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What shit is

  • Posted on August 10, 2013 at 10:40 am

‘Shit’ used to be a deprecated word in English. But it’s a very old word, a purposeful word, and an honest word. It’s the stuff that’s left over when all the goodness has been extracted for the purpose of sustaining healthy life. It’s the stuff that isn’t good for you. It’s the gunk that was always bad, or useless, and it was the indigestible fibrous bulk that was necessary to get the bad stuff out efficiently.

And the thing about shit (unless it’s a medical thing, and you analyse it as information) is that we handle our own OK, but seriously dislike everyone else’s. It’s a healthy attitude really, but it’s partly a cultural thing too. We don’t talk about it, even though we encounter it every day from birth to death. We don’t talk about it like we do about food, even though it’s just the opposite end of the same argument.

I’ve taken in a lot of good stuff all my life. I’ve been lucky to have had a stable childhood, a good education, an adequate social circle, for a while a small degree of affluence (in UK, not global terms – I accept my position there is very different), a few wonderful (romantic) girlfriends, a successful and long marriage, two grown-up children, and a series of jobs that I could at least really make my own. I have skills and talents I indulge in expressing, and now … And now?

From some things, all I have left is the shit.

My soon-to-be ex hears all my sadness and grief as anger and recrimination. I hear all her coping mechanism as defensive, cold and distanced. There is no exchange of love any more. There is no meaningful relationship. This is refined shit, with all the goodness taken out. My daughter hasn’t spoken or communicated with me for over two years, and I frankly expect no change any more.

And I have no intimacy and no sex, and I can’t remember the last time or when. That’s pure shit too.

I’m worth more than this. And yet I have to ask, what am I feasting on now?

A new diet

Last week I blogged anger about Pride becoming carnival rather than protest. But as I walked up the main road to the event, surrounded by hundreds of lovely people, most of whom had been through a similar crisis of acceptability and identity as I have (and realised I was the only trans* person in sight) I saw openness, vulnerability, strength, romance, love and happiness. We joined thousands already in the park, the music was loud, the atmosphere was amazing, and I felt completely safe, completely accepted. Why should I not be happy too? In the Literature Tent, some of the anger, the protest and the meaning of Pride was voiced. Enough for me not to do the same. My angry poem stayed in the folder, my envisaged introduction unspoken. There was a consistent, articulate trans* voice in the event, and that was enough, so I added my own with a different poem.

I’d never even brushed close to Pride before, and here I was seriously enjoying myself and meeting new and lovely and welcoming people I could never have met before. If my flat purchase in Hove succeeds, it will feel very much like coming home. ‘My people’ are different people now, and it feels good. In fact, where was I, and where were they, all my life?

Today, once more, my legs are aching, but my feet less sore, from dancing barefoot all evening. This week, not Five Rhythms, but ecstatic dance. What? Who? Me? Yes me, dancing with 30 others, doing my thing, synching with people I’ve never otherwise met, flying around the floor at times like a bird set free. This is the person who was the massage client described only a few years ago as ‘very different’, not for being trans* in hiding or denial or not understanding, but for being so conventional! My previous life-diet signified one thing: either I was severely constipated, or I was shitting pure goodness without digesting it, and not growing as I should. And now I am learning where the best food is, chewing it, appreciating it, accepting the shit.

The whole point of this, is that these last two years have been a really bad time for me, to go through such heartbreak, so many destroyed ideas of what love and life are all about, feeling that I have only ever been loved as an object of significance, not as person of value. I haven’t lost everything at all. A lot, yes. Things that most people would only imagine losing through infidelity, serious misdemeanour, or death. But everything was a result only of my integrity and their choice. I have told the story to death, and the book’s binding is tearing loose, the lettering no longer gold.

With all the goodness extracted from the previous three decades and more, I have been left with the shit. And the significance of this, is that everything in the shit was inside my life before. Some of it just useful roughage, but the truths of being loved for significance rather than self were there all along. Contingent love looked different when its dependency was safe. And now all the crap is out. That means no longer in. It should instead feel like relief.

