Midweeks...

What a life this week is being...

I've been taking a bit of a break from social media in general, mostly just trying to stay connected with a few people that matter most. It's just been too much recently, and having to repeatedly argue for my identity and my sexuality is growing a bit wearisome.

To top it off, I ended up cracking my head very very hard getting into the car this morning for work, and I'm pretty sure I concussed myself. Which is fun. For certain definitions of fun. Really all I wanna do right now is curl up and get some sleep, bu I gather that's not a great idea.

I've been getting very into a Japanese band named Versailles, a power metal/visual kei band. A friend of mine linked be to a concert video for them, and I was hooked enough to get the albums...and I was certain I'd be disappointed without the visuals. Well, quite the opposite really. They stand up amazingly well as really great power metal...upbeat, melodic, lots of energy...without the visuals and costumes and staging. Two thumbs way up.

Here, have a taste:

Finally, on the rare occasion I have been playing World of Warcraft (taking a bit of break there too cos needed), I finally got the second of two mounts I wanted more than anything on launch of Legion...the ghost moose from archaeology. That and the fosk were the only two I knew I had to have, and I'm so glad to have gotten both :-)

I'll be having another essay up here in the next couple days...but for now I'm gonna rest my head.

Take care everyone.

Trans 101 With Julie: Sur la morale du mal

Hello and welcome back to Trans 101 With Julie.

A new idea would be this: Allow our titular Julie to wake up and not immedicately go into a a higher state of anger than she normally has. It would be novel, and an interesting change of pace, and I'd rather like that a lot.

Sadly, it seems unlikely to happen.

We all know about the horrific situation in Cville the weekend of 12 August, so I won't belabour that, safe to note that it is, of course, endemic of the cancer that has eaten at this country for 525 years, give or take. It doesn't need said much more than that, and really isn't within the purview of what I intend these essays/screeds/rants/tranche de vie to be.

But, we'll use this as a foundation, a launching point for what is going to follow. Last week I think I prefaced...let me look...yes. I did. So, I get to use it all over again. Bully for me.

"I want to talk about this week.

I want to talk about my feelings about what happened this week.

I will likely alienate a lot of people with this.

I'm going to use really harsh language and potentially triggering words and slurs in here.

I'd say I'm sorry but I'm not.

It's all necessary.

Let's begin."

~~~//||\\~~~

Two things happened this week that bear some form of comment.

The first is a situation in Philadelphia dealing with Function Coffee Labs, which fired a transgender employee, ostensibly for 'performance-related issues.'

Pennsylvania is an 'at will' state when it comes to employment. To quote:

"[A]n employer may terminate its employees at will, for any or no reason ... the employer may act peremptorily, arbitrarily, or inconsistently, without providing specific protections such as prior warning, fair procedures, objective evaluation, or preferential reassignment ... The mere existence of an employment relationship affords no expectation, protectable by law, that employment will continue, or will end only on certain conditions, unless the parties have actually adopted such terms."

(Ref: Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc., 24 Cal. 4th 317, 8 P.3d 1089, 100 Cal. Rptr. 2d 352)

This means, irrespective of anything, if the employer wants to terminate your employment, they can do so. As long as they don't say 'We're firing you because you're a tranny,' they can get away with it.

So all well and good. Someone got fired.

There are, of course, two sides to the story.

First, the business's:

"We fired a barista who was not adequately performing job duties and yes, also happens to be transgender. However, their termination had nothing to do with their gender identity. Since May, we have been in the process of starting an internship for an LGBTQ youth in conjunction with the Attic Youth Center, which we plan to start in the Fall. We welcome and support people of all kinds both as employees and customers."

There are so many things I would have addressed right to the business on this.

Except I can't.

Because they blocked my ability to post or respond on their page.

Now, as much as it pains me to say this, they are within their rights to do so. It is their FB page and they can include or exclude people as they see fit. The fact that I am trans and openly so, vocal and openly so, and angry and obviously so, surely had nothing to do with it, and the sheer fact that I was argumentative was the only reason they shut off my commenting.

(for the record, and for fairness and clarity and open disclosure, here is what I wrote:

"I come to Philadelphia regularly for my trans health care at the Mazzoni Center over on Bainbridge. Usually my friends and I look for a coffee place to hang out at before and after my appointments. It'll never be Function now that I know they discriminated against one of their employees for being transgender. I am incensed. I hope you're proud of what you've done, and I hope you enjoy the rotted fruits of your efforts.")

And here's the former employee's:

"My name is [blank], I am the person you speak of in West Willy and Queer Philly Exchange, who got fired from Function Coffee Labs. I am very okay with you both posting this - yes, please stop shit like this from happening - but would prefer to remain anonymous. I would also like this to remain credible, so here is the entire story.

First, about me, I am a trans identified person, assigned female at birth, mixed race/POC, in my late 20s. This customer who felt uncomfortable with me had made multiple complaints about me to my bosses, about the "new girl", the "lesbian" - I was not new at Function (8 months of employment), and I do not identify as a girl or a lesbian. In person, he was aggressively sexist, transphobic, and classist to me. In response to his comments and complaints, I told my bosses he made me feel unsafe. However, because he was a "regular" I was forced to continue interacting with him, but relied on my coworkers to serve him whenever possible.

In his most recent complaint, he told my bosses I had made gay slurs at him and his friends, and that I was homophobic. I had never made gay slurs at him, and he never entered with any friends. However, my bosses asked me to apologize to him, to "smooth things over". On his next visit, this customer approached me while I was behind the counter, put his face inches from my face, and shouted at me. I redirected the conversation outside of the store, and as requested, apologized for making him feel disrespected and hurt. He proceeded to verbally harass me, and physically threatened me.

I recounted the details of this incident to my bosses immediately in an email, and told them I did not feel safe. They responded 3 days later, saying that they were concerned about how I interact with customers, and that we'd discuss this further when they returned. They were out of the country at the time of the incident and the email.

In response, I told them I felt unsafe, unsupported, and that I'd been made to feel like a problem employee. I also highlighted the "harassment and discrimination" section of the employee handbook, and left it out for them to see when they returned.

The next day, I received an email telling me I was fired, effective immediately. Their reasons were for defacing the handbook, and creating a "hostile space".

Thank you for reading."

So, we have two stories.

One of them seems a little more detailed than the other.

Now, I realise that the business can't say anything out of fear or worry of retribution and/or defamation of character, but despite my bias, I am a little more prone to believe the employee than I am the business. There's a LOT of detail. Specific incidences. Repeated verbal abuse from the same customer. I have a much easier time believing because these are systems and modalities of transmisist attack that we see time and again. Yes, there are one off attacks...they are usually (but not always) physical, and sadly many end in hospitalisation or death.

The end result?

I'll never shop there.

People are already checking with Attic Youth center to see if they know about this...because the terminated employee was the one who brought the center to the business's attention and got the program, that Function now touts as theirs, going.

And the business will carry on with minimal impact cos, you know, trannies, all we're good for is being emotional and uppity, am I right?

Meanwhile, someone lost their job for living while trans.

And so it goes.

