Pull out all the stops, we are coming home tonight.
A pair of old boxing gloves in a new fight.

So now I’m back at home, and trying to avoid the feeling of being trapped after so much happiness and freedom that the boat has already given me in my three weeks time there.

Every single scar, well it means something to me, as if life wrote down my history.

Where do I begin about the boat? This season, it’s drastically different. Okay, so that’s an exaggeration, but the crew is what makes the experience and they are very different. Less hippy, as Josh (current crew member) would say. The crew is primarily male, with the heavily tatted and often crude Josh; the brilliant but just as crude Jersey; “Super Seaman” Steve; Bakari, a friend of AJ’s and a crew member from last season after I left; and the token gay man, Mikey. Other than the guys, there’s Steph and Emily, Kat (from last season) and the cook, Danielle. Already some crew members have paired off, though I won’t name any names because they’re trying to be discreet.

Rollin with (part of) my crew

Bottles and road signs sound like tires on bent wheels,

Our hands and feet in ordinary thrills.

It’s unusual to be single. But intensely enjoyable. It gives me the time to not worry about taking care of another person and use all of my energy to take care of myself, something I stopped doing for quite awhile. It gives me the time to think about the rest of my life, who I want to be, where I want to be, what’s most important to me. I don’t have many answers yet, but sometimes it’s not about the answers, it’s about the questions.

When we unlocked all the doors, just so we could finally breathe.
Just so we could sew down these torn up sleeves.

Anyway, enough soul-searching, self-serving mumbo-jumbo….now back to life at sea. My bunk this year is in the uncomfortable place right next to the galley table; very little storage space, next to no privacy. I miss fore peak (foc’sle) living from last year, but I think part of it is that I really haven’t had the time to move into my bunk properly. I’ve been on the boat since June 3^rd and I haven’t spent one night sleeping in my bunk. I spend most of my nights in the vastly more comfortable and better ventilated crew house, where the crew likes to get riotously drunk or at least have a beer before bed while watching an inane comedy or ridiculous horror movie.

This roof could be my bed
Blankets feel like the night sky, blankets feel better the heavier they get.

The food is fucking ridiculously good; we truly eat like kings with gourmet and international surprises at every meal. Though I do miss meat in my diet as the boat eats vegetarian. The work is exhausting, but I like it that way. At the end of the day, I feel like I’ve done something tangible, something concrete. Whether that’s sanding, priming, and painting a cabin top or teaching tempestuous middle schoolers about science, it’s something.

Here we stand with a wolf-like shadow, here we stand in the end.

So, back at home life. Last night while out to dinner with my father and brother (my mother has abandoned the family for a sisters weekend in Cape Cod), my father embarrassed me horribly, more than he realized. The waiter continually referred to us all as “gentlemen” and by the third time he did it, my dad interrupted him and said, “This is my daughter, so you know.” The waiter looked horribly humiliated and back tracked quickly. My brother later chastised my dad for saying anything and my dad just shrugged. I stared at my plate for the rest of the meal and the situation put me off my food intensely. So, feeling this overwhelming discomfort, I went to talk to him about it. And though I’d had the “gender talk” with my mom already and assumed she’d told my dad, that assumption was apparently wrong. I started from the embarrassing beginning and tried to explain myself with him foundering on the true motivations behind it all. Frankly, he doesn’t get it. He’s trying, but he really doesn’t. He asked why I have to flaunt my gender difference; he asked why I can’t just celebrate being a woman. I wanted to scream, “you’re missing the point!” Honestly, I’m tired of these conversations. I just want to be left alone to a world where people already get it, or if they don’t get it, they quietly embrace it because it’s what makes me happy, it’s my life, etc etc. Like my crew members for example; I’ve told them all at this point. Most of them don’t really understand, not in the same way that queer people do, but they accept it. I’m equally included as one of the guys, for the most part; yet can casually sink into the realm of girl’s world if I choose. That, in essence, is the only thing I really want. The fluidity to move across the lines because in my daily life, I straddle them. My dad insists that one day soon I’ll have to compromise my gender expression for the world; I don’t believe that’s true.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

—Martin Luther King Jr.

