dakotajoyce-blog - Tumblr blog

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you: so, what’s the Yakuza series all about?

me: 

you: holy shit

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update-college

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Something I’m writing for class. Pretty ok with this thus far.

I remember I conversation I had with Katie Rain Hill, author of Rethinking Normal, at the Philadelphia Trans* Health Conference in June 2016. I had been on the anti-androgen spironolactone for several months, though my life was a protracted state of baited breath. Cross-sex hormones were, after some tumult, perched upon the same horizon that bore the tragedies at the Pulse Nightclub just two sun rises away, hanging above our world like an axe to fall. Katie had given a presentation on young people coming to terms with their gender identity, and the necessary steps a person should take in accordance with the WPATH standards of care. “I don’t know, it has a lot of issues,” I explained after she spoke, “Gatekeeping is a definite problem, at least in my experience.” Our conversation was brief, but I clearly conveyed my stance on the WPATH, that I thought it was a gatekeeping mess, and needed to be revised--I was angry, but I felt justified in my frustration.

In its seventh edition, the standards cover a general guideline by which an interdisciplinary team of medical and mental professionals health work in tandem to facilitate the safest and most tailored treatment options for trans* person’s specific situation. The contemporary goals of these standards aim to hone a delivery method by which these teams have access to the most up to date information they need by promoting LGBTQ+ leadership councils and education curriculums across North America, like HEALE and The TRANS Pulse Project in Ontario.

“I question whether or not your experiences are normative,” my gender therapist explained in the Spring of 2016 “we’ll give it some time, two, perhaps three months, just to make sure. Just to make sure that you’re really transgender.” Back then my world was a black market, where gut-sinking betrayal was the currency paid to gained an understanding of my place in the American medical, political, and social cosmos. I could no more emulate my icons and heroes than identify them but even then, amidst my disorientation, I knew that this was wrong. And I could infer from my own experience in supports groups like PFLAG and PRIDE that I was not alone this injustice. I was bribed with hormones to begin presenting early, professional neglect transmuted into social stigma.

Fleshy chunks of my body had been amputated, invaluable sinews of time frayed from the fabric of my life. The words choked the air around me, a brutal fist that formed then convulsed within my throat as I slipped out from the office, unable or unwilling to give myself permission to let their aftermath pour down my face until halfway to the car. A mental health professional who said she followed the WPATH, quoted it at me even, tortured its letters into a razor and honed her blade with professional clout. For a time it was easy to go straight to the heart and blame WPATH. The causality seemed obvious.

As I learned of the standard’s limitations, my anxiety swelled. Summer days spent cat sitting were overcast with mulling over textbooks and memoirs; Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, Becoming Nicole, and Rethinking Normal affirmed and cast doubt. Transitioning seemed easy, institutions framed as a support network, not a blade that cuts and sculpts your body in the image of time. I learned that the WPATH are guidelines, protective suggestions, soft waves upon fair soil for some, but an insurmountable seaside cliff for many. I merely waded in its sea--we must never forget those individuals whom its depths have consumed. Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in his memoir Between the World in Me that a metric of oppression is the time that we have lost. He is not speaking about trans* people in these passages, but I couldn’t help but feel as though he is speaking to me to some extent. How do I perceive myself pre-transition? Usually it feels like a different life, a different person--I share those memories, but it’s hard to associate myself with them. Can I find purpose in time that I consider, to some extent, lost? I think there is a strength that is required to do so; one that I do not yet posses. While the guidelines have improved, we must remember its failings; though improved, we must be aware of the problems with the delivery methods by which trans* individuals receive treatment.

Education and LGBTQ+ leadership groups can only appeal to a specific demographic of practitioners, which is to say someone who has empathy for trans* lives. But the unwillingness that many practitioners have for the treatment of trans* people is often drawn from the same well that results in evasiveness around curriculums like HEALE. To completely address the gross inadequacies of trans* healthcare, we must first understand that the scars we receive, be the blade one of time, overt violence to the body and psyche, or the suppression of authenticity are the interlinked  accumulation of the cultural and political acceptance of transphobia, systemic racism, classism, homophobia and misogyny. Politicians speak of us as though we are predators, so they deny us the right to exist within public space. I have seen Milo Yiannopoulos stomp his voice upon our downtrodden bodies just as I have seen Jon Stewart bleed his morals dry for quick laugh. We are not damaged until you make us so.