~~~//||\\~~~

The second thing...

Oh, the second thing.

Buckle up cos if part one was bumpy, part two promises to be a roller coaster of fun.

On 14 August, Bored Panda...

Wait.

What IS Bored Panda anyway?

In their words, "Bored Panda is a leading media company dedicated to spreading viral content that makes people happy. Each month, we bring happiness to 30 million readers from the US, the UK and all around the world."

Oh. Kay.

So making people happy.

Got it.

So on 14 August, Bored Panda posted a viral listicle photo thing of some five to six dozen before and after photos of trans women, trans men, and non binary people, in a 'You won't believe the transformation' inspiration porn type thing. I don't even know.

Here's the thing.

When we post before and after pix, it's after a lot of handwringing, and usually for other trans people or eggs (slang for a still not out trans person early in their self discovery) as a way of saying 'Listen, I know you're worried, but you got this. Look. I felt like you. If I can do it you can too. We're here for you.' We do it in places that we think are safe, for our own community, not for cis people to scrape and say 'LOOK AT WHAT A GOOD ALLY I AM FOR LIKING PEOPLE!'

Ahem.

I digress.

None of these people were asked if their photos could be used. Considering that they all had links to their social media accounts under the photos, it's not like BP couldn't have done so...they opted not to.

Many of these people are my friends. And I don't use that in the 'we're connected on FB or twitter' way, I mean we talk regularly friends.

At least one of them has been recently assaulted for the crime of Living While Trans. And is looking for new employment. Many others may be assault victims. Or looking for new housing. Or not out publicly to friends or family.

I can go on, but I don't think I need to. Any other time this would be bad enough. But now? In an era where we allow Nazis to freely walk the streets, hold demonstrations, run cars into crowds and kill people? In an era where Nazis are once again advocating for the extermination of all degenerates? In an era where I regularly get death threats, rape threats? When lots of us do? Who could possibly think this was a good idea for an article?

Oh.

Wait.

I guess the key word is think, isn't it?

So we report the article, both at their site, and on Facebook. We comment on it begging them to take it down. We expose ourselves to transmisists and hateful bigots in order to protect our own because time and again we have to do this. Fortunately, many of my friends who are not trans 'rally to my battle cry,' as one put it, and go in on them as well...an act that I am as always eternally grateful for, as they do it not for cookies or brownie points but because they know it's right to do so.

Finally, the article goes down, both on their site and obviously the link on Facebook. So, victory. But only partial. They kept the article up long enough for it to be scraped, aggregated, and mirrored on countless other sites.

And they still think they did nothing wrong.

How do I know this? How am I sure this is not idle speculation and paranoia on my part?

Let me tell you how.

Yesterday I sent them this message:

"I want you to take a look at the comments under the article you posted of the transition photos.

Take a long look.

Now consider this: you have just put dozens of women at risk. Many of these women may not be out in public yet. Or to their families. You have just outed them. Some of them have been victims of violence for being trans.

And none of them gave you permission to use the photos.

How are you going to address this? You've potentially got the blood of dozens on your hands.

Retract the article. Pull it from your site. Post an apology.

The damage is done, but you can limit it possibly.

Do the right thing."

I think I was reasoned. I didn't curse once. That is a MAJOR victory for Julie.

Around 5 am on the 15th, I get the following in reply:

"Hello,

Firstly, thank you for your concern about transgender people.

All the photos that appear on the post are taken from public internet platforms like reddit.com, where people uploaded and shared these photos by themselves (supposely, after estimating the potential influence on their lives). 18th paragraph from Reddit User Agreement states: "By submitting user content to reddit, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your user content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so." There's a link where you can read more about it -

https://www .reddit. com/help/useragreement

Nevertheless, that was never an intention to put these people in danger and I'm sorry if you see this situation in this way. In that case, even if there's a slightest danger, we don't wanna risk. The post was taken down."

At this point in the proceedings, Julie takes a deep breath.

There is so much wrong with this.

And since I've been in a constant state of rage, and I do not wish to rewrite things in a calmer reasoned manner, here is the response I posted on my FB wall:

" "Firstly, thank you for your concern about transgender people."

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU ARE SHITTING ME.

"All the photos that appear on the post are taken from public internet platforms like reddit. com, where people uploaded and shared these photos by themselves (supposely, after estimating the potential influence on their lives).”

OK WE'RE BLAMING THE VICTIMS NOW GOOD FUCKING JOB.

"18th paragraph from Reddit User Agreement states:"

FUCK YOU IMMORAL LAWS ARE NOT TO BE FOLLOWED FUCK YOU.

"Nevertheless, that was never an intention to put these people in danger and I'm sorry if you see this situation in this way"

THESE PEOPLE?

THESE PEOPLE?

FFFFFUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK YOU SO FUCKING HARD WITH SPORKS AND KNORKS AND RUSTY SCISSORS AND EVERYFUCKING THING ELSE I'M SORRY IF YOU FEEL THIS WAY FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU

"In that case, even if there's a slightest danger, we don't wanna risk. The post was taken down."