I love. I love other people. I have a few deep friendships, and a new ability and freedom to truly encounter and share with the people I meet. I know what it means that women are sisters. I know what it means for me to express my emotions and intuition openly and freely, and to find the same in others. I know that in some ways I have entered a whole new world of personhood, inhabited by people I could never truly have known before, who share my love and exploration of life and meaning, who eschew ordinariness as impoverishing. I will probably never live in a suburban semi with garden again, though somewhere I can have a cat or dog would be welcome

I have real questions about my previous concept of marriage and the merging of people into singular coupleness. I like the word ‘partner’ because it sounds more equal and less role-dependent. It seems to leave people intact and able to do their own thing and find their own way. I would love to find romance, and real commitment, but without the suspiciousness that marriage can bring. Maybe it’s my age! And I really long for kisses and intimacy … My diet may have changed, but I still need a complete diet.

It takes a while to understand shit, to accept that it is waste, and is meant to be waste, that it can contaminate and needs to be disposed of and washed away properly. But there will always be some, and it is better out than in. It is the product of imperfect goodness, and no reason not to feast. The shit is over. Long live shit.

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Angry. OK?!

  • Posted on August 2, 2013 at 11:01 pm

transgender flagHave I done anger yet? Maybe a bit, for example: We have had enough, but it feels like time to talk anger, to feel anger, see anger and to speak it. Not in fury or resentment, but from the heart.

This week, weekend to weekend, has been Pride in Brighton. Being the centre of the world, of course it’s a non-local event, and has become a carnival, a big party, a celebration. Look, world, we can be gay, we can be lesbian, and our sexuality has nothing to do with you and everything to do with how we were born. Stuff you, we’re proud! And by now Pride everywhere attracts our friends and relations in joyful support.

We’ve arrived! YeeHaaa!

Haven’t we? I could walk out of Pride Park and be abused on my way to the station. Not for being gay or lesbian, but for being trans*. But in fact the worst street abuse I have had, and in Brighton, in daylight, was for being a woman. Vile stuff that went on and on, from men in a small truck.

Pride has become carnival for the huge strides in acceptance of sexual diversity in this country. It began in anger, in protest for equal human rights, against hate and bigotry embodied in the law, expressed in the media, ingrained in culture and perpetuated by blind beliefs. In no small part, religious dogma and doctrines have been responsible for the roots of this culture.

I want anger again. I want real anger for media hounding and othering. I want anger for women being expected to protect themselves rather than men being expected to drop their societal privilege. I want anger because of events like 50 rape threats an hour online when Caroline Criado-Perez succeeded in her campaign for a woman to feature on a UK banknote. Sexual threat against any woman who has an opinion, success without acting masculine or adopting male dominating attitudes is a deep sickness that has been accepted in our society. It’s just men being men. Carry a rape alarm and avoid dark places. It’s up to you to be safe.

I want anger that Pride has had to exist at all. I want anger that countries where Pride is a feature still allow trans* people to be demeaned and diminished, working below their skill levels or unemployed, and subject to violence and hatred. I want anger, that at one end of the year the carnival streets are alive with Pride, while at the other there are quiet, dignified events marking the Transgender Day of Remembrance. That one is in the media with colour pictures, whilst the other hardly features for its sobriety.

I want anger that a large proportion of people attending pride still have no idea what trans* really means. That ‘T’ is an honorary add-on member smiled upon and thought of as being something sexual.

Trans Pride – a first

This year in Brighton saw the first Trans Pride event in Europe. It was a gathering in celebration of trans* people finding each other, being free and happy together, enjoying a degree of quiet acceptance, good entertainment, and rain. But among the 1,500 who went, probably every single one will have suffered some abuse, and every one will at least know another who has attempted suicide, if not having done so themselves. Many, if not most, will have experienced some rejection by one or more family members.

I wish I could have gone, but I had previous commitments. And to be fair, I do have some reservations about anything that requires me to ‘belong to a community’, when I just feel normal and ordinary. And yet standing out is an important statement too. Or at least standing up. Because there is much still to be said, and a lot to be angry about.

