Dear Google

Dear Google, how do you cope with mania? Please don’t tell me to avoid caffeine. I literally haven’t drank soda for weeks, and I still feel like I’m going to pop out of my skin and roll around on the floor like marbles, my pieces clinking together awkwardly and never merging together to form a whole.

Dear Google, telling me to seek a qualified mental health professional isn’t helping right now. I’m already seeing one of those, and she’s not going to come to my house to help me calm down and concentrate on studying so I won’t bomb that test tomorrow. It’s after hours anyway. I need your advice right now.

Continue reading “Dear Google”

Monster

Content note: This is a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago about cissexism and transphobia, both external and internalized. If you’re a trans person and you’ve had a particularly bad or dysphoric day, you might wanna skip this one.

Today in my literature class, the professor said we were going to deconstruct race and gender in Frankenstein. A sense of dread settled over me as she wrote “Race” and “Woman” on the board and asked a room of mostly white students what race is. After a very intellectual discussion, she asked the class what woman is. The first response was exactly what I was dreading. A student said, “Being biologically and anatomically female.” Continue reading “Monster”

Why I Suck at Eye Contact

Content note: This post talks frankly about ableism in a way that might induce anxiety in autistic readers.

Recently, I started a new job. I haven’t told anyone there that I’m trans or on the autism spectrum. I don’t like to have those conversations unless I feel safe and know I won’t be treated like an oddity or less of a person. Because I usually don’t talk about these identities of mine in public, I often hear things I don’t care for.

At this new job, I overheard a conversation between two coworkers where they were talking about a customer they didn’t like. One of them said, “Isn’t making eye contact just, like, basic human decency?”

And the other one said, “You’d think so, but…” Continue reading “Why I Suck at Eye Contact”

Transmasculine Gothic

  • You walk into the men’s room. Some cis dude is taking a shit in the only stall. You walk away and come back. He is still there. You eventually give up and use a different bathroom. The next time you return, he is still in the stall. He is always there.

Continue reading “Transmasculine Gothic”

The Cinderella Ideal and Tone Policing

Why do people expect each other (and themselves) to be saintlike in the face of abuse and oppression?

When I was growing up, I never saw any media that talked about ways to deal with abuse. Sometimes there might be a horror story about an abuse case on the news, but there was nothing about how to handle the experience yourself. The only example I had was the story of Cinderella.

Continue reading “The Cinderella Ideal and Tone Policing”

Here’s to Gender Agnosticism, Y’all

I recently found a blog post where someone wrote about their identity as “gender agnostic.” I liked it so much that gender agnosticism is becoming part of how I describe my gender identity. It makes for a very apt description of the attitude I’ve been developing towards gender lately. The way I’ve been feeling about gender is similar to the way I feel about God. Weird, right?

Continue reading “Here’s to Gender Agnosticism, Y’all”

Seeking Humanity in Trans Stories

In my world literature class, we cover the Epic of Gilgamesh and Babylonian myth. My teacher talks about a being named Asushunamir. He uses the words “creature” and “hermaphrodite” to describe them. According to my teacher, Asushunamir was created to rescue the goddess Ishtar from the underworld. He says that because they were both male and female, they were considered “more than human” and therefore could enter the underworld safely, whereas mortal men and women could not.

Continue reading “Seeking Humanity in Trans Stories”

Things HB2 Has Taught Me

Because this North Carolina resident gets real tired of people sometimes.

For non-NC residents, House Bill 2 is a piece of legislation that struck down all anti-discrimination ordinances for LGBTQ folks in the state and mandated that transgender people have to use the restroom that corresponds with the gender marker on their birth certificate. A more extensive explanation of HB2 is here.

In the wake of HB2, many memes have been circulating which show pictures of muscular, bearded trans men with a caption along the lines of, “Would you want these guys sharing a restroom with your wife/daughter?” The implication is that of course these guys should be allowed to use the men’s restroom, because they look just like any other guy. I’m not a fan of this approach, as you can see below. Continue reading “Things HB2 Has Taught Me”