HOW FUCKING MAGNANIMOUSLY CAUCASIAN OF YOU BUT NOW THOSE PHOTOS ARE ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE WITH LINKS TO THESE PEOPLE'S SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS ONE OF THEM WAS JUST ASSAULTED FOR LIVING WHILE TRANS SEVERAL OF THEM ARE TRYING TO FIND NEW JOBS SOME OF THEM AREN'T EVEN OUT TO THEIR PARENTS HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU HAVE POSSIBLY THOUGHT OR WAIT THERE IT IS THOUGHT I EXPECTED YOU TO THINK HA HA HA HA HA HA HA SILLY JULIE HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY THINK THAT SOMEONE WOULD ACTUALLY THINK ABOUT US OR IF AN ARTICLE THAT WE HAVEN'T FUCKING CONSENTED TO WOULD BE A RISK HA HA HA"

I...did edit out some of the egregious ha's I typed in there tho.

Because I do have some restraint.

Sometimes.

In the interest of clarity, here's how I replied to them tho:

"And because you put the photos up, now they have been disseminated and are replicated on multiple websites which have scraped your content and mirrored it. Good job. I hope you're proud."

They did see this reply. There is a read notification.

But they won't respond to it.

And give me credit...that was incredibly composed and restrained.

Comparatively speaking.

Here's the thing, people:

We're under threat. We're always under threat. On a good day our alert status is yellow. I don't know what a green day is like. Going out in public, even if I'm in boimode, worries me cos hey boobs am I right boys and girls they're pretty good, eh? So I get weird looks and looks of distaste and I wear makeup even if I have a day's growth because fuck I'm me why should I have to hide anymore look boobs.

Well, my average day starts orange now, and generally hits red around 10 AM on the regular. And I know loads of people tell me I can calm down, I can take breaks, I need to take care of myself.

And I shake my head.

When exactly am I allowed to do this?

My life...my very act of breathing 15 times a minute give or take...is a threat to people who have never met me. They want to put a bullet in my brain. They want to shove me in ovens. They want to cut me to pieces. They want to rape me while murdering me. And if you think I'm exaggerating or overegging the custard, I'm not. And I bet I get it lighter than a Zinnia Jones or a Riley Dennis. Or a Chelsea Manning. And I've seen the shit they get in PUBLIC, so I know it's bad.

These are my sisters.

My brothers.

My enby siblings.

This is my family.

And family means you fight.

Sometimes past the point of exhaustion.

Because the alternative really isn't an alternative. The alternative is surrender. The alternative is death. And if I'm going to die, I will die facing the enemy, I'll be armed, and I'll make damned sure I take as many of them with me when I go

Stay safe, comrades.

For me.

Transmission ends.

Trans 101 With Julie: Give a moment or two to the angry young tran

Hello and welcome back to Trans 101 With Julie.

I am interrupting my usual flow of pieces this week.

And there'll be no witty pop culture references. So if you've come to expect that, come to expect a light-hearted romp through Julie's Trans Life, you'll be disappointed.

I want to talk about this week.

I want to talk about my feelings about what happened this week.

I will likely alienate a lot of people with this.

I'm going to use really harsh language and potentially triggering words and slurs in here.

I'd say I'm sorry but I'm not.

It's all necessary.