Bill Maher has couched our rights, our lives, and our bodies as a “boutique issue” worthy of attention at some nebulously defined future where artificial logistics supersede moral responsibility. Transphobia may not render overt hatred, but the ability to row through its channels and arrive at the same destination. Because our pain is less, because we are less human. Because the agony I’ve felt as teeth burrowed into flesh, or hands ripped hair from its roots is different than yours; perhaps because these were isolated instances, or because it was my choice to do so.

Transphobia translates the scars etched upon our bodies as textual evidence of our inhumanity. Too young, for the decision is cannot be yours to make. Too old, and you’re inauthentic. Our flesh is woven by whomever seamstress wields the sinews of our time--be she cruel or fair, a seamstress she remains, imbued with the potential for negligent concern, overt hatred, and genuine empathy. I’ve found the path of least resistance leads to accepting their lies, and as we are human, so too do we err. Consciously or not, I have looked in the mirror and seen a young man as often as I have seen a woman's eyes pierce my own. I have been asked by therapists if I experience dysphoria, and my answers reflected what they wanted to hear; but can I know for sure--do I feel the same as conceptualized others this person is comparing me to? I knew that I hated the person whose image mocked my own, and I knew that certain clothing dispelled, to a small degree, my discomfort. But do I measure up? No, no. Listen to me.

I have been reified, categorized, sized and compared. But empathy comes first from listening. Anita Sarkeesian, whose work to address, compile, and expose sexism within video game and online spaces writes “The most radical thing you can do is actually believe women when they talk about their experiences”. She is not referring to medical procedure, nor should her comments be taken that way. But our treatment must be laid upon a bedrock of empathy if we are to be seen as human, complete and whole and beautiful.

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Happy New Years everyone! Thank you all so so much for the support and love!!! :D Repost from last year cuz this resolution didn’t come true. I’mma join a religion this year, maybe that’ll help. I’ll go with Buddha, he’s got the biggest tits out of all of them.

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in case u forgot

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“For those who think that No Platforming should never be used, instead of being reserved for extreme cases like this”--Garrett Girton

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Tired, no makeup. 

Dakota, 19 y/o trans gal.

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Oh hey look

Wrong age and gender, but happy with the pic!

Dakota, 19 y/o transgirl

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Pluggity plug plug

Heya check out my newest article over at FemHype! https://femhype.com/2016/10/04/the-right-to-exist-transition-affirmation-in-final-fantasy-ix/

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Eyo gurl

Got my brows did! 

Dakota, 19 transgirl

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5 Movies I Can Watch at Any Time

1. Return of the King

2. Pan’s Labyrinth

3. Children of Men

4. Blade Runner (Final Cut)

5. The Prisoner of Azkaban

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5 Ships Because the Internet Told Me To

Final Fantasy IX: Baku x Kuja

Welcome to the NHK: Sato x Yamazaki

Persona 4: Yu Narukami x Yosuke Hanamura

Polar Bear Cafe: Polar Bear x Grizzly

Fate/Stay Night: Kotomine Kirei x Gilgamesh

There, I did it. I feel filthier than Michael Gira putting out a debut album, but it’s done.

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GET A JOB DAKOTA

Selfie at work. Dakota 19 y/o transgirl

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Pull your shirt up girl! (God I look like a dude in this one lol)

Zero makeup, zero worries. I might live in a cave, but at least I got them glasses!

Dakota, 19 y/o transgril.

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Past Anxieties

So I knew all about misogyny. I skimmed over article headlines here and there, and proudly dressed my rhetoric in phantom authority. Taking potshots from the sideline, I thought my peanut gallery opinions were as valid as those steeped in academic study and personal experience. Sure, the issue was at arm's length, and so what if my thoughts on the topic lacked any of the social context that creates these situations in the first place? I wanted to be heard dammit, so let me speak!

Fast forward years later I’m staring at my first ever creepy internet message some from some guy on Reddit regarding a picture that I posted, and I don’t know what to feel.

How about some context. Over the course of my transition, my thoughts on intersectional feminism have been radically altered. Though I will never claim to be an authority on such topics, I read constantly. I read and I listen and I go as far out of my way to expose myself to feminist rhetoric as I can. I’m not an expert, but what I have now is far more than I can ever say for the confused “dude” that I once was.

Back to staring at my computer screen in confusion. So a guy on the internet wants to fuck me, and wants it known.

