Definitely lifted from derryere. This year was weird, thought I might want to remember exactly how weird.
Dude, I took this quiz in January 2007, and got this result.
I take it this year, and I get this:
Clearly, college has done some very bad things to me. I am that evil guy on the couch at the party who is saying very loudly “LOVE IS FOR DICKWADS.” I poop on people’s parades, apparently.
I had just better hope for an equally cynical person to come along and we can yell about how love is a sham, and then fall in love anyway.
A Life Done Wrong
by Hanna Wehr
At the age of 88, my heart will attack me
82: all you really need are large handled jugs of chardonnay and cat food
I am 71. I tell my husband that I understand. Sometimes the only thing we can control in life is how we kiss it good-bye. I sleep beside his body for two days before I call anyone
In my 62nd year I learn that mercy imposes no conditions
At the age of 58, my husband sleeps with a woman who is not me. I wring my heart out like a sock
56: I make casseroles for the homeless, read to underprivileged children, start a neighborhood recycling program. I wonder when I will feel something
I am 52. I bury my mother. Two months later my son steps in front of a train with his arms outstretched like Christ
In my 49th year, I become far too interested in the lives of celebrities. I buy a Crock-Pot. I make too much food and my family looks at this weird abundance in silence
At the age of 47, my life does not suit my shoes or my cigarettes. I go out to get canned pineapple and I come home with two cocker spaniels and a homeless man
41: my son tries to tell me something. I ask him to wait. And he waits for years. That winter while driving I run over a rabbit. I throw my cell phone into a field and have an affair
I am 34. I realize that I love anyone who reads to me In my 31st year, I wonder if I care for anything. I wonder if I am hungry out of habit
At the age of 30 I have a son. I am afraid to touch him. I leave him in the bathtub for long periods of time
27: I marry because that is what is next in the natural progression of things. I will spend the rest of my life feeling like I am living in someone else’s clothes
I am 22. I believe in God because I refuse to accept that seahorses are an accident
When I am 17, I make the choice to look like the type of trouble certain men choose to get into
12: I learn that these are only words and we never mean them
9: I am punished for bringing home a stray cat. I learn that it is a liability to love
7: I believe in snowmen. I hope for more
5: I learn to be quiet
4: I believe that my mother’s red car will be a fire truck when it grows up
1: I learn how to say no. Two decades later, I will forgot how
And at the point when I first meet myself, I already know that my ghost bones are engraved with directions.
Originally posted on December 6, 2009 at The Nervous Breakdown.
I was on Facebook un-tagging myself in photos where I have long hair/am wearing dresses. I don’t know why, but I was uncomfortable with them there. I don’t want to deny my past, but I don’t exactly embrace it either.
And then I ran across a photo with this caption I had made on a photo of myself:
I literally laughed so hard I almost peed myself. Can we say, in denial much? About a year after making that I comment I came out.
I stopped un-tagging photos after finding that. I have nothing to hide. I am who I am, past, present, etc.
One of the hardest things about coming out was losing people. Right now I’m struggling with the loss of a friendship. The rift happened over a year ago, but I’m still coming to terms with it.
I finally “de-friended” this person on Facebook, after a year of waffling on it. I wanted to stay in contact with her for the sake of old times, but honestly, it was just physically painful to see her pop up on my news feed. Whenever I hear her name, or hear about her sister, all I can think about how she told me that I was “faking” it. And how her boyfriend, one of my best friends, agreed with her and was fixated on the idea that I was doing it for attention. They also told me that it was statistically possible that I was a gay trans man, but the chances of it actually happening were “too small.”
I don’t know how to address the issue without conflict, so I don’t bother. But she’s set a precedent among my high school friends: it’s quite alright to use the wrong pronouns when referring to Julian because ze won’t say anything about it. I don’t expect them to know the gender neutral pronouns, but they do know that they aren’t supposed to use “female-assigned” pronouns. This is a problem I should have nipped in the bud and told her how offensive I find it. However, I’m morbidly afraid of one-on-one conflict, and couldn’t bear to “ruin” a friendship. What I’ve learned is that it was no friendship, but a control dynamic. She can control me by using the wrong pronouns, and being disrespectful. She did stuff like this before I came out, and I just never realised it. De-friending her on Facebook hasn’t really resolved anything around the issue. I still haven’t resolved the issue, or come to a conclusion on how I feel about it. Just thinking about it has got me all worked up, and weird. I even went and looked through my email to find one of the emails I exchanged with him (the friend’s boyfriend) about the issue.