Let's begin.

~~~//||\\~~~

In a series of three Tweets, and less than 420 characters, (chokes on the words) President Donald 'Cheeto Jesus' 'PINO Chitler' Trump made clear as policy that transgender members of the military would no longer be able to serve in any capacity. Not as front line soldiers. Not as pilots. Not as medical staff. Not in administration. In no way, shape or form.

I quote:

"After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow......
....Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming.....
....victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you"

There's no lack of clarity there.

Of course, this has led to the kind of uproar you usually see reserved for...well...gorillas shot in zoos or every other crap thing that falls out of Trump's sphincteresque oral orifice. People have spent thousands of words on how this is really all about cost, how this is really all about team synergy, how this is really all about making sure men don't rape women or come on to other men.

So let me break these lies down for you.

The RAND corporation did a survey/study of the DoD budget in 2014. At that time, the DoD budget for health care was six billion dollars. That's a 6 with 9 zeros following it, in case you didn't know. At that time, there were 2,450 openly trans members of the armed forces, and of that number perhaps 29 to 129 of them would require transition related health care that impacted their ability to deploy.

The cost for health care for this 2,450 members of the military?

Between 2.9 and 8.4 million dollars per annum.

Want a percentage on how much that works out to as a portion of the DoD health care budget in toto?

Here it is.

0.14%

Let me repeat this, with words this time.

ZERO POINT ONE FOUR PERCENT.

Using the highest amount of the health care estimated range. Divide that number by 3 for the low end estimate.

Also keep THIS in mind: trans health care: it's not fucking surgeries. We aren't joining the military to get top surgery (trans men) or neovaginas (women). Some of us don't want that at all. Some of us can't have that for other reasons. Trans health care is literally health care for trans members of the military. And lest you think hormones are some exorbitant cost, consider this: I pay, out of pocket because my insurance doesn't cover it at all, about 10 bucks a month for estrogen. My spiro is covered because my freaking cardiologist prescribes it to me to aid with some circulatory issues I have. So, like, 120 bucks a year? Obviously breaking the bank, and keeping us from ordering yet another fighter jet that explodes if you look at it wrong, causes pilots to vomit on launch, and requires manual system reboots in mid air due to software failure.

But we are talking about a military complex that has no compunctions creating more fodder to grind up in the war mill, but won't take care of them once they're home and broken from what they've seen.

This is obviously NOT a budgetary concern.


This is not about team synergy. Countless enlisted troops have stepped forward and said they don't care who is fighting along side them so long as they are doing their job. Generals have stated that they were blindsided by this edict; in fact, many of them didn't know it was coming until the tweets came through. Apparently there was NO communication between the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the DoD, and affected commanding officers and the Commander in Thief.

Somehow, given the tack of this administration, this comes as no shock.


This is not about concerns that a transgender member of the military will be a traitor.

This one comes from the transmisist fallacy that someone who is confused about their gender will end up confused over whose side they're on.

This one is obviously hateful bullshit.

Firstly, we're not confused about our gender. Many of us knew from the time we were able to actually form words that things were wrong. Some of use could have been diagnosed with depression when we entered kindergarten. Some of us attempted suicide after taking part in the one thing in high school that made us feel like ourselves because when it was over, that safe space was gone. Some of us tried repeatedly to get transition underway, only to be thwarted at every turn. And still we banged our head against the brick wall like a recalcitrant bull until either we broke or the wall broke.
I may or may not be speaking from experience.

The simple fact of the matter is this: we KNEW. We KNOW. We know who we are.

Did you know, for example, that roughly 1 in 5 trans people eligible for military service actually serve? Compare that to 1 in 10 of the rest of the populace. Some of this is because it's one of the few places we can actually GET a job, let alone health care and the like. Some of it is obviously for reasons of wanting to serve this country, even as it is a country that constantly reminds us how much less we are as human beings. Most of it is because we're brave enough to put our lives at risk to BE ourselves.

We're not confused about who we are.


It's not about men raping women.

There should be an uproar about men raping women. It's an endemic problem in and out of the military. Oddly it's never brought up when cisgender male members of the military rape women in the military. I guess it's because that never happens, it's only the degenerate and sub-human trans members of the military that rape women.

Oh wait.

1955 Yumiko-chan incident
1991 Tailhook scandal
1995 Okinawa rape incident
2002 Michael Brown incident
2006 Mahmudiyah killings
1996 Aberdeen scandal
2003 US Air Force sexual assault scandal
2012 US Air Force sexual assault scandal

Just off the top of my head.

But hey, gotta keep the trannies out.

Maybe we need to keep the cis men out.

Just a thought.


In the interim, we have all these people speaking out and speaking up about this discrimination. You'd think this is a good thing, that we'd be appreciative of this support. And maybe some/most/nearly all of us are.

I'm not.

You see, I'm sitting here, and I'm seeing this upswell of attention and anger.

And I wonder:

WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN BEFORE THIS?

It is in the same classroom as all the cis people who did stuff for Pride. Yay well and good you changed your profile pic to have a rainbow overlay and you used your pride reacts and you said all kinds of nice things.

And then Pride ended.

And you went silent.

I expect a spate of 'But I don't...' and 'But you know I...' and 'Not all people are like...'

And I shake my head, and say it's a shame.

Because if you read what I wrote, and your initial reaction is one of those, you ARE part of the problem, whether you want to admit it or not.

If you know you are putting in the work, you won't get upset, because you realise my words are NOT FOR YOU. You realise that you don't need to put in my face all the things you are doing. You are vocal all the time. You amplify and don't speak over. You look for trans voices to lift up about trans issues.

Here's the thing, cis people without a clue:

You see the rainbow alphabet soup community as one glorious melange of colours and cool clothes and awesome dance music and stuff.

You don't realise that the Bi connunity is erased and is sitting on the outside looking in.

You don't realise the L community is basically looked on as fodder for straight cis men to toss off over.

You don't realise that the T community is pushed so far out of the way that we're in a different club completely, and some of us are in a corner listening to Bathory and Septic Flesh because dance music makes us break out in hives.

Because that pretty community you love so much?

It's catered to young buff white cis male gays.

And everyone else gets to go pound sand.

Even within the trans community, we have the truscum trans people and the Caitlyns and the Indias and so on telling us what you really need to be to be trans. You have people like Riley Dennis getting dragged through the mud because she would neither confirm nor deny that she was on HRT, which of course meant she was a transtrender. You have people like Zinnia Jones who gets attacked at every turn because she has the guts to stand up against people like Laci Green and prove her wrong every damned time. You have people like Katelyn Burns and other trans journalists who writes deeply researched and documented pieces on the trans community and repeatedly has gotten passed over for some writing jobs for cis people to do the same thing from an uninformed standpoint.

Our own community wants to kick us out.

You have people like Phil Attey who tells us that if we want people to support us, we need to act a certain way, and not slur people by calling them cis. Phil Attey, who calls Repub gay men raggots, tells us how we should act and treat him if we want his table scraps.

Here is what we get 24/7/52/365, courtesy of my friend Mia Violet (another trans essayist you need to check out):

"Celebrities: Trans people, you are valid ❤
Trans people: Thanks, but um… Can you support us the rest of the year too?
Celebs: Byeee~"

Here are my thoughts on all of this in the most piquant, potentially offensive, punctilious manner available to me:

We see you.

We see your being offended that the President won't let us die for you.

We see you not care the rest of the time.

And we don't want that support.

We don't need that kind of support.

And if you're the kind of person who only speaks up when something like this happens, or something like Pride is happening...we don't want you.

Bad shit happens to us every damned day of our lives. We are constantly dehumanised, cast as monsters, cast as degenerate or mentally ill. We are routinely discriminated against, unhireable, discriminated against at the jobs we have (and oh sweet Artemis can I share from personal experience as well as stories from other trans people I know). We're seen simultaneously as freaks and fetishes, good enough to fuck but not worthy of relationships. We're constantly flooded with rafts of death threats AND dick pictures...often from the same person. For those of us with any connection whatsoever with the mostly indy trans erotica industry (a more than coincidental number of my closest friends on Twitter run their own studios, are producers, directors, cam girls, etc.) these things are doubled/trebled/et cetera.

We're gawked at and ridiculed.

We're treated as less than human but good enough to fuck.

And in the end, all we're good for us fertiliser for flowers.

Just ask Dee Whigham.

Except you can't, because she was stabbed in excess of 100 times by former Navy member Dwanya Hickerson.

To the best of my knowledge, with 5 months left in the year, we are at 15 trans women murdered in the US, the vast majority of which are trans women of colour.

Last year was 27.

Better than two per month.

We'll probably break that record this year.

Are you outraged enough yet?

Are you angry enough yet to speak up more than one month a year plus a few extra days here and there?

Cos if you're not...take your support elsewhere.

Cos I don't want it.