The need to speak righteous anger

Injustice should shout to everyone who believes in humanity. Instead we have become a society of individuals afraid of being noticed, and afraid of reaching out to protect others lest we too be attacked. Pride is easy, because it’s a carnival. It wasn’t when it began. And there is nothing carnival about being trans* on a daily basis. If we survive, we are strong. As I often say, we are not brave, but we need a hell of a lot of courage.

Tomorrow I shall stand up in the largely LGB tent at Pride to read. I’ve wrestled with what to write, read or say. A nice bit of stirring, fun performance poetry? Would something gentle and thoughtful be more settling instead? (cue polite applause) But in reality I want to challenge, I want to be angry for my two minutes, for all the injustice and unfairness that happens on a daily basis to trans* people everywhere, including Brighton. And for where it comes from.

Our society as it is didn’t come from nowhere. We are not male dominated by default, not by some divine proclamation, and not because humans evolved fighting bears for survival. Comparative physical strength rather than inner strength is not by default the determinant of rights. And yet our heritage is stamped with ‘male is default’ (unless stated otherwise with ten good reasons listed beneath). Men are listened to more, expected to be the leaders (sorry, darling, didn’t notice you). Women are still expected to be the respondents and givers of pleasure through food, home-making or sex, still expected to accept what to do, still expected to listen before they speak, to concur before they disagree. All old feminist stuff? All still so terribly true.

And so I want to be angry that Pride has ever needed to exist, and that the carnival hides what is still a bigoted, wilful, male-dominated, unequal and unjust world right outside Pride Park. So if you are L or G or B, or just content to support and welcome others who are, spare more than a thought for what trans* people still encounter every day, with fewer protections and less support. Share a bit of anger for the overt and covert discrimination, for the hatred, for the media sensationalising, for the parents denied access, for the loneliness of being ‘different’ whilst being exactly the same as you on the inside. Because it all stems from not challenging societal norms, in origin flavoured powerfully by masculine religious culture and past doctrinal teachings.

I don’t mean deliberately to run up against people with faith – I will respect you if you respect me. But we do need an honesty about where societal norms originate about right and wrong, good and evil, and about how those norms have been given authority and by whom. Is your god male? Does your god have a history mostly of working through men, where women are the exceptions? Does your god have a history of male law-makers and priests, disciples, bishops, cardinals, and popes? Does your religion reflect ancient cultures where men ruled and women were usefully subservient? All of these things have helped give us a binary, clear-cut world where even gender and sexuality can be right or wrong. Why do so many feel suspicion about trans* people? Why is there that thought, that ‘something isn’t right here’, or indeed is ‘wrong’? Why is something that can be clinically diagnosed regarded as a moral issue, or distasteful? I reserve a bit of my anger for this, because in no small part I lived 40 years in fear and self-anger because of this cultural belief.

And now? I’m proud alright. And I’m angry. OK?!

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Unorthodox icon

  • Posted on July 28, 2013 at 10:26 am
Orthodox icon

I have a lasting memory of black and gold religious icons of a revered madonna. Mysterious, impassive, unjoyous. And I have abiding memories from my religious experiences of feeling that something about me was deeply wicked and unspeakable. Somehow there was a connection, and patriarchy and male enforcement was common ground. This is deeply feminist, but I do not mean to offend anyone. However, largely as a result of religious views, I had no voice; I could not speak. I was illegitimate. Icons are part of our culture still, if not religious. But they are co-opted, made by and for…

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Dis-appearances: stealth or skin?

  • Posted on July 27, 2013 at 9:05 am

We have evolved and survived – we being every living creature on this planet – through expert pattern recognition of things that matter most. For a bacterium, perhaps a chemical signature, for a bat an auditory echo, for an antelope, stripes moving the wrong way in tall grass, for a human, maybe a facial expression or the face itself. In fact our senses are all designed for pattern recognition, to know food from poison, welcome from warning, friend from foe, mate from challenger.

But for us as humans it has become incredibly complex. An actor is not really threatening you; their terrifying violence will become beans on toast as soon as the camera stops or the curtains close. And we thrive on novelty and invention, so the challenge of the unfamiliar is always with us. Sometimes we lose and a real danger is not spotted: insecticide toxins, environmental disaster, over-confidence is a dangerous place, early experiments with radioactive substances. Sometimes we win, and a new invention raises our game, an unexpected relationship becomes love, a crowded room of strangers becomes a welcome.