I stood back on the couch, remembered this is my life,
with my hands over my head, friends by my side.

Here is where we’ll go; I will take us home.

So now, it’s off to the open ocean, off to NY City.

SAIL

Hey New York, here’s our wolf-like shadow.

Hey New York, our old friend.

With a new haircut on a rainy day.

Compare the above current haircut to my previous lack of one:

I call it amorphous blob hair.

See? Much better. Granted, my mom’s probably going to kill me since I promise not to cut my hair again, but I look so much better clean cut than I do shaggy. I’d really rather not go into the drama of the past…month/3 weeks. It’s too tiring and I spent all night working on a paper about Morocco and it’s raining so…not today.

But I’m still here, still alive and kicking. Senior Ball is coming up this Saturday, plenty of tuxedo pictures to follow.

I’ve been thinking a lot more about top surgery. It’s like…I always want it. Sometimes I just want it more than others. And for some reason, by myself, on my own, I think about it more. I stare at myself in the mirror and see not a sliver of the wisp of a boyish girl or girly boy, but simply, maleness. Never in my life has this process been so solidified. So then top surgery pops back up again. Do I really want it? What will top surgery look like on an non-T body? [Will I lose sensitivity?]

E.V. expressed something I hadn’t thought of: as the first to see me, shockingly, as a whole entity instead of just pieces of biology and secondary sex characteristics, to her, having breasts is just something male about me, not explicitly female, just mine. She asked if I was worried if no one else would ever see that, worried that no one could love me as a whole and complete entity, just me. I’m not worried. I thought when I first started, um transitioning? becoming? evolving? finding myself? (fuck language, moving on…) When I first came into the knowledge of myself as otherly gendered or at least not binarily gendered, I thought I would never find anyone to love me. My recent ex-lover had forced me out because of it; that wasn’t the issue in its totality but it was a huge fucking issue. How could anyone ever love someone so mired in the darkness of confusion about ones own self? Can’t you not love someone unless they love themselves?

And I came to the place of loving myself. I slowly, slowly realized that there are people who see the whole of me, or if not the whole of me, parts that coalesce and shift, like putting together a blank puzzle.

Don’t push me out, just a little longer. Stall your mother, disregard your father’s words.
Keep your clothes on, I got all that I can take.
Teach me how to use the love that people say you made.

Janelle Monae is coming to perform here. I feel meh. Thoughts?

I will say she has the nicest hipsteriest asylum cell I’ve ever seen.

I will present you with my newest love, before I vanish into the rainy abyss and sleep for an eternity:

It’s alright, the camera is talking.

Even though I can’t be sure, memory tells me that these times are worth working for.

Weep for yourself, my man,
You’ll never be what is in your heart.
Weep little lion man,
You’re not as brave as you were at the start.
Rate yourself and rake yourself,
Take all the courage you have left.
Waste it on fixing all the problems
That you made in your own head.

But it was not your fault but mine.
And it was your heart on the line.
I really fucked it up this time.
Didn’t I, my dear?

Tremble for yourself, my man,
You know that you have seen this all before.
Tremble little lion man,
You’ll never settle any of your scores.
Your grace is wasted in your face,
Your boldness stands alone among the wreck.
Now learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck.

But it was not your fault but mine.
And it was your heart on the line.
I really fucked it up this time,
Didn’t I, my dear?

Anyway, moving on.

A Response to my Critique, by Theo Retos

(The numbered parentheses indicate caveat-footnotes at the bottom.)

Gender Experimentation in College

Without experimentation there cannot be realization. Some people do eventually shake off the transgender or gender-variant identity, but granting the population the opportunity to do so is worth it for those who come to terms with whatever identity they settle upon. Additionally, I think there will be less fleeting experimentation when people are allowed, in societal terms, to adopt aspects of variance earlier. They will have already accepted certain facets of their gender identity before college, and therefore won’t need to assume an ‘extreme’ presentation and then shift back to more personally moderate expressions. Instead, they will be relatively close to a comfortable presentation when they arrive at college.