~~~//||\\~~~

I continually and constantly say I am not your Good Trans Friend.

I am angry.

I am acidic.

If you've ever seen this meme:

I never hit the first or the second.

I started immediately at number 3.

Maybe this is because I was out to the public for over two years before I was finally able to start HRT. Maybe it's because I'm an angry young woman in general. I don't know.

The pure and simple of this is this:

I don't trust you.

I'm being as honest as I can possibly be.

If you're cisgender, I don't trust you.

I can't.

Some people have proven worthy of me letting them in. But generally speaking, I can't and won't trust cis people. I don't trust that women want me there in their spaces, I can't trust that they'll fight for me with as much loudness as they will for AFAB women (ref: the Women's March, which felt like FAR from a safe space for me). I don't trust that men won't turn on me like they turn on women. If you're a gay man or lesbian woman, I don't trust you doubly because your community has done a yeoman's job making sure we know that we're guilty of gay genocide for wanting to be the gender we are.

I'd say I don't care if this causes me to lose people, and on one hand I really kinda don't care. I definitely don't care if this means that people say I'm building an echo chamber...because if I can't surround myself with people who understand me, and my life, and what I am going through...and do so with nothing but support and kindness...then what point is there?

There IS a war going on, and you may not like the analogy, it's true.

Let me leave you with this:

In may of 1935, Jewish people were not only forbidden to join the German armed forces, those currently serving were removed from the military.

Four months later, Jewish people in Germany were stripped of their citizenship.

And if you haven't seen ANY parallels with what this current administration is doing with the German government post-Weimar, you're willfully blind.

Julie out.






 (This is posted under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license with the intent that you may share it if you have found it informative, helpful, or enlightening. You may use extracts, properly attributed, as part of your work as long is it is openly shared under similar license.) 

Trans 101 With Julie: Things We Never Want To Tell You, Part 1

Hello and welcome back to Trans 101 With Julie.

This time around, and for a few other installments which will probably come out when I have either the strength or rawness to handle what I'll be writing, I want to cover some stuff that is going to be once again intensely personal, interspersed with anecdotes which should not be construed as data but rather simply observations from my particular view of the community I have somehow collected around me.

That's...that's an incredibly long sentence.

In a way, however, that really encompasses how difficult this is to go through. I think it's essential though.

While I can, let's begin.

~~~//||\\~~~

As I've written in the past, I have known for literal decades that I'm a Julie. Single digits, certainly. I know that I've been depressed for a very very long time...but that's really a subject for another article (one, in fact, that I plan to write in the not distant future, dog willing and the creek don't rise). Being trans comes with its own set of complications, and those complications vary wildly from person to person. And while I certainly have no hard and fast data to strengthen any kind of blanket statement I might make were I a person trying to push an agenda, I think that there is a tendency for trans femme and trans women to have at least some kind of phase during which hyper-masculinity is a coping mechanism.

This is where we start hitting the nitty and the gritty, as well as the very uncomfortable.

In grade school, I was pulled in two wildly different directions. On one hand, I was in gifted and talented. I spent more time talking to teachers than I did kids in my classes. I don't think I talk to any of the people I went to grade school with anymore...I don't think any of them really knew me and those are connections that just don't exist. I had a breakdown in 7th grade when my 4th marking period report card was all As and 1 B.

On the other hand I was a huge baseball fan and I wanted to play baseball. And I was on the team in 7th grade. And I was horrible.

In high school I wanted to play football...and I don't mean proper football, I mean the hyper-masculine sport with shoulder pads and grunting and sweating and tight pants and...umm...that kind of football. I tried out for the team. I'd never have made it.

I quit.

And y'all know that I was way involved in music and theatre. I've written about my senior musical, my trip to Austria for choir, my singing the Mozart Coronation Mass and being in madrigals and chamber choir, my coming back to sing at my choir director's final performance leading the high school choir I sang in (and how that brought me back to music and reignited my love of classical music). I may have talked once or twice about reciting Jabberwocky in a mixed up Scouser/Cockney accent.

Here's what you don't know about my high school years.

You don't know that I spent time in the weight room, doing high weight reps.

You don't know about the time I was playing indoor lacrosse in gym class, when someone hip checked me and I went after him, across the floor, stick checked him into the bleachers, then threw my stick down and went after him, fists flying.

You don't know about the time, at a battle of the bands, that a bunch of Nazi skins showed up cos one of the bands had 2 black people in it (including one who would go on to play in a band y'all might have heard of called TV On The Radio), and of all the people there, two of us squared up to go in on them, with one of them being me.

Why did I do these things?

I am sure you could make some very good, and very accurate guesses.

Here's what else you don't know about my high school years.

I used to hang out with people after school, and I'd leave conversations intentionally to see if anyone would notice I was gone, because I was sure no one actually cared. Most often, I felt I was right. (It was only later, talking to a friend over coffees at Panera, that I learned the truth...they knew I was gone, knew something was terribly wrong, and no one had any idea what to do or say to broach that gap I'd imposed. No one had the language for it, the slightest scintilla of idea how to eve begin, and they were frozen with fear. I was then told, gravely, that none of them ever expected to see me again after graduation, and when I'd walked through the door for the concert, several of them started crying when they saw me.)

You don't know that I was someone who knew everyone and whom no one knew. I could walk up to anyone in my class and ask them about something I knew they were into, or talk to one of them about how they did at their basketball game the previous night. I was...inscrutable. And so it was when, senior year in high school, I caused a near riot when at my prom I was seen doing 'the forbidden dance' (a.k.a. Lambada) with someone, as there was no way I had that in me. Virtually cause célèbre.

What do all of these things have in common?

The answer is impossibly, deceptively simple.

Every one was a somewhat valiant, yet horribly ill conceived attempt at trying to be the man I wasn't.

The stereotype, of course, is that guys don't talk about their emotions. How could I talk about MY emotions when I barely understood them myself, let alone say the terrifying words 'please, I'm not a boy, someone help me?' Easier by far to play the part, suck up, be strong and silent...and kill myself inside.

Easier to lash out at someone in the most masculine way possible for a perceived slight in gym class, allowing 12 years (at that point) of pent up frustration at being bullied and mocked and ridiculed to explode in one hyper-masc display of violence.

Easier to try and impress in gym class by lifting well over twice my body weight, even if it meant I couldn't walk afterwards. If I could be man enough, if I could flex hard enough figuratively or otherwise, I'd be seen as one of them and I could get through each day, week, month, year. I obviously didn't know that one one had that thought at all about me...in fact, too many were worried by what they were seeing, but in my mind, this all made perfect sense.

Fake it till you make it, you know?

Balancing this with the fact that none of this was at all comfortable for me was, of course, pretty fracturing. How do you reconcile the fact that you're much more comfortable in rehearsal for the school musical, wearing a gown and singing soprano, than you are trying to press 500 pounds? How do you reconcile the fact that you sit at home at night, listening to WYSP or WNEW late at night, wanting to femme up your clothes and wear makeup to school, with the fact that when you get on the gym floor to play hockey you're looking at who exactly you're going to target and take out of the game? All the while knowing that you're doing that simply because if you act a certain way people will see you a certain way which means you actually will be that certain way?

As I type this, it sounds ludicrous.

This is how complex my high school years were.