June 15 2008:
I suppose that something else that makes me wonder is the dramatic transformation from how you were last year to how you are now.
I think these words (excerpted from the email referenced) have stuck with me all this time. Did I change? Maybe. But not in the way that people perceived. It was if I was suddenly this “whole new person.” All I “changed” was my gender identity and presentation. With this person in particular, I think he needed to think of me as a “whole different person” in order to process the change. He couldn’t overcome the limitations of his perceptions of gender, and had to put me in a whole different category from the “girl” he knew.
When I’m away at school I’m able to largely ignore the issues I have surrounding the loss of friendships in such a way. After all, the situation is not restricted to only these two friends. This happened with numerous people. Some of them can’t even look me in the eye any more. And, when I’m away, it’s as if these people don’t exist. I don’t have to deal with them. I don’t have to let them touch / hurt me. But when I’m back here, in my home town, in my parent’s house, I have to deal with friends constantly talking about these two, as well as the others who I don’t talk to.
I’ve told many people that I’m “over it” and that I have no animosity to these two, but that is such a fucking lie. I can’t stand them. I can’t even be in the same room with them without wanting to say something. And it’s fucking infuriating to be limited by good manners. T hasn’t made me a violent person, but damn I want to punch both of them in the hearts.
I guess I keep hoping for a happy ending, where they both come out and apologise for being massive shits. And that’s not going to happen, ever. I want to “resolve” the conflict, but there isn’t any way to resolve something like this. Even if they did apologise I wouldn’t believe they were sincere. Even if they did make an effort to get to know me as I really am, I wouldn’t trust them. I can’t help but hate them for helping to form my cynicism regarding friendship.
It’s one thing to have a stranger on the street say something. I can ignore them. But to have a childhood best friend reject you, that’s something that doesn’t go away, no matter how much you want it to.
Been reading a lot about femme invisibility lately, and it’s really been striking a chord. Before I transitioned / came out I definitely fell into the casual femme category, and I remember people laughing at me when I told them I identified as bisexual. Woot. That was not fun. I wonder how much of my current state of dress and “butchness” has to do with my earlier devalidisation.
Here are some good links that can expand more on this more than I can.
Sinclair, of the Sugarbutch Chronicles, weighs in here.
‘Essin Em offers her personal insight on the topic.
Any opinions?
I live in a town where cultural appropriation is rampant. There are pseduo new-wave hippies every two feet, many of them white, with dreadlocks and buddhas tattooed to their forearms. I find them particularly onerous and distasteful. I have a deep abiding hatred for white kids with dreads, which I find to be cultural appropriation at its worst.
So, when someone linked this article in a comment on a post I moderated for Genderfork, I had to stop and think a bit. I have a mohawk. I fucking love my mohawk. And I knew its origins, but somehow didn’t really think about them very much, because I loved my mohawk so much. When I moderated the post what I was focusing on was not the hairstyle itself, but the idea of shedding hair as a way of revealing gender- I didn’t expect the cultural significance of the mohawk hairstyle to come up.
But I am very fucking glad that the topic came up. I’m aware that many people are going to read that and say “Well, the mohawk is just a hairstyle.” And it is a hairstyle, but clearly one that has immense cultural significance to those who invented it/claim heritage in it. And that is why I’m going to grow mine out.
Yes, I am sad to lose my mohawk. But I would be sadder knowing that I was walking around culturally appropriating a significant cultural marker to people who have been continually oppressed by imperialism. I cannot “claim” a mohawk, just as those white hippie kids can’t claim “dreads.” I cannot, in good conscience, dismiss the mohawk as “a style” or something that just anybody can wear.
As a queer non-white person it isn’t very often that I think about having priviledge in a racial sense. I think about male priviledge every day. I think about how heteronormative priviledge oppresses me. I could not live with myself knowing that I had knowingly continued to wear a hair style that in wearing it would imply that I condone cultural appropriation in any form.
I welcome people who can challenge me to check my priviledge every day. I know that society has given me some priviledges that I take for granted, and it’s always good to get a little kick in the ass frequently to remind me of them.
My punk identity is not contingent on my mohawk, simple as that. Being culturally aware, and more than culturally “sensitive,” being culturally fucking empathetic, is way more contingent to my punk identity. Because, boy, do I know how infuriating it is to see the symbols of my cultural heritage emblazoned on rugs and in freshman dorm rooms. So, fuck that imperialist shit.
Winter 2010 will probably be my last quarter in an university.