Think about it in terms of sexuality— college used to be, and in some ways still is, a safe space to question our sexuality. However, since non-heteronormative sexualities are now more widely accepted at various developmental levels people often come to college with an idea of their variant-sexuality.[1] They may shift and change some, but their fundamental queerness is already there. Hopefully one day gender-variance will exist on a similar plane… taken for granted as a possibility rather than something strange and worthy of ‘experimentation’.

Adopting a variant identity during college brings about at least some of the fears gender-variant people have. If you discuss class you have to take into account the monetary expense of adopting ‘gender-variance’, if only temporarily. Those without great deals of expendable income must wear their newly acquired neutral or masculine clothes either in Northampton or at home, and home may not be nearly as accepting as the Smith Bubble. Additionally, if they cut their hair short they have to deal with that alteration in conjunction with their adoption of the aforementioned clothing, which brings about some of the presentation problems you mentioned gender-variant people face. To assume that those experimenting with gender don’t have to deal with some of these fears is unfair. No, their fears aren’t as bad as the perpetual fears gender-variant people have to face for the rest of their lives since the subject’s experimentation is in Northampton, which is an accepting place. Yet, if they choose to go abroad, take time off, get an internship during the summer, etc. they have to deal with the wardrobe and hair cut they have in non-Northampton contexts. Overall, take the fad and the irritation it causes with a grain of salt.

Gender-Variance and Medical Intervention

The most important aspect of your post I want to address is your view about the rejection of medical procedures by gender-variant people. Why does medical intervention imply a reinforcement of the gender binary? Why does medically changing my body to fit my conception of self make me less gender-variant? I’m unclear as to the correlation between medically altering my body and the somehow necessary connection to an altering of my personality. In making the connection between top surgery and Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) you are actually reinforcing the stereotypes of “maleness”. You are equating the results of medical treatment: flat chest, squared jaw, lower voice, etc. with maleness, and completely removing the ingredient of self-identification. There is nothing to say that if I choose to medically change my body I can no longer claim to be gender-variant. Since, one doesn’t need breasts to identify as female, nor do they need a penis to identify as male, the reverse is that one doesn’t need to become a transman in choosing to acquire medically-induced ‘male’ characteristics. If the absence of some characteristics doesn’t imply a deprivation of identity, then the presence of some characteristics, whether ‘natural’ or medically created, doesn’t imply a deprivation of identity either.

My body, my presentation, my conception of self, and the world’s interpretation of me are what make me gender-variant. Your assertions about gender-variance not needing medical intervention ignores the role medicine can play for anyone. You are creating a dichotomy between trans-binaryism and gender-variance. In other words, you are binding transpeople to medical intervention, saying that medical intervention necessarily makes one trans and indicates a movement across the gender binary. Simultaneously, you are putting gender-variant people above the binary and ignoring the role medical intervention can and may need to play in some gender-variant people’s lives. In other words, you are equating medical intervention with transitioning across the binary, and ignoring the role medical intervention can play in queering anyone. I think this ideology occurs because of the normative conception of transpeople being ‘born in the wrong body’. Some transpeople would, if they had the option, opt into changing their history so they were born male or female. The restrictions of science make it so this group is forced to use medicine to compensate for the body they were born with in pursuit of the body they want; they use HRT and surgery to create a body that fits their desire to be male.[2] However, this should not be the dominant conception of what medical intervention is, does and means. There are structures within which our presentations as gender-variant people will be interpreted. I will be read as male/man, female/woman or trans regardless of my desire to be genderqueer. As a result, the fundamental purpose behind our presentation, and our choice to take hormones and get surgery, should be our own happiness. The world may see me as a transman, like some assume, but I will still be variant in my own way, which is the important part.

Transmen have inadvertently co-opted the narrative of a certain kind of body being immediately correlated with ‘male’ or ‘man’. In other words, since transmen inhabit a range of bodies, many of which are acquired through medical intervention, those bodies come to mean “man” or “male” as much as cis-men’s bodies do. Since transmen often undergo or want to undergo HRT and top surgery but don’t often receive bottom surgery AND they want this body to mean “man” for them these bodies are increasingly deemed “man” in the general discourse. As a result, any gender-variant person who adopts a ‘male’ name and ‘male pronouns’ and wants to undergo various forms of medical intervention are equated with being a transman.[3] In the same way that people impress upon you the common notion of transgenderism, you are placing upon interventionist gender-variant people the narrative of trans-binaryism (or using medicine to shift one’s gender/sex from one side of the binary to another). In essence, you are reinforcing the gender-based stereotypes of what it means to be a (trans)man and ignoring the identities of gender-variant people who want medical intervention. You are equating a “flat chested, hormone altered, specific set of genitals”-body with being a ‘man’ even if that’s not how the person wants to identify.