~~~//||\\~~~

As I was nearing graduation from high school, I made what now seems like an absolutely off the wall, out of left field, completely irrational decision.

I decided I wanted to join the Army.

Now, I can hear you through your looks of incredulity.

But it gets better.

Because, you see, not only did I want to join the Army, I wanted to be...a grunt.

Go ahead. Please laugh. I'll wait.

In fact, I'll go make a sandwich so you have time to get it out of your system.

*goes and makes sandwich*

All done?

Good.

But really, think about it in conjunction with everything else you've read above. In the context of that, it makes perfect sense. The one way I could prove once and for all to everyone, and thus to myself, that I was actually 100% man and not at all the woman I knew I was but really I couldn't be because men were men and women were women (except we know that isn't true in the sense that I'm saying I believed it was at the time) was to join the military and do the dirtiest, most physically demanding thing I could think of.

As you can imagine...it didn't happen.

The day before I was due to sign the papers, I chickened out.

In retrospect, this was probably a wise choice on multiple levels. Not long after this tensions rose to critical levels in the Middle East, and soon we were amassing troops in and near Iraq for what would be Operation Desert Storm. I doubt I'd have even made it through basic, to be honest...I'd either have failed a mental health exam (I'd already had one failed suicide attempt, a fact the recruiter knew about and told me to not mention on my application), or a physical (I was already showing signs of what I now know to be osteoarthritis on my right side)...or I'd have burned out. Or I'd have lost it and shot someone. Or I'd have killed myself.

But it was the choice I thought was the best way for me to prove once and for all that I was a man.

And obviously...I'm not.

Here's a neat thing...I know (not just me following them, but them following me and having conversations type people) at least 4 or 5 trans women on Twitter who were active military. And I really don't know what their motivations were for going into the military, but if they were to tell me that one of their deciding factors was similar to mine, I'd not be the least bit surprised.

I know several who were heavily involved in sport...and still are in many cases, including one who was a wrestler (and I don't mean freestyle or Graeco-Roman).

I am not saying their experiences are the same as mine...I am a strong adherent to the proposition that the plural of anecdote is not data...but the coincidental preponderance of points of information is something of interest to me.

Keep in mind this is not to say that doing any of these things are BAD. Sport is awesome. I love my football as much if not more than I ever have. And while I have no interest in lifting weights or checking someone into the boards, I like getting out and about when my body allows me to. Trans men and women in the military have done, and will continue to do, amazing things, even if I do not support the military-industrial complex or the government that used said same as an iron fist to colonise and propagate fascist/cap systems of government around the globe.

Oh...there's my inner anarchist coming out.

Apologies.

The point is, I think a lot of us go to the other extreme when we're fighting ourselves. Much as so many trans women are accused wrongly of embracing femme stereotypes once they are out (when in fact so many do as a way of trying to shield themselves from the likewise wrong assertion that they're aren't REAL women or woman ENOUGH), I think it is not only natural but almost normal for those of us struggling with identity issues to over-compensate in an effort to try and right what we think is a listing shop. It's not until we're able to more clearly understand the dichotomy of those two sides that we're able to get them into some kind of equilibrium.