Stealth

Military technology that deflects radar enquiry (stealth) removes pattern from the response. Signals are absorbed, scattered and confused. You don’t get back a clear picture, or any meaningful picture or signature at all. It’s better than being ‘under the radar’. Its purpose is to confuse, to be invisible, so that an infiltrating mission, aggressive or surveillance, can go undetected.

As a borrowed term, I am very uncomfortable with adopting it for living as a transsexual woman. I am not intending to deceive anyone, but neither do I want to stand out. I want to adopt normality, not invisibility, and as trans* people do gain more acceptability in society, the fear factor will reduce. Being ‘found out’ is not something I want to happen. I want the conversation always to be:

‘You’re trans, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Oh. OK.’

In other words, my pattern has been noticed but it means I am friend not foe.

But this is a very difficult one indeed, because being trans* is not like being gay or lesbian or bi. I do not need another trans* person in order to have a relationship that is normal to me, whereas being gay or lesbian does. So I may need to be openly lesbian whilst not openly trans*. Being trans* is a diagnosis that has treatment to make you as un-trans* as possible. I used to think I had to live as if I was a man, because of my physiology and social expectation, but that is history. It is over; done; finished.

My male features, some of which I can do nothing about, like hand size, large big toes, a broader ribcage, will always make me noticeable. So I really do understand the grief a younger person feels, that correcting their genitals and torso, even their face, may still not be enough to assert without explanation, their own gender. If it didn’t matter to anyone else, it wouldn’t matter at all. But can I really ever be the object of desire to another? A frightening thought.

We present patterns to those around us, and they recognise and respond. I cannot make my big toes slender, but you can let it be completely OK. I don’t need stealth, you need to adjust your pattern recognition response. Being trans* is normal, not disconcerting or repulsive. The trouble is, I am in charge of myself, but I cannot change society around me except by slow, if vocal, influence. I am living now, today; tomorrow will not do for social acceptance.

Under the radar?

We do live with pattern recognition, and society assuredly has not adjusted. Most of the time I am just flying under the radar. I get on with life, I make myself look as normal as possible, whilst expressing my personality and individuality. I do a good job at work, I meet lots of people in many different settings. Being transsexual is not an issue. Until …

‘There’s that man in drag!’

As I left my flat a few evenings ago, a young man (isn’t it always?) in a car, announced this loudly to his friend. He was announcing his insecurity. His pattern recognition (maybe he has been around since I moved in, and remembers the earlier days) still says: ‘I know what to do with man, and I know what to do with a woman. This person confuses me. They are only in my book of shapes as a man in drag, and I have no better understanding. I feel safer by alerting my friends to something I don’t understand, rather than saying nothing because it doesn’t matter.’

As always, this young man spoke about himself, not me, but yes, I did find it offensive. And disappointing. Why was I being mis-identified at all?

I have no need to avoid this person in future, because the problem on one level isn’t mine at all. But if I could wave a magic wand, and become an attractive woman, would I? Well, maybe I would, just to avoid the hassle. But being stealth-configured to avoid hassle, risks the accusation of deceit, and frankly, I should not need to hide anything.

Skins

A lot of popular software applications, from this blog to games, offer alternative ‘skins’. The same thing underneath, no change in functionality or rules, just pink instead of green, flowers instead of camouflage. As an alternative to stealth, adopting a different skin, is perhaps feasible. I am what you see, and I want you to recognise that this is only a skin, and that yes, we have all chosen these presentations: I, as a transsexual woman with my style, and you, as a cis-person with your style. Or as a lesbian with your dyke style, another with a femme style, and so on.

So instead of stealth, in place of acting, and renouncing fear, throwing away the pattern-recognition manual for gender, I want you to know that inside I am exactly what I say I am. And that my skin is my familiar garb, not for you to question, but to understand why I wear it.

My ribcage does not make me a man. My dress is not drag. Ask me and I will be straight with you, and explain as best I can. But I will not hide just to assuage your prejudices. I did not choose this, just as you did not choose your gender – or your shoe size.