Let me try to break down the combination of bodies here that are being equated with (trans)man in the context we’re talking about (Smith College or other insular queer spaces):
breasts, female-assigned genitalia, lack of testosterone = man
breasts, female-assigned with clitoral growth (referred to as dick) genitals, presence of testosterone = man
flat chest, dick/clit, presence of testosterone = man
flat chest, dick/clit, cessation of hormonal injections but maintenance of bodily changes = man**
flat chest, surgically constructed dick, presence of testosterone = man
natal/biological male-assigned body = man

In all those cases, the person or subject is assigned a (trans)man designation to their body. They call their bodies ‘man’ or ‘male’. However, a genderqueer person could also feasibly inhabit any of those bodies and still be genderqueer. If I can queer my presentation and queer my gender, why can’t I queer my body? Why can’t I get top surgery and take T, either temporarily or permanently, and still call myself genderqueer? Since the dominant discourse is that “female-assigned medically altered male named and pronoun’ed bodies are transmen”, genderqueer people are being shifted into those boxes when they receive HRT and top surgery even if they don’t want those designations.[4]

We cannot separate the way bodies play a role in our pursuit of our true gender. I understand the frustration of feeling pressure to change one’s body to conform or present one’s masculinity since the discourse presumes this of us. I completely understand your frustrations regarding peoples’ intrusive questions. I think for the reason that people don’t often associate medical intervention with variance is because the ‘medical transition to male’ narrative has become the dominant one for both transmasculine and transgender people. As a result, the overarching discourse is framed through this lens. For example, rather than asking, hopefully in private, “why do you feel positively or negatively about certain parts of your  body?” the discourse is framed as “are you going to get top surgery (and when)?” As if top surgery is a given for either group, transgender or transmasculine people.

It’s hard to make the claim that genderqueer people shouldn’t need medical intervention. That’s like universalizing transpeople’s experiences— some don’t have bottom dysphoria, some do. (Queer) Society at large accepts the idea that a transman’s natal genitals are a dick or a transwoman’s natal genitals are a vagina; this doesn’t mean we cannot also accept someone’s need to get bottom surgery. Our acceptance of their state of being doesn’t remove their dysphoria. Therefore, our acceptance of the bodies of gender-variant people doesn’t take away their need to take T and get top surgery in pursuit of a complete realization of self. We just need to reflect on where our desire for medical intervention comes from— are we succumbing to pressures of conformity or do we truly feel that to exist in the world the way we want/see ourselves we need HRT and surgery? Keep in mind some genderqueer people only take hormones (some for temporary periods of time) and others only get top surgery.

Reorientation and Loss

Additionally, I understand the sense of loss you feel when gender-variant people appear to move into the ‘trans-camp’. I worry about how undergoing medical intervention will alter peoples’ conceptions of me or narrow the idea of gender-variance at large. I chose a male name and adopted male pronouns as a way to manifest my masculinity in a shorthand way. Rather than having my original name and pronouns be used in conjunction with my presentation to interpret me as a masculine lesbian woman, I adopted new signifiers to intentionally shift public interpretation. Additionally, I think my chosen name and pronouns suit me better than those I was originally assigned. That does not mean they are the best, but I continue to explore this even today. Meanwhile, I lament that my identity will be reassigned if I choose to undergo medical intervention— I will be read as a (trans)man rather than a genderqueer person. Yet, that sacrifice and re-education should only be taken into account, it shouldn’t be what stops me or anyone else from getting HRT or top surgery if we so choose. No, I shouldn’t feel pressured to use medical measures to manifest my gender identity, but I should be given the option. l agree with you that gender-variant people should do a great deal of reflection about whether or not medical intervention will yield the satisfaction they desire— they need to navigate internal desires to alter their body, their conception of their presentation and their body’s relationship to this presentation (ex. can they be satisfied binding and be comfortable with breasts?), social pressures to conform to conceptions of masculinity, and the trans-narrative discussed above.