Remember that when I'm writing this, I'm doing so from a very extremely binary female point of view. I am happily binary, with a full understanding that the spectrum of trans identity is far from a 0-1, black-white system. What I express and describe can only be my experiences, and I'm only speaking for those experiences and not for the community as any kind of holistic entity. A non-binary trans woman (be they gender queer, gender fluid, transfemme, or any of hundreds of other possibilities) will not only have different experiences but different ways of feeling how those experiences impacted them in their quest to become who they are internally.

~~~//||\\~~~

I want to thank you, as always, for reading along. The past week or so has been very difficult for me, and as a result I've really been facing some very difficult things and trying to make sense of them. Right now, that makes it a bit...I don't want to say easier, because it's anything but easy...but perhaps more readily possible...for me to look at some of these things and try to evaluate where they fit into my personal history and how they continue to cause tremors to this day, or how they have affected my internal landscapes and structures.

I'll see you next time for more Trans 101.

Transmission ends.

(This is posted under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license with the intent that you may share it if you have found it informative, helpful, or enlightening. You may use extracts, properly attributed, as part of your work as long is it is openly shared under similar license.) 

Some random thoughts about gaming, RPGs and the holy trinity

I want to talk about games for a moment.

I actually have another piece I am writing about computer gaming that is very different than this, but for the moment, and for today, I want to talk about roles and stereotypes and so on.

Basically, most CRPGs and MMOs are based around what's called a holy trinity, which is Tank/Healer/DPS. There have been times that things have moved away from that somewhat (WoW did introduce a concept called scenarios during Mists of Pandaria in which 3 people of any class/spec could succeed, but even there some really benefited from a dedicated tank in there), but at the core, all end game content that isn't PvP is really designed with that in mind.

For the uninitiated:

Tank: basically a meat shield. High health, high armour, lower DPS, designed to survive big hits and keep enemies and bosses occupied.

Healer: does what it says on the tin. They keep everyone vertical, with emphasis on the tank.

DPS: the cannons that kill the boss. Often made of glass. They break easily.

When I started playing WoW in 2008, I had illusions of what a tank really was. How do you keep threat on something? By doing more damage than anyone else. I was shocked to find out when I was tanking I'd be doing the least (this has improved a LOT since then, but it was not until recently that tanks could be so competitive)...in fact, the first dungeon I tried to tank I tanked with a 2 handed sword because, when asked if I could hold threat, I said 'well, I have a big sword.'

I tanked basically non stop through the last year of Burning Crusade and all of Wrath of the Lich King. I took time off during Cataclysm as I was being less involved in guild activities...basically seeing myself frozen out of a lot of stuff. I came back at the end because a friend wanted a thing to play with me and so I picked it back up from the last content patch in Cataclysm and played non-stop through the first 3 months of the newest expansion.

I'd gone through a sea change tho.

You see, tanking is one of the two hardest jobs in the game, and I think heals tops it. If you're a good healer no one ever notices. If you're a bad healer, well...people notice. If you're a good tank everyone notices. If you're a bad one...it's bad. Really bad.

Because I started tanking in Burning Crusade, I have a different toolkit for tanking. I do line of sight pulls. I am more methodical because you could not pull an entire room and AoE (area of effect) them down. Trash had mechanics. You had to pay attention. Today we have a bigger toolbox for tanking...which I did not understand at first, but now I think makes all the sense in the world...I was super squish in protection spec and just...gave up. The stress had gotten too much, coupled with being in a progression guild for Wrath, and...

I just couldn't do it.

I mean to the point that I even stopped running dungeons and stuff as a DPS because I'd freeze up at the thought of zoning in.

In Legion, things have been a bit different.

For one, I have a dedicated healer with whom I am in voice contact. Add to that that we're a thing, and stuff becomes...verbal comm goes away? She knows how I pull mobs, she knows how I'll position and when I'll use cooldowns and that I WILL use my active abilities to minimise my incoming damage, and she can focus more on triage for everyone rather than dumping mass heals on be cos I feel I can pull an entire room and stuff.

Even tho I prolly could.

It means when I tank a dungeon it takes 18 minutes rather than 15.

But no one dies.

My pocket healer doesn't scream in my headset on every pull (which is fucking adorable by the way and makes me giggle).

Stuff gets done.

I love the ease of playing DPS, and I think I'm a better DPS because I tanked and tank.

I laugh about the fact that I pull a boss and the DPS runs around to the back...only to find that's where I already am because I am trained to face the boss away from the group. I guess that's not a thing anymore. It used to be.

I don't love tanking. I'll be honest, there are times I don't even  >like< tanking. It's hella stressful. I do get very anxious. I would rather be mindless and just hit things hard with 7 foot long pieces of magicked metal.

But.

When I run 5 mythic dungeons in one night...and watch a tank pull things madly, leaving people behind...and a DPS who shall remain nameless but whose name might just rhyme with unruly might possibly get hit by a boulder and knocked into trash mobs that were never killed, which decide oops we're gonna eat you thank you...I realise that I can do a better job, keep myself alive, keep everyone alive, and not stress out my healer whom I eventually will be crashing out with.

Roles are hard...and tanking is a job that I associate with a still closeted Julie trying desperately to...something. But I realise also some of the best tanks I ever played with were women, and...this role is something I can do.

And with someone at my side to support, I can do it well.

Trans 101 With Julie: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

 Hello and welcome back to Trans 101 with Julie. I am your clumsy fingered hostess with the toastses (mmm, toast) Julie.

  I want to talk today about one of the most popular misconceptions that gets bandied about when someone comes out publicly (or even privately) as transgender. That misconception, to lay things out at the beginning, is this:

“But you've changed!”

  The thing is, we really haven't.

  At least, not in a bad way at all.

  What you are seeing is someone who has finally given up one of the biggest things holding them back, and now they finally maybe feel free enough to talk about some of the things they've kept drawn close to the vest for years and years.

  You may also be seeing someone who is letting go of things they claimed they liked as a kind of safety net they used in order to blend in and stealth through life.

  To use myself as an example:

People who are very very close to me were not the least bit surprised when I told them I was transgender. Depending on the person, they saw me struggle with it for years or decades, or watched me go through failed and furtive attempts to ratchet the door open, only to come up short each time. Others saw my willingness to throw myself headlong into things like RHPS or stage stuff, specifically roles that may or may not have involved playing a woman (or a man playing a woman) on stage, and realised there were things I was hiding.

  And here on my wall...yes. I talk about clothes and makeup from time to time. Remember that for me this is puberty point two. I am finally having to teach myself how to navigate things I was never socialised with as a teen, even tho I sorely wanted to be. It doesn't mean I've changes...it means I've grown.