Well, this is what I would like. I am horribly aware that even for me, there are those I counted even as friends who ‘don’t know how to relate to me’. Even my wife and daughter don’t know, so have distanced themselves to a safe place for them. Yes, me, a threat to their normality: you can’t be my dad so you can’t be my parent. You can’t be my man, so you can’t be my partner or lover. Pattern recognition has destroyed my family, and there is no stealth imaginable there. If anything, living before realisation was stealth, and I have renounced it.

All around the world, every month, trans* people are murdered for being unfamiliar to the pattern-recognition handbook. Stealth would present a constant fear of being discovered, the radar points too low, the unwillingness of society to learn new patterns is not there. They are hated for being different. I am lucky. Very lucky.

Out in my skin

I can’t get out of my skin, I own it. But this is the bit I also choose. I choose for taste, but also for acceptability, not to hide, but to present. Some have a problem with it, but I don’t. Stealth? No. Discretion? Maybe. I am confident in my skin. But see me beyond it, because that’s where recognition really lies.

Related poem for reflection and fun: Patterns

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Take two

  • Posted on July 20, 2013 at 9:11 am

My weekend schedule is screwed. My Tesco weekly is deferred by two days, and I shall probably need to work half of Sunday too. That means a late walk on my own somewhere, then back to work. Why?

After my Chakradance workshop I worked out that Five Rhythms dance was a similar opportunity for me to do what I was already doing in my own space. But once more, down in Brighton the group was on Wednesday night, a popular night for everything, including band practices. I booked up a couple of other events in the autumn, again, not far removed from what I do. However, I then got invited over to Lewes Five Rhythms, and last night turned up to a new experience in dance. Well, almost everything is a new experience for me in dance. I sat out for 40 years at almost every disco, did the Gay Gordons when a reception demanded it, the odd skip at a Ceilidh, and even a few short weeks learning Lindy Hop. The one memorable event I have is when a girlfriend and I choreographed and performed a small dance when working at a community centre in Devon. That was a wonderful experience for me. None of those other forms are for me though, any more than I shall spend my time carefully crafting sonnets or sestinas. I write free verse and I dance free dance.

So for two solid hours, I and 30 others danced continuously, thoughtfully, mindfully, expressively. And sweated. I was in my element. After all these years, here was a room full of people who took my new self-discovery for granted. I think it did me a lot of good, so dance has to be part of my life now. Well, I’m not going to be invited to any parties any time soon, so I shall go and find dance. What can I do with it? Where can it take me? I don’t know, but it feels as essential as music and writing to me.

As I walked up the hill to the car afterwards, thankful for a warm night in my wet things, I was thinking how I got here. At 56 I was discovering things about myself that must have been latent all my life. At junior (primary) school, where we went in at doors engraved ‘boys’ and ‘girls’, I remember ‘being a tree’ or a butterfly or … Well, it was called music and movement, and I didn’t know I was dancing. After that I was plain awkward, and soon realised that I just didn’t do ‘bloke dancing’ at discos. But now? I was dancing, and wondering why I hadn’t been doing it all my life.

The feeling is one of release. First, no-one to ask permission if it was alright to skip Tesco and go off 20 miles to do some New Age thing with strangers. Second, no permission to get it wrong. What if I turned up and it was alien? But third, the freedom to discover myself and to set loose things that have been suppressed for all my life. No, it isn’t too late. The funny thing is, I never felt like I was the kid ‘trapped in the wrong body’, but I have lived all my adult life not expressing some innate and very deep aspects of self. This is release. This is the unspeakably awesome turning point of my life. This is a whole cage-full of white doves sent up into a blue sky and sunlight.

When the clapper-board of life comes down, and the action stops, and those you have been acting with retire to separate trailers and you are standing alone, you don’t expect it to come down again for ‘take two!’. I have been embedded in all I have lost, in terms of relationships, from family to friends who have simply withdrawn, and those who just don’t want me to get too close. And yet everywhere I go now, I find new acceptance, new welcome, and the most amazing inclusion in new things. Maybe, just maybe, someone will dare to get close, really close, and that first white dove will land and coo again.

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