Week Six!

Okay, so I've had like the best week ever.

(with the exception of when I got my hormones, but I mean that was more crazy/lifechanging/emotional, and this is more just everything is awesome sort of thing.)

Schools back in session. I finally have something to do with my life again. My class schedule is a lot less ridiculous than it was last quarter which is awesome. (Apparently having 9 hours of lab classes every week in addition to having a full regular class schedule and working a part time job wasn't as good an idea for my mental health as one might think)

But since school's back in session that also means that all my friends are back, which is super-exciting! Most of my friends are queer as well, and fit somewhere under the alphabet soup lgbt umbrella. Which is fabulous in every sense of the word.

And I'm going to go on a brief tangent for a minute, so bear with me. One thing I've noticed though, we all joke about gay things. Stereotypes, euphemisms, innuendo, all that fun stuff. It's legitimately hilarious. We never joke about trans* things.

And there are quite a few trans* identified, and gender variant people in our group (although I'm the only one transitioning at the moment) And I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's sort of unmentioned. Trans* jokes don't really pop up, other than for the sake of "Oh hey we've got an entire alphabet here" sort of jokes.

I mean to be fair I really fucking hate things like obviously cis-gender guys in drag for the sake of a joke. Like that horrible abc series that's staring up.

(*Shudder* Let us never speak of this again)

So, on one hand it's sort of relieving, but on the other I wonder/worry if me being trans* might make some of my friends uncomfortable, or if they feel like it's a subject that just shouldn't be joked about, or if it's just something that never crosses their mind.

I'm not sure how I'd take a trans* joke. I mean at a party for new years, this one guy who is as camp as a row a tents and was on the border of complete liver failure came up to me said "Nat come here, ya' trannie bitch, give me a hug."

ಠ_ಠ

I mean, Browhat? 

I judged him with my judging eyes.

Then again I really fucking hate the word "trannie", especially from people who aren't trans* identified. I mean he's sort of my friend/acquaintance, and still is I suppose. And he apologized later, and I'm not about to hold something against someone they say 'cause they're shitty wasted. I've been there. But still.

Fucking A

Maybe it's best to just joke about the homo stuff for the moment and leave the trans* stuff out. I dunno. More on this later. Need to think about it.

Anyway. Tangent Over. Back to awesomeness.

(This was actually posted on the wall of my barracks at military school. Flawless victory.)

I finally scheduled an appointment for laser hair removal on my face. Which is absolutely epic. It's relatively cheap  from what I can tell ($150 per session, for four sessions), and almost literally right next to my house. I can walk there. I don't know why I was never able to find this place before with all my googling.

I mean it's a legit dermatology clinic, and you have to licensed to use the equipment they're going to use, so I'm not going to show-up pay 150 bones and have them just shine a little laser pointer on my face and tell me
I'm good to go.

It's going to be so nice to wake up in the morning and not be immediately dysphoric because I have to shave these nasty fucking pube hairs growing out of my face. I can't wait. My first appointment is on the 11th, at 4:20, which gives me interesting ideas on how I might be able to deal with the pain, (although I hear it's not too bad).

Oh, and I got my lip pierced yesterday! I always feel so fucking shwanky when I get new peircings. It's like a little switch. Swag on. Fucking exciting. I really like it, although my lip is swollen as hell right now, and it's sore as shit.

Also exciting news, I got a kitty!!!

(Created by billions of years of evolution, the sleek and deadly killing machine, in the flesh.)

His name is J'zargo (if you get the reference there's a good chance we can probably be best friends). He was a stray, but now he's my own little babykins, and I love him dearly. 

He's absolutely adorable.

And also batshit insane.

He tries to pounce on EVERYTHING. He does midair flips when playing. And he cuddles with me at night. And falls asleep in my lap, and in boxes. I can't stop trying to take pictures of him with my webcam.

My girlfriend keeps on telling me I'm gonna turn into a crazy cat lady.

(You'll notice that eventually regardless of how cute a girl is you'll eventually stop giving a shit and not want to hear about her fucking cat anymore. Shamelessly stolen from Dmitri Martin)

Speaking of which. New news, I have a girlfriend now. She's fucking terrific. I mean we've been kind of sort of dating, but now it's official. Happy feelings all around. I mean. God, she's beautiful. And smart. And makes me laugh. And is shamelessly adorable. And she considers me her girlfriend without a second thought. 

To be pretty honest, she's pretty much all around super awesome.

