious order and taking a religious name, someone going from Corporal to Sgt. ... None of these are the same (many are closer to name-change than pronoun-change), but maybe (?) you can find some useful parallels in the "update your mental tags for somebody" process?
Also, while my pronoun isn't they/them, it is a way to leave a gendered pronoun unspecified. I won't be thrilled with people using they/them or sie/hir as a way of signalling that they don't really think I deserve a she/her, but I can cut folks some slack for using they/them as a kind of crutch (or safety-harness?) to avoid falling all the way back to he/him while installing my new pronoun on your mental model of me. *hug* (And, of course, any time when they/them or sie/hir would be natural in their gender-not-relevant-here meaning -- instead of their gender-not-binary meaning or gender-has-a-question-mark meaning -- will remain as correct when apllied to me as when applied to anyone else.)
(no subject)
Breasts would certainly help, agreed, at least as long as we're facing each other. My until-this-conversation understanding of your sexual identity was "in a non-binary continuum-space and pleased with it," i.e., not "transitioning" to or from anything and happy with the current state of things-within-DGlenn, however alien to non-DGlenn humans that state might be. My understanding from this conversation is that that understanding is incorrect. I don't yet have a better model to replace it with. Possibly you are engaged in a protracted and deliberate process of transitioning from one non-binary space to another? As I find it unlikely we'd be sharing a bed any time soon I don't think my understanding is critical or timely, so feel free to enlighten me or not at your convenience.
My imagination, being silly that way, is imagining breasts with beards on them. I've had furry girlfriends before, but not that furry. best, Joel