Finally, it is hard to understand the intersection between physical presentation and social signifiers. For some, the idea of medical intervention grows before the decision to change one’s name or pronouns. Names shouldn’t be gendered just as bodies shouldn’t be gendered. There should be a large volume of gender-signifiers for us to choose from that will help people understand our concept of self with or without medical procedures— for example, “he, she, hir, ze and they” simply do not represent the plethora of genders out there. My choice to alter my body shouldn’t necessarily add to or detract from one gender or another if I don’t want it to— I should be whatever gender I decide. Breast implants don’t make someone more woman, and steroids and gaining muscle mass doesn’t make someone more man. If that is logically true, getting top surgery and taking T shouldn’t make me more (trans)man or less gender-variant if I don’t want it to.[5] However, gender-variant do need to understand that the world doesn’t understand this principle and learn to navigate what this lack of understand will mean for them and for the progress of eradicating the gender-binary.

Footnotes:
[1] By ‘variant’ I mean all non-heteronormative sexualities. Since Jax’s post discussed the relationship between dominant, oppressive concepts and their counterbalancing ideas anything that does not conform to the het-cis-white-patriary-etc.-discourse will be considered variant. Variant is the uncategorized, which is I am not categorizing trans as variant. Regardless of its accuracy, transgenderism has a schema in common discourse— as a movement across or along a gender binary. Therefore, gender-variance is categorized here as not man/male, not woman/female, and not trans.

Complaint #9

The genderqueer support group keeps losing members to the trans support group.

Game, set, match?

Le sigh. If this is a game, I don’t want to win. Anyway, enough with cryptic semi-self-pitying remarks. Guess I’ll have to keep you waiting.

I am tired of the god-damn lesbian pecking order.

Here’s what I mean. Smith College has create a hierarchy of sexuality and gender. Suddenly, it’s cool to be transitioning to male. It’s cool to be taking medical steps towards changing your biological gender when you’ve barely begun to comprehend how that will change your life. I’m not trying to assume anything or devalue someone else’s struggles, this is just my opinion. But it’s my opinion, so I shall go on. Just a warning, this is gonna get offensive to some of you.

Certain things have been built into our community that are unacceptable. Strangers coming up to me and asking me about how my transition is going: unacceptable. Strangers asking my friends about my gender and my business: unacceptable. An 18 year old who sees all these cool transmen around him and suddenly wants male pronouns, a male name, top surgery, and hormones? You guessed it, unacceptable. Does no one realize that T will permenantly and unalterably change your body? Have you not considered the consequences?

Being transgender has become a fad at Smith College. Yeah, I said it, a fucking fad. Women, especially lesbian women, have come to eroticize and fetishize the trans men in this community or really anyone who expresses masculine traits. I’ve had friends who have had strangers come up to them and ask if they were transitioning simply because they display traits that are not traditionally feminine. When they say they are not, the stranger will respond, “Well, you’d be hotter if you were.” What? Every week I hear of someone else who has changed their name, who’s taking T. Whatever, I guess, you’re choice. But here’s the question no one is asking, after college, will this still be your choice? Some may say, so what if it isn’t? And here’s my response: by co-opting trans identity and shucking it off when it’s no longer convenient or no longer useful, it trivializes the real struggles that transgendered and genderqueer folks have to go through because gender-variant folks can’t do that. They’re playing with oppression, an oppression that they do not have to experience and may not actually fully understand. For so many people, it’s a deeply personal and intensely difficult struggle. Also, it’s a highly politicized identity, which these kids are only playing with, without having to experience the real oppression or the real personal and political struggle.

For some, yes. Some have stuck to it. But it’s statistically problematic to assume that all of them will. Smith College is a wonderful, safe little bubble. I don’t think many people understand how dangerous the world is. These kids hardly ever have to experience the real fear that gender variant people have to deal with. A trans person dies every day. It is so safe here, but when I go out into the world, I am constantly afraid. Afraid of the no-necks, afraid of women’s bathrooms, more afraid of men’s bathrooms.