Why, you ask? It’s not because I couldn’t cut it as a student. I’ve made Dean’s List two out of my three quarters. It’s not because I couldn’t handle the social pressure, or I was struggling with being away from home. It’s not because I’ve lost interest, or I’m unmotivated or lazy. It’s not because I’m home sick.
It’s because my parents can’t afford to send both me and my sister to a public university in California. That’s right. I attend a University of California school. Not one of the more “famous” ones, but I love it here. I love this campus, I love the people. I love learning. I’m one of those people who has always loved school, loved challenging school work, enjoyed research, and thrived in a traditional school environment. But with the 32% increase in tutition fees, one of us has to stop going to school.
A lot of people have asked me: “Are your parents making you stop?” The answer is a resounding “No.” My parents love me, and want me to go to school. They would bankrupt themselves to help me go to school. But they want me to transfer back to the UC in my home town, which just isn’t going to happen before the money runs out. It’s notoriously difficult to transfer between UCs, not to mention, the application due date is long gone. I have to take a leave of absence no matter what.
I’m going to do one last quarter, and then take a leave of absence and try to attend a city college, or something. I don’t know what the statistics for returning students are, but I can’t imagine they’re stellar.
Needless to say, I’m fucking bummed. My family prides themselves on being able to send their kids to college. My grandmother’s family is from China, and they have a long tradition of sending all their female-born children to college, even back when women didn’t go to college really. So, this is kind of a big disappointment to us all.
I’ll keep you all updated.
So I had a looong ass stretch between shots. I had to get blood work done so that my doctor could renew my prescription, but as is pretty evident, I am hella busy these days, so it took me a good week and a half to get into the lab to get my blood drawn. So, I finally (after three weeks !!!!!) got my shot in, and boy do I feel twenty times better. I didn’t even realise how crummy I was feeling until Monday night when I was walking across a bridge up on campus thinking “Don’t jump, don’t jump.”
The effects T have had on my mood are kind of extraordinary. I mean, I guess I knew that mood swings were a possibility, but I never expected them to be so violent. And when I’m actually on T, in a regular pattern, they don’t happen. But as soon as I go off it for more than a couple days… I’m pretty good at internalising mood swings and mood disorder-ish types of things, so none of my friends bear the brunt of the craziness going on in my head, but I do have to withdraw and sit in my bed and watch Mad Men or something to distract myself from the randomass mood swings. Alas.
But that should all be in the past now— I have new needles, which are only an inch long and are super skinny. The shots take extra long to do now, but it’s so worth it because it’s twenty times less painful than with the larger gauge, longer needles. For those of you who have never self-injected testosterone, it’s super goopy stuff, very viscous. It takes a long time to do a shot, even with a larger gauge needle, because it’s so thick. So, with a smaller needle it can take a while to do a shot. Which is no fun, but at least it doesn’t hurt as much. I think I was so irregular on my shots for a long time because I was dreading the pain of doing the shot, and now that it’s no longer an issue… Hopefully I’ll be more regular now.
Life is busy, busy, busy. I took a bit too much on this quarter, and am definitely feeling the burn. I’m not doing super well in classes (in fact, the worst I’ve done ever) but my personal life is improving daily, and I’m recommitting to my school work with ferocity. I got the classes I wanted for next quarter, so hopefully things are on the up and up.
When I went through puberty for the first time around the age of 12 (or 13) I had acne. It was pretty gross, but not particularly gnarly. It was obvious, and painful, and humiliating. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as the pustule fest that now festoons my face.
I take comfort in things such as Julie Blair’s Youtube video, “YOU’VE GOT ZITS! Acne Advice for Trans Guys and Everybody!” I actually use one of the products she mentions in the video, because it actually works (St Ives Aprict Scrub if you wish to know).
But the fact of the matter is: I have a pizza face. I have white heads, black heads, CYSTIC ACNE (GAH); in short, I look like a fourteen year old boy. Agreed, I have too many piercings (and now a tattoo) so I can’t order off the children’s menu at restaurants…
Anyhow, I remember in junior high and high school being completely petrified that someone would notice my fucking awful zits. It was the bane of my existence. My mother talked about my acne frequently and with a disparaging tone, as if there was something more I could do about it.
This time around no one has said a single thing about my acne. Nobody. Perhaps it’s because I’m older? I think not. I think that in general, girls are not allowed to have shitty acne. Guys, who seem to have worse acne, can get away with more. Of course, acne in excess is universally derided, but I’ve seen some boys with hardcore cystic acne and societally-deemed attractive girlfriends… Huh.
Last.fm