I will always post about FC Bayern and proper football, because there is nothing on this world or any other that will diminish my love for the beautiful game. I didn't fall for soccer because I was trying to hide behind it...I fell in love with it cos when I was tiny Pele signed with the NY Cosmos, and I learned about football off a cereal box back. Likewise, I still love baseball, always will, and I blame Burger King and their Yankees baseball cards for that.

Well, and Nolan Ryan.

But, like...in HS I tried doing the football thing, and I couldn't do it. Nothing was worth putting myself through that hell. If that meant I'd get tagged a choir queer, so be it. I still have issues with American football because of that.

And I will always love the music I love...it's a running joke that I'll post all the classical stuff on my wall (Classical Music Julie, anyone?) and then someone will get on Skype or Discord with me and they'll hear a wall of white noise, blast beats, and black metal scream. When I say I love all kinds of music, I really do mean it.

And all those interests are inherent. They're ME.

  But me also likes dresses. And learning what my aesthetic is. And makeup. Me is going through physical changes that are amazing to witness, if not always the easiest things to deal with. I do tend to NOT talk about those because I do know people have their limits, but each day I move further and further away from the shell/husk I used to be and closer and closer to me. I am, to quote/paraphrase Janet Mock, redefining my reality and surpassing certainty.

  I know girls who are madly into muscle cars...to the point that their Youtube channels are chock a block filled with vids about their Mustangs or whatever. One of my friends is a mad off-road biker. I know someone who played league football in the UK, someone else who builds Gundam models, and another who cosplays as 2B from Nier: Automata. One of my close friends is a business owner, another is a well known blogger and published author on gender studies, several other are ex-military...

The point is, I am betting in almost every case these are things they have been into for years if not decades.

But when we come out, when we start talking about things we never have before, those new things often seem to overshadow all the other things we've always liked...those other things becomes like background noise and the new stuff seems amplified. We've...we've changed. Even if we haven't really.

One other thing to keep in mind is this:

Often we do go to the extreme end of the binary, as much as a coping mechanism as anything else. We're so afraid of not being seen as real trans people that we go over the top in expressing or presenting in an overtly binary fashion. There's mingled unmitigated joy at the fact that this whole new world shining glimmering splendid is before us, and we dive in head first. But it's also armour, a way to protect ourselves from the slings and arrows hurled at us.

“But LOOK! I am so femme!”

“LOOK! I'm a real girl!”

“LOOK!”

  We learn, some quicker than others, that those end up being tells that we can't risk. We learn to reel it back, to actually embrace the resplendence in divergence that is the entirety of the femme experience.

It's not personality changing.

It's called the growth game.

I'm two years-ish in in a public sense. Y'all have seen so many of my growing pains, and there's certainly a billion more slips and pitfalls and pratfalls ahead of me as I learn my way through. I'm becoming myself, more surely every day, and more fully in every way. Will I cast off things? Most likely and I might not even know what they are, because they'll literally be things I don't even think about as I go along. We all do that, trans, cis, enby, agender, doesn't matter.

That's called living.

Anything else is stasis and homogeneity.  

  And if you think I've changed...maybe instead you should look at how your perception of me may have changed as a result of new data.
  Each one of us going through transition, no matter how that is (CHT, surgery, nothing at all if they medically can't) is essentially going through a second puberty...only we're doing it without the benefit of a cadre of others going through it with us in close proximity. Do you have any idea how difficult puberty was for me, seeing body hair and feeling bits...descend...and waking up with this stuff stuck to my sheets...and then getting to school and seeing the other girls in my class talking about outfits and stuff, and knowing that as much as those were conversations I was desperate to have, at this time they were decidedly off limits to me?

  So everything is new, and exciting, and terrifying.

  We talk about make up as much because we're discovering it as it is because we hope that if we do, the women around us who grew up learning about it will be able to give us tips and hints and pointers. We talk about clothing, and post pix, because as much as we may be proud of how we pulled off a certain look, sometimes we can get amazing advice on how to put things together better, or without being too over the top, or where we could push things a little. For so many of us, this is a foreign language we're having to learn by the collective butts of our britches, and without the benefit of a life lived with these things, we have to play catch up exceptionally fast and with great furiousness.

And potentially with far less Vin Diesel than we'd like.

And yes, to the outside these things can seem like evidence that we've changed.

But they're really not.

They're excitement mingles with fear crossed with a sincere desire for help as we try to pack 20 years of childhood and puberty and adolescence into a 3 or 4 year period in the hopes that we don't get clocked and get clocked...or worse.

  Trust me...we're still in there. We're still us. We're just...us plus.

We're ourselves, upgraded.

Julie point two :-P

(You had to know, at some point, I'd have to work in a Doctor Who reference into one of these essays. Anything less would be...less. Less...Julie. Less...of a certain je nais se quois, a certain savoir faire, a certain...Jacques Chirac.)

  Thanks once again for hanging out with me. I hope this helps you get some idea of the things we're dealing with and trying to pick up as we go through a major change in our lives for the first time for the second time. As always, I encourage questions, comments, insights, anything you might have, ad there's plenty of room below to add your bits, bobs, and allsorts. Take care of yourselves, eat good food, hug your loved ones, and stay alive.
  See you here next time.




 (This is posted under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license with the intent that you may share it if you have found it informative, helpful, or enlightening. You may use extracts, properly attributed, as part of your work as long is it is openly shared under similar license.)

Things and stuff...

A heap of broken images from the past several days...

1) A very close family member is having a long series of medical tests, which started Monday and continues today preceding a surgical procedure next week. Vibes for them are gladly appreciated, as I need them to be well.

2) My bun, the love of my life, the star-flecked night sky my moon travels through and with, should be getting her full regimen of HRT within the next 2 weeks. This is more exciting for me than when I got mine.

3) I made it through some game stuff in WoW that I'd been struggling with. WoW has been a huge escape for me through much of the last decade of my life, and having some great friends to play it with right now is a big thing. I'm in a very trans-friendly guild on Wyrmrest Accord, an RP server, and my guildies are in many cases friends that I've known for a long time.

In any event...

The first, and biggest, one was that I finally made it past the warrior class mount challenge:

That's my battlelord's proto-drake :-)

Secondly, I finally made it past the fire mage artifact empowerment quest...AND I somehow found a hidden appearance for mine!

Those really made me happy.

4) Speaking of gaming....I am working on a piece for here and my FB page about gaming and how important it can be for trans men and women. It's one of several pieces I have in the works, and hopefully you'll be seeing it soon. I still have a backlog of 4 or 5 essays that haven't been posted here, so...patience.

5) Speaking of writing...since I began my essay series on FB back in December (the same week I started HRT) I have written some 40,000 words on the subject. It's likely by the time I hit the 1 year anniversary of the essays and my estrogen that I'll be close to 100,000 words.

I am strongly considering assembling all of it in a book.

We'll see.

6) BTW....obviously my PC is rebuilt :-)

See y'all back here soon.

Stay frosty this summer.