Perhaps the one thing I’ve been building up to and around: by transitioning to male or transitioning to anything, aren’t you just reinforcing the gender binary? Isn’t the point of being gender variant to be just that? We should stop reinforcing the gender-based stereotypes because it’s never just about gender, or it shouldn’t be. By eroticizing the maleness or perceptions of maleness, we’re just reinforcing the binaries which have historically kept us down. Haven’t we learned enough about intersectionality in our SWG classes to know that gender is never just about gender, that it’s about gender and sexuality, gender and race, gender and class, gender and age.

There is much more to say, but let me end with the concept brought first to my attention by Audre Lourde, that the Master’s tools will never dismantle the Master’s house, and quote one of my favorite gender scholars, Riki Wilchins:

“Is it too much to say that the notion of the homosexual and perhaps the notion of even gay identity itself is not in some way an invention of heterosexuality? Perhaps even a reaffirmation, if only unconsciously, that the most important thing about us should be where we stand in relation to reproduction? Would it be overreaching to say that just as light requires dark and male an opposing female, so gayness actually requires an antecedent and opposing straightness? So that instead of struggling against a heterocentric culture, gayness actually demands and solidifies it?…with these pre-frabricated identities of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender we are so quick to occupy, we are still living in the Master’s house.”

I’ve been “away” for awhile. You could say it’s been years. Basically, I got to this point last night where I realized that my habits, specifically my drug habits, were starting to become a problem. I looked around. My entire wardrobe was either dirty or scattered on the floor. Dishes that had gone unwashed for months were hosting colonies of mold. I would eat nothing for breakfast, sleep all the time, do nothing.  I left marijuana and sex toys lying around. I felt like shit. I couldn’t remember the last time I did laundry, clipped my fingernails, brushed my hair. I needed to wake up, sober up, take a shower, read a zine, write a song or a letter, do my homework for once. I needed to start taking care of the basics, then whine about how depressed I feel. And then I want to start doing the things I used to enjoy: go on a bike ride, or talk to my neighbors, or cook something nutritious, or call my parents. I should know how to be responsible by now. I should know how to be an adult by now.

Part of my goal of responsibility is to dedicate more time and energy to this blog again. I’ve been failing and mostly it was because I thought no one cared about my whining, self-pitifulness. But then I remembered that it’s more than that. I remembered the time when someone I only vaguely knew came up to me and THANKED ME for what I had written, how they’d never heard anyone else express what they were feeling inside. Or the number of people I’ve heard, offhandedly, talk about their gender and the complexities of the “middle ground” of being genderqueer in a local and generalized community that constantly asks you to choose. And in the “bubble”, where I’ve lost track of the trans and gender bending folk here, so many people, like me, feel alone. But we’re not alone, or rather, maybe we’re alone together.

Standing in the middle can be isolating. But it’s worth it.

I'm back...and "dapper as fuck"

you know how it goes, i know you do, too – see it in your eyes. so you tell me then, cause i want to know, tell me about the places i’ve never been to, tell me about all the places i’m gonna go to

you look like someone who knows how it goes, so

i’m going to tell you how it goes,

…he wants to know how i got all these scars on my pretty little body.

i tell him, sweet as i know  how: baby, i forget.

i drink from the river of forgetfulness.

i forget the names i forget the faces i forget the stories

i forget all kinds of shit.

yeah, baby, i got scars

i got scars all over, but i don’t even know this story,

see.

ain’t no story, cause i forget.

I stay up late smoking weed and…well, masturbating.

I sleep until 2 PM most days.

I spend long amounts of time in my room on the computer.

I hope you can see through you big lawn and watch it get fenced.

I don’t shower often and have taken on the scent of boy body oder and the sweet smell of marijuana.

Sleepless long nights, that is what my youth is for.

A change in your heart, you know who you are.

Expect an “etymology of a mix” post forthcoming. I’m working on a special one right now. A back-to-school, senior year, fix-your-life-fix-your-friends, apology mix.

Now I see it in your eyes, you’re giving up the gun.

Though it’s been a long time, you’re right back where you started from.

I see you shine, go on.