There's just a ridiculous number of good things about her. Like how since we both identify as pansexual and point out attractive people to each other. Or how we cuddle. Or paint our nails together. Or how we talk about everything.

Fuck. I'm gushing. 

But yeah, ANYWAY. Awesome week. Hopefully it continues. Now that I finally have money from my student loans I can go for realsies grocery shopping, and I've been craving jalapenos like a motherfucker. Weirdness. I think I'm gonna see if my roommates mom can trim my hair since I haven't had a cut since I shaved it completely in February (yes purging is pretty terrible, and yes, I looked like a neo-nazi. The uniform didn't help). Apparently she cuts hair. So awesome sauce. Anyways. I promised a shitty drunk picture of myself from new years. That didn't really happen, so it will have to wait. In the meantime here's me and little Jazzy cuddling (J'zargo's nickname is Jazzy, apparently it's a hard to remember for people not well versed in Khajiit names.)

(Not sure I pull of that fashion mullet as well as Tegan and Sara :P)

Rant

So first of all let me say, I fucking love tumblr.

(This is where I post pictures of really attractive people, kittens, and bitch about my life)

I also really like the blog MTF Confessions on tumblr. The basic idea is that MTF identified individuals can submit confessions anonymously, which I think is really awesome and empowering. But when I logged on to tumblr this morning I saw this.

"323) I'm tired. Every trans blog out there is run almost solely by trans men. Every trans meme focus on trans men (I can only think of Transrex as an exception). FTM confessions has three times the number of confessions here. Every new blog run by a trans person I find, they're afab and masculine. No one seems to care about us."

Feel free to bash me, but I really, really, think this is the wrong attitude for our community. I don't want to bash the person who wrote this specifically, but I feel like this sentiment is fairly prevalent within the MTF spectrum community, and really needs to be addressed.

Really I have two big problems with this notion.

First of all, it encourages oppositional sexism. Which is bad. We shouldn't judge our community of mtf spectrum individuals against the community ftm spectrum individuals. We are all fighting for the same thing. Trans* rights, awareness, and advocacy. This is not us vs. them. We are all on the same side as gender variant people. Although we may face different challenges and privledges, when it comes down to it, trans* people are one community, and we should support each other.

To foster an us vs. them mentality which splits between the sexes and genders of trans* people just seems incredibly counter-intuitive to me. We, of all people, of all communities, should be supporting our trans* siblings, regardless of gender or sex. This should be intuitively obvious, and if it's not I really think you should probably reexamine the way you think about sex and gender.

My other problem with it is that it seems very "Poor me" to me.

Know who this guy is?

Mahatmas Ghandi helped to free India from the British. He was generally a pretty good guy but also sort of a dick, considering he let his wife die of pneumonia because he disallowed her from having penicillin because he thought god would save her. He did have a quite a few good quotes though, and one of my personal is favorites is this "Be the Change you want to see in the world".

If you don't think there are enough blogs by MTF spectrum individuals, and you happen to identify as a MTF Spectrum individual, then it seems to me that the obvious solution is to start your own blog.

If you're just gonna sit on your ass and whine about how shitty our community is without actually doing something, then I'm not going to have much respect for you. You are not creating solutions. You are not creating a sense of community. You may not be part of the problem, but I'll be fucked sideways if you think you're part of the solution. And if you already have a blog, use it to encourage others to create their own blogs and/or events!

(This is where I'm gonna do the little "practice what you preach" thing, and encourage any trans* people reading this to create their own blogs, and help create trans-visibility, it's really not hard, and you'll be glad you did)

I'll be the first to admit, we, as a community (and not just the mtf community, but also the trans community and queer communities in general) need more vocal advocates. We need more noise. We have very specific problems that need to be addressed by society, and they're not going to be changed by us sitting quiet, and hoping that the government, liberals, the greater lgb community, or anybody else is going to help us. 

I mean Jesus-tap-dancing-Christ people! We need awareness! We need advocacy! We need intra-community support networks! We need more rainbows, Goddamnit!

(That's a little better)

But most of all, we need people like YOU. You are our community. If you see an aspect of the community you don't like then make an attempt to change it. If you don't think you're ready then wait. But there comes a time when just being a spectator isn't enough. Start your blog.

Again this is NOT meant as an attack for the person who wrote this confession. I've heard this sort of sentiment before, and I really think that this sort of thinking is a problem we as a community need to be really critical of, because I think it's a type of thinking we simply cannot afford to have. It's self-defeating, and not at all helpful to us.


Anyway, leave some comments, whether you agree with me or think I'm full of shit. Let me know!