And I know how I’m supposed to feel, but my disgust is purely cerebral. My mind races, I start thinking of the message as endemic of normalized sexual harassment, and while I’m appalled at how casually the man treated me, the feeling is borne of distaste for the trend, not the immediate act. In truth, all I sussed out was terror, guilt, and shame. How on Earth could I find this experience validating?

Beyond the shallow stabs of giddiness I feel from this guy thinking I’m cute, I saw myself as finally having an experience that nearly all women do. And I can’t help but feel as though I’ve betrayed myself. I’m disgusted that I’ve internalized a fallacious correlation between womanhood and perpetual victim-hood and, moreover, I questioned whether I want to be a victim in order to feel validated. But I dig deeper, I try to analyze and think and push through rotted validation. I talk to a friend, listen to music, and furiously “head-pillow” in attempts to reconcile my pained affirmation.

And I have no easy answer. I’m still frustrated, and I still feel shame for the ideas that I’d internalized throughout my youth and teenage years. I see a void within me that desperately longs for a do-over. A new start, a fucking respec. I pinpoint discomfort with my male socialization, lamenting and raging with my next breath. I have learned to live with my body, but for me, that has been the easier part. 

I am not only disgusted that I am validated by a negative experience, I am disgusted with myself for feeling as if I require this validation. I have never in my life felt the way I do having read this man’s message. I have never been so thoroughly objectified, never been told to have my fuckhole plugged. And the novel wave of emotions that I felt during this experience emphasizes the constant perfunctory nature of my authentic self--I lack twenty years of feminine experience and socialization, and I can never get them back. And that terrifies me. I feel like a man who’s taken it upon himself to define womanhood, to feel that “authentic” experiences are requisite to my feminine integrity, while dismissing my those that I deem too “masculine”.

I feel like a shitty high school senior who, at arms-length, knows all about mysoginy. 

And I know nothing about myself as a woman--I lack a those formative experiences, instead cursed by a history of boyhood. And I want it removed and re-sculpted more than any part of my body. Having largely been alone for these past six months, I’ve allowed these emotions to fester in their most isolate, fecund environment. I attend monthly PFLAG meeting and, on rare occasions, rendezvous with a couple trans “sort-of friends” recreationally. So while these meet-ups help my mind focus on anything but my past and what I need, my fear is that all I’ve done is apply temporary bandages to a much greater problem. My gender dysphoria stems from my past experiences as well as my body and if my I history has defined me, my history is male, and that will never change. And I feel powerless. I assert, again and again, that I am a real woman, and while sometimes I believe it, I doubt whether I can ever be a complete woman. So while painful events sparked my thinking, I don’t exclusively refer to the negative commonalities; I’ll never be taken to prom, never have a high school boyfriend who sees me as a woman. I’ll never have an awkward first period, nor have a group of girl friends to hang out with after school. If this sounds shallow, or whiny, that’s because it is. I know there’s nothing I can do about the past but keep looking forward and improving myself for the future, and that there are plenty of people who’ve waited far longer than I have to transition. But goddamn sometimes it hits hard and I’m dragged down into a spiral of intense negativity. I fucking scream in bed, bite myself, blast music as loud as I can take it. I punch-dance until my hollow fury subsides. So I manage, and I’ve always gotten out, even if it means staying home for a day in pajamas without showering, or binge eating granola because, at that moment, it’s just that good.

I’m not at the point where I’m able to reconcile myself with my masculine past, and I’m not even sure that approaching the problem from that angle is correct. I need to understand that my childhood was, as my life is now, about a girl-- every bit as much as it is for who’ve had  a “typical girlhood”. And while I don’t yet feel, even from the truest part of myself, that I quite believe this, I know that I need to find peace with my past, one way or another. And strangely, beyond any logic that I am equipped to adequately convey, I know that I can do that. Ten days ago I had’t even the words for this problem, yet now I have identified something that has forever lingered in my soul like a cancer. And that is progress that gives me hope. Real, genuine hope because I have a lifetime to work on it. My lifetime. Each moment from this point on is mine, and I can deal with the past surer than I could ever do before, and right now that is enough. I know that gender changes along with society, so even if I struggle with a pain that is real and now, perhaps my identity is all I require to be complete. And more than they ever have, those possibilities feel defined.

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Reblog if you've formed a meaningful relationship with someone you met online.

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WHO IS SHE

First time in a skirt! Dakota, 19 year old transgirl.